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The Social in Social Psychology

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Social and Personality Psychology Compass 8/7 (2014): 303–313, 10.1111/spc3.12113

The Social in Social Psychology

John D. Greenwood*
City University of New York Graduate Center

Abstract
In this paper, I make a critical plea for the rehabilitation of the theoretical conception of the intrinsi-
cally social dimensions of cognition, emotion, and behavior shared by early social psychologists but
progressively neglected and abandoned in the last century. Some critical implications of this theoretical
conception are considered, including its relation to contemporary theories of social cognition and the
restrictive methodological prescriptions of experimental social psychology. Finally, I consider the re-
lation between this conception and alternative theoretical traditions in social psychology, such as social
representation theory and ‘social identity’ theory, cultural psychology, and social constructionism.

Introduction
In this paper, I make a critical plea for the rehabilitation of the rich and fertile theoretical
conception of the social dimensions of cognition, emotion, and behavior advocated by early
European and American social psychologists, which grounded the early distinction between
individual and social (or collective) psychology, but which was progressively abandoned as
the 20th century wore on1 and eventually displaced by the ‘social cognition’ paradigm (Fiske
& Taylor, 1982) in the 1980s and beyond.
I offer this plea as an exercise in critical psychology, albeit in a historical-analytical mode
rather than more common contemporary modes that focus on discourse analysis, political
power, and the ideological privileging of certain accounts of psychology over others
(Henriques, Hollway, Urwin, Venn, & Walkerdine, 1984; Parker, 1999; Potter & Wetherell,
1987; Prilleltensky, 1997). According to these latter forms of critical psychology, the very
attempt to explicate the difference between social and individual psychology may be seen
as merely perpetuating an outdated dualism of social and individual that fails to do justice
to the politically problematic nature of the social.
I don’t deny the dangers of privileging some psychological theories and methods over
others and especially the danger of rendering invisible legitimate and viable theories and
methods that deserve to have their potential recognized by the discipline of social psychol-
ogy. However, I also think that to claim that the distinction between social and individual
psychology merely perpetuates a distorting and conservative dualism is one other way of ren-
dering invisible the theoretical conception of the social that has been historically neglected by
mainstream theories and practices of social psychology. Thus, my aim in this paper is to make
a plea for a theoretical conception of the social that has been neglected by mainstream social
psychology for most of the past century and which seems in some danger of remaining ob-
scured by the dialogical and political reactions of mainstream critical psychology.
Social Dimension of Cognition, Emotion, and Behavior
Wilhelm Wundt, the father of experimental psychology, was also one of the first to make a
distinction between individual and social psychology (or as he sometimes called it, ‘folk’ or
‘cultural’ psychology). Wundt (1897) recognized that a social community – or social group

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304 The Sorts of things that are Social

or collective – is fundamentally a psychological community in which the thought, emotion,

