The Diverse Nature of Psychology Paper Term Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The Diverse Nature of Psychology - Term Paper Example Social psychology tries to understand people as social animals in social environments and contexts. As the below diagram by McAndrew (2011) indicates, social psychology is a combination of cognitive psychology, sociolinguistics, social anthropology and individual psychology. What is the difference between microsociology and social psychology? Thoits (1995) argues, â€Å"[S]ociologists generally devote their efforts to identifying which social phenomena have effects on individuals while psychologists generally specialize in identifying the mechanisms or processes through which social phenomena have their effects on individuals†. The distinction is between dyadic and monadic analysis. Social psychology tries to analyze people as they are effected by social factors. They look at people qua people and see the social factors as the next level of analysis. But microsociology looks at people as units in a dyadic relationship: They form dyads but the analysis is of the dyads. Social p sychology looks at Katrina, Bob and Joe individually; microsociology looks at Katrina-Bob, Bob-Joe and Katrina-Joe. Social psychology is immensely applicable to my sociological focus. To understand the dyads, it's important to understand the monads.