Whig and Anti-Whig histories- And other curiosities of social psychology

In successive editions of the Handbook of Social Psychology (Lindzey, 1954), the focus of the history of the field shifted from the substantive ideas of nineteenth‐century thinkers to the successful emergence of a psychological experimental social psychology in the twentieth. Countering this whiggis...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of the history of the behavioral sciences 2000, Vol.36 (4), p.499-506
Main Author: Samelson, Franz
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Historiography
History of medicine
History, 19th Century
History, 20th Century
Humans
Individuality
Psychology, Experimental - history
Psychology, Social - history
Reference Books
United States
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Summary:In successive editions of the Handbook of Social Psychology (Lindzey, 1954), the focus of the history of the field shifted from the substantive ideas of nineteenth‐century thinkers to the successful emergence of a psychological experimental social psychology in the twentieth. Countering this whiggish account, the dominant themes in the present issue involve attempts to portray two parallel paradigm shifts: from a “social” to an “asocial” social psychology, and from a broad‐ranging theoretical‐philosophical subject to a narrow experimental (psychological) science—changes initiated by Floyd Allport. But such a formulation may be called into question as another version of retrospective history—with inverted, anti‐Whig valuations. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
ISSN:0022-5061
1520-6696
DOI:10.1002/1520-6696(200023)36:4<499::AID-JHBS14>3.0.CO;2-J