Talk:Social psychology/archive 4

Compressed summary

How about we add a short summary, something like the following:

Both disciplines of social psychology investigate how the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of other(s) (Allport 3). This includes investigation into the processes of social perception and social judgment, social interaction and communication, aggression, attraction, and social influence. The products of these processes are manifold: they include (but are not limited to) attitudes, self and identity, pro-social and anti-social behavior, and group formation.

(Obviously, the wording can be changed, but I just write it to give you an idea of what I mean.)

{ Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 20:31, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Not bad actually, but we need another definition. Allport was a psychologist and that definition is somewhat biased toward psychology with all that business about thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. To give this a better context, here is what a sociologist I know said about social psychology when I recently emailed him about our discussion:

Much of social life is a fiction. Sociologists like to say reality is socially constructed. That's just a fancy way of saying it's acted out. Society is a play we reenact daily. It's sometimes easier to see this when "reality" falls apart... the power of positive thinking can only take us so far. Society is a "We" thing. I cannot do it alone.

So the trick will be bridging that point of view with the psychological approach, which is much more grounded in the brain of the individual. Jcbutler 20:43, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I purposefully hesitated to add uniquely SSP material because I'm looking for common ground, and while some SSPers may be interested in PSP work, the road probably doesn't go both ways. Anyway, I guess the possibility is open that we say something quick about how those PSP concepts may be applied in SSP. In the spirit of "sociological miniaturism", I take it that we shouldn't mention anything that's more "sociological" than the behavior of small groups, i.e., intergroup conflict and cooperation (as per M. Sherif's work), communicative networks, social identity, power and trust relationships, origins of groupthink, etc., since these are the concepts that the sociologists would like to use to apply to larger scale social systems. { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish

I should hasten to add that although the perspective that your friend has shared is surely common in sociology, the quote itself doesn't help much in our discussion about social psychology. I mean, you might be able to analyze the quote and try to get what's being implicitly suggested, and those implicit opinions might be right and relevant; i.e., the construction of broader social "reality" out of shared meanings is clearly a main focus of sociology, and inquiry into meaning can also be examined from the point of view of a social psychologist by the review of the testimonies of individuals, dyads, groups, and demographic samples, as well as the effects of those meanings on behavior and interaction. And to the extent that we're talking about this robust sense of meaning (be it shared or otherwise), we're talking about brains and minds to some degree. (And I believe that was what one editor was trying to express with the so-called "second cognitive revolution".) { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 00:20, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Psychology as the default?

I've been giving this some thought lately. A consensus indicates that the split between psychology and sociology was a good idea, but perhaps the current disambiguation page was the wrong way to go. Given that most social psychologists are psychologists, would it be more appropriate to make social psychology (psychology) the default social psychology page, with a disambiguation statement at the top directing interested readers to social psychology (sociology). This would solve the problem of how to write a good disambiguation page, and hopefully clarify the situation for users. It also appears to be standard practice on Wikipedia, e.g. emotion, forest, moon. In most cases, the default is the most commonly used version, with disambiguation statements directing people to other versions. Any thoughts on this? --Jcbutler 17:49, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Strong endorse. I think this is a great idea. I was thinking somthing similar for quite some time, but I figured the opposition from the sociology camp would be too intense. For better or worse there always seemed to be more active sociology editors when the page was combined. I think some statistics regarding the number of professors/grad programs in each might be telling. Irongargoyle 18:09, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Strong endorse. I also agree--somewhere in the discussion archives I mentioned how, at my university, over 500 students take the various sections of the Psych Social Psych course each semester, while only one 50-person of social psych is offered by the sociology department. I think this is typical of most American universities. In addition, there are many psychology-based social psych journals, including several international ones (JPSP, PSPB, PSPR, Basic & Applied SP, J of Applied SP, British J of SP, Eur J of SP, etc). As far as I know, Social Psych Quarterly is the only sociological social psych journal. In addition, books such as the handbook of social psych and annual review of social psych tend to be psychological. Finally, the fact is that psychological SP is a much larger (populous) field than sociological SP; odds are, if someone searches Wikipedia for SP, they are looking for the psychological one. -Nick^talk 18:39, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

weak endorse I think social psychology is predominantly a psychological discipline (per all above); therefore I endorse this idea; however there has been much argument on this page that Sociological SocPsy should be treated on an equal footing. This page was the resulting compromise; changing this page into the (psych) SocPsy page may be felt by some editors as opposed to the original idea behind the compromise; therefore, for 'political' reasons my endorsement is not more then weak. Arnoutf 18:44, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

