The long past and the short history of social psychology
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10902257 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robert M Farr (London School of Economics and Political Science, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1991 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 371-380 |
| Publication date | 1991-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | European Journal of Social Psychology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0046-2772 • E-ISSN: 1099-0992 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1002/ejsp.2420210502 |
| OpenAlex | W1629263781 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 8 |
In 1908 Ebbinghaus distinguished between the long past and the short history of psychology. The short history dated from 1879 when Wundt established a psychological laboratory at Leipzig. The long past concerns the time when psychology was a branch of philosophy. Implicit in such a break with the past is a positivist philosophy of science. I show how this philosophy of science distorts the historical record. I then analyse the history of social psychology. Unwittingly Lindzey and Aronson (1985) distinguish between the long past of social psychology as part of the Western intellectual tradition and its short history as an experimental science that is mainly American. Murchison's Handbook of Social Psychology (1935), whilst marking the boundary between the long past and the short history, belongs to the long past. The break with tradition came in 1954, when Lindzey published the first Handbook in the modern series. There is a self‐conscious need, in the post World War II era, to train a whole new generation of social psychologists. The Lindzey series of Handbooks meets that need. The ‘progress’ of modern social psychology is now measured in terms of its distance from the Murchison milestone of 1935
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| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,2 |
| Citation span | 1996 - 2023 (28) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |