ABSTRACT
It may be argued that the predominant psychological social psychology with which psychologists are familiar has become increasingly individualistic and intrapsychic in orientation in recent times. In the past it has often been concerned to identify the impact of the presence or conduct of other people upon the functioning and behaviour of individuals, for example in the social facilitation experiments of Triplett (1898) which are regularly quoted as being among the very first experiments in social psychology. Much research on phenomena such as obedience, conformity, bystander behaviour, group decision-making and interpersonal attraction can be thought of as fitting this picture. The social here is conceived as a set of variables relating to other people and their conduct that may influence a pre-existing, selfcontained individual. Other research and theory, particularly that which focuses upon dynamics within and between groups, has sometimes gone beyond this position to suggest that a person’s location within social groups is an important source of identity and self-esteem. The role of the social here is not simply one of impacting upon a pre-existing individual but in some way helping to create that individual. However, developments in psychological social psychology towards the end of the twentieth century have led to an increasingly individualistic position, and one which may be hard to defend as social at all. The rise of cognitive psychology and cognitive science has been mirrored in social psychology. Cognitive theories have been enthusiastically developed in two areas of what has come to be known as ‘social cognition’, attitudes and attribution, which now occupy central positions in social psychology.
