Theory & Psychology

The articles in this special issue cover a range of critical issues and approaches in social psychology. Two of their common features are: (a) their restatement—in various forms—of the unresolved epistemological problems that continue to inform critical discussions of social psychology; and (b) the rarely debated question of just what makes social psychology social. These two questions are interlocking: the undecided nature of the latter eventually creates an impassable barrier to resolving the former. Focusing on a cross-section of issues derived from the social psychology literature presented in this issue, I introduce the problematic and contested nature of the domain of social psychology.

Psychology has become divided by its methodological fixations, largely overlooking the centrality of its phenomena. The alienation of methods from phenomena results in skirmishes between preferred methodological styles (e.g. qualitative vs quantitative). This defies the integrative nature of science that functionally links theoretical and empirical facets of the research process in a methodology cycle. This integration was called for by C. Lloyd Morgan a century ago in the form of integrating the researcher’s introspective and extrospective experiences on the way to creating general knowledge. In contrast, our contemporary fragmentation of the discipline is compounded by forces of social canalization—it becomes controllable by different social interest groups. What kinds of questions are asked by researchers, to whom, and with what kind of focus becomes a task of negotiation between science and the given society. The increasing social control over the domain of ‘research ethics’ in psychology is an example of the social canalization of psychology’s knowledge construction. As a result, many basic questions are no longer addressed. To return to the creation of basic knowledge, psychology needs to reverse the fragmentation of its methodology and to assert the relative autonomy of its research practices from the control of social institutions.

Across the last four decades, applied social psychology has sought to apply theories to ‘real world’ social problems, hoping for some insight into intractable social issues. This paper reviews applied social psychology discourse on the application of theory in the resolution of social problems, with a focus on the ‘post-crisis’ literature. This analysis suggests that much of applied social psychology lacks serious theoretical analysis and has yet to use the kind of theory needed to understand social problems. While exceptions to these trends are noted and discussed, current mainstream applied social psychology, as exemplified by a survey of recent texts, seems highly individualistic, rarely focused on important social issues, and generally atheoretical. Two themes, which run counter to these trends—the emergence of critical psychology and renewed attention to the limits of generalizability, along with the importance of knowing contexts—may set the agenda for further theoretical efforts in applied social psychology.

In recent years we have witnessed a number of new developments in social psychology that set out to offer an alternative to the dominant social cognitive paradigm. Whilst there is undoubtedly growing interest in these alternatives, they have not had the impact that many might have hoped. In this paper, I outline Paul Ricoeur’s work on the social imaginary, ideology and utopia, and use this as a critical hermeneutic to understand the failure of ‘new movements’ within social psychology to move the discipline forward. The social imaginary is the ensemble of stories possessed by all societies that serve to mediate human reality. Ricoeur uses this concept to understand and conceptualize the distinction between ideology and utopia. Ideology and utopia are reconceptualized by Ricoeur as integration/identity and rupture/critique, respectively. I argue that social psychology vacillates between these two positions and, as yet, has not been able to engage dialectically with both.

Based on the premise that a psychology of theatre acting can teach psychologists about social acting, I evaluate Goffman’s influential dramaturgical metaphor and discuss what theatre acting reveals about conceptions of the self. Within Goffman’s model, differences between the quotidian and theatre worlds are accidental and daily life is like theatre actors’ life on stage. First, I assess how well this version of the drama-turgical metaphor accounts for both theatre acting and social interaction. The complexly layered, psychological aspects of theatre acting reveal the limitations of Goffman’s model. The second critical issue pertains to the implications of a psychology of theatre acting for conceptions of the self. The flexible, relational nature of theatre actors’ multiple ‘selves’ challenges psychologists’ literalist applications of dramaturgy to social actors as well as essentialist conceptions of a core self, while complementing postmodern notions of relational selves.

In this paper I discuss the importance of examining the impact of our common-sense making on the development of academic psychological constructs. In the process, I shall review the history of social psychology in understanding differences and similarities in the ways in which attitudes and social representations have been theorized. After a concise review of each of these two concepts, I examine the points of connection and tension between them, with particular reference to the dialectic of the social and the psychological. This highlights the influence of dominant constructions of the individual within the discipline of social psychology itself and on recent research in attitude theory in particular. The paper discusses how social psychologists have used, have been constrained by, and have developed particular social representations of the individual and of ‘attitudes’ themselves in the reified realm of academic psychology. By way of a conclusion, the example of racism is drawn on to reveal the conceptual and political consequences of theorizing either racist attitudes or racializing representations.

In order to understand how and why extreme right parties and movements are more often put forward in the political sphere and taken up by the media, I address a social psychological perspective and consider the many processes at work in these phenomena. Starting with the explanation of the success of the extreme right in terms of the theory of innovation, I analyse its acceptance through the theory of social representations. A dynamic social psychology has to focus on social change and conflict, especially in political topics and communication.