Talk:Social Psychology/Introduction

Notes from Abrams, D. in Group Processes:

p. 427 "The split between psychology and more sociological theories of social processes was accentuated with Floyd Allport's pronouncement that, "There is no psychology of groups which is not essentially and entirely a psychology of individuals" (Allport, 1924, p. 4; see Graumann, 1986). By 1925 sociology and psychology had become discrete disciplines (Manicas, 1987), and this meant that social psychology and the study of groups in psychology became separated from its collectivist past. As a result, different levels of analysis were not well articulated in theory and research (Doise, 1986). "According to Farr (1996), there are two social psychologies. The sociological form owes much to collectivist perspectives, and in an extreme form it regards psychological processes as barely relevant for explaining the impact of social categories and institutions on societal change and development. The psychological form is rooted in the behaviorism and reductionism of Watson and Floyd Allport. At its extreme, social categories, institutions, and roles are treated simply as factual inputs that individuals process, without much regard to the way the meaning of the categories is shaped by societal context (see Hopkins, Reicher, & Levine, 1997, for a contentious critique of the way psychologists treat race as a stimulus variable in social cognition research on prejudice). "The direction taken by social psychology throughout the following six decades suggests that, as far as most were concerned, Allport had won the day. For example, the idea that the group somehow dehumanizes us, stripping us of our identity and individuality, re-emerged in the form of deindividuation theory (Diener, 1980; Zimbardo, 1969; see also Reicher, this volume, chapter 8). As a result, James's view that the group may be represented in the self (as distinct from simply influencing the self) was neglected in much of the theorizing that followed his writing (see Hogg & Abrams, 1988; Reicher, 1984; Tajfel, 1978). An individualistic meta-theoretical framework also pervaded the enormous arena of group dynamics, which was dominant from the 1940s to the 1960s (e.g., Cartwright & Zander, 1969; Shaw, 1981). Despite its roots in Lewin's potentially collectivist field theory (e.g., Lewin, 1952), group process research has largely been a study of interpersonal interaction in small face-to-face groups, in which "I" reigns supreme, and any reference to "we" is largely descriptive; "we" is simply an arithmetic aggregation (Hogg, 1992)."

p. 428 "In social psychology, the dominant meta-theory remains one in which the self is a unique, individual entity that is relatively autonomous and independently motivated. For example, Baumeister's (1999) choice of articles in his collection of readings on The Self in Social Psychology reflects a ballot mailed to the membership of the International Society for Self and Identity, and includes topics such as self-regulation, self-awareness, self-presentation, self-esteem, self-evaluation, and self-affirmation. None of the articles focuses on group processes, intergroup relations, or social identity. The collection is largely concerned with (a North American view of) the self as an individual psychological entity. Baumeister (1998) argues that selfhood is based in three human experiences: reflexive consciousness, interpersonal being, and executive function."

plan for the page

Should include:

• Brief history of the discipline
• Relation to other fields
• Basic perspectives Lucidish 22:09, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Source concern

This is from Wikipedia; it doesn't match the current but is exact to the version that was new when this was created (13 September 2006). I'm placing a subpage with the Wikipedia history at /Sources. JeremyMcCracken (talk) 21:20, 21 January 2008 (UTC)