The 4 differences between Psychology and Sociology

Psychology is often understood as a science dedicated to studying the individual, the person. However, it's not always like that.

Good part of the psychological phenomena that are investigated from this discipline have to do with interaction, the way in which we relate to others and, ultimately, the social.

This easily brings up a question: What are the differences between psychology and sociology? What makes it possible to distinguish them?

• Related article: "The main types of sociology"

Differentiate between Sociology and Psychology

Both psychology and sociology are very broad disciplines, which is why there are several points of overlap between them. However, coming to recognize their differences is not complicated. Let's see what they are.

1. Psychology is not just a social science

Sociology is the science that studies and analyzes social phenomena and relationships between people, that is, those that cannot be understood starting from the study of the individual.

Psychology, although it has a facet that falls squarely within the field of social sciences, cannot be fully included in this category. This is so because its object of study is bio-psycho-social. That is to say,

takes biology and even genetics into account. These last elements are by definition something that affects the individual in the first place, and cannot be considered the result of interaction with the environment. (the genotype only changes by small random mutations).

Biopsychology and basic psychology, for example, study the most basic mental processes and universal, as well as the problems that appear when the nervous system is altered in a way drastic. These are processes that do not depend as much on culture and the social as the material changes that take place directly within the human organism.

Through research in this type of field linked to what human beings have in common, an attempt is made to understand the "raw material" with the that we come into the world and that, in combination with the relationship with the environment, will make us human beings with their own personality that all we know.

2. Sociology studies only collective phenomena

The sociology does not focus its objective on a specific individual, but rather analyzes the behavior patterns of groups and crowds. For example, the way in which people blame the government or the market economy for the rise in unemployment.

Psychology, through the branch of social psychology, also takes social phenomena into account, but does not focus its study on them. Instead of that, analyzes how these social phenomena have an effect on the individual.

For example, experiments on conformism carried out by the psychologist Solomon Asch were used to observe the effects that social pressure had on the individual behavior, leading people to give an answer that they believed was wrong just because it was not the grade discordant of the group.

• You may be interested in: "What is social psychology?"

3. The methodology they use is different

Psychology uses the experimental method a lot., which consists of generating a psychological phenomenon by controlling all the variables to see what causes it and what consequences it has. That is, it is intended to see the causal link between one event and another that comes later.

For example, experiments measuring the effectiveness of different types of psychotherapy are an example of this. In them, it is observed how a series of patients are involved in a psychological intervention program and, once the necessary time has passed, it is observed what changes have occurred in them, and these results are compared with the state of other people who have not undergone treatment (to better isolate the variables).

Sociology, on the other hand, is not characterized by using the experimental method, but it is based rather on the correlational method (although the latter is also used by psychology).

The correlational method does not allow knowing which causes produce which effect, but rather describes reality showing trends that occur at the same time and that perhaps have a causal link between them or perhaps No.

For example, if wealthier people tend to vote more for one party, there will be a correlation between the amount of money earned and the odds of voting for that electoral option. However, in this way it is not known if these people decide to use their vote in this way because that is the party that best suits their ideology, or if they do it to prevent another party from winning despite the fact that there is another very minority one that better represents their vision of the world.

In short, sociology renounces knowing very well the causes of what it studies, because what he analyzes is a historical process that is constantly changing with the passage of time and, therefore, universal and timeless laws cannot be extracted about it.

4. The size of the groups

Both disciplines can base their research on the observation of groups of people, although we have already seen that psychology and sociology differ. in a fundamental qualitative aspect: the first studies rather the effect of the social on the individual and the second studies the collective phenomena themselves themselves.

Now, in addition to this, there is another difference related to the use of groups in the research. In this case, it is a quantitative difference; psychology looks at small groups, while sociology tends to investigate much broader collective phenomena, involving thousands of people.