Talk:Social psychology/Archive 1

"Allport 1968, p. 3 [orig. 1954]" Found this in the article, but we need more info than that for a citation. Lucidish 18:01, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

ambiguity in article?
Although this article claims that social psychology bridges the gap between psychology and sociology, it is my understanding that there are actually two different social psychologies: one that is a branch of psychology, and one that is a branch of sociology. Although there is some overlap, each kind of social psychology is strongly rooted in its larger discipline. Can anyone address this? Slrubenstein
 * Sure, just did some edits. Lucidish 19:01, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thanks -- looks good! Slrubenstein

First, I'd like to apologize my comment regarding Erikson was in the wrong place, so let me do that: I'm sorry. Second, this article, indeed, summarizes Social Psychology quite well. Nonymous-raz


 * No probs. Thanks for the compliments, I'm happy the article is helpful! Lucidish

There is a fundamental problem with this article. Slrubenstein was right in saying that there are two different social psychologies: one that is a branch of psychology, and one that is a branch of sociology. They have different theories, address different issues, and have different methods; even the overlap seems not to be very large. In this sense, social psychology can be said to widen the gap between sociology and psychology. To pretend that these two disciplines of social psychology are two branches of the same thing is misleading and artificial, and can only be accomplished at the expense of one or the other discipline, which at the moment is the social psychology that is a branch of psychology; most of what is in this article is unrecognizable to a psychological social psychologist like myself, so I assume it is a part of sociology. Most readers, however, will be misled into thinking that it is a part of the overlap (or even further that there is a coherent whole with branches). It seems that the great bulk of the article was written by sociologists. It looks as though sociological social psychology borrows from psychology, but the reverse seems not to be true in any meaningful way, so most of what is in this article is foreign from the standpoint of a psychological social psychologist. It would not be enough to complain that the third paragraph completely ignores the fact that there are two disciplines (the psychological and the sociological); I can't see any solution but to create two articles, one for sociology: Social psychology (sociology) and one for psychology: Social psychology (psychology), and let them overlap to whatever small degree they may.

By way of examples, references to emotion theories would not belong on a Social psychology (psychology) page; the fine work of Ekman and other psychologists like Lazarus and Zajonc (as well as references to James's perspective on emotions) would fall under physiological psychology instead. The comments in the article about how closely personality psychology is related to psychological social psychology also seem foreign; to a psychologist, social psychology is a huge field, and personality psychology is a separate sub-field (and which some psychologists feel has been plagued by difficulties). The fact that moral development was not even mentioned until I added it also seems to point to the sociological approach to this article being dominant. I don't think we are knowledgeable enough to write about each others' disciplines. If an assumption was made along the way that because the sociological approach to social psychology references the work of psychologists, this ties together the two disciplines into a whole with some coherence, that assumption was not waranted. - Do c  t  or  W  18:22, 24 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Amen. I am also in favor of splitting the article into two discipline-specific (sociology vs. psychology) articles. I'm about one year away from finishing my Ph.D. in social psychology (emphasis on the psychology), and I've never heard of many of the "perspectives" and theories mentioned in the article. In fact, I've even had students (I teach a variety of undergraduate psychology courses) tell me that they've been thoroughly confused when they read this article and it doesn't jive with the content they learned in their Social Psychology courses. And, at least at my school, the psychology department's social psychology courses enroll about 400 students each semester. The sociology department's social psychology course enrolls 40 people once every other semester. These enrollment figures are proportionally similar to my undergraduate institution as well. As such, I must infer that the vast majority of individuals with training in "social psychology" acquired their knowledge in a psychology department. My conclusion then is that the Social Psychology article on Wikipedia should either focus on psychological social psychology or be split into two articles with a disambiguation page explaining the split and directing people to the appropriate page. Nick 20:54, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm going to add my voice to the chorus. I'm a month away from defending my dissertation in (psychological) social psychology, and much of what I read on this page has no bearing on what I have learned and taught. Splitting this article into two articles needs to be done. url 12:19, 2 December 2005