"Comprimise" is not exactly the word that fits what happened here. { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 02:45, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Strong oppose, for reasons which would be tiresome to repeat. PSP is an advanced body of literature, but it is not the ONLY body of literature under this heading. { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 02:45, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Comment. Sociology and Psychology wikiprojects rated their articles respectively as High importance and Top-importance on their importance scale. (See Talk:Social psychology (psychology) and Talk:Social psychology (sociology)), maybe these scales should have the last word about articles relative importance, i don't know? Even if it's a standard pratice on Wikipedia to give the default page to the most important article, i think it's a bit different in this case than for articles such as emotion, forest or moon. Frédérick Lacasse 23:07, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't this suggest that social psychology is more central to psychology than sociology? It's also worth noting that social psychology is a prominent part of the psychology page, but only mentioned in passing on the sociology page. The comment is mainly that sociology has "links" with social psychology. --Jcbutler 23:50, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I put it as a comment because I don't know if there is a policy related to this kind of scales, i mean, are they enough accurate to be used to take decisions about renaming for example. This could be a strong argument for you. Frédérick Lacasse 00:52, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think any weight whatsoever should be placed on these ratings. More than once I have seen these ratings resulting from the ill-informed decision of a single undergraduate student. The point Dr. Butler raises, about psychology placing more emphasis on social psychology than does sociology, has more validity; ultimately, however, the relative importance assigned by the two fields is far less significant than comparing the two versions of social psychology in a more objective sense, as Nick has done above. An extreme analogy illustrates the point: A sixth grader might place top importance on videos of his own basketball practices, whereas a national TV network might give the prime air time to something other than NBA basketball (singing or dance competitions, a popular drama or sitcom, or even football). Nevertheless, no one thinks that the child's basketball practice videos should be weighted at all equally with coverage of NBA games. -DoctorW 16:43, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry. I think there is a little misunderstanding. My comment was that if Wikipedia guidelines exist about rating scales accuracy, but i don't know, i ask the question, it could be not necessary to debate about is PSP a more important topic than SSP because PSP is already rated higher on this scale. In this way, it supports Jcbutler. I thought other users knew something about it, maybe it doesn't exist at all. By the way, if you think that some articles ratings on talk pages, especially on psychology related topics, don't reflect reality, i guess you are allowed to change it, it would be appreciated. Frédérick Lacasse 00:42, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Weak oppose. Although it seems difficult for editors to improve this disambiguation page, i think it is very useful and constructive for readers because it describes differences beetween topics that are linked by a real ambiguity. I think that sociological social psychology seems important enough for this argument to be valid. Frédérick Lacasse 23:07, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Once you put aside all the hustle and bustle of 2006, I don't think it should be difficult for editors in general to improve this page. It just has to be guided by sincerity, fair-mindedness, a sense of balance, and a respect for scholarly references. { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 21:07, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Feel free to continue the discussion, but I see that there will be no consensus, and I have withdrawn my proposal for the move/name-change. It seems that people like the disambiguation page, so perhaps we can work with it a bit, while still keeping it brief. I think it is important to respect both disciplines, but it is currently a bit misleading as it suggests that psychology and sociology are equally represented in the area of social psychology. The trick will be to make the respective roles of each discipline clearer, while maintaining fair presentation for both. I'd like to thank everyone for their input on this. --Jcbutler 22:29, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Revision

I have made significant revisions on the page, in order to improve its appearance, and to be more informative and accurate. The previous version was a simple, functional disambiguation page, but it was misleading because it implied that sociology and psychology were equally represented in the field, and that they were were separate and isolated from each other. This is not entirely true. They are indeed separate disciplines, but sociologists occasionally publish in more psychologically oriented journals, and there is some cross-fertilization. This is the reasoning behind my statement that this is an interdisciplinary area if not a common discipline.

In my revision, I included a clarifying introductory paragraph and then separate sections for psychology and sociology, including "main page" links instead of the previous disambiguation statement. I hope this is an improvement, though it is a little longer than it was. I think it's important to stick with the earlier consensus that this page should be short- primarily a lead into the main pages for sociological and psychological SP. --Jcbutler 18:15, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Psychology journals listed

I'm not sure that the statement: "The most influential journals for publication of research in this area are The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. There are also several other specialized academic journals." is accurate. According to the social science citation index, the ranking for general social psychology journals is:

1. JPSP
2. Personality and Social Psych Review
3. Personality and Social Psych Bulletin
4. British J. of Social Psych
5. J of Experimental Social Psych
6. European J of Social Psych
7. Social Psych Quarterly (sociological)
8. Basic and Applied Social Psych
9. Asian J of Social Psych
10. J of Social Psych

