Juan All Community Social Psychology

Eva Muchinik: 'History of Social Psychology'.

Introduction: the thought of an era

Social Psychology is interested in understanding how and under what conditions, in the relationship with others
people, human behavior is built and modified. It is complex to define its limits in relation to
other social sciences, and addressing their history requires a particular type of skill in manipulation.
Nevertheless, we can say that it is a discipline that has its own theoretical core and
factual, as well as a particular point of view.
Science, as a legitimate form of knowledge, emerges from the Enlightenment period.
marked by the access of the bourgeoisie to political power. Comte's thought within a
tradition of social thinkers legitimizes the scientific method based on experimentation and the
observation, and/or Sociology as a science. Modern science (late 17th century) coincides with the impulse
of commerce and manufacturing and the interests of men begin to unfold from the purposes
theological to utilitarian: the emergence of social sciences in the 19th century is the expression of
these changes.
There are two orders of phenomena that must be considered: on one hand, a society that is changing.
structure and physiognomy: on the other hand, modernity bursts in with the values of subjectivity, the
autonomy and individualism.
If it is necessary to establish a starting point in the path of building Social Psychology as
body of knowledge, we must necessarily articulate it with the development of psychology and the
emergence of social sciences in the 19th century. However, it is necessary to go back to the century
XVII, which marks the beginning of modernity in the West with Descartes; changing the
perspective on man and what stimulates personal ventures.
The notion of subject and the problem of subjectivity are present in the development of ideas about the
thinkers of the eighteenth century. Such is the case of Hegel (who gives rise to the idea of the man who takes
self-awareness and suggests a science of consciousness, but considering that 'the life of the
"Individual consciousness" is essentially a life of relationship with the other, which can never be
radically different). Locke and Hume, English empiricists, emphasize the importance of experience
vivid and appeal to immediate data to establish man's knowledge.
Psychology as an independent discipline will be established from the legitimization of existence.
of an object, of a unit that can be studied by the scientific method.
The issue of social influence is established early on in the proposal of a discipline to which
It is referred to as psychology. The social as such has not yet been formulated in these terms, nor
associated with Psychology. In the second half of the 19th century, the ground is prepared for the
emergence of a Scientific Psychology. From the field of physical and natural sciences and the method
experimental emerge the pioneers of Psychology: Fechner, Von Helmholtz, and Wundt.
Wundt pointed out, at the beginning of his career, the existence of two Psychologies: a physiological one, based on the
idea of the existence of an individuality, with a certain autonomy and a sense of unity, and another
social. I didn’t believe that individual Psychology could explain higher mental processes.
It refers to Social Psychology, a discipline less advanced than Individual Psychology and the
conceived as a descriptive science. The psychological interpretation of history and ethnography
both belong to this domain.
Higher mental processes such as thinking or artistic creations, accessible only by the
products or social and cultural creations, for which the historical method was required. It aimed to
to discover, through language, the laws, customs, and myths, the nature of the processes
mentals that had created them.
 Where does the history of social psychology begin?

