On The Very Idea Of Social Psychology

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-1-2008

Published In

Social Psychology Quarterly

Abstract

The currently dominant form of social psychology, largely issuing from the discipline of psychology, struggles to relate psychological process to social life; nor have sociological accounts of human behavior compellingly demonstrated the significance of psychological underpinnings. [...] Potter and Wetherell (1987) have pointed to the advantages of viewing attitudes as positions taken in conversations; Billig (1996) has illuminated the way in which reason functions as a form of social rhetoric; Gergen (1994) locates the function of emotional expressions in relational scenarios; Lutz (1988) describes the social function of emotion talk within non- Western cultures; and Middleton and Brown (2005) demonstrate the way in which both experience and memory are quintessentially social activities.

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