Introduction

Socio-cultural Level of Analysis Introduction

At the third level of analysis, the biological and cognitive systems that make up the individual are embedded in an even larger system of interrelationships with other individuals. At its beginning, psychology largely confined itself to the study of the individual acting alone. As the discipline matured, a few psychologists recognized that human behaviour could be fully understood only if the social context in which behaviour occurred was also taken into account. This recognition led to many investigations of social influence, that is, how the presence and behaviour of one or a few people affect the behaviour and attitudes of another individual. It also provided a broader context for exploring topics such as aggression and helping behaviour that had largely been regarded as individual personality traits.

Although there has long been an exchange between the sciences of psychology and anthropology, the study of culture has largely been the province of anthropology. Recently, as many societies have become more multicultural, the need to understand the effect of culture on a person’s behaviour has risen to a new prominence. Social psychologists saw the need not only to achieve an understanding of the role of culture in human behaviour, but also to devise means for alleviating problems that arise from misunderstandings when individuals from different cultures come into contact with each other.

In what appeared to be a contrary movement, as social psychologists turned their attention to exploring the power of culture, other investigators were focusing attention on the biological bases of human social behaviour: the role played by genes. These investigators explained important social behaviours as special adaptations to becoming social organisms acquired throughout the course of human evolution. As social psychologists continue to integrate the biological and cultural contributions to social behaviour, there is a general consensus in the discipline of psychology that a synthesis of the biological, cognitive and socio-cultural levels of analysis holds out the greatest promise of bringing us closer to the goal of more fully understanding the nature of the complex interacting systems that make up the human being.