ABSTRACT
Current writers on social psychology regard it as the study of the individual living in groups or as the influence of groups upon the development of the individual. Sometimes social behavior is considered as responses made to other people or in a social setting. Although these conceptions satisfy the ordinary use of the word “social,” they fail to isolate a distinctive subject matter for the science of social psychology. Consequently, the data usually included in the subject seem heterogeneous and badly organized. Basic to this confusion is the lingering idea, itself a reflection of popular thought, that psychology can divide behavior into hereditary and environmental categories. Thus, social psychology, as the study of the latter, has come increasingly to include a vast collection of data garnered from several fields of psychology, such as developmental and abnormal psychology, and from neighboring sciences such as sociology, anthropology, and ethnology.
