Social psychology aims to analyze how people’s psychological concepts—thoughts, feelings, and ideals, among others—are influenced by the social factors surrounding them. The presence of people in the vicinity can change drastically how a person thinks; it can result in inhibition, hostility, excitement, etc. and therefore can change the way that person acts accordingly. Basically, the presence of social factors is a major indicator of how a person acts and thus is a major point of interest in the study of psychology.
One of the concepts involved in social psychology is the case of the bystander effect. This is a social phenomenon observed when people do not come to the rescue of someone needing assistance when there are other people present. If there are more people in the vicinity, the less is the chance of a person offering help (Cummings). This is more observed nowadays in the age of social media; people would rather take a photo or a video of someone needing help but no one doing so in order to show the apathy of people nowadays when in fact they can just do the deed themselves.
This effect is exactly what I aim to observe in my proposed social experiment. I can set up a scenario that involves assistance from other people—say, an elderly woman carrying a heavy load and watch how many people would try to help. For added pathos, the lady can pretend to fall down, thereby dropping her bag conspicuously. The experiment would be done in two scenarios: one in a place there are only a few people and one in a place where there is a relatively large number of people and then note the difference in the reaction of the two scenarios regarding the scene that is going on around them. I can repeat the experiment in different scenarios for better results.
Works Cited
Cummings, Kristin Marie. "The Bystander Effect." Applied Social Psychology. Penn State University, 8 Dec. 2011. Web. 18 Feb. 2016. <http://www.personal.psu.edu/bfr3/blogs/applied_social_psychology/2011/12/the-bystander-effect.html>.