and behavior of its members (and prospective/apprentice members) are oriented to the repre-
sented thought, emotion, and behavior of other members of a represented social community.
This theoretical conception of the fundamental social dimensions of human thought,
emotion, and behavior was shared by early 20th century social psychologists working in both
departments of sociology and psychology (e.g. Bogardus, 1924; Ellwood, 1925; Katz &
Schanck, 1938), when social psychology was seen as providing the bridge between individual
psychological and purely social explanations (Greenwood, 2004). On this conception, social
beliefs and attitudes, for example, were characterized as social by virtue of their orientation to
the represented beliefs and attitudes of members of social groups. On this conception, a
Catholic’s belief that abortion is wrong, for example, is a social belief if it is held because
and on condition that other Catholics are represented as holding that belief; if this represen-
tation provides her motive for holding that belief. In contrast, a Catholic’s belief that abor-
tion is wrong is individually engaged if it is held for reasons or causes independent of
whether any other Catholic (or any member of any other social group) is represented as
holding that belief: if, for example, it is held on the basis of reasoned argument or compelling
evidence, or if it has been beaten into her as a child (Greenwood, 2003, 2004).
The critical point to note about this distinction between socially and individually engaged
beliefs, which can be readily extended to socially versus individually engaged attitudes, emo-
tion, and behavior, is that it is a distinction between the manner in which beliefs are engaged –
that is, socially as opposed to individually. It is not a distinction between different types of
beliefs, with different contents or objects, or a distinction between beliefs held by groups as
opposed to individuals. Thus, one could socially (as well as individually) engage commitments
to individualism, egoism, or competition, and one could individually (as well as socially)
engage commitments to collectivism, altruism, or cooperation. One could have socially
(as well as individually) engaged attitudes toward other persons and social groups, such as one’s
spouse, colleagues, and Muslims, but also toward climate change, vaccination, and the exis-
tence of gravitational exchange particles.
Since the distinction between socially and individually engaged beliefs and attitudes is a
distinction in terms of the manner of which beliefs and attitudes are held, any particular belief
or attitude can be held either socially or individually, or in part socially and in part individ-
ually. Thus, for example, one individual can hold the belief that climate change poses a threat
to future generations socially, and another can hold one and the same belief individually, and
yet another can hold one and the same belief both socially and individually – in part because
they represent other members of a social group as holding that belief and in part because
of reasons or causes independent of what they represent other members of their social group
(or any other social groups) as believing. Given our need to represent and present ourselves as
rational beings, it is likely that most of our socially engaged beliefs and attitudes are also held
in part individually, even if our reasons for holding these beliefs and attitudes are to a signif-
icant degree rationalization, although this is of course a matter for empirical determination.2
In the early decades of 20th century social psychology, this social orientation of an individ-
ual’s beliefs, attitudes, emotion, and behavior to the represented beliefs, attitudes, emotion,
and behavior of members of what later came to be characterized as their social ‘reference
groups’ (Hyman, 1942; Kelley, 1952) was held to explain a variety of social psychological
phenomena, such as social prejudice and ‘occupational attitudes’. Thus, Horowitz (1936) ar-
gued that the racial prejudice of Whites against Blacks in the American South was generated
not by inductive inference from interactions with Black persons with negative qualities but
by the social adoption of the prejudices of their White reference groups. Similarly,
Bogardus (1924) argued that many distinctive ‘occupational attitudes’, such as those

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associated with certain trades and professions, are socially engaged, and Watson and
Hartmann (1939) and Edwards (1941) extended this analysis to religious and political
attitudes. Lewin (1947) and Kelley (1955) demonstrated that socially engaged – or ‘socially
anchored’ – beliefs and attitudes are more resistant to change by persuasive communications
than individually engaged beliefs and attitudes. Asch (1952) characterized these forms of
cognition, emotion, and behavior as intrinsically social because of their orientation to
represented social groups.
According to this conception of intrinsically social cognition, emotion, and behavior, it is
not essential that they be engaged in the presence of or directed toward other persons, al-
though they frequently enough are. Thus, I may be secretly but socially ashamed of my suc-
cessful cheating in an exam in the isolation of my studio apartment, and the old widow may
perform her social ritual of genuflection alone in the chapel in the gray hour before the
dawn. As Knight Dunlop put it years ago, the social orientation of our psychology and be-
havior may be engaged in the presence or absence of members of the social reference groups
to whom they are oriented3:

The consciousness of others may be perceptual, or it may be ideational. One may be conscious of
one’s membership in the Lutherian church, or in a group of atheists, when physically alone; and this
group consciousness may be as important and as vivid under such circumstances as when one is
physically surrounded by members of the group.(Dunlap, 1925, p. 19)

