Theory

To understand people in context, social psychologists organize ideas into theories that they test using descriptive, correlational, and experimental research. Social psychology theories are “integrated sets of ideas and principles that explain and predict observed events” (Myers, 2008, p. 17). Theories differ from facts in that theories are ideas that explain facts and predict events. The predictions in theories are called hypotheses. A hypothesis is a guess or assumption (Kenrick, Neuberg, & Cialdini, 2007; Aronson, 2008) that allows the social psychologist to test and modify a theory, give direction to research, and offer practical applications for the theory.