Social Psychology and Socializing

Social Psychology and Socializing

We often hear the phrase that humans are social animals. Indeed, social psychologists have often shown that human beings show interest in interpersonal interaction and exert effort to attain social rewards. Furthermore, the fairly recent advent of social networking Websites and their subsequent popularity has demonstrated how important social interaction is to human beings.

Notwithstanding, some experts criticize social media and social networks, and say that because of them people have stopped socializing in the ways they should, or in person. In fact, many people now only have online social lives. For example, some individuals only interact through their social personas, they maintain online profiles and have a lot of online friends, but are in reality friendless and lonely. Along these lines, some writers believe people are actually more isolated than ever because of social media and social networking platforms.

According to social psychologists, people prefer to hang out with those who express positive emotions rather than negatives ones. Image: Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

Moreover, from an evolutionary perspective, socializing and forming groups and societies may even have conferred an evolutionary advantage. However, we know from sociology that groups have group norms, and societies have societal norms. The way we learn about these and how to interact with others and how to behave in social and other situations, is learned by such mechanisms as Theory of Mind (ToM) and social cognition. Social cognition includes learning by observation, such as mirroring of actions and emotions.

From a neuroscience perspective, mirror neurons have been found. Mirror neurons fire both when a person performs an action and when a person observes that same action being performed. Neurons are brain cells; they are composed of a cell body called a soma, a projection called an axon, dendrites and terminal buttons. Axons are often myelinated to speed up transmission (myelin is a fatty substance covering the axon). Between axons are located synapses and neurotransmitters are discharged into the synaptic cleft. From a social psychology viewpoint, friends often mirror each other’s postures, body language and positioning.