Discuss the social psychological approach in psychology and identify the types of questions that social psychologists attempt to answer. This essay will study what social psychology actually is and the debates within the field, as well as the history and origins of social psychology. Beyond that, it will continue and look at what they study in this field, what types of questions to ask and what results they get from this. The question of what social psychology actually is is not something that is easy to answer as it has been considered a diverse and fragmented discipline, divided by the battle between experimental and critical social psychology. This is based on whether it should be a science or not, on ideology, and on what constitutes the social world (Rogers, ). It is considered an umbrella discipline that includes many subdisciplines, including biological, clinical and organizational. (Myers,) Many social psychologists argue that social psychology is a scientific study that investigates how others influence thoughts, behaviors, and feelings (Hogg & Vaughan,). These are the experimental psychologists who try to find a cause-effect relationship between two variables by testing hypotheses, while ensuring that all variables are operationalized in order to obtain valid results and there are no confounding variables. They do this while in a controlled laboratory environment, ensuring that no other factors can play a role and act as a confounding variable. Critical psychology, on the other hand, would argue that the scientific method for measuring behavior is not the only method that can be used. He argues that the scientific method, if often unsuitable for studying some aspects of peoples, was used because many relied on experimental methods and the hypotheses of positivists to produce reductionist explanations. rather than holistic and looking at the whole environment and not just the person. The ideology was also criticized during this period as the values ​​of individualism were emerging rather than the sociological ideology that had previously existed (Myers). Social psychologists have a range of different subject areas and topics that they can choose from when deciding what research they want. do, including; obedience, conformity, identity, communication and language, persuasion and influence. Apart from this there are two main theories which derive from social psychology, the first is behaviorism and the second is social learning theory. The first theory of behaviorism, derives from Pavlov's work examining operant conditioning