Allport, Gordon W. (1968). The Person in Psychology. Boston: Beacon Press.

Six decades of social psychology (28-42)

In this article, the author approaches the recent history of social psychology, as seen
in the mid 1960s.
1. The first decade
The start of scientific social psychology (1908) was marked by a
complementary sociological and psychological approach (28)
Psychological: William McDougal, individual
instincts and sentiments which bear on societal membership(28)

Sociological: Edward A.
Ross, societal aggregations and their psychic components (28)

Both approaches were conscious of their onesidedness and the authors strove for complementary works (30)

2. The second decade

Starting 1917 Harvard offered a course of (psychological) social psychology
held initially by Edwin Bissel Holt consisting of Tarde and
Schopenhauer (30)
Le Dantec L'Egoisme,

At the same time, a social psychology course at the Chicago University was
held from a sociological point of view (31)

During thw 1920s more social psychological books appeared, together with
important methodological developments in attitude measuremet, group
experiments etc (32)

3. The third decade

Confrontation between sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists in an
effort to bring together their research centered around the project "culture
and personality" (32)
This new direction is explained by the author in two ways: first, the strive for
uniting individual and social and
second, the weariness of researching old unsolved
problems determines their reconceptualisation (e.g. Sugestion becomes persu
asion, rationalisation becomes cognitive dissonace, friendship becomes inter
personal attraction) (33)

"the average life of popular concepts is, I estimate, about two decades. After
that they begin to taste as flat as yesterday's beer" (33)

Exception: attitudes, which seem a central concept with a long life (33)

4. The forth decade

influential studies: Lewin' group theory, the authoritarian personality
(frankfurt school), the american soldier (Stouffer) (35)
Kurt Lewin despre perceptie sociala, MacLeod despre fenomenologie,
Gardner Murphy?

The perception, cognition, and phenomenology approaches become

influential (36)

5. The fifth decade

Consolidation of phenomenological movement, through Asch's Social
Psychology (36)
Obsession with mathematical models, empiricism,
and elaborate experiments (36)

"We inflate our methods into 'methodologies' because we are so conscious of

them and so childish proud" (36)

"No one can object to clear methods, to an accurate handling of data, or to an

accurate handling of data, or to serve self-scrutiny in research. But the
obsessiveness we encounter in our journal articles during the fifth and the
sixth decades seems to betoken a drift whose significance is not yet fully
clear" (36-37)

Why? Because social psychology is in search for a methatheory which must

be based on mathematical models. Second, due to avdances in information
theory and linguistic studies, scientists are pursuing a metatheory in the
methodological realm, leaving the substantive one. Third, the goal of
researchers is to publish as much as possible, without concerns for the
novelty of their studies, as long as they are methodologically sound (37)

Social psychology focuses less on the bright and joyfull subjects and attends
to the more dark and gloomy ones (38)

6. The sixth decade

Social psychology has not lost its substanticeness (38)

E. B. Holt, towards the end of his career disconsidered academic

social psychology, especially handbooks, which he considered to be full of "
useless abstractions" (39)

"But if we are honest with ourselves do we not all have moments of

depression when we doubt our justification as scientists? Unlike the engineer
we cannot demonstrate the validity of our theories or the utility of our
methods - not even when we inflate them into 'methodologies'? (39)

Conclusion
Social psychology is not yet "a powerful theoretical and applied social
science", but the author is optimistic about the futurre hoping that it might
one day become useful for understanding and helping mankind, altough it's a
long way (40)
He observed that most studies from J Pers Soc Psychol cite other studies
from the last 15 years, thus ignoring work from previous decades (40-41)

Social psychology would benefit from an immersion in other disciplines like:

psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, theology, history,
economics (41) // biology, political sciences, linguistics

"In short, although social psychology has its own body of history, theory,
problems, and methods it is not a self-sufficient science. It thrives best when
cross-cultivated in a rich and diversified intellectual garden" (41)

Hunt, j. McV 1956 Traditional personality theory

Miller, d. R. 1963 the study of social relationships. In S. Koch Psycology: a

study of a science, vol 5.