Intrinsically and Derivatively Social Groups

On this account of the intrinsically social dimensions of human psychology and behavior,
intrinsically social groups, such as Catholics, Democrats, and street gangs, are best defined
as – because they are constituted by – populations of individuals who share socially engaged
beliefs, attitudes, emotion, and behavior. To paraphrase the sociologist Georg Simmel,
intrinsically social groups are nothing more than populations of individuals who share socially
engaged beliefs, attitudes, emotions, and behavior4: that is, who orient their beliefs, attitudes,
emotion, and behavior to the represented beliefs, attitudes, emotion, and behavior of other
members of that population.
Although intrinsically social groups are essentially psychological entities, it is not enough
for a population to simply share beliefs, attitudes, and the like for their members to constitute
an intrinsically social group. The moviegoers coming out of the cinema or the Buddhists
coming out of their temple may all believe it is raining because of the liquid evidence that
assails them, but their belief is only shared socially if it is socially engaged by them. This seems
unlikely in the case of beliefs about the rain, which is why neither the moviegoers nor the
Buddhists constitute social groups by virtue of these common individually engaged beliefs (al-
though the Buddhists do by virtue of their shared socially engaged beliefs, attitudes, and rit-
uals). It is also not enough for a population of individuals to share common properties for
them to constitute an intrinsically social group. Thus, the populations of persons who
happen to think in images, are afraid of spiders, and walk with skip in their step do not con-
stitute intrinsically social groups because they do not share socially engaged beliefs, attitudes,
emotion, and behavior (or at least it is reasonable to presume this, although this is ultimately
an empirical question).
This is also the case with respect to many of the populations of interest to social psychol-
ogists, such as the populations of women, Blacks, the unemployed, and the divorced, which
we often do characterize as social groups. However, we characterize these populations as
social groups derivatively, because their members have properties that are held to be socially

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306 The Sorts of things that are Social

significant by intrinsically social groups, although the social significance of these properties,
such as being a woman, for example, is often contested by different intrinsically social groups,
such as feminists, Marxists, and evangelical Christians (Greenwood, 2003, 2004).
To characterize such aggregate groups as derivatively social is not of course to devalue or
demean them or to rule out the possibility of their coming to form intrinsically social
groups.5 It is simply to note that sharing a common property or properties is not sufficient
for members of populations to socially orient their psychology and behavior to the repre-
sented psychology and behavior of other members of populations who share that property
or set of properties. This is more obvious with populations whose members share a property
that no intrinsically social group would consider to be socially significant (without some
elaborate back story), like the populations of individuals who have a mole on their upper left
arm or who were born on June 17, 1972, but it is equally true of those populations whose
members share a socially significant property or properties. Moreover, recognizing that such
derivatively social groups are not bound by socially oriented beliefs, attitudes, emotion, and
behavior is not to deny that such socially significant categorizations – as female, Black, unem-
ployed, divorced, and so forth – play an important dynamical role in modulating social
interaction, enabling, promoting, and constraining certain forms of interaction between
individuals and groups, including creating and sustaining forms of social domination and
political exploitation.

Implications
In this section, I focus on some of the critical implications of this theoretical conception
of the intrinsically social dimensions of human psychology and behavior, both for par-
ticular theories in social psychology and for the current orientation of academic social
psychology.
The first is that since individuals orient their psychology and behavior to the psychology
and behavior of a variety of different intrinsically social reference groups, they may be said
to have as many social psychologies as they have different intrinsically social reference groups.
This topic was extensively explored by early social psychologists such as James (1890), Dewey
(1927), and La Piere (1938), who took themselves to be exploring the social dimensions of
personality or identity. They also recognized the everyday problem of managing the dispa-
rate demands of the different social dimensions of our personalities (which only rarely reach
the limits of disassociation marked by multiple personality disorder).6 More significantly, they
recognized that these different intrinsically social reference groups provide the normative
foundation for what Goffman (1961) and Harré (1983) later described as ‘moral careers’ or
‘identity projects’ within such intrinsically social reference groups. They provide socially
recognized means of attaining, maintaining, and losing reputation, honor, and face (as family
member, professional psychologist, or Catholic); socially prescribed objects of pride and
shame; and potential social trajectories to be navigated and negotiated by social agents. Con-
sequently, individuals could be said to have as many social identities as they have intrinsically
social reference groups, or, as James aptly put it:

We may practically say that he has as many social selves as there are distinct groups of persons about
whose opinion he cares.(James, 1890, p. 294)

However, this social – and multiple social – conception of personality and identity was in-
creasingly neglected as the last century progressed and perhaps deserves renewed theoretical
and empirical attention.