 * I don't support this measure because it is based on an incomplete article. If you have problems with the article's point of view, then it is NPOV, and that should be remedied. Also, the claims about the two subdisciplines having little overlap have not been shown, only asserted.
 * DoctorW, I disagree with much of what you've said. Ekman most certainly deserves mention here because his theories of facial / emotional recognition do not have a purely physiological bent; they are also, quite explicitly, about cultural differences and similarities. Admittedly, the James-Lange theory seems a bit of a stretch, but it might provide some context for more social-psychological theories. Any claim about personality psychology should emphasize that it is merely one subfield in social psychology. Moral development is worth noting, except it also has a foot very much in social philosophy. In any case I don't think your conclusion has been made on the basis of the premises you've drawn; they not being decisive in their own right, and also not comprehensive across the content of the whole article.
 * All of what has been said above, I take to heart, and recognize as deficits in what I've contributed. However, this should be taken as an opportunity to expand the article, not split it. Lucidish 18:38, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Very good job
Many people have added their own pieces of meat and vegetables to that dish (I even brought occasionnally my few grains of salt ;-)). The result is, in my opinion, a very good presentation of social psychology. I congratulate all of those who worked for it from the beginning until now. Hope it will be elected article of the year ;-) --Pgreenfinch 07:34, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Mental Illness
How does it relate?
 * To what? Lucidish

Recent reversion
I've revised the past five edits or so because of their POV nature, are underinformative, have stylistic problems (extra spacing where none is required), and grammatically poor. I would also suggest the the anonymous editor that they do not eliminate full sections of text unless those sections are in and of themselves inaccurate. Lucidish 22:32, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Improvement Drive
Cultural appropriation has just been nominated on WP:IDRIVE. Public education and Flirting as well as Teenage pregnancy are also currently nominated on This week's improvement drive and may be of interest to you. If you are interested in contributing, please vote or comment here: This week's improvement drive--Fenice 09:23, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Personality cult
Over at Talk:Cult of personality there is quite a dscussion about what this really is and who it applies to (more specifically Castro, but also many others like, say, Washington). Anyone here know? Or know a good source? DirkvdM 10:32, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a Max Weber-ism to me. But OED says the first mention of it was in 1956 in a Canadian journal. I don't much trust that. Might be good to check a sociology text. Lucidish 22:52, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Somewhat Jumbled
This article seems to be a jumbled mix of psychology, sociology and philosophy. As a result, I fear it does not give a clear description of "social psychology." The deliniation between "sociological social psychology" and "psychological social psychology" is not explicit enough, and so readers may become confused (ironically, readers who have taken a course in social psychology may be the most confused). In addition, the tone of the article may be too "academic" for the general audience.--Nick 20:14, 18 September 2005 (UTC)


 * If it seems to you that an article about social psychology is a jumble of sociology and psychology, then that shows that the article was successful in conveying the facts about the discipline. If this is a point of critique for some, then I'd have to hear how.
 * I'd also like to hear how overt definitions of sociological social psychology and psychological social psych, as found in the Relation to Other Fields section, are not "explicit".
 * I also don't know what parts have too much jargon. I'd be happy to rewrite those parts, but I tried to have that in mind the first time around, and so if you object to it it's safe to say I don't know what's too technical and what's not. So a more specific analysis would be welcome. Lucidish 00:04, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Historical background
Any mention or discussion of Hobbes would have to go in a "Historical background" section, which doesn't exist yet. It sounds like it might be a valuable addition. It doesn't belong in the introduction before the table of contents, however. - Do c  t  or  W  19:22, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

to be improved
I'm not happy with the bulletpoint layout of the article. One of the things to do should be to transfer the info from the point-form notes to full paragraphs, with decent narration as to how the issues are relevant and so on. Lucidish 20:58, 1 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I fully agree with you. And good call on the hedonism edit; I was planning to do exactly the same one but you beat me to it. Also, thanks for all the valuable contributions you've made to this article.


