Microsoft Word Chapter 1 done doc

1.2 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY : A DEFINITION : 
 
Defining any field is a very difficult task. So is the case with 
social psychology. Here are some examples:
According to Gordon Allport (1954) social psychology is 
best defined as the discipline that uses scientific methods in “an 
attempt to understand and explain how the thought, feeling and 
behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or 
implied presence of other human beings”. 
Myers and Spencer (2006) define social psychology as the 
“scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to 
one another”. 
Barron and Byrne (2007) defined social psychology as “the 
scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and cause of 
individual behaviour and thought in social situations”.
1.2.1 Social Psychology: It’s Scientific Nature : 
 
For many students, the word science means physics, 
chemistry biology, genetics, etc. They and many others would 
wonder whether social psychology is science. To understand the 
scientific nature of social psychology, we need to understand what 
we mean by science. In reality science is not a label for certain 
fields of advanced studies in natural sciences. It has set of values 
and methodology. Accuracy, objectivity, scepticism, and open-
mindedness are the values of science. The data collection, analysis 
and inferences are drawn in most error-free manner. The collection 
of data and interpretation is as free as possible from the human 
biases. Only those scientific conclusions are accepted that have 
been proved time and again. The views are open to change, no 
matter how strong they are. The principles that are determinants of 
science are Empiricism; Objectivity; Parsimony; and Converging 
evidence. Empiricism means human experience, so the scientific 
enquiry should be human experience and not beyond and without 
it. Parsimony means simple explanations are preferred over 
complex (also known as Occam’s Rezor). Considering all these 
parameters, science differs from the non science.