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 The Sorts of things that are Social 307

With respect to contemporary academic social psychology, it is clear that whatever the
theoretical and empirical achievements of the discipline (and I believe them to be many),
it is not devoted to the study of intrinsically social beliefs, attitudes, emotion, and behavior.
Since academic social psychology resolved the ‘crisis’ of the 1970s by ‘getting inside the head’
(Taylor & Fiske, 1981, p. 459) and adopting the new cognitive paradigm of the ‘cognitive
revolution’, its primary focus has been on social cognition, defined as cognition directed to-
ward social objects, such as social agents and social groups, as opposed to non-social objects,
such as rocks, rivers, and rottweilers. Thus, for example, social cognition is defined by Fiske
and Taylor in their landmark text Social Cognition (1982, p. 1) as the study of ‘how people
make sense of other people and themselves’, (repeated in the 1991 and 2008 editions) and
by the flagship journal Social Cognition as the study of ‘the perception of, memory for, or pro-
cessing of information involving people or social events’ and ‘the role of cognitive processes
in interpersonal behavior’ (Schneider, 1982, p. i, reiterated in the latest edition).
Social cognition thus defined cannot be equated with socially engaged beliefs and atti-
tudes, since beliefs and attitudes about social agents and social groups can be individually en-
gaged, as a product of inductive experience or cognitive heuristics such as stereotyping, and
socially engaged beliefs and attitudes may be directed to non-social objects such as climate
change, vaccination, and the existence of gravitational exchange particles. Consequently,
while there is of course a considerable degree of overlap – since we have many socially
engaged beliefs and attitudes about social agents and social groups – the two forms of social
psychology are essentially orthogonal to each other: the older concerned with socially
engaged beliefs, attitudes, emotion, and behavior and the later concerned with beliefs and
attitudes directed to social objects (social agents and social groups). By focusing on social
cognition simpliciter, contemporary social psychology simply ignores a potentially fertile
source of theoretical understanding of the social.
Yet not only is the social engagement of cognition, emotion, and behavior excluded from
the contemporary conception of social cognition, the empirical study of the social orienta-
tion of cognition, emotion, and behavior is effectively precluded by the overly restrictive
conception of experimental adequacy that developed in the latter half of the 20th century.
Although earlier experimentalists allowed that ‘organismic variables’ such as the social orien-
tation of beliefs and attitudes could function as manipulated independent variables in exper-
imental studies, for example, in Edwards (1941) study of the socially engaged attitudes of
members of political groups and Festinger’s (1947) study of ‘group belongingness and voting
behavior’, later experimentalists treated any form of ‘psychological connection’ between sub-
jects grounded in their orientation to represented social groups as a source of contamination
and confounding.
Thus, although the first and second editions of Research Methods In Social Relations allowed
that the ‘equality’ of experimental groups could be attained by methods such as subject
matching or frequency distribution control (Selltiz, Jahoda, Deutsch, & Cook, 1959, p. 59),
by the third and fourth editions, ‘true experiments’ were defined as those in which potentially
confounding variables are excluded via randomization (Selltiz, Wrightsman, & Cook, 1976,
pp. 77–80), and ‘subject’ or ‘organismic’ variables were carefully distinguished from genuine
‘experimental’ variables (Kidder, 1981, p. 19.) The Handbook of Social Psychology followed
the same increasingly restrictive pattern. The random assignment of subjects to experimental
conditions, originally seen as a ‘major advantage’ of experimentation (Aronson & Carlsmith,
1968, p. 7), came to be treated as ‘the criterial attribute of defining a study as an experiment’
(Aronson, Brewer, & Carlsmith, 1985, p. 447). Thus, by the end of the 20th century, there
was simply no methodological space left for the experimental study of socially engaged forms
of cognition, emotion, and behavior.

