Advances in Applied Social Psychology

Volume 1

R. F. Kidd, M. J. Saks

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317770237
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría en psicología

First published in 1980. The purpose of this volume is to widen, stimulate, and inform the growing debate surrounding the application of social psychological knowledge. It includes the history of applied social psychology and follow the changing nature of definitions of both applied and basic issues.

1	What Is Applied Social Psychology? An Introduction

Robert F. Kidd

Boston University

Michael J. Saks

Boston College and National Center for State Courts

No, a thousand times no; there does not exist a category of science to which one can give the name applied science. There are science and the application of science, bound together as the fruit of the tree which bears it.

—Louis Pasteur, Revue Scientifique, 1871

The line has been drawn with uncommon clarity. There is the pure and the applied. One is either a scientist or an engineer, a thinker or a technician, a contributor to the advancement of knowledge or a user of that knowledge. If their pronouncements are to be taken literally, most social psychologists experience no uncertainty as to their identity; they are scientists, thinkers, and contributors to knowledge. The application of theory to the solution of practical problems is not derogated, of course, but these jobs are best left to others who are willing to hack away at them. Scientists have the profound work of developing and verifying basic theory, which someday, in some unspecified fashion, will contribute to the solution of pressing worldly problems.

The first time students and educated laypeople learn of this cleavage they are a bit stunned. The scientist patiently explains that the purpose of science is the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. Immediate practical importance is unimportant. Laypeople are stunned because their culture worships the tree of scientific knowledge because of the technological fruits that it yields. The surprises are nowhere more evident than in the social and behavioral sciences because surely these fields, assumes the pragmatic citizen, are concerned with human welfare, not with abstract knowledge alone. People expect social psychology to be on one side of the line, but it places itself on the other.

The distinction between pure and applied science persists, even though it has been attacked since well before Pasteur’s time. Where did the distinction originate? Some historians of science credit the ancient Greeks with the discovery of science’s cognitive essentials—abstraction and generalization—rooted in a “cult of uselessness.” The Greece of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle was a slave-based culture in which practical day-to-day activities were left to the slaves. Socially superior persons devoted themselves to philosophy, to sport, to politics, and to science. According to Asimov (1960): “[To] allow mundane knowledge … to intrude upon abstract thought was to allow imperfection to enter the Eden of true philosophy [p. 9].” The distinction between high-rent pure theory and low-rent application has persisted, beyond its aristocracy-versus-slave origins. Not only has its original social purpose become obsolete, but the vestigial distinction has become counter-productive for knowledge “creators,” for knowledge “appliers,” and also for knowledge “consumers.” Within social psychology, whose founder Kurt Lewin (Marrow, 1969) expressed the unity of knowledge and application in his well-worn aphorism “there is nothing so practical as a good theory,” devoted adherence to the distinction borders on the absurd.

Still other historians of science have focused on the mythicality of the distinction. In contrast to the basic-into-applied model, where basic knowledge is driven by its own engine with technology flowing out of basic research knowledge, it is as likely that a theoretical advance will result from the pursuit of a practical problem as it is that technology will spring from its own head. Examples are easy to come by. The (serendipitous) discovery of totally new phenomena forces the revision of fundamental theory (e.g., x-rays, radioactivity). In turn, improved explanations of phenomena permit a widening of their applications (e.g., synthetic substances). In all of science, theory and practice have been better partners than most theoreticians or technologists are inclined to believe. In social psychology, where the practicalities and processes of social life are of major theoretical concern, the cleavage is even more strained.

The purpose of this chapter is to suggest the beginnings of a useful operational defìnitition of applied social psychology. This phrase will lose its paradoxical quality in proportion, as the line that separates theory from application loses its sharpness. Without this dividing line, it may be possible for something that is dedicated to the “science side” to be simultaneously on the “application side.” If the border crossing requires no cancellation of citizenships, no abandonment of allegiances, the reader will more easily understand our eventual conclusion that it is really the same social psychologists who populate the territories on either side of the line.

As a way of setting the definitional stage, this chapter examines some of the antecedents and origins of applied social psychology in an attempt to fix the area historically. The first section of this paper is devoted to an abbreviated history. Next, there is a short discussion of the current uses and definitions of social psychology in both its pure and applied aspects. Finally, an operational definition of applied social psychology is proposed and some of the definition’s implications are examined. Some of these implications will center on the training of future social psychologists.

The thesis to be developed throughout this chapter is that the applied social psychologist is not a new or heretofore unseen beast. The applied social psychologist is most often a rather traditional, experimental social psychologist who finds him/herself in contact with settings outside the microcosm of the laboratory. Armed with the assumptions, concepts, and methods of the discipline, the applied social psychologist carries a point of view into a real-world setting and tries to reconcile his/her background and knowledge to the problem at hand. This attempt at reconciliation constitutes the substance of a renewed and exciting field of inquiry.

