Part 1: Introduction to Social Psychology
I’m on a explorative journey to understand the insights from social psychology to better designing products for people.
Topics covered
What is Social psychology?
The impact of social influence
Understanding what people think, how they feel and interact
I’m reading and referencing from “Social Psycology Principles v.01 by Charles Stangor” — feel free to read with me (it’s a free text book) and join me on this journey.
1. What is Social Psychology?
Social Psychologists study behavioural factors scientifically to understand what makes people behave differently in specific environments.
Let’s look at the definition outlined in the text book:
“Social psychology is the scientific study of how we feel about, thinkabout, and behave toward the people around us and how our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors are influenced by those people.”
Looking at this definition it brings to mind the humble Empathy Map. It’s one of the first methods which helps us to understand user behaviours.
Empathy map includes 4 quadrants and focused on a user with a specific goal eg. finding an online class.
What people say
What people think
What people do (behave)
What people feel
”An empathy map is a collaborative visualization used to articulate what we know about a particular type of user. It externalizes knowledge about users in order to 1) create a shared understanding of user needs, and 2) aid in decision making. — Nielsen Norman Group”
The humble empathy map is a visual map to interpret the insights from research.
2. The impact of social influence
We are very familiar in design with “what people say and the how they behave isn’t necessarily coherent.” We know that users behave differently depending on their environment. That’s why it’s important to conduct different types of research methods.
“Our social situations create social influence, the process through which other people change our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and through which we change theirs.”
Best described by Kurt Lewin’s equation called the “person-situation interaction”
Behavior = f (person, social situation)
In other words behaviour depends on a person’s characteristics and their social situation however the influence of the social situation is more prominent paraphrased form the quote below.
“Social psychologists believe that human behavior is determined by both a person’s characteristics and the social situation. They also believe that the social situation is frequently a stronger influence on behavior than are a person’s characteristics.”
What is our social situation saying about us?
Our beliefs and our thinking is influenced by the people in our environment which leads to “group think” more often than we realise.
“One outcome of social influence is the development of social norms — the ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving that are shared by group members and perceived by them as appropriate — (1955; Cialdini, 1993).Asch, S. (1955).”
I can’t talk about “group think” without referring to the controversial research method specifically in UX — “focus groups”. Group thinking in focus groups are common and skew the reality of what the indivual, think feel and behave. If you do conduct focus groups in UX it’s important to know what you want to achieve through focus groups and be aware of the social influence in these environments.
Where do social influence come from?
Cultural influence is the most predominant influence we see in people. We are most familiar with individualism and collectivism.
Individualism: Motivated by self concern.
“Individualism — cultural norms, common in Western societies, that focus primarily on self-enhancement and independence. Children in Western cultures are taught to develop and value a sense of their personal self and to see themselves as largely separate from the people around them. Children in Western cultures feel special about themselves — they enjoy getting gold stars on their projects and the best grade in the class — (Markus, Mullally, & Kitayama, 1997).Markus, H. R., Mullally, P., & Kitayama, S. (1997).”
If your environment is influenced by the western culture you are familiar with the focus on independence, own self success and self worth.
Collectivism: Motivated by other concern.
“Norms in the East Asian cultures, on the other hand, are more focused on other- concern. These norms indicate that people should be more fundamentally connected with others and thus are more oriented toward interdependence, or collectivism.”
If your environment is influenced by the east asian culture you are familiar with the focus on interdependence, social relationship and community success.
“The social situation creates social norms — shared ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.”
As an international designer traveling and working with various people and companies being aware of social norms has been valuable to be open, understanding and not force specific cultural norms onto others.
4. Understanding what people think, how they feel and interact
In design we attempt to understand our users, motivations, emotions and behaviour to design products which achieve their goals as easy as possible.
Let’s see where thy come from:
Thinking: Social Cognition
“Social cognition is cognition that relates to social activities and that helps us understand and predict the behavior of ourselves and others.”
Social psychology identified two types of knowledge which causes people to interpret information differently.
Schemas: a schema is a knowledge representation that includes information about a person or group (e.g., our knowledge that Joe is a friendly guy or that Italians are romantic).
Attitudes: an attitude is a knowledge representation that includes primarily our liking or disliking of a person, thing, or group (“I really like Julie”; I dislike my new apartment”).
This creates various challenges as you can’t fully predict how people will behave when interacting with your product. Hence the importance of researching and testing with a diverse group of people.
Feelings: Social Affect
“Feelings we experience as part of our everyday lives”
The difference between emotions and moods is something that’s overlooked but plays two different roles in our daily lives.
“Mood refers to the positive or negative feelings that are in the background of our everyday experiences. “
“Emotions are brief, but often intense, mental and physiological feeling states.”
When we design we often focus on how the user feels during a specific journey — we develop journey maps to indicate their emotions while interacting with a specific task or phase to achieve their goal. However do we take into consideration their mood? What feelings do users come to before interacting with your product, tired after a long day, frustrated or stressed? All of these feelings impact your product.
Interact: Social Behaviour
Understanding how people behave is the core of user experience to make sure products are developed for people who will convert, engage and return.
To understand social behaviour social psychologists look at Social Exchange and reciprocal altruism.
“Social Exchange: The sharing of goods, services, emotions, and other social outcomes among people.”
Social rewards: Everyone enjoys receiving things which benefits them. In digital products it could be discounts, loyalty points, top of the leader board, money back, positive reviews/comments.
Social cost: On the flip side we dislike when we are feeling “cheated”, receive bad customer service or if the product does not live up to our expectations.
Generally we want to gain more than what we lose. As much as we are focused to achieve our goals influenced by our self-concern we are also influenced by other-concern as we need people to collaborate and achieve our goals with others which leads to reciprocal altruism.
“Reciprocal Altruism: The mutual, and generally equitable, exchange of benefits between people.”
Reciprocity is an interesting topic, can we be totally self less or do we inherently expect something in return? From a product perspective we can assume the notion that we want to provide a gain to the user which is more than the cost. Basically a reward for their attention.
Key take-aways:
The humble empathy map influenced by social psychology is one of the most valuable methods to understand users.
Choosing the appropriate research or testing method depends on what we need to understand— we know now that social influence plays a much larger role than we realise.
How people feel, think and interact with your product require designers to understand schemas, attitudes, emotions, moods, social costs, social rewards and reciprocity.
Resources: