ABSTRACT
Of all Psychology’s subdisciplines, Social Psychology is that in which involvement with socio-cultural context is most intense. The priorities, problems and concerns of the societies in which social psychologists live largely determine the matters with which they deal. Their personal social positions, including gender, social class and ethnic group, will, moreover, play a part in determining how they deal with them, while, as members of society, they have ideological and political beliefs which may figure prominently in deciding the goals of their Psychological work. One result is that the ways in which social psychologists orient towards and conceptualise the subject are peculiarly diverse, sometimes even conflicting (see Table 12.1). A particularly important underlying axis of tension is whether the individual or the ‘social’ is prioritised. This has serious ramifications. Theoretically, the latter leads to more social constructionist (if not by name) positions, the former conforming more closely to the orthodox ‘natural science’ approach of experimental Psychology. Methodologically, the latter broadly favours field research and naturalistic observation, the former laboratory-sited research. Ideologically, the latter will also lean towards positions critical of the status quo and be prepared to invoke socio-economic factors in explaining social problems as opposed to individualist explanations in terms of personal psychology. Obviously too, the Sociology-Social Psychology boundary can become quite blurred from the second perspective.
