PSYC 308 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Kenneth J. Gergen, Experimental Psychology, Gordon Allport
16 Sep 2016
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Document Summary
Social psychologists want to discover causal relationships so that they can establish basic principles that will explain the phenomena of social psychology. Social psychologists related its application of psychology to social action and change, especially in attempts to make social psychology more relevant to interpersonal and sociocultural contexts outside of the research laboratory. Social psychology deals with facts that are largely non repeatable and which fluctuate markedly over time. Principles of human interaction cannot readily be developed over time because the facts on which they are based do not generally remain stable. Social psychologists stated that all of this social, cultural fabric could not be duplicated in experimental situations so folk or everyday psychology must be observed, documented, and interpreted in everyday social contexts. Principles of human behavior may have limited predictive value across time and their acknowledgement can render them impotent as tools of social control.
