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(Thread) Rereading Kenneth Gergen' classic paper "social psychology history", of great relevance to the "replication crisis". The paper is accessible here: tinyurl.com/y8pjyfaj
KG starts from the observation that most definitions of social psychology invoke general basic principles governing social behavior. For him, this is a remnant of a 18th century view of the natural sciences.
The success of the natural sciences stems from the stability of the natural world. "Unlike the natural sciences, social psych deals with facts that are largely non repeatable and which fluctuate rapidly over time". Hence, knowledge cannot accumulate.
KG goes on to report two main reasons why this is. The first one is that the very formulation of social psychological principles influences the people on which those laws bear.
Much social psychologist is "propagandist". Conformity, Authoritarianism for example are value-laden. According to KG, the capacity of social psychologists to broadcast their knowledge means that their audiences are influenced into adopting these values.
"Value commitments may be unavoidable but we can avoid masquerading as objective reflections of the truth".
7/ KG goes on to suggest that many well known phenomena may be rendered null by the public's knowledge of their existence (and hence they can free themselves from them). An example is the risky shift.
8/ Knowledge of psychological principles is liberating and may induce people to assert their freedom from them in a display of reactance. "The more potent a theory is in predicting behavior, the broader its public dissemination and the more prevalent and resounding the reaction"
9/ The motivation to resist the dehumanizing aspect of psychological theories (that lump people together while ignoring their singularities) may exacerbate this tendency.
10/ Before moving on, KG discusses a possible solution to this problem: developing an elaborate theory of such reactance (what he called a "psychology of enlightenment"). This is a dead end because this theory would pose the same problems.
11/ The second major argument regarding the historical contingency of psychology has to do with cultural change. "If we scan the most prominent lines of research during the past decade, we soon realize that the observed regularities are firmly wedded to historical circumstances"
12/ For example, variables that predict political activism at the beginning of the Vietnam ware are different from those that predict activism during later periods.
13/ Another example: the idea that people desire to evaluate themselves accurately and to compare themselves to other (basis of social comparison theory) may not hold in many societies & depends purely on learning (in a particular context).
14/ He goes on to make similar arguments for cognitive dissonance, affiliation, conformity, causal attribution etc.
15/ "Perhaps the primary guarantee that social psychology will not disappear via reduction to physiology is that physiology cannot account for variations in human behavior across time".
16/ "However, while social psych is thus insulated from physiological reductionism, its theories are not insulated from historical change".
17/ Even behaviorist theories of social learning (reinforcement theory) fail this test because reinforcements do not remain stable across time. Citing the David Reisman, he notes that social approval has greater reward value today than it did a century ago.
18/ Now that he has shown that social psychological knowledge is dependent on historical circumstances, what does he propose? Five alterations are proposed:
19/ First, use our knowledge and rigorous methods to try to solve practical and contemporary problems rather than seeking to find general principles. Thereby integrating the pure and the applied.
20/ Contrary to basic cognitive processes, social psychological processes are a counterpart to cultural norms. Thus, we should examine the evolution of psychological dispositions and their relationship to social behavior.
21/ For example, we could examine the prevalence and strength of cognitive dissonance with a society over time and the preferred modes of dissonance reduction.
22/ This may mean using different methods than the laboratory experiment. He advocates a "technology of psychologically sensitive social indicators"
23/ Last: we should seek to identify the relative durability of social phenomena. For example cross-cultural research would help us identify which phenomena are stable.
24/ Analyzing historical material through content analysis would also allow us to do so.
25/ But this does mean than stable phenomena are more valuable than more transient ones. "the major share of the variance in social behavior is (...) due to historically dependent dispositions and the challenge of capturing such processes 'in flight" (...) is immense".
26/"Social psychological research is the the systematic study of contemporary history."
27/ Hence, we should associate with historians and practitioners of other historically bound sciences (such as sociology, political science, economics).
28/ Most social psych research focuses on minute segments of ongoing processes. Associating with historians would help us consider the interrelations of events and psych phenomena over long periods of times.
29/ That's it. Refreshing to see an argument about the replication crisis that's not methodological but due to the nature of what we study.
"Social psychology AS history". Sorry!
Much social psychologY sorry
Erratum: the [sociologist] David RiEsman
erratum: "Value commitments may be unavoidable but we can avoid masquerading THEM as objective reflections of the truth".
