Characterization of social psychological schools. Contemporary state of social psychology.

Social psychology has no complete and clear history. It is a relatively young science. Compared to the development of other public and humanities, it is too late to identify itself as a science. Her birth is in the early 20th century. Every science evolving along its path observes its historical past. The best way to understand nature, subject, method, and so on. one science is to outline its genesis in general. In this line of thought it becomes clear why every methodological analysis turns out to be forced to turn to history, especially when it comes to solving perhaps the most fundamental issue for the social sciences - that of their subject matter. This is a great deal about social psychology, as this issue is far from being the lightest for her. The understanding of the subject of social psychology is relative - in its sense as a result of the coordination of different points of view and the intersection between them.

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It is difficult to derive a definition that is common to all authors. In the case of social psychology, complexity is compounded by the pressure of two factors specific to it, namely the vast variety of issues studied and the high level of change in the level of change. In summary, however, it can be said that the subject's profile is formed by concentrating efforts on solving a fundamental task: understanding how human individuals build their relationships with others, what they think and feel in their communication with them, why ultimately , "Something" happens exactly this way, not differently. From the antiquity to the present day stands the skeleton in front of the man to get to know himself. Questions are asked why people do not react in the same way in similar situations; why some relationships are long-lasting and deep, while others are short-lived and superficial; what makes people love passionately and hate cynicism, and so on. In a nutshell, these are all issues pertaining to everyone's lives. And when people compare their actions not only as individuals but as members of certain groups, they are now approaching the work of social psychologists. Understanding in this direction gives rise to a wider and freer than the strict definition of the terms defined for the subject of social psychology, namely, the scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and causes of human behavior and thinking in social situations.

A key point here is the quest to understand the circle of conditions involved in forming the individual's behavior. However, it is clear that it is necessary to take into account the role of a large number of different factors classified into several categories, namely: the actions of others, the manifestations of cognitive processes, the peculiarities of the environment, the specificity of the cultural context, the specificity of biological factors. And the question torturing the subject of social psychology is how to find the right access to them. The subject involves considering the relationship between individual mental functioning and a wide range of social processes that shape and shape it. Pursuing its goals with the desire to adequately serve its subject, social psychology deals with a problem-set of behavioral problems that can be found in several research sectors, namely, the pursuit of a "description" of behavior - to describe a phenomenon means identifying the regular sequence of events and this is the initial step towards understanding the behavior; a claim to "predict" behavior - allows it to be predicted in future situations if an event repeats itself often enough.

Practice on the "explanations" of behavior - closely related to the concept of "causality", requiring tracing the phenomenon to find the cause of its origin; the conditions for "regulation" of behavior - it is related to the mechanisms for managing human actions. From what has been said so far, one can say that social psychology occupies a very specific place in the system of scientific knowledge. It has a dual character - it is an intermediate integrative science because it occupies the intersection of the boundaries of at least two sciences with one psychology and the other with sociology. It is this duality that determines the special status of social psychology and creates many difficulties, both in the definition of the subject and in the outline of its problems.