Before embarking on this agenda, a strong caveat is in order. Any attempt to define a field of investigation or a subdiscipline is difficult and largely arbitrary. The very act of defining fixes thoughts or processes in such a way as to deny their dynamic aspects and deprive them of essential characteristics that make them vital enterprises. Definitions, however, do satisfy the tendency of the mind to categorize and insulate concepts even though the distinctions made among ideas, by virtue of this exercise, often yield foils rather than foundations for further study. This discussion is only a first attempt at identifying the broader dimensions of applied social psychology. The task is incomplete.

Historical Fix

Applied social psychology has its roots firmly planted in the origins of social psychology itself, the discipline founded by Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) who advocated and practiced “action research.” Even before Lewin’s time, however, the application of social psychological knowledge was hardly new. Scholars like Floyd and Gordon Allport with their interests in stereotyping and prejudice, along with the seminal work of Likert, Murphy, Guttman, and Sherif on attitudes and social influence were contemporary with Lewin in their concern for addressing social issues and their solutions.

So great was Lewin’s commitment to applying social psychological knowledge that his biography was entitled The Practical Theorist (Marrow, 1969). Among Lewin’s many achievements and insights were his talents for conceptualizing complex social issues and transforming these intricate social analyses into testable propositions. The ability to use this rare talent unfortunately was not transmitted to future generations of students. The small and active group of students (among them, Lippit, Festinger, Thibaut, Kelley, Pepitone) who toiled under his tutelage did not maintain the conceptual integrity of theory and use after Lewin’s untimely death in 1947. According to Deutsch (1975) Lewin had achieved an integration of theoretical and problem-oriented work while “creating the conditions which would encourage the actual use of such knowledge by those in the position to act upon it [p. 2].” Marrow (1969) states: “The second [area that shaped Lewin’s career] was his persistent integration of theory and practical actions, his uniting theory to ingenious experimentation, and even more his close coordination of seemingly abstruse hypotheses with the affairs of everyday life—something achieved by few other scientists [p. 230].”

The separation of the two strands, the basic or experimental approach and the applied or problem-oriented approach, that occurred after Lewin may have been caused by a number of factors. First, the growing aspirations of social psychologists to become scientifically respectable meant abandoning large-scale, sloppy, field research and adopting small-scale, highly contrived, laboratory experiments. Laboratory studies were “cleaner” and less subject to criticisms on strictly methodological grounds. This move suited Lewin’s students, who eventually moved from research institutes like the MIT Research Center for Group Dynamics into academic psychology departments within universities.

Second, the style of conducting social psychological experimentation, that of writing grants filled with a series of experiments each built on the other, was taken as the prototypic model for conducting respectable social psychology. What seems to have survived Lewin is his methodological, hypothesis-testing approach without the equally strong emphasis on broader conceptual analyses. Finally, before Lewin’s death, the actual number of active social psychologists was quite small and geographically centralized, allowing a great deal of personal, face-to-face communication between most of the researchers in the field. Because of this arrangement, Lewin could keep his constituency and, consequently, his integrations together simply by having his students attend meetings to grapple with each other’s problems and ideas. It was an ideal and exciting time for a young science. The rapid growth of the field after Lewin precluded this face-to-face contact, further fragmenting applied and basic aspects of the discipline.

For some 20 years after Lewin, the applied aspects of social psychology took a back seat to laboratory experimentation. The functioning social psychologists of the late 40s, 50s, and early 60s proudly identified themselves as experimentalists. The reward system within universities, where most social psychologists were employed, and the abundance of research funds suited these methods of investigation. Phenomena as diverse as conformity, aggression, dissonance, cooperation, and interpersonal attraction were researched in the context of highly controlled, highly artificial experiments. Few, if any, of the findings produced during this era were generalizable beyond the walls of the lab, and only a few were directly relevant to the solution of pressing social issues. This was a time for the development and testing of theories rather than a time for practicing social psychology in the outside world.

The late 60s saw a change in the Zeitgeist, prompted largely by the social unrest of the times. The responses of social psychology to the “greening of America” seemed to pull workers in the field in opposite directions simultaneously (McGuire, 1973). In one direction lay an attempt to make earlier findings socially relevant by extending observations to other “real-world” settings. Investigators sought to enhance the generalizability of their laboratory results by conducting field experiments, the field setting often being selected because of its social rather than its theoretical relevance (for an excellent articulation of these issues, see Ellsworth, 1977). This movement out of the lab marked for some the advent of applied social psychology. However, most of the work conducted in this vein was not explicitly concerned with the application of knowledge as much as it was with testing already established phenomena in field settings. (The Journal of Applied Social Psychology is replete with examples.)

