ABSTRACT
The field of communications today is still a relatively young discipline that is seen by some as a scientific parvenu whose right of existence is called into question. For many, Ferdinand Tönnies’ statement at the annual meeting of the German Association of Sociology in 1929 still applies when he responded to the proposal to establish a press science (“Zeitungswissenschaft”) alongside sociology. His answer: Why would one need it? The universities also do not have a chicken and duck science besides in biology either. Today, the field searches its identity via the social importance of the phenomena it is dealing with: social communication and particularly mediated communication (Donsbach, 2006). In its self-understanding as an “integrative science,” i.e. a field that integrates methods, theories and findings from many other disciplines, it indeed shares most of its inter-disciplinary connections with psychology. The significant role of psychology for the development of communications has mainly two reasons. First, fundamental progress in our explanatory knowledge of the communication processes could only happen because we adapted concepts, theories, and methods of psychology. For instance, psychological phenomena are found in all phases of the communication process: in the production of media content the predispositions of journalists, their subjective attitudes, group-dynamic processes, and the collective formation of opinions are playing an important role. During the reception process, psychological approaches come into play in the exposure to and the processing of information (e.g., in the concepts of attention, of selective exposure, the elaboration-likelihood model, or schema theory). Finally, psychological concepts are of utmost importance in media effects research. It starts with early persuasion research (particularly Hovland’s “scientific rhetoric”) and does not end with excitation theories, mood management, psychological predispositions for and effects of violence in the media, or the priming approach. However, contrary to the past, the influx of personnel from psychology has no longer the same importance as in the early days of communication
research. Today, communication researchers are predominantly socialized in their own field and the majority of authors who have published in our academic journals are teaching at communication departments. However, although today there is a strong self-recruitment of the field, basic psychological knowledge still plays an important role and is often taught in the curricula of the communication field itself. A second aid besides the supply of theory and evidence on the level of explanatory knowledge could be referred to as “epistemological mentoring of communications by psychology.” Particularly in Germany, communications was traditionally influenced by historical and cultural approaches, inter alia by the continuation of pre-war traditions (e.g. Emil Dovifat). The epistemological turnaround took place in the mid-1960s. The adaptation of American research and of psychological methodology were particularly influential. Both implied the use of systematic, quantitative methods, the striving for intersubjectivity, and the awareness that one needs different methods, but not a different philosophy of science in order to analyze human beings and social issues instead of phenomena of nature. In most parts of the discipline the awareness prevailed that the underlying social legitimization of the scientific system consists in distinguishing true from untrue statements, thus to develop and apply clear criteria for separation. Only this distinguishes science from other social systems that make assertion about reality-like literature or politics and is therefore its basis of legitimacy. For many, psychology (at least its dominant paradigm) was a beacon on which to orientate. Today communications is epistemologically more or less divided, as is the case in psychology. A survey of the members of the International Communication Association (ICA) shows some positive tendencies in that respect: the younger the members, the more they feel constrained by the quantitative-social scientific tradition. But the survey also revealed just how deep the rift is between the regions of the world in terms of their understanding of science (Donsbach, 2006). Today, there is a reasonable division of labor between the two fields. Communications has not been primarily interested in the way people process information, but rather in the input and output to this processing, whereas input can be understood as media content and output as specific uses or effects of the media. The black box between these two remains largely unopened by communication scholars. In contrast, psychology is less interested in real settings and contents of the world of communication, and for the most part not in the mass media either, but its interests lie in the basic processes of human processing of information. However, more precise hypotheses in communications as well as more relevant examples in psychology can be generated through the cooperation of both disciplines. When speaking about the relationship between both disciplines, one inevitably arrives at the theory of cognitive dissonance. No other theory, as will be shown, played a bigger role in the development of media effects research and
no other theory is entrenched so deeply in the common knowledge of communication scientists and practitioners.