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308 The Sorts of things that are Social

Alternative Perspectives
Although social cognition has been the dominant tradition in social psychology – and espe-
cially American social psychology – since the 1980s, it has not been the only game in town.
Aside from the general critical psychological reaction that has eschewed putatively objective
theory in favor of the rhetorical analysis of the social and political effects of theoretical
psychological discourse (Henriques et al., 1984; Parker, 1999; Potter & Wetherell, 1987;
Prilleltensky, 1997), there have been other theoretical traditions that have laid claim to a
more direct focus on the social dimensions of human cognition, emotion, and behavior, such
as the European traditions of social representation theory (Moscovici, 1961, 1987, 2001;
Wagner & Hayes, 2005) and ‘social identity’ theory (Haslam, McGarty, & Turner, 1996;
Tajfel & Turner, 1986; Turner & Reynolds, 2010), the international interdisciplinary enter-
prise that is ‘cultural psychology’ (Cole, 1996; Markus & Hamedani, 2007), and the meta-
theoretical cum theoretical perspective that is social constructionism (Gergen, 1985; Gergen
& Davis, 1985).
Social representation theory is perhaps the closest to the theoretical conception of the
social promoted in this paper, insofar as social representations are characterized as social by
virtue of the avowed social dimensions of representations, rather than by reference to the
social objects of representations, such as other persons and social groups (as in social cognition
theory). Thus, within this predominately European tradition of research, the sorts of social
representations studied are frequently directed toward non-social objects such as AIDS
(Joffe, 1995), Paris (de Alba, 2011), and climate change (Berglez, Höijer, & Olausson, 2009),
as well as social objects such as African Americans (Philogéne, 1994) and the British Royal
Family (Billig, 1992). Moreover, at least in Moscovici’s original work on the reception of
psychoanalysis by different social groups in France (Moscovici, 1961), there was recognition
of the social orientation of social representations to intrinsically social groups such as Catholics
and communists.
However, as social representation theory has developed in the past few decades, the focus
has shifted to the more widely distributed forms of representation that constitute communal,
common-sense, or cultural forms of representation (Moscovici, 1987, 2001) and the modes
of objectification and anchoring by which they become embedded in the collective psyche
(Wagner & Hayes, 2005). This shift is also manifest in the increased focus on the construction
of the meaningful content and dynamical interactions between social representations rather
than their orientation to distinctive social groups, although these two perspectives are not
of their nature exclusory: that is, some forms of social representation may be socially engaged
by intrinsically social groups, such as social representations of disease by practitioners of alter-
native medicine, for example.
Like social representation theory, cultural psychology is concerned with forms of represen-
tation that are more widely distributed than socially engaged forms of cognition, emotion,
and behavior, such as the manner in which biologically evolved cognitive and affective struc-
tures are shaped and partially constituted by cultural activities and practices (Cole, 1996;
Markus & Hamedani, 2007). Thus, for example, analytic forms of perception and cognition
supposedly characteristic of North America are frequently contrasted with more holistic
forms of perception and cognition supposedly characteristic of South East Asia, and these
differences are held to be a product of their distinctive cultural practices (Nisbett & Masuda,
2003).
Cultural psychology operates at a much broader level than socially engaged forms of cog-
nition, emotion, and behavior, which are oriented to different intrinsically social groups
within cultures and which can be reidentified across cultures (such as Catholics and gangs in

