In life, people do not just exist, but interact with each other. In other words, they communicate, show certain emotions, in a certain way relate to others, etc. If all this social life is combined, then it can be called in one word - psychological reality. It is this psychological reality that social psychology is studying.
All the knowledge that people possess within the framework of social psychology is systematized for convenience. So, this science contains scientific ideas about a variety of socio-psychological phenomena, patterns, the causes of their occurrence, functioning. In addition, social psychology is divided into industries that are deeply studied. General views on the direction in which social psychology is developing . Methods of using the accumulated experience in public relations. In the first place among socio-psychological relations is the social psychology of groups, as well as interpersonal relationships. And already for the second time, social psychology studies all the remaining social processes and phenomena, such, for example, can be the mood of people, their feelings, the “climate” in a certain group.
Social psychology has its own object, that is, what its action is aimed at. So, the object is both groups and associations of people, as well as individual individuals. Socially psychological phenomena themselves are classified according to the basic principles of belonging to one or another, often completely different, community or entity. So, socio-psychological phenomena take place in organized communities, that is, small and large groups. In large groups, social psychology is expressed in terms such as “psychology of the nation”, “religious psychology”, “class psychology” and “psychology of politics”. All these concepts, even though they look unambiguous, but in reality their content is a lot of complex. Even to this day, scientists have ambiguously explained this or that phenomenon.
As for small groups, there are also social and psychological phenomena regarding the relationship between several people or entire groups. However, it is worth considering that it is in such groups that the closest contact is possible between all people and their individuals. A branch of social psychology that affects relationships, phenomena, and processes in small groups is called small group psychology. In addition to the organized communities mentioned above, there are also unorganized communities. These communities include a spontaneously arising crowd or other masses of people. The social and psychological phenomena that spontaneously arise in these masses are called massive, but the behavioral reactions that are characteristic of people from the crowd are spontaneous. In this regard, several areas of social psychology can be distinguished : the psychology of panic and fear, the psychology of the crowd, the psychology of propaganda, the psychology of advertising, the psychology of rumors and some others. The very branch of the section of social psychology that studies these processes and phenomena is called the psychology of the mass class of socio-psychological phenomena.
Separately, it must be said that the main object of study in social psychology is personality. It is worth noting that the personality is a different phenomenon, different from the individual, and not related to interpersonal and group relationships.
However, the personality itself is capable, under the influence of social relations, of changing, turning into some other state. These changes and processes are studied by a separate branch of social psychology, the name of which is the social psychology of personality.