What Happened to the “Social” in Social Psychology?*

This article describes the historical abandonment of the distinctive conception of the social dimensions of cognition, emotion and behavior embraced by American social psychologists in the early decades of the twentieth century. It is suggested that part of the reason why the original conception of the social was abandoned by American psychologists was because of its association with theories of the "group mind," the apparent threat it posed to cherished principles of rationality and autonomy, and the impoverished conception of the social inherited from European crowd theorists that came to inform the experimental study of social groups. It is suggested that while these factors partly explain the neglect of the social in American social psychology, none represent particularly good reasons for abandoning the original conception of the social. Consequently there are in principle no impediments to the revival of the theoretical and experimental study of the social dimensions of cognition, emotion and behavior in contemporary American social psychology.     

Collective Psychological Empowerment as a Model of Social Change: Researching Crowds and Power

The issue of psychological empowerment in crowd events has important implications for both theory and practice. Theoretically, the issue throws light on both intergroup conflict and the nature and functions of social identity. Practically, empowerment in collective events can feed into societal change. The study of empowerment therefore tells us something about how the forces pressing for such change might succeed or fail. The present article first outlines some limitations in the conceptualization of both identity and empowerment in previous research on crowd events, before delineating the elaborated social identity model of crowds and power. We then describe recent empirical contributions to the field. These divide into two areas of research: (1) empowerment variables and (2) the dynamics of such empowerment. We finally suggest how psychological empowerment and social change are connected through crowd action. We conclude with some recommendations for practice following from the research described.     

Understanding learning behavior using location and prior performance as moderators

This study proposes and validates a research model that examines individuals’ learning behavior. Drawing on social cognitive theory (SCT), this study postulates self-efficacy, outcome expectations, social influence, and facilitating conditions as the key drivers of individuals’ learning behavior. Learners’ residential location and prior performance are also considered as moderators in the proposed model. This study contributes to the education literature by extending traditional SCT models to examine the previously unexplored area of environmental factors containing social influence and facilitating conditions, by validating idiosyncratic drivers of learning behavior and by presenting an operationalization of location and prior performance as two moderators in the learning behavioral formation. Finally, implications and limitations of the research are also provided.     

Do social allowance transfers crowd out private transfers? An analysis of responses among elderly households in Taiwan

Chuang JCC. Do social allowance transfers crowd out private transfers? An analysis of responses among elderly households in Taiwan This article examines whether public transfers ‘crowd out’ private inter‐household transfers in Taiwan, focusing on two old age social allowance schemes (old age allowance and old age farmer allowance) during the 2002–2008 period. This study used a data set from the Survey of Family Income and Expenditure in Taiwan. Empirical evidence suggests that Taiwanese donors are strongly motivated by altruism, and that the increase of public transfers will crowd out private transfers, and vice versa. Besides, altruism is more likely to dominate among poorer elderly recipients, whereas the exchange motive would dominate among richer recipients. Thus, the response of Taiwanese donors is likely to neutralise the distributional impact of public transfers. Finally, the elderly are not a homogenous group, and the effect of public transfers on private transfers varies significantly by household characteristics, in particular depending on age, marital status and living arrangements.     

Social Psychology from Flat to Round: Intersubjectivity and Space in Peter Sloterdijk's Bubbles

In this paper I describe the relevance of philosopher Peter Sloterdijk's (1998/2011) book Bubbles for social psychology. Bubbles offers the opportunity for the development of what I call a round social psychology. This is in contrast to the flatness characteristic of some of the more influential contemporary varieties of social psychology. Flat social psychology stays close to the ground, and is focused on the coordination of action. Round social psychology describes the atmosphere that surrounds and makes interaction possible in the first place. It requires a theory that links intersubjectivity with spatiality. To describe flat social psychology I analyze the assumptions of three contemporary versions of social psychology: social cognition theory, Goffman's dramaturgy, and Gergen's relational psychology. I then describe in greater detail Sloterdijk's bubble philosophy and the characteristics of round social psychology.     

Critical Comments on Experimental,Discursive, and General Social Psychology

The historical background of the contrasting traditions of experimental and discursive social psychologies is outlined, and two illustrative experimental and discursive studies are described in detail and critically scrutinised. Among the major weaknesses of the experimental approach is an increasing tendency towards an a‐social computer‐mediated procedure and a decontextualised setting. While experimental methods and results are clearly set out, the discursive research presents only small and highly selected fragments of masses of data. Hence the actual ways in which findings are arrived at remain largely obscure. Experimental, and to a lesser extent discursive social psychology, make implicit and unjustified claims for universality. The scientific pretensions of mainstream social psychology texts are also questioned in a brief discussion of the implications of these critiques for social psychology at large.     

Transition psychology： the membership approach

改革开放以来的中国社会转型给中国社会心理学者提供了独特的社会实验室。为了描述、理解和解释社会转型中的中国人心理和行为逻辑，应该呼唤直面社会转型的社会心理学研究，或转型心理学的研究，以超越文化特异性路径和稳态社会路径。其可能的核心构念是多元群体（成员）资格。     

Falsificationism is not just ‘potential’ falsifiability,but requires ‘actual’ falsification: Social psychology,critical rationalism,and progress in science

Based on an analysis of ten popular introductions to social psychology, we will show that Karl Popper's philosophy of ‘critical rationalism’ so far has had little to no traceable influence on the epistemology and practice of social psychology. If Popper is quoted or mentioned in the textbooks at all, the guiding principle of ‘falsificationism’ is reduced to a mere ‘falsifiability’ and some central elements of critical rationalism are left out – those that are incompatible with positivism and inductivism. Echoing earlier attempts to introduce Popper to social psychology by Paul Meehl and Tom Pettigrew, we will argue that a discussing Popper's ideas in more depth could help social psychology to move forward in view of the ‘crisis of confidence’ (Pashler and Wagenmakers, 2012) that has emerged recently in view of the ‘Stapel affair’ and the reports of failures to replicate social psychological experiments in high‐powered replication attempts.     

Piaget's Social Psychology

Piaget's social psychology is not widely discussed among psychologists, partly because much of it is still contained in untranslated French works. In this article I summarize the main lines of Piaget's social psychology and briefly indicate its relation to current theories in social psychology. Rejecting both Durkheim's sociological holism and Tarde's individualism, Piaget advances a sociological relativism (relationalism) in which all social facts are reducible to social relations and these, in turn, are reducible to rules, values and signs. Piaget's theory of social values takes the form of a social exchange theory characterized in an abstract logical way. Piaget claims social exchange requires normative principles of reciprocity and that individual social development results in such an equilibrium because rationality itself is social and based upon social cooperation. These views, in turn, derive from Piaget's orthogenetic views concerning the course of evolution: development can be characterized as an increase in equilibrium manifested both in individual action and in social interaction.     

Religion as a Meaning System: Policy Implications for the New Millennium

The development of social policy related to religion has received increasing focus in recent years, yet psychology continues to play a relatively minor role in this important domain. In the current article, religion's positive and negative influences as a meaning system on individual, community, and societal well-being are delineated. The challenges facing psychology in contributing to public policy development in the religious arena are examined, challenges that stem from profound differences in the meaning systems of religion, government, and psychology. These challenges notwithstanding, a number of different pathways in the domains of applied research, community practice, and policy development are delineated through which psychology can help to maximize positive, and minimize negative, outcomes in the religion and social policy arena.     

On the Social Dimensions of Moral Psychology

Contemporary moral psychology has been enormously enriched by recent theoretical developments and empirical findings in evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology and neuroscience, and social psychology and psychopathology. Yet despite the fact that some theorists have developed specifically “social heuristic” (Gigerenzer, 2008) and “social intuitionist” (Haidt, 2007) theories of moral judgment and behavior, and despite regular appeals to the findings of experimental social psychology, contemporary moral psychology has largely neglected the social dimensions of moral judgment and behavior. I provide a brief sketch of these dimensions, and consider the implications for contemporary theory and research in moral psychology.     

