Social psychology is based on
ABCmodel (Affect, Behavior and Cognition), which means that how we feel, think
and behave in our daily day routine, these threeattributes are consider as human
capabilities to maintain effective and successful social interaction with other
people in the society. E.g. If someone appreciates any girl, she feels proud,
think positively and behave in respectful manner with others, that means in this
little incidentthat girl receive affect in the shape of proud, behave by showing
good manner, think herself and the other person in positive sense, so these
three components combine and develop particular attitudeto interact with others
while living in the society. These three components (Affect, Behavior and
Cognition) work together to build human experience in any particular social
situation, but the most important thing is the ‘control’ that effect these three
capabilities of human being, if we lose control on our feeling, thinking and
behaving attributes then our social interaction may face negative consequences,
lets discuss these attributes individually.
(1) Social Affect: Feeling about ourselves and other selves.
Affect is define as the feelings that we experience as a part of our social
life, e.g. Happiness, Consciousness, satisfy, loneliness, tense etc., that show
our inner situation to perform any action according to the situations, because
we mostly act according to our feelings that portray our inner sense e.g. If I
feel conscience about my studies then I consider my regular studies more
actively, I try to come in class on time, I prefer to portray myself as more
Conscious person, and if I feel up-set then I cannot socialize my-self in the
University. We experience the affect in the form of mode and emotion, mode;
refers to the background of the situation in which we feel good or bad regarding
anything, were emotions; are the mental and psychological feeling state that can
be intense as compare to mode, mode is comparatively have long lasting effects
e.g. such people having less economic resources, resist themselves to be a part
of any enjoyment activities which shows the feeling of his resistance mode
towards any energetic activity, whereas emotions has less period but intensive
effect on specific events e.g. I feel happy because Pakistan won the cricket
match that show my positive intense emotions that will be exist for few hours.
Everyone has their own feeling expressions regarding the same event, some people
feel aggressive when ShahidAfridi gets out but some people feel calm and cool on
that particular event.
(2) Social Behavior: Interacting with others.
We have a capability of social behavior to make our social interaction more
effective and efficient to spend more co-operative life in the society by
sharing goods and services with each other. The concept of social exchange and
social rewards such as praises affection, love and financial support that build
the positive behavioral relationship among human beings. We act our social
matters that fulfill our needs, to maximize our outcomes and to gain much social
rewards. There are two types of behaviors (1) Overt: those behaviors are
observable or that can be easily judge able e.g. Aggressiveness, naughty ness
etc. There are further two forms of overt behavior named as Verbal and
non-verbal, Verbal overt behavior are identify through wordings like aggressive
speeches whereas non-verbal overt behaviors identify through symbols and
gestures. (2) Covert: that cannot be observable or that cannot be easily pointed
we can identify covert behaviors through indirect approach e.g. Jealousy. Mostly
we behave with others according to our perception about any person or anything
and we help someone by keeping in mind the concept of reciprocal altruism that
means we facilitate any person because we want the same response from that
person in the society, so as we conclude we can say that ABC model leads us
towards better way to interact with others at societal level.
(3) Social cognition: Thinking and learning about others.
Self-thinking and thinking about others is the vital part of our social life,
according to social psychologists, cognition is the mental activity of
processing which refers to our social actions which help us to understand the
behavior of ourselves and others in a particular social situation. There are two
main things to consider while studying social cognition, one is Schemas; which
includes the representation of information about any individual or group of
individuals e.g. we know that Manchester United is one of the favorite football
club in the world, which present us the knowledge about a group. The second
thing is called Attitude; that refer to the liking or dis-liking about any
person or thing e.g. I love Northern areas of Pakistan, which represent my
likings towards anything, these two elements ‘Schemas and attitude’ help us to
identify that which thing is better and which isn’t good for us which influence
on the person’s behavior leads to social interaction. People has different
cognition capabilities while interpreting the same event because of having
individual mindsets, e.g. A boy suddenly shouted in the classand every person
thinks differently on that particular act perform by the boy, some people
interoperate that action asun-intentional act and some thinks he do
unintentionally so the point is that everyone has their own understanding
ability to interpret the behavior of others in particular social situation.