Welcome Message

Welcome to the Social and Developmental Psychology labs. Human beings are social-psychological subjects from birth to death. To the extent that we are interested in the development of individuals, we are interested in how the cognitive and psychosocial development of individuals is affected by social interactions and the historical and sociocultural context of a society. On the other hand, social processes often studied in social psychology like intergroup relations, interpersonal processes, social influence, social representations, attributions, cooperation and competition cannot be taken as given and uniform irrespective of the developmental level of the person.

All these processes take different forms at different ages and have different developmental trajectories; therefore an understanding of these processes requires the formulation of ontogenetic questions. "The fact that both of these approaches have a common beginning and are inspired by common interests is impressive. Through their different traditions and methodologies, a deep similarity that ties them together is generated. It is as if Social Psychology and Developmental Psychology are interested for the same subject, Social Psychology for the space, through the outer environment and Developmental Psychology for the time, through the inside environment. Thus, they constitute two views of the same science, where one tries to resolve, on a group level, the same question the other one tries to resolve on an individual level" (Moscovici, 1990).