ABSTRACT
The most often cited definition of social psychology is Allport’s (1954) broad description of the field as the “attempt to understand and explain how the thought, feeling and behavior of individuals is influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of others.” In practice, however, social psychologists have often acted as if Allport had included in his definition an explicit qualification that social psychology should exclude the study of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that connote dysfunction or psychopathology, or that are of any interest whatsoever to clinical and counseling psychologists. Although social psychologists have been interested in other kinds of potentially problematic reactions-such as aggression, intergroup conflict, and discrimination-they have traditionally limited themselves to the adverse thoughts, emotions, and behaviors of seemingly “normal” individuals and left “abnormal” psychology to the clinicians and counselors.