So the two most influential (highest impact) are JPSP and PSPR (although PSPB is close behind and published many more articles). And, the way the statement is written, it makes it seem that there are only two general social psych journals. In fact, there are at least these 10, and perhaps dozens of specialized journals. On the other hand, we probably shouldn't list a ton of journals on this page, so I don't know exactly how to handle the edit. Thoughts? -Nick^talk 19:36, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. By the way don't forget Journal of Applied Social Psychology (JASP). I recently did see the impact factor of JESP (experimental) and that was almost as high as JPSP at least in 2005. But can't recall the others. Review papers tend to gather high Impact Factors, so a journal specialising in this (PSPR) may have a slightly higher IF than could be expected. Personally I would have chosen JPSP and PSPB as most influential. Perhaps list only JPSP which seems to be undeniably the top journal, and state there are at least 10 others? Arnoutf 19:49, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

As a temporary fix, at least, I changed the language to Two influential journals for the publication of research in this area are... --Jcbutler 04:25, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

request for comments

On race and intelligence, please [1] Slrubenstein | Talk 16:26, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

The "Debate"?

So, I've been following this discussion for quite some time now, and I think that the debate surrounding the split between SSP amd PSP itself deserves some mention on this page. I'm sure that something can be excavated from one of the three(!) archives documenting this. Hopefully, those of us who believe that holism is the way to go, will be granted a voice as well.

Thanks!

-Tim —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 144.118.54.2 (talk) 20:47, 31 January 2007 (UTC).

Hi Tim. Unfortunately, this seems unlikely in the near future. I have been the lone voice on this, and so long as that's so, then nothing will get done. If more persons -- esp. more credentialled persons -- are a) willing to take up the position, and b) are willing and able to do the research work necessary to show that the view is a significant minority position, then that would be indisputable grounds for inclusion. I no longer have access to the databases necessary (or the patience for that matter). { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 23:45, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

As interesting as the debate on these pages has been, it's probably not "encyclopedia" material. To the extent that it's been debated in academic journals etc, then perhaps, but remember that only externally verifiable, nonoriginal content should go on these pages. Particularly this page! --Jcbutler 01:59, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

restored old version

I have restored the January 31 version of this article, which has a separate section for sociological social psychology rather than the differences section that had been added, and contained a number of errors, e.g. "social psychologists are often incorrectly referred to as sociologists"... I don't think this "often" happens, and besides, some people who study social psychology are sociologists! --Jcbutler 21:31, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

storm in teacup

This is an irrelevant page based on a ridiculous discussion. If the logic used to include the page is followed strictly, then we'd have to parenthesize all disciplines within all other fields of study simply because many have received contributions from practitioners in other disciplines. Sigmund Freud was not a psychologist, George Kelly (psychologist) started out in physics, Carl Jung was a psychiatrist, Gregory Bateson was an anthropologist. Yes, social psychology draws from the work of sociologists, but it is obviously a branch of psychology. Whether it should always be that way is the subject of another discussion.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Suidafrikaan (talk • contribs) 12:48, 14 April 2007 (UTC).

Actually, "Social Psychology" is also formal branch of Sociology with a slightly different focus than Psychology. You can get a graduate degree in Social Psychology from a Sociology Department. "Social Psychology Quarterly" is an academic journal published by sociologists. US News has separate graduate program rankings for Sociological Social Psychology and Psychological Social Psychology. It is not simply that Social Psychology draws from Sociology, rather, they are separate disciplines. -Nick^talk 17:41, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Indeed this page is the compromise of a relatively fierce debate between the Soc-Soc-Psy and the Psy-Soc-Psy schools. Although not ideal, this has been relatively stable and working compared to the previous version of the page. Arnoutf 17:56, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

And of course the original point -- sourced in Michener -- was that the two disciplines share ample common ground to be discussed in a single article. Evidently a fringe perspective, though. { Ben S. Nelson } 15:14, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Dab page?

