the.com/social psychology
The science of why you act like an idiot only in groups.
means The scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behavior are shaped by the presence—real, imagined, or implied—of other people.
from A 19th-into-20th-century coinage built from Greek 'psyche' (mind, soul, breath of life) plus 'logia' (study of), bolted to 'social' from Latin 'socius' (companion, ally). The term solidified as a field name around the early 1900s, when thinkers started treating crowds, conformity, and influence as things you could actually run experiments on — rather than just moralize about.
- core finding
- Situations beat personality almost every time
- famous proof
- Strangers obeyed orders to shock people
- bystander effect
- More witnesses, less likely anyone helps
- replication crisis
- Many classic studies failed to repeat