 * I'm not happy with a lot of aspects this article, though. Most of them stem from the fact that all throughout the article the reality that social psychology is two fields, one affiliated with psychology and the other with sociology, is ignored. Most of the present content must have been written by a sociologist, as it is completely unrecognizable to a research psychologist, even one who specializes in social psychology like myself. Most of the overlap seems to be very general things that overlap with almost all of psychology, sociology, and some other social science fields. Some key aspects of psychological social psychology were not even mentioned until I added them to the article. Because of this deep division, I'm not sure a single article is the best way to represent these two fields with the same name. There may have to be two articles Social psychology (sociology) and Social psychology (psychology). The present article would apparently need only a bit of work to become the former. If the two are to be kept together in one article, a complete rewrite needs to be done with a largely bifurcated structure. I think we need to discuss these two options. We certainly can't have all the sociology in the present article masquerading as what social psychology research psychologists do. See also comments above toward the end of the section "ambiguity in article?" by me and by Nick. - Do c  t  or  W  01:33, 2 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Once the understanding that social psychology is codisiplinary is fully integrated into one's conception of it, any problems about a fault line of disciplinary boundaries splitting it into entirely different fields will be understood as artificial. Or, at least, this is the sense that I have gotten in my discussions and classes with social psychologists. If this ends up being a futile project, fine; but our role as Wikipedians isn't really to judge the adequacy of the layout of the fields. In any case it is good to keep in mind that the scope of the field is quite wide.
 * If more ought to be written on the subject of psychological social psychology, then it is certainly welcome in the article. The "models of social behavior" section is most certainly incomplete, and what is listed is only the most tentative of samples in the research. If more emphasis, and more outright additions, are needed, then the article opens its arms to it.
 * Incidentally, the source is the textbook Micheler/Delameter/Myers "Social Psychology", and at least the pointform notes were derived systematically from it. I took (minor) pains not to exclude material that would be pertinent on an article like this.
 * I'm not exactly content with the idea that it be bifurcated, but then again I'd really have to see the details in action to come up with an intelligible opinion. To be quite honest I think the PSP and SSP distinction is a load of nonsense, only of merit as a methodological point of view (i.e., trying to explain the actions of an aggregate of persons in terms of individual minds in the former, and trying to predict how interactions would affect group / aggregate behavior in the latter). Both are talking about the same subject matter and I see no principled reason (except for that relatively uninteresting methodological point) to make that divide more pronounced than it really is. Lucidish 06:19, 16 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree with Lucidish. And If we are to continue this discussion further I'd suggest you all to read through Vivien Burrs book Person In Social Psychology, which discusses critically about this difference and how to get past it. Exellent book, it begins by analysing the differences in SSP and PSP and goes through the historical aspects as well as ideological ones. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1841691801/qid=1134903722/sr=8-4/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl14/104-5720273-4116736?n=507846&s=books&v=glance

--Michael 11:06, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

About the sociological side of social psychology
Apparently the article includes views about social psychology from the both sides of the atlantic. And In a way I resist (presumably) you americans in splitting this article in two, thus separating the "sociological" and "psychological" social psychology. And I'm not too thrilled in the general attitude that the "psychological social psychology" is the right one. At least here in Finland even undergraduates study "both" views of social psychology, and usually they study psychology and sociology on the side. Sociological an psychological aspects of this particular dicipline contemplate each other in many ways and this article is a good way of emerging the both views. So what if it confuses a few undergraduates. At least it gives a larger perspective of the dicipline and may encourage some students to look for some more information.

By the way, I'm the one responsible for adding Mead, Hobbes, Harre, Averill, James, Ekman, Zajonc, Moscovici to the article. Among a few other things(e.g. discursive psychology). Thank's for editing it and removing the typos.

