Tourist activity is basically a communicative relationship in which human contact is essential to establish close communications and psychological and sociological behaviors. For this reason, psychology, especially social psychology, enters fully into tourism activity..
Social psychology applied to tourism is a subject that has been offered in the past as an optional subject of the Degree in Tourism.
Social psychology studies Tourism as a social phenomenon. Try to understand how this phenomenon affects both tourists and residents of a tourist destination.
His studies are focused on the social perspective of tourism, tourist motivation, the perceptions and attitudes of both tourists and residents towards this phenomenon..
Social Psychology focuses on studying the way people perceive themselves and how the environment affects them. Social Psychology is determined by the social influence, and analyzes the influences that people have on the beliefs or behaviors of others.
Tourism is a very topical and booming phenomenon, which has its origins in ancient Greece. This behavior of traveling mobilizes thousands of people, putting them in contact with different cultures, traditions, etc. A tangible presence that has direct and indirect effects on culture and the environment.
The aforementioned effects are those that will influence the host society in the economic, political-social and environmental spheres. These issues do not escape the study interest in social psychology.
The need to study social problems makes the application of this science to be included in the study of tourism, understood as an applied dimension of social psychology, never as a set of knowledge other than the mother discipline.
This relationship is established because social psychology assumes the importance of the individual in the social environment, as well as the social relationships that it maintains in that environment, which is why the study is given to tourism from the point of view of social psychology.
For this reason we can say that social psychology applied to tourism is responsible for analyzing basic social processes, interpersonal, group and intergroup processes and, carry out a study of the tourist observing how it affects local populations (language, traditional values of conduct, ...), attitudes towards visitors, changes in attitude as a result of a trip and stereotypes about the country visited.
In short, social psychology applied to tourism is the science in charge of studying how social influence affects in both ways. On the one hand it studies the influence of the tourist on the visited destination and on the other hand it studies the influence of the destination on the visiting tourist..
Psychology provides tourism itself with the critical ability to understand communication processes, emotions, reactions, critical and problematic situations between human beings. In this way, there would be a better preparation when conducting people, groups in recreation and cultural exchange situations.
Differential psychology: studies the differences between people, differentiated by motivation, experiences, education, generation, socioeconomic status, educational level, sex.
Race Psychology: studies the psychological and cultural differences of different races.
Ethnic Psychology: comparatively studies different peoples and describes the characteristics of these.
Cultural Psychology: studies the learning processes that constitute the behavior and cultural patterns of these individuals (depending on the culture they react differently).
Work Psychology (industrial): studies human behavior when carrying out a work activity (behavior of tourism workers).
Market Psychology: born from the psychology of advertising. Study the psychological processes that the laws of supply and demand have in the tourism market. Needs and their satisfaction.
Organizational psychology:studies the behavior of the individual in the organization (companies or institutions). Relationship between the individuals of an organization (between the members of a structure).
Communication Psychology studies human communication processes (understanding communication as the most important element or social interaction).
Yet No Comments