ABSTRACT
During the 1970s a discussion about the crisis in social psychology in general (House, 1977) and about small groups in particular (Steiner, 1974) took place. Both discussions have much in common, although at first glance, they started with different foci: The general discussion concentrated on the unintegrated three “faces” of social psychology, whereas the specific view on small groups was concerned with historical waves and cultural influences. Thus, the general discussion was concentrated on internal scientific causes of the crisis, and the specific discussion was seen as externally caused by pragmatic, cultural, and other reasons from outside of our science. In my opinion, both kinds of causes converge in small-group research, making this area a focal point of the crisis in social psychology. The crisis still exists in the sense that small groups have not been the center of social psychology for a long time. What, then, is the central research area of social psychology? And what is social psychology? The answer to the last question is also an answer to the first question about the central research area, because there are different social psychologies. Furthermore, small-group research itself has been fragmented into the different social psychologies so that its publication rate appears reduced; this, however, seems to be an erroneous idea (Fisch, Daniel, & Beck, 1991). Small-group research has been segmented into different parts that do not notice each other. And, in each single part, small-group research no longer plays a dominant role, as there are many other interesting research areas. There seems to be no decrease in small-group research, rather an increase in other areas, giving the appearance of a reduction in each segment (see, for the psychological small-group research, Moreland, Hogg, & Hains, 1994).