The other direction taken by many researchers in the late 60s was a retreat further into the laboratory. Research in social psychology seemed to be aimed at smaller and more elegant theories tested within the lab. Most of these studies involved increasing methodological complexity and evolved around issues in problem solving, information processing, and social cognition. The recent glut of research in attributional processes (Harvey, Ickes, & Kidd, 1978) clearly illustrates the type of work done by this branch of experimental social psychology.

This schism in social psychology in combination with the depressed economic conditions of the early 70s contributed to the phase known as the “crisis.” The crisis in social psychology was characterized by a loss of confidence in the methods and theories of the field (Elms, 1975; Gergen, 1973) and coincided with a surplus of young Ph.D.’s seeking employment on already overcrowded university faculties. A complete discussion of the crisis and its ramifications is beyond the scope of this chapter; however, the interested reader is referred to other elaborations and accounts (see Symposium, in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 1976, 2).

The late 70s, still reeling from the crisis and social outburst of the late 60s, have brought renewed interest in issues of application and use. The growth of activity in applying social psychology is evidenced by a number of events. New, highly applied areas of research have emerged (e.g., environmental psychology, psychology and law, social gerontology). New journals have been created (e.g., Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Law and Human Behavior, Evaluation Quarterly). Numerous books have appeared emphasizing applied research and highlighting the importance of application in general (e.g., Deutsch & Hornstein’s Applying Social Psychology, Segall’s Human Behavior and Public Policy, Varela’s Social Technology, Riecken & Boruch’s Social Experimentation). Courses and entire graduate programs with an emphasis on applied social psychology have been introduced (e.g., at Loyola University of Chicago, Teachers College, University of California at Irvine, and Boston University).

The upshot of most of this interest has been not only enlivened debate about the role of the applier in social psychology but also a movement of academically trained social psychologists into jobs outside academic psychology. According to one survey (Hamilton, 1977), only about 25% of the estimated 200 academically trained social psychologists who graduate each year can find employment in psychology departments. In the meantime, the number of admissions to social psychology programs appears to be holding steady at approximately 300 admissions each year. The solution to this contraction in academic employment is an ever increasing emphasis on applied training and methodological skills in anticipation of seeking employment outside academia.

We feel that at the heart of this shift from academic to applied social psychology lies the questionable conceptual status of applied social psychology. Advanced degree programs that are “retooling” to take on a more applied emphasis cannot train applied researchers by simply advocating or requiring knowledge of more sophisticated statistical techniques or by adding an internship to the usual Ph.D. training program. A conceptual shift is also necessary.

Conceptual Fix

Before defining applied social psychology, it might be appropriate to look briefly at representative broad definitions of social psychology. Definitions of social psychology abound, expanding as rapidly as the number of textbooks on the subject. There is some discussion as to whether sociological or psychological versions of the definition are more fruitful, but more often than not, this problem is settled by the author’s own preference, largely reflecting his/her prior training. For our purposes the definition of social psychology provided by Jones and Gerard (1967) will suffice: “Social psychology is the study of the behavior of individuals as a function of social stimuli [p. 1].”

How does one distinguish the “pure” or basic and the applied facets of the discipline, given the foregoing definition? As noted in the previous section, scientists operate as if the division between basic and applied were a reality. Certainly, there are many differences between a discipline that has explanation rather than application as its end.

What Are Some of the Differences?

No one has ever taken seriously the job of defining basic social psychology, but the traditional view has been that basic social psychology, usually the realm of the experimentalist, is characterized by the single ambition of understanding the mechanisms that underlie social behavior. The focus of the basic researcher’s questions is on the underlying causes of behavior. For example, how are people affected by the presence of others? How are moral standards internalized during the socialization process? How do people perceive other people, and how do these perceptions color the perceiver’s subsequent reactions? From the outset, the basic social psychologist seeks answers to these and ot...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1. What Is Applied Social Psychology? An Introduction
• 2. The Potentiation of Social Knowledge
• 3. Conditions Required for a Technology of the Social Sciences
• 4. Toward an Applicable Social Psychology
• 5. Socially Revelant Research: Comments on “Applied” Versus “Basic” Research
• 6. “Give Me the Facts”: Some Suggestions for Using Social Science Knowledge in National Policy-Making
• 7. Politics as Social Science Methodology
• 8. Social Science in the Contract Research Firm
• 9. Applied Social Psychology and the Future: A Symposium
• Author Index
• Subject Index