ABSTRACT
Popular beliefs and scholarly knowledge develop in separate communication channels but in quite similar ways; they differ mostly in the extent to which use of critical ability is institutionalized. This chapter is an extended reflection on this statement. Shibutani saw scholarly knowledge as differing from popular beliefs in that it develops in separate channels and because of the greater degree of institutionalized critical ability. Brunvand and Hobbs have provided a number of versions of a story in which members of an audience have influenced the behavior of a lecturer by carefully choosing to show interest and attention when he was acting in a particular way. Although it is a convention of academic writing that sources should be cited, it is clear that there is a degree of "licensed nonreferencing". Writers often have occasion to refer to work in disciplines adjoining their own. Psychology has grown to be so vast a field that no individual could master it all.