If the utopists of the 18th century or Comte developed their thought from the disorders and
changes of the French Revolution, both Le Bon and Durkheim, from different perspectives
they were the lucid witnesses of a rapidly transforming society subjected to social upheavals.
Durkheim The sociologist must seek objectivity by analyzing external facts, through the
observation and experience, in the model of positive science. The social has a reality that is
external to the subject; rejecting the possibility of a Social Psychology and shaping Sociology
as an empirical discipline. There is no continuity between Psychology and Sociology since the facts
social phenomena cannot be explained by psychic and individual facts. They are phenomena of
different nature. The individual corresponds to Psychology and the social to a positive science.
In the field of social sciences, a harsh dispute known at the time as the controversy of
Evening and Durkheim, the individual versus the social. Thus, a false antinomy is inaugurated.
Afternoon I affirm the irreducibility of the individual fact. In his opinion, the whole society is a product of
the imitation, state of hypnotic sleep.
He attributed great importance to inheritance and considered that imitation is the key to the social mystery, without
to be able to explain order and conformity as the effect of agreements and consensus. Imitation
it is the basic scheme of the social process.
The good In line with the thinkers of the end of the century, Le Bon was faced with a new enigma, that of
the mass society. It foresaw the emergence of a totally new power: the power of the
masses, the advent of the popular classes into political life. Groups, who aware of
their forces could destroy society.
The keen observations of Le Bon, his strategies for manipulating large human groups
They are not disposable. Not like their explanation, it shows their contempt for the crowd.
Freud, drawing from Le Bon, addressed his work "The Psychology of Crowds and the" a few years later.
Analysis of the Self
Development of Social Psychology as an independent discipline took form as a derivation
of English positivism, and in the field of North American pragmatism. There he had as
definitive precursor to James; who proposed his thesis that consciousness is not composed of parts
united with each other, it is like a current, a process, a peculiar function of human beings, linked with
needs of the action inherent to the biological nature of man.
Behaviorism deWatson; is an original conception of American psychology. The environment
it will be considered the determinant of what man can become. It was primarily oriented
toward laboratory work to show under controlled conditions the possibility of learning
and behavior modification.
Mc Dougall would confront Watson's social determinism by proposing a biological determinism:
society can be explained by the instinctive trends of man. Strongly fought,
he later abandoned this notion, replacing it with that of propensity or tendency.
The old controversy between Tarde and Durkheim remained.
Others who contributed to social psychology within the Sociological Sociology movement were Mead and
Dewen, among others, who belonged to the Chicago School.
Cooley worried about the development of the self within the context of social relations, established
the important concept of the reflected self or self in the mirror, resulting from a way of imagining that
what we are to others and the judgment related to that experience.
Thomas and Znaniecki they formally established the possibility of creating a Social Psychology.
They chose the behavior of adaptation as the axis of their theoretical development, and found in the notion
of attitude, a unit of analysis that they believed could solve the problem of unity.
fundamental of social reality: the individual-society relationship.

Individualized Social Psychology and Collectivist Social Psychology:

Social Psychology as a discipline was born with Psychology and sought to show the presence of the social.
in the formulation of subjectivity.
Distinction between psychology and social psychology:

Psychology defines the individual subject as its empirical object of study: an entity
natural, with attributes. A primary reality, an integrated unit, a totality to which it is
assigns a relative autonomy: personality.
Social Psychology, for whom the formulation of oneself will be central to their development,
It results from a different reading, aimed at addressing another area of problems, such as prejudice.
racial or urban violence, understanding that to continue advancing in understanding
scientific understanding of basic intrapsychic and interpersonal processes requires not isolating them from
context.

In the context of Social Psychology, two aspects can be seen: Social Psychology
Individualistic or Psychological and Collective Social Psychology or Sociological.

1. The Psychosocial Psychology:

Define its work from the Experimental Social Psychology laboratory to analyze the variables.
of social influence. The criticism of the discipline focused on the ignorance of the social context. They thought
the individual in society, but they thought of the individual. It is mostly marked by cognitivism,
without considering the contributions of Lewin or Newcomb.

Lewin The psychologist coming from Gestalt Theory is, along with Mead, one of those who
find more linked to this 'inclination'.
Historical Context: 1930s.
He proposed an approach to the group as a whole.
It proposed a perspective that sets aside the old problems of boundaries between the individual and the group.
social as a system, proposed to limit the objectivity of the observer in order to take into account perception of the
subject in the situation: the reality of the subject is that which he perceives, the one that is present in his field
psychological.
He/she dealt with the boundaries: of the system of personality, of those of the group.
I consider groups as radioactive atoms from which social change can expand.
Community Psychology builds much of its developments on Lewinian contributions.

The positivist thought had, however, a strong impact on both approaches to Social Psychology.
Although its influence was greater in Psychological Social Psychology and its experimental version.

What does Lewin contribute?

