Social Psychology

Spontaneously formed, non-stereotyped and non-systematic social consciousness of people in social production and social life. It manifests itself as the mood, feelings, customs, habits and prejudices directly connected with men’s daily production, life and intercourse and has the features of vividness, variability and lack of stability.

Social psychology is a complex mental phenomenon. According to its different subjects, it can be divided into individual psychology and group psychology. Group psychology can be distinguished into class psychology, stratum psychology and national psychology, etc. In class society, due to the different economic, political and cultural position of each class, their social psychology shows different characteristics and manifests the thoughts and feelings and the lifestyle of a certain class. National psychology is formed by each nation in the course of long-term historical development, and is national feelings, national character, national penchants and national habits, etc. gradually formed due to common natural and socio-historical conditions, especially under the determination and influence of common economic life. The national spirit is the concentrated embodiment of the national psychology, a most stable, most lasting and strongest social psychology. During its long historical development, the Chinese nation has gradually formed a great national spirit of union and unity, love for peace, diligence and courage and self-improvement with patriotism as its core. The spirit of the Chinese nation is a powerful intellectual force for achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and the Chinese dream.

Social psychology is an intermediate link social being and forms of social consciousness. In the process of human socio-historical activity, whether the reflection of social being by the forms of social consciousness, or the dynamic reaction of the forms of social consciousness upon social being, or the revolutions in social being, all must be filtered, regulated and converted through the intermediary of social psychology of the subject in order to be realized and accomplished. Only on the basis of integration and enhancement of the social psychology of the subject can the reflection of social being by the subject achieve systematization, theorization and logic, and become a social consciousness in the form of ideological-theoretical system, or called a form of social consciousness. And systematic, rational, and theoretical forms of social consciousness can only be realized and accomplished through the concrete socio-historical activity of the subject, if they react upon social being and exert their function of revolutionizing social being, and if they are accepted by the subject’s social psychology and transformed into the subject’s internal consciousness.

Social psychology is an intermediate link spanning between social being and forms of social consciousness. It is also the intermediary, bridge and bond of the subject’s double activity of objectification (objectification of the subject and subjectification of the object). In expounding the position and the part played by social psychology in the theoretical system of historical materialism, Plekhanov pointed out: “To understand the history of scientific thought or the history of art in any particular country, it is not enough to be acquainted with its economics. One must know how to proceed from economics to social psychology, without a careful study and grasp of which a materialist explanation of the history of ideologies is impossible.” Plekhanov also put forth the “five-point formula” for the knowledge of the social structure, which divides the structure of a society into five levels: (1) the state of the productive forces of society; (2) the economic relations conditioned by them, i.e., the relations of production; (3) the social formation reflecting these relations, i.e. the socio-political system; (4) the psychology of social man, determined partly by the direct influence of the economy and partly by the socio-political system which has grown upon it; (5) various ideologies reflecting the properties of such psychology are also systematic, rational, and theoretical forms of social consciousness.