Talk:Social psychology

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[edit] Archives

[edit] Compressed summary

How about we add a short summary, something like the following:

Both disciplines of social psychology investigate how the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of other(s) (Allport 3). This includes investigation into the processes of social perception and social judgment, social interaction and communication, aggression, attraction, and social influence. The products of these processes are manifold: they include (but are not limited to) attitudes, self and identity, pro-social and anti-social behavior, and group formation.

(Obviously, the wording can be changed, but I just write it to give you an idea of what I mean.)

{ Ben S. Nelson } Lucidish 20:31, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Not bad actually, but we need another definition. Allport was a psychologist and that definition is somewhat biased toward psychology with all that business about thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. To give this a better context, here is what a sociologist I know said about social psychology when I recently emailed him about our discussion:
Much of social life is a fiction. Sociologists like to say reality is socially constructed. That's just a fancy way of saying it's acted out. Society is a play we reenact daily. It's sometimes easier to see this when "reality" falls apart... the power of positive thinking can only take us so far. Society is a "We" thing. I cannot do it alone.
So the trick will be bridging that point of view with the psychological approach, which is much more grounded in the brain of the individual. Jcbutler 20:43, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
I purposefully hesitated to add uniquely SSP material because I'm looking for common ground, and while some SSPers may be interested in PSP work, the road probably doesn't go both ways. Anyway, I guess the possibility is open that we say something quick about how those PSP concepts may be applied in SSP. In the spirit of "sociological miniaturism", I take it that we shouldn't mention anything that's more "sociological" than the behavior of small groups, i.e., intergroup conflict and cooperation (as per M. Sherif's work), communicative networks, social identity, power and trust relationships, origins of groupthink, etc., since these are the concepts that the sociologists would like to use to apply to larger scale social systems. { Ben S. Nelson } Lucidish

I should hasten to add that although the perspective that your friend has shared is surely common in sociology, the quote itself doesn't help much in our discussion about social psychology. I mean, you might be able to analyze the quote and try to get what's being implicitly suggested, and those implicit opinions might be right and relevant; i.e., the construction of broader social "reality" out of shared meanings is clearly a main focus of sociology, and inquiry into meaning can also be examined from the point of view of a social psychologist by the review of the testimonies of individuals, dyads, groups, and demographic samples, as well as the effects of those meanings on behavior and interaction. And to the extent that we're talking about this robust sense of meaning (be it shared or otherwise), we're talking about brains and minds to some degree. (And I believe that was what one editor was trying to express with the so-called "second cognitive revolution".) { Ben S. Nelson } Lucidish 00:20, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Psychology as the default?

