Social psychology is the development of new science and is a branch of psychological science in general. Science describes the human activities in relation to social situations. Of the various opinion leaders about the notion of social psychology can be concluded that social psychology is a scientific study about the experience and behavior of individuals in relation to social situations.
While the background of the emergence of social psychology, many people argue some, such as Gabriel Tarde said the fundamentals of social psychology theories originate in the process of imitation as the basis of the social interaction between people. Surgery again by Gustave Le Bon, that in humans there are two kinds of souls that is the individual soul and the soul of the mass of each different nature.
Mass soul is more primitive (savage, irrational, and full of sentiment) than on the properties of the individual soul. Different with Le Bon, Sigmund Freud argues that the soul of the masses is actually already there and are covered by the individual soul, only humans are often not realized by itself because it is in a state of latent. And many more characters who argued in a book that has an influence on the development of social psychology.
In 1950 and 1960 are actively growing social psychology and psychology degree programs in major universities began Basic study of social psychology on the basis of human potential, where the potential is experiencing the development process after the individual is living in a community environment. Potentials include:
1. ability to use language
2. existence of ethical attitudes
3. Living in three dimensions (past, present, future)
The third principal over the human condition commonly referred to as a minimum. Thus that do not meet minimum human itself were classified as public is difficult. Object of social psychology is the study of human social activities / social phenomena. While social methods include: a. Experimental method, b. Survey method, c. Observation methods, d. Diagnostic methods - psychis, e. Sosiometri method.
As the object of human science, then there is mutual relationship between social psychology with other sciences are also human object, such as: law Science, Economics, history, and is most closely related to sociology. Location in a systematic social psychology in psychology, including the nature of empirical psychology and the psychology of belonging to a special psychology and a study investigating aspects of the specificity of the things that are generally studied in the specialized field of psychology. While social psiklogi position in the field of psychology is included in theoretical psychology, social psychology, while classified in theoretical psychology.
About the ideology of social psychology there is any contradiction between the various figures in social psychology which can outline that is divided into two streams, the flow subyektifisme stating that the individual that shape his behavior in any society. And the second is the flow, which is obyektivisme flow opposite of subjectivism, that the society that determines the individual.
In addition to the above two streams, there are still discussing the flow of the relationship of the individual with the society of which is the flow of historical and cultural personality.
