Chapter 1 History of Social Psychology : Insights , Challenges , and Contributions to Theory and Application

In his classic Handbook of Social Psychology chapter, Jones (1985) offered a particularly comprehensive account of five decades of social psychology, beginning with the late 1930s. His treatment of the contributions of Kurt Lewin, whom he rightly identified as the most important shaper of modern experimental social psychology—and the groundbreaking work of Leon Festinger, whose discrepancy reduction model (borrowed from Lewin’s tension-system concept) was applied to both pressures toward uniformity within groups and consonant versus dissonant cognitions of actors—remains essential reading for aspiring researchers who want to understand what social psychologists study, how they study it, and the “middlerange” level of theorizing they find most comfortable. Jones also offered balanced assessments of the most provocative debates that had taken place within the field and a clear-eyed account of the waxing and waning of specific research programs (which he characterized as “bandwagons” and “sinking ships”). Although we generally refrain from summarizing these debates and contributions, we do try to build upon them—not only with some updating, but also with further consideration of the challenges confronting our discipline, and the various ways in which those challenges have been met. Any history of a field of study reflects particular values and tastes. Ours include a fondness for studies that employ consequential behavioral measures and an appreciation of social psychology’s potential to speak to applied problems in the real world. In short, this chapter represents a history, rather than the history of social psychology, an account of contributions, problems, insights, and events seen through the particular interpretive lenses of its authors. The chapter includes five sections, each of which includes various subsections: