Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T02:09:05.754Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Project of an Experimental Social Psychology: Historical Perspectives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Kurt Danzier
Kurt Danzier
Affiliation:
Department of PsychologyYork University, Toronto
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The notion that experimentation provides an appropriate means for acquiring valid knowledge about some aspects of social reality has always depended on certain presuppositions about the nature of social reality and about the role of expenment in knowledge acquisition. In this paper I examine historical changes in these presuppositions from the beginnings of social psychological experimentation to the period after World War II.

It was late nineteenth-century crowd psychology that provided the theoretical inspiration fo the first systematic steps in the application of expermental methods to the investigation of social psychological problems. The basic question addressed by these early experiments was derived from the individualistic social ontology of crowd psychology. It was this ontology that made the microcosm of the experimental situation appear relevant to social reality outside this situation.

In the 1940s experimental social psychology was briefly influenced by a nonindividualistic social ontology for which group phenomena were real. In the work of Kurt Lewin this was linked to an anti-inductivist conception of experimentation derived from Gestalt psychology and the philosophy of Ernst Cassirer. However, this model proved to be utterly unassimilable by American social psychology which was dominated by an individualistic social ontology and an inductivist philosophy of experimentation that mutually supported each other.

Type
Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1992 , pp. 309 - 328
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ailport, F. H. 1920. “The Influence of the Group upon Association and Thought.” Journal of Experimental Psychology 3:159–82.Google Scholar
Ailport, F. H. 1924. Social Psychology. New York: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Ailport, F. H. 1933. Institutional Behavior. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Ash, Mitchel. G. 1992. “Cultural Contexts and Scientific Change in Psychology: Kurt Lewin in Iowa.” American Psychologist 47:198–207.Google Scholar
Ash, Mitchell G. In press. Holism and the Quest for Objectivity: Gestalt Psychology in German Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Barker, R. G., and Wright., H. F. 1966. One Boy's Day: A Specimen Record of Behavior. Hamden, Conn.: Archon.Google Scholar
Cassirer, E. [1910] 1923. Substance and Function. Chicago: Open Court.Google Scholar
Danziger, K. 1983. “Origins and Basic Principles of Wundt's Volkerpsychologie.” British Journal of Social Psychology 22:303–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Danziger, K. 1985. “The Methodological Imperative in Psychology.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 15:1–13.Google Scholar
Danziger, K. 1990a. Constructing the Subject: Historical Origins of Psychological Research. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Danziger, K. 1990b. “Wilhelm Wundt and the Emergence of Experimental Psychology.” In Companion to the History of Modern Science, edited by Olby, R. C., Cantor, G. N., Christie, J. R. R., and Hodge, M. J. S., 396–409. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Festinger, L. 1953. “Laboratory Experiments.” In Research Methods in the Behavioral Sciences, edited by Festinger, L. and Katz., D., 136–72. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Festinger, L. 1980. Retrospections in Social Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Festinger, L., Back, K., Schachter, S., Kelley, H. H. and Thibaut, J. 1950. Theory and Experiment in Social Communication. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, Research Center for Group Dynamics.Google Scholar
Gergen, K. J. 1978. “Experimentation in Social Psychology: A Reappraisal.” European Journal of Social Psychology 8:507–27.Google Scholar
Gergen, K. J. 1982. Toward Transformation in Social Knowledge. New York: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geuter, U. 1986. Daten zur Geschichte der deutschen Psychologie, vol. 1. Gottingen: Hogrefe.Google Scholar
Gigerenzer, G., and Murray., D. J. 1987. Cognition as Intuitive Statistics. Hilisdale, N.J.: Eribaum.Google Scholar
Graebner, W. 1986. “The Small Group and Social Engineering 1900–1950.” Journal of Social Issues 42(1): 1 37–54.Google Scholar
