The diverse traditions within social psychology have
spawned differing ideas of social psychology as a science.
The term science is itself awkward to define, but can be broadly
thought of in terms of incorporating research, theory, oncology
and objectivity or interpretation. Three of the perspectives
listed above, the experimental/cognitive, the experiential/humanistic
and the social constructionist approaches, have postulated
different notions about social psychology and the kind of
science it is.
The most dominant approach, experimental social psychology,
with its emphasis on empirical investigations that examine
objective, observable behaviour in trying to establish regular
"cause and effect" laws, views the controlled investigations
and experiments that are characteristic of a scientific "natural"
approach as being the way forward; this promotes the idea
of social psychology as a naturalistic scientific science.
The experiential/humanistic approach, with its focus on
actual lived experience, seeks to examine and interpret people's
experience and the meanings they hold for their actions and
the actions of others, and assumes that people actively construct
their experience through exercising autonomy. Each unique
individual can become reflexively aware and this can facilitate
the process of personal growth and generally improve the experience
of living.
This "person of potential" approach presents the
idea that social psychology is a "moral" science.
The social constructionist approach has its emphasis on the
idea of people as social beings influenced, constructed and
defined by their social context, and that people also play
a part in shaping society (this mutual interdependence can
be seen through the analysis of the observation of interactions,
interviews and event records). As this approach views the
social context, with its resources, economics, meanings and
ideologies as being inexplicably bound up with the person,
it deems social psychology a critical, "political"
science.
These critiques have omitted the biological and psychodynamic
perspectives - however, the biological perspective, with its
focus on the human as a biological being and the experimental
methods it uses, seems to fall easily under the umbrella of
a natural science.
The psychodynamic perspective is more complex - it could
perhaps be argued that its focus on the unconscious and childhood
experience and the centrality of the therapeutic encounter
to help people cope with life and make them feel better would
make it suited to the idea of a moral science, although it
could also be broadly termed a personal science. Overall,
the consensus seems to be that social psychology is a science
- the trouble is that the different perspectives have different
ideas about what kind of science!
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