If there's debate, but basically two approaches, isn't the better option to turn this page into a disambiguation page which distinguishes between the two? WLU 18:53, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism and removal of 'social psychology (sociology)' page

Without permission and most likely in relation to being out-voted on a separate issue on the sociology talk page, the user User:Canto2009 has deleted the social psychology (sociology) article and replaced it with an endless series of redirects. --Tomsega

I fixed the page-move. It was certainly disruptive, but I'd hesitate to call it vandalism. There is definitely still an issue that still needs to be addressed surrounding the social psychology articles about the naming. Psychological social psychology is a major research discipline, while sociological social psychology is a niche research area. The status quo of equal billing is not satisfactory. IronGargoyle (talk) 17:23, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Proposed name changes

This page should be moved to Comparison of psychological and sociological social psychology, Social psychology (psychology) should be moved to Social psychology and hatnoted, and Social psychology (sociology) should be left in its current location. The reason for this is the dramatic difference in the impact of the respective fields. The highest impact rating journal in psychological social psychology has an impact rating more than three times that of sociological social psychology's most influential journal. Psychological social psychology has more journals, the vast majority of other language Wikipedias farm out the Social psychology (sociology) article, while leaving Social psychology (psychology) at this location (i.e., Social psychology). Many psychological social psychology studies have become general knowledge...Milgram's obediance study, the Zimbardo prison study, diffusion of responsibility research...the list goes on and on. I can't think of one single sociological social psychology study that has made any sort of impact on popular culture. IronGargoyle (talk) 14:20, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

We tried something like this three years ago, and it resulted in huge arguments among editors (See Talk Archives 2 & 3). Before then, this page was basically a description of the sociological perspective mixed with social philosophy. As a psychologist, I barely recognized anything in the article. A group of people tried to bring in the psychological stuff, and we debated over what the main "social psychology" page would say. After spinning our wheels for a while, the end result was this disambiguation page. I'd support this proposal, but only to the extent that it doesn't cause another several-month-long debate. -Nick^talk 16:53, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, not much debate yet. Is everyone tired of arguing? Using this page as a disambiguation page was never an optimal solution, so I support this proposal, as I supported the similar proposal before. --Jcbutler (talk) 17:01, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but IronGargoyle's argument seems to amount to being an appeal to pop culture. { Ben S. Nelson } 01:07, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I would support the proposed changes also. My memory is that during that long, drawn out debate in 2006, there was one intelligent but headstrong undergraduate or recent graduate (can't remember) with apparently unlimited time who strongly opposed all changes that didn't agree with his POV, which seemed more and more as the debate unfolded to be a minority view. Even so, the rest of us (including at least 3 editors with PhDs in the field!) had to push through the present compromise somewhat forcefully. The quality and accuracy of the article is what should take precedence; minority views should be incorporated into the content of articles, but they should not determine the structure of Wikipedia at the expense of the mainstream view. Let's make the changes.

I would be open to advice regarding situations like the one we dealt with before. I am dealing (a little) with a similar but more difficult (and less knowledgeable) editor on another page. But I am not interested in fighting and I don't have much time for shenanigans. -DoctorW 03:34, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

OK, that's 4 supports and a sarcastic remark. It's been over a year now. I think it may be time to make the change. --Jcbutler (talk) 23:30, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Welcome

Welcome to the psychological social psychology subpage. This page was created in response to the discussion on the social psychology page. -Nick^talk 04:23, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I am new to this. I am a Social psychologist (PhD) and would like to be involved. Can anyone tell me what areas you need help with and how I can get started writing and editing articles etc? thanks (sorry for the 'bold' type, I did not know another way to let anyone know I want to help!) Psyxologos 04:16, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Experts

I've placed a call for experts on this page. If you have any experience in psychological social psychology, please help out. Take a look at the original social psychology page and see what info should be moved (or copied) over here. -Nick^talk 23:42, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I think an "Important terms and concepts" section would be nice. I think the original page's version goes into WAY too much detail (especially when there are pages available for some of those concepts), but a lot of the concepts listed are important to include.

One thing I noticed while looking for pages on SP-related topics was that there was a lot of redundancy and strange redirects. One other thing to do may be to try and find people to work on merging those pages.

Y'know, just a couple little thing. Dujang Prang 17:22, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Material from Social psychology moved here

Material from the Social psychology page has been moved here but is in a huge comment embedded in the text. Draw on it or delete obviously irrelevant parts of it as you see fit. -DoctorW 07:13, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Making progress

I spent a couple of hours today restoring much of the original content that pertained to the psychological study of social psychology, e.g. classic experiments, key concepts, etc. I also reworked the definition, focusing on Allport's explanation and the demarcation of psychological and sociological approaches. The article still needs some work and refinement, but it's starting to look better...

Jcbutler 22:33, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Serious attention to all this by serious content generators is both welcome and long overdue.