Hacking, I. 1983. Representing and Intervening. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Haines, H., and Vaughn., G. M. 1979. “Was 1898 a ‘great date’ in the History of Social Psychology?” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 15:323–32.3.0.CO;2-I>CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Harré, R., and Secord., P. F. 1972. The Explanation of Social Behaviour. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hovland, C. I., Janis, I. L., and Kelley., H. H. 1953. Communication and Persuation. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
King, E. G. 1990. “Reconciling Democracy and the Crowd in Turn-of-the-Century Social Psychological Thought.” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 26:334–44.Google ScholarPubMed
Bon, Le G. 1895. Psychologie desfoules. Paris: Alcan.Google Scholar
Bon, Le G. 1960. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. New York: Viking.Google Scholar
Bon, Le G. n.d. Psychologie der Massen. Leipzig: Kröner.Google Scholar
Lewin, K. [1927] 1981. “Gesetz und Experiment in der Psychologie.” Symposion 1:375–421. Reprinted in Kurt-Lewin-Werkausgabe, vol. 1, edited by C.-G. Graumann and A. Métraux, 279–320. Bern: Huber and Klett-Cotta. Translated as “Law and Experiment in Psychology,” Science in Context 5(2):385–416.Google Scholar
Lewin, K. 1935. “The Conflict between Aristotelian and Galilean Modes of Thought in Contemporary Psychology.” In Dynamic Theory of Personality, edited by Lewin, K., 1–42. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Lewin, K. 1936. Principles of Topological Psychology. New York: McGraw-HillGoogle Scholar
Lewin, K. 1952. Field Theory in Social Science. London: Tavistock.Google Scholar
Lewin, K., Lippitt, R., and White., R. K. 1939. “Patterns of Aggressive Behavior in Experimentally Created ‘Social Climates’.” Journal of Social Psychology 10:271–99.Google Scholar
Lewin, M. H. 1987. “Kurt Lewin and the Invisible Bird on the Flagpole: A Reply to Graebner.” Journal of Social Issues 43(1): 123–39.Google Scholar
Mayer, A. 1903. “Uber Einzel-und Gesamtleistung des Schulkindes.” Archiv für die gesamle Psychologie 1:276–416.Google Scholar
Meumann, E. 1904. Hausarbeit und Schularbeit. Leipzig: Klinckhardt.Google Scholar
Moede, W. 1920. Experimentelle Massenpsychologie. Leipzig: Hirzel.Google Scholar
Morawski, G. 1986. “Organizing Knowledge and Behavior at Yale's Institute of Human Relations.” Isis 77:219–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moscovici, S. 1985. The Age of the Crowd: A Historical Treatise on Mass Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Patnoe, S. 1988. A Narrative History of Experimental Social Psychology: The Lewin Tradition. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Paicheler, G. 1988. The Psychology of Social Influence. Cambrigde: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sighele, S. 1892. La coppia criminale. Torino: Bocca.Google Scholar
Smith, L. D. 1986. Behaviorism and Logical Positivism. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Tolman, E. C. 1932. Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men. New York: Century.Google Scholar
Triplett, N. 1898. “The Dynamogenic Factors in Pacemaking and Competition.” American Journal of Psychology 9:507–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Creveld, van M. 1983. Fighting Power: German and U.S. Army Performance 1939–1945. London: Arms and Armour Press.Google Scholar
Ginneken, Van J. 1989. “Crowds, Psychology and Politics 1871–1899.” 1–1899.” Ph. D. diss., University of Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Hoorn, van W., and Verhave., T. 1980. “Wundt's Changing Conceptions of a General and Theoretical Psychology.” In Wundi Studies, edited by Bringmann, W. G. and Tweney, R. D., 71–113. Toronto: Hogrefe.Google Scholar
Winston, A. S. 1988. “Cause and Experiment in Introductory Psychology: An analysis of R. S. Woodworth's textbooks.” Teaching of Psychology 15:79–83.Google Scholar
Winston, A. S. 1990. “Robert Sessions Woodworth and the ‘Columbia Bible’: How the Psychological Experiment Was Redefined.” American Journal of Psychology 103:391–401.Google Scholar
Woodworth, R. S. 1938. Experimental Psychology. New York: Holt.Google Scholar
Wundt, W. 1887. Grundzuge der physiologischen Psychologie, 3rd ed. Leipzig: Engelmann.Google Scholar
Wundt, W. 1900. VOlkerpsychologie, vol. 1. Leipzig: Engelmann.Google Scholar
Wundt, W. 1909. “Ober reine und angewandte Psychologie.” Psychologische Studien 5:1–47.Google Scholar
Wundt, W. 1921. “Die Psychologie im Kampf urns Dasein.” In his Kleine Schrjflen, vol. 3, 515–43. Stuttgart: Kröner.Google Scholar