Psychologist coming from Gestalt Theory.
Historical Context: 1930s.
He proposed an approach of the group as a whole.
He proposed a perspective that sets aside the old problems of boundaries between the individual and the group.
social as a system, proposed to limit the objectivity of the observer to consider perception of the
subject in the situation: the reality of the subject is that which he perceives, that which is present in his field
psychological.
It dealt with boundaries: of the personality system, of the group.
I consider groups as radioactive atoms from which social change can expand.
Community psychology bases much of its developments on Lewinian contributions.

2. Sociological Social Psychology:

It is inserted into the tradition of Sociology, which is derived from the thinking of Cooley, Thomas, and Mead.
Moved away from the laboratory, she focused in the 1950s on the study of communities and institutions, to
analysis of social roles, the change of attitudes and their measurement through scales, as a topic
central to the discipline. The most important influences on social behavior are symbolic and derive from,
fundamentally from the use of language in social interaction. Methodology criticized as being unscientific.

Meadal, like James, had the ability to see that man, as a person, is constituted in the
interaction; a complex process of building and rebuilding the meaning of reality, as
collective enterprise. He considered that 'the truth of an idea' or 'the meaning of a statement'
they depend on their practical consequences, on the results of the action.
He developed a theory of the mind as a process. He distanced himself from behaviorism. For him, mind, body and
behavior and are one and the same, inseparable aspects of a single process of evolution. He demonstrated that
human behavior was too complicated to be explained by instinct.
One cannot abstract the subject from the social context, because it would result in an abstraction, difficult to
to support.
Human beings act based on the world of objects created by the symbols they use.
but symbols are not individual; they have arisen from mutual agreements about meaning.

Current Situation and Critiques of the Trends:

A more interdisciplinary Social Psychology is sought, which utilizes the fundamental resources of the
Psychology and Sociology necessarily incorporating intellectual resources from other fields.
Escape from the antinomy and the previously described inclinations. But this has been difficult,
social psychologists have rivaled and criticized each other.
Social Psychology is accused of renouncing the experimental method in favor of the
observation of real life, and set aside the experimental method, an attitude that was affirmed when pointing out,
Paradoxically, the preference of sociologists for subjectivist concepts and their propensity to theorize
without a strong foundational research.
Social psychologists trained in psychology were disqualified by sociologists for
having produced irrelevant knowledge to the human condition and having considered the unobservable
as residual and the non-measurable as non-scientific.
The demand for relevance, in relation to the human, is made from both social psychologies.
Both currents have opened, and in most cases, sociologists have been drawn to them.
for theories that pay greater attention to intrapsychic processes and psychologists have been concerned
more due to the impact of the social structure. Both perspectives seem to converge in a Psychology that
demands action responses to contemporary psycho-social problems.

Ethnomethodology and Etogeny, concepts that influence symbolic interactionism

and in the Sociological Current:

Ethnomethodology: it will directly influence "Social Constructionism", the ethnomethodologists are

interested in the actor and their experiences.
In Ethnomethodology, the observer must approach concrete interactive processes without frameworks.
pre-established conceptualizations, to capture the rules of everyday life and the method
that people use to make sense of their own phenomenological world. This perspective has other
implications that refer to Cognitive Psychology, and it is how it explains and provides a response
coherent, considered relevant by the actors in the interaction.
Etogeny: it does not differ too much from the previous stance in its arguments and perspectives. The subject
It must be approached as an active agent, acting according to rules.
Suggest a Social Psychology that treats social interaction as a product and seeks the
cognitive representations of the structure that defines a certain product.
The task of Psychology as a science is to identify patterns and envision the means of production of
those patterns require the radical abandonment of positivist methodology.
The idea of a plan or script appears this way, that which guides action. Harre tried to show the relationship.
between thought and action. "The reason someone does something is not a psychological problem, the question
An interesting socio-psychological question is why this person is doing precisely what they are doing. A rule
It is a matrix, try to find the rules that prescribe the actions.
Etiology is the study of human lives as men live them in reality, not in the
strange and impoverished world of laboratories, but places where people truly
interact.
Although resisted for multiple reasons that go beyond the theoretical, there is community between both.
points of view.