Theorizing Political Psychology: Doing Integrative Social Science Under the Condition of Postmodernity

The field of political psychology, like the social sciences more generally, is being challenged. New theoretical direction is being demanded from within and a greater epistemological sophistication and ethical relevance is being demanded from without. In response, an outline for a reconstructed political psychology is offered here. To begin, a theoretical framework for a truly integrative political psychology is sketched. In the attempt to transcend the reductionist quality of cross-disciplinary or multidisciplinary inquiry, the theoretical approach offered here emphasizes the dually structured quality of social life as the singular product of both organizing social structures and defining discourse communities on the one hand and motivated, thinking individuals on the other. To further this theoretical effort, meta-theoretical considerations are addressed. The modernist-postmodernist debate regarding the status of truth and value is used as a point of departure for constructing the epistemological foundation for political psychology. In this light, structural pragmatic guidelines for theory construction, empirical research and normative inquiry are presented. While the focus remains on political psychology in particular, it is assumed that the criticisms of present research and the suggestions for future inquiry apply to the social sciences more generally.     

中国大陆社会心理学适应性重建初探--基于社会转型期知识社会学的视角

以社会转型为背景,以知识社会学为视角,梳理当前中国大陆社会心理学的两种主要范式———“实验社会心理学”与“本土（化）社会心理学”,揭示其与本土“历史—社会现实”的疏离状况,进而对其本体论的缺陷进行反思与批判,探讨以消解疏离为目标、以“本土（化）社会心理学”为基底、以“社会转型”为基本背景框架与研究内容、以本体论的重构为切入点与着力点的大陆社会心理学重建之路。     

Social psychology and neoliberalism: A critical commentary on McDonald,Gough, Wearing,and Deville (2017)

McDonald, Gough, Wearing, and Deville (2017) call for the discipline of social psychology to investigate issues of neoliberalism, consumption and self‐identity more seriously. We make two contributions in relation to their analysis. First, we highlight some current issues associated with neoliberalism as a concept that leave us in doubt regarding the analytical usefulness of the term. Due to its imprecision and over‐extension, predominant association with the left who use it pejoratively, and altered economic circumstances, we are increasingly skeptical of neoliberalism's analytical validity to social psychology. Second, we also stress the importance of interdisciplinarity, but suggest that empirical insights from mainstream social psychology have much to offer social scientists concerned with how current economic developments impact upon self‐identity and social behaviour. We conclude by pointing out that a greater openness to heterodoxy within and between critical and mainstream strands and the wider social sciences are required if social psychologists are going to make more persuasive impacts to the study and resistance of market logic.     

Adaptations for Nothing in Particular

An element of the contemporary dispute amongst evolution minded psychologists and social scientists hinges on the conception of mind as being adapted as opposed to adaptive. This dispute is not trivial. The possibility that human minds are both adapted and adaptive courtesy of selection pressures that were social in nature is of particular interest to a putative evolutionary social psychology. I suggest that the notion of an evolved psychological adaptation in social psychology can be retained only if it is accepted that this adaptation is for social interaction and has no rigidly fixed function and cannot be described in terms of algorithmic decision rules or fixed inferential procedures. What is held to be the reason for encephalisation in the Homo lineage and some of best atested ideas in social psychology offers license for such an approach.     

Certain Aspects of the Study of Social History (Historical Social Psychology)

One of the scholarly disciplines, the utilization of whose method and subject matter would, in our opinion, offer very fruitful prospects for historical research, is social (societal) psychology. The subject matter of social psychology is dual. In the first place, its tasks include study of the conditioning of the individual's mentality by his membership in a society, class, or social group. Social psychology concerns itself with those aspects of the mental set and emotional behavior of man that take shape as a consequence of his life and activity in a group. In the second place, social psychology studies the behavior standards of groups and societies, the psychological reactions of groups or masses of people. We know that the emotional behavior of a group is not merely the sum of the emotions of the individuals comprising it. On the one hand, the mentality of the individual and its manifestation in the group are not analogous to the intellectual life of the individual in isolation.     