I decided to introduce myself finally. I'm a third year undergraduate with large amount of side studies from psychology, biology and sociology, anthropology.

One thing that I'm wondering is the mentioning of sociobiology as a sub-field of social psychology... At least in Finland sociobiology is generally considered as a pseudoscientific racist a priori poor excuse of a field.

And a suggestion for a new section : Should we include mentionings about the major schools in social psychology and discribe them a bit? For example Loughborough -school and Chicago -school?

--Michael 23:52, 14 December 2005 (UTC)


 * See, this is part of the problem--I have no idea what "Loughborough school" and "Chicago School" are. Psychological Social Psychologists don't really discuss "sociobiology" (which in the US is considered a subfield of sociology), and of the names you listed, the only one who has major relevance to psychology is Zajonc. What I am most worried about is the fact that this article seems to be about 80% sociology and 20% psychology. I understand that I am coming from an american perspective (in which the vast majority of social psychology is psychological), but I still think this article needs to be split up. -Nick 19:09, 15 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Having read several of Blackwell published books about Social Psychology(mostly american) I still think this article has more elements than 20% american. And I still can't figure out why the American view of the field should be considered as the right one or default one. Quantitative research is done on both sides of the atlantic.


 * Rob Farr's The Roots of Modern Social Psychology deals with the issue of american SP differing from European but at the same time showing that they indeed both have the same roots. Maybe the thing we should address here is the fact that social psychology is a wast field that no one person can fully cope with. --Michael 02:42, 16 December 2005 (UTC)


 * (Written before Michael's comments immediately above but saved afterward): I'm sure I'm not the only one who is grateful that Michael has taken the time to make valuable contributions to this article. Michael, when you say that "in Finland even undergraduates study 'both' views of social psychology," do you mean that it is taught by both psychologists and sociologists? Or is there a department of social psychology that draws evenly from the knowledge base of the two fields and somehow integrates the different research methods of the two fields? (This would seem to be a challenging task.) The fact that social psychology as taught by sociologists draws occasionally on the research of psychologists is not nearly sufficient to claim even a degree of balance; even when the research of psychologists is cited, it seems sometimes to be treated very differently than it would be by psychologists, as I mentioned above by pointing out that Ekman, Zajonc, James, and others dealing with emotion would be studied in a course (if taught by psychologists) in physiological psychology, not in social psychology or social development. So I'm wondering if Michael is getting the impression that there is such a thing as a single field of social psychology when in fact what he may have experienced is a sociological social psychology course that had a superficial smattering of findings by psychologists (without an organic integration of theory and methods). This is what we have in the U.S., as far as I can determine; psychologists and sociologists are each trained in their own methods and have their own departments, and when social psychology has its own department, it is composed of psychologists who follow their own methods, approaches, and theories (in the cases I know in the U.S.). Michael, what do you think? - Do c  t  or  W  04:00, 16 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm in a bit of rush right now so I'm answering shortly. In Finland Social Psychology is it's own field of research integrating views from sociology, biology, cognitive psychology, gerontology, developmental psychology, school psychology and personal psychology. It's a wast field where one can specialize in any subcategory one feels fit to. There is a general acknowledgement(diffucult word) of the two different paradigms and neither is considered better. They are seen as fullfilling and the veriety of views are constantly looking for emerging. One masters thesis, say about behavior in school, can integrate cognitive theories of Piaget and constructionist theories of Gergen. I've studied social psychology a lot, inside and outside the curriculum, so I'm fully aware of the differences in thought conserning "psychological" views and "sociological" views. I've been adding sociological substance to the article for the reason being that it is too often overlooked, even though It gives a major and valuable addition to the subject of SP. And in my view this article is too much in bias for psychological social psychology (In my view the sociological substance covers only the 20% ;). So I think this article is looking good and constantly evolving.

