Social Versus Cognitive Psychology
1. Cognitive psychology differs from social psychology long with the following aspects:
a. In terms of concept and definition,
Cognitive psychology studies mental processes including how people think, perceive, remember and learn. The focus of cognitive psychology is on how people acquire process and store information, while social psychology on the other hand is a discipline that uses scientific methods to understand and explain how the thought, feeling and behaviour of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of other human beings.
b. strengths of cognitive and social psychology:
In terms of studying these fields, social psychology’s strength is that it attempts to use real life situations when studying behaviour. It studies behaviour in the context of the social world. Because social psychology is interested in human interaction this is best studied in real situations where participants have the opportunity to interact, while cognitive psychology on the other hand uses a scientific approach through the use of laboratory experiments in observing human behaviour.
Another asset of the social psychology is the contributions it makes about understanding social behaviour. Social psychology makes useful applications because it can explain and even offer solutions to problems in the real world. It also explains the phenomena of human behaviour-why such actions arise within a person given the circumstances of social influence or pro-social behaviour for example. Cognitive psychology is helpful as well, in the context of education and training. For cognitive psychology, the brain functions like any other physical system. We can study how our brain stores data and later memorizes it, how knowledge and information is represented, how things get categorized in the brain, how we judge probabilities, how we plan, and finally, how ideas in our minds mix all this to produce high level inferences in daily.
c. Weaknesses of
a. In terms of concept and definition,
Cognitive psychology studies mental processes including how people think, perceive, remember and learn. The focus of cognitive psychology is on how people acquire process and store information, while social psychology on the other hand is a discipline that uses scientific methods to understand and explain how the thought, feeling and behaviour of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of other human beings.
b. strengths of cognitive and social psychology:
In terms of studying these fields, social psychology’s strength is that it attempts to use real life situations when studying behaviour. It studies behaviour in the context of the social world. Because social psychology is interested in human interaction this is best studied in real situations where participants have the opportunity to interact, while cognitive psychology on the other hand uses a scientific approach through the use of laboratory experiments in observing human behaviour.
Another asset of the social psychology is the contributions it makes about understanding social behaviour. Social psychology makes useful applications because it can explain and even offer solutions to problems in the real world. It also explains the phenomena of human behaviour-why such actions arise within a person given the circumstances of social influence or pro-social behaviour for example. Cognitive psychology is helpful as well, in the context of education and training. For cognitive psychology, the brain functions like any other physical system. We can study how our brain stores data and later memorizes it, how knowledge and information is represented, how things get categorized in the brain, how we judge probabilities, how we plan, and finally, how ideas in our minds mix all this to produce high level inferences in daily.
c. Weaknesses of