Sociology and Psychology

Psychology is often defined as the science of behaviour. Its primary focus is the individual — the person as a unit of study. It is interested in her or his intelligence and learning, motivations and memory, nervous system and reaction time, hopes and fears. In other words, psychology asks what goes on inside a person, both biologically and mentally, that explains how she or he behaves.

Social psychology sits between psychology and sociology, serving as a bridge between the two. It keeps its primary interest in the individual, but it studies that individual in a social context — how a person behaves in social groups, collectively with other individuals. So the unit of analysis remains the person, but the setting is no longer isolated; it is the group, the crowd, the interaction.

Sociology, by contrast, attempts to understand behaviour as it is organised in society. It does not start with the individual but with the social arrangements that shape the individual. The question is how personality is shaped by different aspects of society — the economic and political system, the family and kinship structure, the culture, the norms and values. Where psychology might explain a person's action through her or his motives or mental state, sociology explains it through the social structures and shared expectations that surround the person. …