Michael 16:17 16.12.2006 (updated --Michael 14:48, 16 December 2005 (UTC) )


 * I'm on Michael's side. While I agree with DrW, Nick and anon about it not being psychological enough, and encourage them to make additions where they think there are deficits, I don't think that the material presented here is off-base.
 * So. What I'd like to suggest is that we list off the sorts of material covered in psychological social psychology, and then work that into the article. Lucidish 18:43, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm also on Michael's side - the sociological side of social psychology is too often overlooked, which creates an artificially narrow conception of social psychology.

Next on the docket...
As you folks may have noticed, I've been doing some updates, category shuffling, fleshing out the narration in what are presently point-form notes, etc. While this is being done I've put the "underconstruction" tag at the top, so folks are aware that the article is undergoing a major revision.

One of the things that might seem weird that I thought I should point out is that I've changed the category structure entirely: removed the "models of social behavior" section and merged it with "theories in social psychology", and given "theories of soc-psy" a higher-level category on its own (not just subsidiary to the "relation to other fields" section).

Hopefully this is all for the good. Comments, etc are appreciated, as always. :) Lucidish 16:54, 18 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I love it --Michael 17:33, 18 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Just about all of the micro-SP theories are fleshed out to an adequate level. Still to do: in the theories section, a list of important terms and key concepts for each subject matter is needed; I'm thinking of a little table that just sits to the right on each subsection, like this --->


 * Also need to finish the macro-SP stuff.
 * Then, the goal will be to revise what's been done, make salient additions, and that sort of thing.
 * I'm still looking for the psychological issues that folks think have been given short shrift here, so that I can include them. Lucidish 20:19, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Finished narrating, so I removed the "under construction" warning. Todo list is as follows, both as an outlet to my own angst and in case folks want something to help out with: Lucidish 03:48, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
 * essential terms lists (above)
 * general improvements in quality (more detail in psych section?); make the narration less crappy/repetitive/disjointed and more reader-friendly
 * structure the "theories in social psych" section more around the Cote/Levine diagram, either implicitly or explicitly, in order to get a more complete survey of the discipline. Right now it is roughly arranged according to various levels of analysis, i.e., from micro to macro, with emphasis upon social action; also needed is a greater emphasis (at least in this section's intro) on socialization and processes that are internal to the level of analysis (i.e., at the level of interaction: what is an interaction? how is it measured?).
 * cross-reference "theories" with the recurring "perspectives"
 * more syndromes should be listed, in order to address the complaint a few sections up about a failure to cover mental illnesses
 * maybe at one point the article should be given over to an alumnus in social psych to take a peek at and give suggestions on


 * Right. Well, I've added an "ecology" section, which I may or may not decide to keep.
 * Also added an "experts" shout-out so that we can get some more professorial and less studentorial eyes laid onto the matter. Lucidish 05:29, 3 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I am going to try and integrate "ecology" stuff into the rest of the theory section. As of right now, the theory section is split into rough-and-ready categories of micro, middle, and macro social psychology. The goals of each subsection have, I hope, been explained well enough in each section heading: there should be topics relating to socialization, social action, and relevant processes internal to the topic of the subsection. In addition, each subsection should address ecology, matters relating to material in adjacent sections (if possible), special topics / research focuses, and social psychological disorders. Lucidish 22:44, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree a good editorial may greatly imporve this page. There isdefinitely a lot going on at this page. My impression is that there is just too much material on it right now (perhaps some sections (e.g.) social philosophy may be moved to a sub-page). That also may allow you to adopt a more straigthforward structure in your editing and imporve legibility. Good luck with the hard work --Arnoutf 22:43, 13 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Good points (though editorials are what Wiki needs to shy away from). I'll be thinking about things to prune. Lucidish 17:04, 14 January 2006 (UTC)


 * If there's any help / interest, one idea might be to start a Social Psychology Portal. Another idea is to offload much of the info here to other articles. Lucidish 23:02, 27 January 2006 (UTC)