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North America and South East Asia). Cultural psychology does, however, raise one intrigu-
ing but presently unanswered question. Most social psychologists have assumed that although
the contents and objects of socially engaged beliefs, attitudes, emotion, and behavior may
vary (and sometimes quite dramatically) across social groups and times, the basic form of
‘sociation’ (Simmel, 1894) remains invariant in cultural place and time. Yet they may be
wrong about that, and it may turn out to be the case that different cultural practices modulate
forms of social engagement in different cultures.
‘Social identity’ theory is another European tradition in social psychology that may at first
sight appear to resemble the theoretical orientation promoted in this paper, insofar as it ex-
plicitly recognizes ‘the distinct role of the social group in determining individual cognition
and behavior’ (Haslam et al., 1996, p. 30). Yet on closer examination, ‘social identity’ theory
merely offers an individual cognitive psychological explanation of persuasive force and inter-
personal influence in terms of perceived ‘psychological equivalence’, via an individual’s
categorization of the source of a communication or influence as similar or different to them
in some respect, via so-called ‘self-categorization’ theory. That is, in this tradition, ‘social
identity’ is simply equivalent to ‘social category’ identification and applies indiscriminately to
identification with members of intrinsically social groups, such as Catholics, Democrats and
teenage gangs, and members of what Newcomb (1951) and Asch (1952) distinguished as mere
‘category groups’, whose members simply share some common property, such as ‘all males in
the State or Oklahoma between the ages of 21 and 25’ (Newcomb, 1951, p. 38), ‘persons who
are five years old or the class of divorced persons’, (Asch, 1952, p. 260) or are ‘male, Australian,
or persons who want to outlaw the sale and consumption of alcohol’ (Haslam et al., 1996).
The problem with this theory of ‘social identity’, like so-called ‘social labeling’ theories of
social identity, according to which our social identity is determined by the linguistic labels we
apply to ourselves (Breakwell, 1983; Deaux, 1993), is that mere category identification or
labeling is insufficient for socially structured ‘moral careers’ Goffman (1961) or ‘identity pro-
jects’ (Harré, 1983). Categorizing oneself as male, divorced, or disabled does not provide an
individual with socially recognized means of attaining, maintaining, and losing reputation,
honor, and face; socially prescribed objects of pride and shame; or potential social trajectories
that can navigated and negotiated by social agents. In contrast, orienting one’s beliefs, atti-
tudes, emotion, and behavior to intrinsically social reference groups, such as Catholics, pro-
fessional psychologists, and gangs, does precisely that – which is not of course to deny that
being labeled as ‘Oxford educated’ or ‘unemployed’ often serves to advance or impede entry
to and success in moral careers or identity projects within the normative structures of intrin-
sically social groups.
Put another way, social identity is a substantive social achievement, by which successful in-
dividuals survive the social slings and arrows constituted by the normative expectations and
demands of intrinsically social reference groups. Contra ‘social identity’ theorists, our social
identities are not ‘functionally antagonistic’ with our personal identities as individuals
(Haslam et al., 1996, p. 36). Rather, as early American psychologists recognized, our social
identities grounded in different intrinsically social reference groups are the medium in which
our personal identity and individuality are developed.
Social identity theorists claim to reconcile opposing needs for assimilation and differentia-
tion through categorization theory by demarcating an ‘intermediate level of inclusiveness,
one that provides a shared identity with an in-group and differentiation from distinct-out
groups’ (Brewer, 1991, p. 478). However, we do not need out-groups to distinguish our-
selves from others in the pursuit of our social identities, for our different social trajectories
within the normative structures of intrinsically social reference groups do that well enough.
Furthermore, it is worth noting that members of intrinsically social reference groups need

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share no categorical features beyond the socially engaged forms of cognition, emotion, and
behavior that constitute them as intrinsically social reference groups. Thus, for example,
Catholics are old and young; employed and unemployed; rich and poor; married, unmarried,
and divorced; male, female, and transgender, and so on and so forth. Moreover, there is no
reason to suppose that members of any intrinsically social reference group share the same
orientations to other social reference groups: some Catholics may be Democrats, others
Republicans; some may be professional psychologists, others Marines; and so on and so forth.
And the same point applies of course, with far greater force, to mere category groups them-
selves: all the unemployed may share is their unemployment.
Which brings me finally to the social constructionist movement, or rather movements,
which range from general meta-theories about the social construction of reality (including
but not restricted to social reality) to specific theories about the socio-linguistic construction
and constitution of psychological states and social identities. Length constraints preclude any
serious engagement with the multifarious arguments of social constructionists (although for a
detailed critical discussion, see Greenwood, 1989, 1994), so I will restrict myself finally to
one concessive and one critical point.
There is no doubt that our use of socio-linguistic labels does play an important role in pro-
moting, enriching, and displacing social psychological phenomena. Thus, although the ancient
and medieval emotion of ‘acedia’ (a debilitating form of disgusted boredom with the world) and
‘multiple personality’ were not created by our employment of the terms ‘acedia’ and ‘multiple
personality’, the emotion of acedia became attenuated when the term ‘acedia’ dropped out of
common usage and was displaced by ‘melancholie’ and ‘depression’ (Altschule, 1965), and in-
stances of multiple personality increased dramatically when the originally theoretical term came
to be appropriated by everyday folk psychology via a form of ‘looping effect’ (Hacking, 1995).
Analogously, as Kurt Danziger (1997) has emphasized, the categories of 20th century psycho-
logical science, such as intelligence, motivation, personality, and learning, do not so much ‘carve
nature at its joints’ as impose a theoretical structure on complex social-psychological dimensions
and structures that have been differentiated in quite different ways by proto-scientists and lay
men and women in different cultures and historical periods.
All this may be granted without supposing that social identity, for example, is nothing more
than a linguistic creation (Gergen, 1985; Gergen & Davis, 1985), social only by virtue of the
presumed social basis of theoretical and folk discourse about social identity. For to suppose
this would be to discount the real work done by social agents in establishing their social iden-
tities. Their identities are socially created and constituted to be sure, but via their different
social trajectories within the normative frameworks of intrinsically social reference groups,
through which their social achievements and – all to often – social failures determine their
unique identities within the social world.