I've been giving this some thought lately. A consensus indicates that the split between psychology and sociology was a good idea, but perhaps the current disambiguation page was the wrong way to go. Given that most social psychologists are psychologists, would it be more appropriate to make social psychology (psychology) the default social psychology page, with a disambiguation statement at the top directing interested readers to social psychology (sociology). This would solve the problem of how to write a good disambiguation page, and hopefully clarify the situation for users. It also appears to be standard practice on Wikipedia, e.g. emotion, forest, moon. In most cases, the default is the most commonly used version, with disambiguation statements directing people to other versions. Any thoughts on this? --Jcbutler 17:49, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Strong endorse. I think this is a great idea. I was thinking somthing similar for quite some time, but I figured the opposition from the sociology camp would be too intense. For better or worse there always seemed to be more active sociology editors when the page was combined. I think some statistics regarding the number of professors/grad programs in each might be telling. Irongargoyle 18:09, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Strong endorse. I also agree--somewhere in the discussion archives I mentioned how, at my university, over 500 students take the various sections of the Psych Social Psych course each semester, while only one 50-person of social psych is offered by the sociology department. I think this is typical of most American universities. In addition, there are many psychology-based social psych journals, including several international ones (JPSP, PSPB, PSPR, Basic & Applied SP, J of Applied SP, British J of SP, Eur J of SP, etc). As far as I know, Social Psych Quarterly is the only sociological social psych journal. In addition, books such as the handbook of social psych and annual review of social psych tend to be psychological. Finally, the fact is that psychological SP is a much larger (populous) field than sociological SP; odds are, if someone searches Wikipedia for SP, they are looking for the psychological one. -Nicktalk 18:39, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
weak endorse I think social psychology is predominantly a psychological discipline (per all above); therefore I endorse this idea; however there has been much argument on this page that Sociological SocPsy should be treated on an equal footing. This page was the resulting compromise; changing this page into the (psych) SocPsy page may be felt by some editors as opposed to the original idea behind the compromise; therefore, for 'political' reasons my endorsement is not more then weak. Arnoutf 18:44, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
"Comprimise" is not exactly the word that fits what happened here. { Ben S. Nelson } Lucidish 02:45, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
Strong oppose, for reasons which would be tiresome to repeat. PSP is an advanced body of literature, but it is not the ONLY body of literature under this heading. { Ben S. Nelson } Lucidish 02:45, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
Comment. Sociology and Psychology wikiprojects rated their articles respectively as High importance and Top-importance on their importance scale. (See Talk:Social psychology (psychology) and Talk:Social psychology (sociology)), maybe these scales should have the last word about articles relative importance, i don't know? Even if it's a standard pratice on Wikipedia to give the default page to the most important article, i think it's a bit different in this case than for articles such as emotion, forest or moon. Frédérick Lacasse 23:07, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
Doesn't this suggest that social psychology is more central to psychology than sociology? It's also worth noting that social psychology is a prominent part of the psychology page, but only mentioned in passing on the sociology page. The comment is mainly that sociology has "links" with social psychology. --Jcbutler 23:50, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree. I put it as a comment because I don't know if there is a policy related to this kind of scales, i mean, are they enough accurate to be used to take decisions about renaming for example. This could be a strong argument for you. Frédérick Lacasse 00:52, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't think any weight whatsoever should be placed on these ratings. More than once I have seen these ratings resulting from the ill-informed decision of a single undergraduate student. The point Dr. Butler raises, about psychology placing more emphasis on social psychology than does sociology, has more validity; ultimately, however, the relative importance assigned by the two fields is far less significant than comparing the two versions of social psychology in a more objective sense, as Nick has done above. An extreme analogy illustrates the point: A sixth grader might place top importance on videos of his own basketball practices, whereas a national TV network might give the prime air time to something other than NBA basketball (singing or dance competitions, a popular drama or sitcom, or even football). Nevertheless, no one thinks that the child's basketball practice videos should be weighted at all equally with coverage of NBA games. -DoctorW 16:43, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Sorry. I think there is a little misunderstanding. My comment was that if Wikipedia guidelines exist about rating scales accuracy, but i don't know, i ask the question, it could be not necessary to debate about is PSP a more important topic than SSP because PSP is already rated higher on this scale. In this way, it supports Jcbutler. I thought other users knew something about it, maybe it doesn't exist at all. By the way, if you think that some articles ratings on talk pages, especially on psychology related topics, don't reflect reality, i guess you are allowed to change it, it would be appreciated. Frédérick Lacasse 00:42, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Weak oppose. Although it seems difficult for editors to improve this disambiguation page, i think it is very useful and constructive for readers because it describes differences beetween topics that are linked by a real ambiguity. I think that sociological social psychology seems important enough for this argument to be valid. Frédérick Lacasse 23:07, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
Once you put aside all the hustle and bustle of 2006, I don't think it should be difficult for editors in general to improve this page. It just has to be guided by sincerity, fair-mindedness, a sense of balance, and a respect for scholarly references. { Ben S. Nelson } Lucidish 21:07, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Feel free to continue the discussion, but I see that there will be no consensus, and I have withdrawn my proposal for the move/name-change. It seems that people like the disambiguation page, so perhaps we can work with it a bit, while still keeping it brief. I think it is important to respect both disciplines, but it is currently a bit misleading as it suggests that psychology and sociology are equally represented in the area of social psychology. The trick will be to make the respective roles of each discipline clearer, while maintaining fair presentation for both. I'd like to thank everyone for their input on this. --Jcbutler 22:29, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Revision