Collective Action—and Then What?

Two aspects of the social psychology of collective action are of particular interest to social movement organizers and activists: how to motivate people to engage in collective action, and how to use collective action to create social change. The second question remains almost untouched within social psychology. The present article delineates research from political science and sociology concerning variables that moderate the effectiveness of collective action and maps these variables against intergroup research. Within intergroup social psychology, there is a theoretical literature on what needs to be done to achieve change (e.g., changing identification, social norms, or perceptions of legitimacy, stability, permeability). The article considers possible testable hypotheses concerning the outcomes of collective action which can be derived from intergroup research and from the synthesis of the three disciplines. For theoreticians and practitioners alike, a program of research which addresses the social-psychological outcomes of collective action and links these to identities, norms, intentions, and support for social change in bystanders, protagonists, and opponents has a great deal of interest.     

Social psychology as a stable interpretative framework irrefutably committed to the scientific study of persons and society

Despite repeated opportunities to reconsider their natural science ambitions, social psychologists have not done so, and there are no obvious signs of this changing. Why? This paper pursues an answer to this question by defining the field after the fashion of Michael Polanyi's thought. According to Polanyi, interpretative frameworks develop from our primitive bodily encounters with the world and then are shaped by language into the vast conceptual systems of our culture. Concerning frameworks erected on our most fundamental beliefs (e.g., science), he says that we “live in [them] as in the garment of our own skin.” Frameworks such as this are not objects of critical evaluation but of commitment, and social psychology, as an outgrowth of positive philosophy, is an interpretative framework in this sense. Professionals' recent responses to the field's political makeup and replication failures demonstrate this. They aim primarily at preserving a natural science understanding of social psychology and point to the influence of belief-stabilizing mechanisms Polanyi finds operative in folk religious practices. These mechanisms appear at work also in psychology as a whole. They are implied, for instance, in the field's resistance to Sigmund Koch's authoritative judgement against its scientific self-conception in the latter half of the 20^th century. Noting this reveals the broader implications of this paper's definition of social psychology, but it also urges questions about truth and relativity that cannot be ignored. These questions are addressed briefly in the end where it is suggested that what psychology needs most of all is a change of heart, and that this will happen, if at all, not primarily through argument and evidence, but through persons who authentically believe in the veracity of a different framework.     

Social Psychologists' Expertise in the Public Interest: Civilian Morale Research During World War II

By reviewing the careers of three prominent social psychologists, Floyd Henry Allport, Daniel Katz, and Rensis Likert, this article describes the theoretical and practical psychological expertise that American psychologists developed before, during, and after World War II and describes how this expertise resulted in significant gains for the field of social psychology. Prior to World War II, Allport, Katz, and Likert made pioneering contributions to understanding issues relevant to society, to the science of social psychology, and to methods of attitude measurement and poll design. In response to World War II, each of the three pursued research topics more immediately connected to the war effort. Similar to other prominent social psychologists, Allport, Katz, and Likert were able to parlay their prewar reputations into significant, high-level roles in the service of the World War II effort. In turn, these successes helped to lay the foundation for a postwar boom in social psychology that had implications for training in and research on social psychology. Nonetheless, social psychology's and society's utilization of the knowledge gained during World War II appears to have been less than optimal.     

Working Between Worlds: Qualitative Methods and Social Psychology

We invite social psychologists in the United States to join with psychologists in other countries and with researchers in other disciplines to include qualitative approaches in their research repertory. Several classic studies in social psychology used field-based qualitative approaches, yet in recent decades, these ways of working have been on the margins of American social psychology. We explore what a qualitative stance offers and entails, giving examples from our own and others' research. The relentless attention that qualitative workers have given to issues of bias, subjectivity, and research ethics prompts us to consider how such issues are always present in research, regardless of its methods.