Social Psychology

Social psychology and human placement and interaction in the social world are complex. Our behavior and thought processes in this context are not always conscious and deliberate; in fact, most of these processes are unconscious and automatic. Supporting this premise is much research and theory from Freud and Jung who spent a lifetime studying the unconscious on individuals and within the group and cultural contexts, as well as in psychotherapy. Further work on neuroscience and cognitive sociology discovered further supporting evidence that much of our behavior in the social world is derived from how we incubate ideas and lack introspection on them.  People acquire skills and automatically and unconsciously apply them to make meaning or solve problems, and preconsciously filter salient information resulting in automatic behaviors that can be constructive or destructive with little fact-based explanation for them. Attitudes are pervasive among all individuals, groups, cultures, and societies for which researchers and clinicians find more times than not are developed and activated with little to no conscious awareness. This specific field of social psychology and psychotherapy has the opportunity to help explain stereotyping, biases, and social injustice and provides possible solutions that may be carried out in the psychotherapeutic clinical setting or at the cultural and collective level of societies.