I have made significant revisions on the page, in order to improve its appearance, and to be more informative and accurate. The previous version was a simple, functional disambiguation page, but it was misleading because it implied that sociology and psychology were equally represented in the field, and that they were were separate and isolated from each other. This is not entirely true. They are indeed separate disciplines, but sociologists occasionally publish in more psychologically oriented journals, and there is some cross-fertilization. This is the reasoning behind my statement that this is an interdisciplinary area if not a common discipline.

In my revision, I included a clarifying introductory paragraph and then separate sections for psychology and sociology, including "main page" links instead of the previous disambiguation statement. I hope this is an improvement, though it is a little longer than it was. I think it's important to stick with the earlier consensus that this page should be short- primarily a lead into the main pages for sociological and psychological SP. --Jcbutler 18:15, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Psychology journals listed

I'm not sure that the statement: "The most influential journals for publication of research in this area are The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. There are also several other specialized academic journals." is accurate. According to the social science citation index, the ranking for general social psychology journals is:

  1. JPSP
  2. Personality and Social Psych Review
  3. Personality and Social Psych Bulletin
  4. British J. of Social Psych
  5. J of Experimental Social Psych
  6. European J of Social Psych
  7. Social Psych Quarterly (sociological)
  8. Basic and Applied Social Psych
  9. Asian J of Social Psych
  10. J of Social Psych

So the two most influential (highest impact) are JPSP and PSPR (although PSPB is close behind and published many more articles). And, the way the statement is written, it makes it seem that there are only two general social psych journals. In fact, there are at least these 10, and perhaps dozens of specialized journals. On the other hand, we probably shouldn't list a ton of journals on this page, so I don't know exactly how to handle the edit. Thoughts? -Nicktalk 19:36, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. By the way don't forget Journal of Applied Social Psychology (JASP). I recently did see the impact factor of JESP (experimental) and that was almost as high as JPSP at least in 2005. But can't recall the others. Review papers tend to gather high Impact Factors, so a journal specialising in this (PSPR) may have a slightly higher IF than could be expected. Personally I would have chosen JPSP and PSPB as most influential. Perhaps list only JPSP which seems to be undeniably the top journal, and state there are at least 10 others? Arnoutf 19:49, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

As a temporary fix, at least, I changed the language to Two influential journals for the publication of research in this area are... --Jcbutler 04:25, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] request for comments

On race and intelligence, please [1] Slrubenstein | Talk 16:26, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The "Debate"?

So, I've been following this discussion for quite some time now, and I think that the debate surrounding the split between SSP amd PSP itself deserves some mention on this page. I'm sure that something can be excavated from one of the three(!) archives documenting this. Hopefully, those of us who believe that holism is the way to go, will be granted a voice as well.

Thanks!

-Tim —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 144.118.54.2 (talk) 20:47, 31 January 2007 (UTC).

Hi Tim. Unfortunately, this seems unlikely in the near future. I have been the lone voice on this, and so long as that's so, then nothing will get done. If more persons -- esp. more credentialled persons -- are a) willing to take up the position, and b) are willing and able to do the research work necessary to show that the view is a significant minority position, then that would be indisputable grounds for inclusion. I no longer have access to the databases necessary (or the patience for that matter). { Ben S. Nelson } Lucidish 23:45, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

As interesting as the debate on these pages has been, it's probably not "encyclopedia" material. To the extent that it's been debated in academic journals etc, then perhaps, but remember that only externally verifiable, nonoriginal content should go on these pages. Particularly this page! --Jcbutler 01:59, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] restored old version

I have restored the January 31 version of this article, which has a separate section for sociological social psychology rather than the differences section that had been added, and contained a number of errors, e.g. "social psychologists are often incorrectly referred to as sociologists"... I don't think this "often" happens, and besides, some people who study social psychology are sociologists! --Jcbutler 21:31, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

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