Conclusion
In this paper, I have provided a characterization of the intrinsically social dimensions of cog-
nition, emotion, and behavior, a theoretically viable and fertile conception that was shared by
early social psychologists but which was progressively neglected and abandoned throughout
the past century. Given the entrenched theoretical and methodological tradition of contem-
porary mainstream social psychology and the radical reactions to it by contemporary critical
psychology, I am not sanguine about my chances of persuading anyone of the merits of what
might fairly be called the original conception of the social in social psychology. But like the
Ancient Mariner, I feel obliged to promote it whenever and wherever I can, in the hope that
what once was lost can someday be regained.

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 The Sorts of things that are Social 311

Short Biography
Professor John D. Greenwood is a member of the PhD Programs in Philosophy and Psychol-
ogy at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He was educated at the Univer-
sities of Edinburgh and Oxford and has taught at Kingston College of Further Education,
National University of Singapore, and University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His main
research interests are in the history and philosophy of social and psychological science. His
published works include Explanation and Experiment in Social Psychological Science (Springer-
Verlag, 1989); Relations and Representations (Routledge, 1991); Realism, Identity, and Emotion
(Sage, 1994); The Disappearance of the Social in American Social Psychology (Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2004); and A Conceptual History of Psychology (McGraw-Hill, 2009).
Notes
*Correspondence: PhD Program in Philosophy, City University of New York Graduate Center, New York, NY 10016,
USA. Email: [email protected]

1
The historical explanation of this neglect, which includes misguided concerns about theoretical commitments to
‘group minds’, perceived threats to cherished ideals of moral autonomy, and the equation of social behavior with crowd
behavior and abnormal behavior, is beyond the scope of the present paper. For a detailed account, see Greenwood
(2004).
2
Fashion thus probably represents the purest form of the social psychological, in which individuals embrace attitudes or
engage in behavior just because (and on condition) that other members of a social group are represented as holding these
attitudes or engaging in that behavior.
3
As opposed to whom it is directed. Thus, a White racist’s prejudice is oriented toward the beliefs and attitudes of other
White racists but directed toward Black persons.
4
See Simmel (1908, p. 7): ‘the consciousness of constituting with others a unity is actually all there is to that unity’.
5
Or indeed rule out the possibility that such populations do constitute intrinsically social groups. Whether they do or
do not is an empirical question, dependent on whether they do or do not share socially engaged beliefs, attitudes, emo-
tion, and behavior. I just believe it is prima facie implausible to suppose that this in the case with respect to women,
Blacks, the unemployed and the divorced but grant that I could be wrong about any particular case.
6
See, for example, Dewey (1927, p. 129):

An individual as a member of different groups may be divided within himself, and in a true sense have conflicting
selves, or be a relatively disinterested individual. A man may be one thing as a church member and another thing
as a member of the business community. The division may be carried in watertight compartments, or it may become
such a division as to entail internal conflict.

Consider, for example, the conflict that might be felt by someone who orients their psychology and behavior to the
represented psychology and behavior of both Catholics and the gay community.

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