Social Psychology: Exemplary Interdiscipline or Subdiscipline

Abstract

This chapter explores the history and disciplinary status of twentieth-century social psychology. In keeping with the theoretical commitments of this Handbook, the analysis is framed within a history of the human sciences perspective grounded in the mutual development of the human science disciplines. It focuses on whether the history of social psychology should be seen as that of a subdiscipline of psychology or of sociology, or, that of an exemplary interdiscipline. Following a preliminary consideration of the disciplinary status of social psychology, social psychology’s objects of study, its relations with its parent disciplines, and its units of analysis are discussed. The central section of the chapter explores social psychology’s dual disciplinary heritage. A dialectical tension between the disparate traditions of social psychology and their parent disciplines is noted. The intermittent quest for an interdisciplinary psychology is then reviewed. Attention is given to the post–Second World War development of European social psychology. A final section reflects on the significance of the diversity of social psychological traditions, concluding that over the twentieth century, the boundaries of these disparate traditions can be seen as fluid, contingent, local, and contestable, reflecting the thematic preoccupations, disciplinary origins, and meta-theoretical commitments of social psychologists, of the parent disciplines, and of those who represent disciplinary practices.