Community Psychology

What Is Community Psychology?

Community psychology is the study of how people relate to their communities, and how those communities in turn influence behavior. It is closely related to social psychology, but whereas social psychology studies how individuals relate to one another in group settings, community psychology studies how individuals relate to the group itself. This is a tricky distinction, but a crucial one. By a loose analogy, we might say that community psychologists theorize that the human mind categorizes groups as distinct entities – it is almost like the team, family, or society is a unique individual, independent from its members.

Community psychology studies communities at all scales – families, teams, work groups, companies, schools, classes, neighborhoods, cities, regions, nations, and even the whole world. Obviously, this introduces considerable diversity and variety into the field: studying the way people relate to their families is a very different task from studying their relationship with their country. The similarities, however, make community psychology a very interesting field for those who want to learn about human-group relations.

Who Should Study Community Psychology?

Community psychology, like many areas of psychology, has both a theoretical branch and an applied branch, and so this field can be of interest to both the scientifically-inclined and also to those who want to use their knowledge of psychology to help others. It is essential to be interested in social issues, not just the individual human – community psychology is intensely focused on the idea of groups or “aggregate identities.” Psychology majors who are interested in culture, globalization, sociology, politics, or business would be good candidates for specialization in community psychology.

Specializing in applied community psychology is a great way to help people and communities in need. Community psychologists can help poor, disenfranchised, or under-represented people to better understand and relate to the communities in which they live. They can also be very helpful in the task of empowering individuals to take action within their communities in order to improve the lives of themselves, their friends, and their neighbors.

Community psychology is still a very young field, and so most people will not take classes in this area unless they specialize in it. Non-specialists may encounter the ideas of community psychology in a social psych or cross-cultural psych class, but there are still too few community psychology scholars for there to be many classes on the subject. Nonetheless, if training in this area is offered at your institution, it might make sense to take advantage of it.

The History of Community Psychology

Community psychology grew up in the 1960s as part of an emerging political and intellectual movement called communitarianism (not to be confused with communism, which is very different). Communitarians were unsatisfied with the ability of existing psychological and scientific models to explain the range of human behavior and experience. They believed that it was necessary to consider the social or communal context within which those individuals were acting. Thus, a group of psychologists inspired by communitarianism began to look at how people understood their relationships to groups and their roles within those groups.

Early movements in community psychology were also driven by new models of social injustice which had come to predominate Western society since the 1950s. As the issues of race, gender, sexuality, and religion became public controversies, the idea of “social evil” (as opposed to the evil of individual acts) became prevalent. Community psychologists were ideally placed and had the right background to study social evils and social justice from the perspective of the science of psychology.