In the introduction, (based on the evaluation of the theories), give your overall impression of the usefulness of social psychology.

If your impression is positive, then for a majority of the theories, you should have a positive evaluation as part of your explanation. If you feel that its usefulness is limited, then you should critique each of the theories more harshly in the body of the text. Then in the conclusion, simply emphasize what you have already demonstrated through your examples and critiques.

In the study of social psychology multiple insights and theories as to why we inherently as humans universally and continuously commit social behavior and have cognitions that are irrational. Some believe that knowing these theories about human behavior is generally not useful and cannot be applied because they do not help us in reducing or ceasing irrational human behaviors. There are others who believe that researching and theorizing about these human cognitions and behavior is useful and can be applied in a positive way to benefit and help humans in the future become more rational and efficiently adapted to its environment changing environment. I will be discussing three social psychology theories, and I will give real world examples of the theories using my own personal experiences and some that I have heard through others. I will also show why I find these theories useful and helpful in making humans behave more rationally and with more insight . The three theories that I will be discussing are the Fundamental attribution error, the Self-fulfilling prophecy and bystander apathy (Wade & Tavris, 1998) The fundamental attribution theory states that we as humans in order to make sense of why and explain our own behaviors and those of others make assumptions and attributions(Wade & Tavris, 1998). In my opinion the fundamental attribution theory is a heuristic that though might create some problems it helps simplify complex human behavior by giving people a fixed and total idea of someone though it might not be accurate because humans are constantly changing physically and mentally from moment to moment. The tendency is that we make internal attributions when giving explanations of others behavior and have a tendency to make attributions about the effects of the environment when trying to explain our own. The theory states that most of the time people will infer someones negative behavior as showing a persons personality or an unchangeable internal attribute they have. A personal experience that I have had that illustrates the fundamental attribution theory is when I began to start driving. I lived in a large city where most form of transportation is driving. While beginning to drive I was very anxious and would get frequently upset, because of many dangerous close calls I experienced that were caused by other drivers. I remember calling people Idiots and dumbasses. After I heard about

the fundamental attribution theory I started to realize that when somebody else would make a mistake I would say something internal regarding the other drivers personality or mental capacity which I had no way of knowing, but when I would make a mistake I would always referred to some outside factor, such as I dropped something, the person was in my blind spot, or I was confused by the directions. In my personal experience learning about this theory has made me aware of my infallibility and made a calmer driver, that does not think that most other drivers are idiots or assholes. The self-fulfilling prophecy states that peoples expectations, intentions and perceived conceptions will have an effect on the things that they perceive(Wade & Tavris, 1998). Specifically the self-fulfilling prophecy states that ones perception of future outcomes when related to a person will affect the outcomes because it will change our behavior towards that other person, thus also affecting their behavior. The perception and the conception could relate to ones own or anothers behavior or performance in future outcomes. Usually the effect of the self-fulfilling prophecy is not perceived by the person, and is taken as a reflection of reality and a confirmation of their expectations. If we were to break it down in steps the self-fulfilling prophecy would be 1. there is a belief or attitude that one has about something that will happen sometime in the future , the attitude or beliefs effects the behavior or the relation to the thing we have a believe or attitude about, and it effect its outcome. In my personal experience I have seen many illustrations of the self-fulfilling prophecy, especially in social situations dealing with others, but I will give an example of one that happened to a friend who tried multiple times to lose weight and improve her diet. She would frequently say that itsimpossible and too hard to exercise for her to lose weight. I would frequently listen to her keep to an exercise routine for about a couple of weeks and gradually stop. She would say see I told you its impossible for me to lose weight, what is the point. One day I was a bit irritated due to work stress and was speaking to her and she brought up having concerns about her weight and appearance again. I snapped and told her all you ever do is complain about how hard it is for you lose weight, and you never fully try because you keep yourself down and how are you ever going to improve if you have such low expectations, why even try. I apologized and told her that maybe she should try different approach to losing her weight that instead of focusing on her weight change she should focus more on fitness goals. A couple of days later we discussed that she should try training for a half marathon and not focus anymore on how much weight she loses but on just being able to complete the half marathon even If its by walking and on improving her fitness. We followed a gradual training program and she began to gradually lose weight because she was having fun, and she was not solely focus or concerned about her lack of weight lost. I think this is a great example of the self-fulfilling prophecy she had always had the expectation that it would be extreme; hard for her to lose weight, because of previous failures which would cause her to stop exercising and giving up on her diet. When we decided that her main motivation and expectation was not going to be losing weight which she had failed before, but just completing 13.5 miles it affected her performance and also having me as a support and knowing that she could at least complete it because she was a healthy a pretty healthy adult and did not have any limitations.

The bystander apathy states that when people are in groups and the group size increases it will affect how responsible they feel about interfering in some helpful way or from stopping a negative behavior from happening (Wade & Travis, 1998) The theory states that its because they believe somebody else will intervene, or that they feel more concern about what that group thinks or plans to do. One great example of this is when we I was being trained in the hospital to respond to code blues which are cardiac arrest cases. In this scenario there everyone has a limited amount of jobs they can do incase of emergency and there is always a leader usually who assignees those jobs to the people who show because sometimes people behave specially in emergency situations that someone else will start to take responsibility. Another personal examples is training for CPR procedures, part of the step process is to point out a specific person from the possible surrounding group and ask them to call 9/11 or go get help specifically, because previous experiences have shown that if you make a general request from the group people will take longer to take the proper steps to get help. It is extremely useful to understand how humans will act in large groups, in order to more efficiently react to possible dangerous situations in groups.

In conclusion the use of scientific method or natural observation in social psychology will only help us to better understand and classify natural recurring human behavior. The more we know about the human species and its natural behavior the more we will be able to adapt more efficiently to our environment.