Social Psychology as a Formal Discipline

                The keyword in our definition of social psychology is discipline. The systematic and organized principles of social psychology distinguish the work of social psychologists from the common-sense predictions of others.

Social psychology is indeed common sense, but it is organized and tested common sense. Sometimes its its finding are not surprising, but we can place more confidence in them if they are tested systematically.

                To understand and explain social behavior, the social psychologist, like other scientists, uses tools called theories. A theory is a systematic statement that sets forth the apparent relationships and underlying principles that make a variety of observed phenomena meaningful. A theory is generally derived by deduction vations can be accounted for by a limited series of propositions. By induction, if our theory is a useful one, we can use it to explain and to predict a number of new observations. Recall that Festinger and his co-workers were acting, as social psychologists, according to a previously conceived and developed theory—namely, Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance. This theory posits a tendency towards consistency—the individual will experience pressures to make his or her attitudes and behavior consistent (or consonant) with one another. An individual’s knowledge that she has exerted considerable effort to join a group, that she has experienced hardship in order to belong to that group, that she has given something up as a result of group membership, and that she has done all of this voluntarily is dissonant with her having a weak affiliation with that group. One way in which she can reduce such dissonance is by increasing her positive evaluation of the group so that her previous efforts and punishments seem worthwhile. Festinger developed this theory by observing his own experiences and thos of others and then integrating these observations with the findings of earlier research. Dissonance theory has deep roots in the Gestalt theory of perception in psychology (for example, Kohler, 1929; Koffka, 1935; Wertheimer, 1923), the field theory of Kurt Lewin (1951), the concepts of balance and consistency of Fritz Heider (1946), and elsewhere. The theory, once developed, seemed to help explain the behavior of the Seekers, the People’s Temple followers, civil rights demonstrators, and Patty Hearst. Later, other social psychologists took issue with the basic assumptions underlying the theory of cognitive dissonance. Some questioned several of the supporting research findings (Greenwald and Ronis, 1978; Wicklund and Brehm, 1976). Others have argued that some of its major predictions could be better understood in terms of attribution theory (Calder, Ross, and Insko, 1973; Collins and Hoyt, 1972) or self-perception theory (Bem, 1967; Markus, 1977; Zanna, 1977). Such is part of the dialogue of social science.

(Source: Raven, Bertram H., Rubin, Jeffrey Z. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY. 1983. John Wiley & Sons, Inc: United States of America. 2nd Edition)

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