The perpetual crisis in social psychology has several facets: the unstable balance between the social and the psychological in social psychology; the conflict between the abstract and the concrete; and the chronic gap between our aspirations and our capabilities with regard to solving social problems. A perspective for theorizing is presented which is oriented toward making social psychology more relevant to specific individuals in particular situations. The author's recent theorizing on distributive justice is summarized. It is concerned with specifying the conditions under which a given value--"equity," "equality," or "need" will be the value underlying a group's system of distributive justice.
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