Introduction
Jessica got to work on time today, but just barely. After driving down the freeway from the suburban community of Carlsbad to the city of San Diego at rush hour, she was personally aware of the congested roadways. But unlike most of us who endure traffic delays, she gets to think about it all day at her job. Jessica works for the Metropolitan Transit System in San Diego, California. Her office oversees the bus, trolley, and rail services throughout the city. Her job is to work out ways to decrease road congestion and increase use of the public transport systems. The problem is fairly clear – too many people (including Jessica!) take private cars to work. The existing streets and roadways cannot accommodate the 1.2 million residents that make use of them, and, especially during morning and evening hours when people are commuting to and from work, traffic is a major problem.
As with all of the social problems discussed throughout this book, human behaviour is the cause. Consequently, solving the problem will require a change in behaviour. But changing human behaviour can be challenging, and our chances of success can be greatly increased by incorporating a social-psychological perspective. We can begin with some basic psychological questions: What motivates a person to drive, rather than take the bus? Can we motivate and encourage residents to drive less by encouraging use of the public transport, a car-pool, or a bicycle? How do we know if our efforts to motivate behavioural change were successful? These questions reflect the primary functions of theory in applied social psychology – understanding (U), solution (S), and evaluation (E). See Figure 2.1.
For more than a hundred years, social psychologists have used the scientific method to understand the ways in which individuals think about, relate to, and are influenced by others. The discipline has amassed a large volume of theories about human behaviour, and these theories provide a foundation for understanding and solving many social problems, such as the issue of traffic congestion we just described. In this chapter, we discuss the role of theory in the field of applied social psychology, provide a broad overview of the types of theories discussed throughout this book, and conclude with some of the challenges that arise when using theory to solve social problems.