Must ask, though: why are the heuristics, persuasion, and group dynamics sections in both PSP and SSP wikis? Lucidish _{{ Ben S. Nelson }} 02:14, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Those will probably come off the sociology page at some point, though there still will be some areas of overlap when all is said and done. I've been focusing on tidying up this page first. Also, I'm a little hesitant about doing too much with that page since I'm not a sociologist. Jcbutler 17:07, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that it's well past time that we put more meat back on the original SP article by underscoring what exactly those points of overlap really are. Otherwise, we're just going to be repeating ourselves. Anyway, good luck. Lucidish _{{ Ben S. Nelson }} 04:55, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

References

Many of the references listed on this page pertain to removed sociology content, or are not cited for other reasons. I'd like to suggest that we keep this page consistent with APA style and only list references that are cited in the article. A suggested reading section might be useful, but a comprehensive bibliography for social psychology would be far beyond the scope of what we can do here. --- User:Jcbutler

Hi J.C. Butler. It appears that you, yourself, added the multitude of references (on Revision as of 22:24, 19 October 2006 Jcbutler) that you just unilaterally removed without discussion. I suggest a discussion before seemingly drastic measures like that next time. Not sure what to do now. Those references were helpful, albeit a bibliography of sorts. Now I see you've added them back, sans E. Jones and Hastorf. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 18:10, 24 October 2006 (UTC) (talk)

Yes, I transferred all of them over from the old page a few days ago, with the thought of sorting them out later (later being today). Unless I've overlooked something, only the references specifically mentioned in the text are now listed. I got rid of a lot of them, including some that were really not related to social psychology at all, e.g. William James. Many of them were very high quality sources, just not "references." I still need to find Lewin, and of course there are all kinds of other thinks that need to be fixed and edited. I do apologize if I stepped on your toes there. Jcbutler 19:10, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Dr. Butler. Thanks for your kind response. I clearly see your points. But, still, I had thought that E. Jones' work and Hastorf's works were, although not referenced in the article directly as per your requirement (APA), worthy of note. I will at some point try to integrate their work into the articles. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 14:49, 25 October 2006 (UTC) talk)

Organization of the page

Although the information on this entry is becoming increasingly more accurate and pertinent to "psychological" social psychology, there is quite a bit of redundancy and unnecessary complexity that could be presented more simply. For example, information on attitudes, cognitive dissonance, attribution, persuasion, etc. is presented at the beginning under "major theories" and then again in the second half of the entry under "concepts." Some of these issues are discussed yet a third time under the heading of "research interests." I was thinking we should clean this up a bit by merging "theories and concepts" together, followed by the research methods section. This organization would also be more consistent with the main psychology page on wikipedia. Jcbutler 19:26, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Major overhaul

Wow, that was a lot of work... As promised (or as threatened?) I went ahead with my plan of cleaning up this page to eliminate the excessive level of redundancy that had emerged after the activity of many authors editing independently of each other. I'd like to thank everyone who has contributed thus far, and I made an effort to preserve original terminology and wording when possible. I also cleared up some extravagant mistakes that I hadn't even noticed before, e.g. the confusion of foot-in-the-door with reciprocity compliance tactics. It's still a work in progress, and yes, I need to fix the references yet again.

When I started rewriting this entry, I took all the separate little pieces on attitudes, etc. and combined them to eliminate redundancy. Then I alphabetized the topic list and put it under a single heading, "concepts." Unfortunately, this turned out to be excessively long, so I divided it in two pieces, based on a common distinction in social psychology between intra and inter-personal processes. This is a somewhat fuzzy distinction, but it works from an organizational point of view, and is frequently seen in textbooks, not to mention JPSP. I think it turned out fairly manageable, though we may want to play around with the categories a bit further, e.g. distinguishing social cognition from attitudes and groups from interpersonal relations. Something to consider as the article continues to grow, which it will probably do, if history is any guide.

So what happened to the theory? It was with some reluctance that I took out the ELM, since it was such a big chunk of this entry. The problem is that it is virtually impossible to list social psychological theories in any way that is fair and meaningful without doing a dissertation. If we put in the ELM, then why not Sternberg's Triangular theory of love? It's just as important and influencial. Why not attachment theory, impact theory, etc. etc. Imstead of doing a theory section, I distilled what I thought were the most important mechanisms out of the major theories (e.g. dissonance, automaticity) and included them with all the terms and concepts. What I've done isn't perfect and no doubt there is plenty of tweaking needed, but I highly recommend treating theories under their own Wikipedia entries. A list of links at the end of the article would facilitate this.Jcbutler 07:36, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

We could create an article that would list the theories' brief descriptions and its link.--Janarius 15:43, 6 November 2006 (UTC) Here's the article: list of social psychology theories.

Thanks, Janarius. I added a link to the theories page in the intro. I also put in some additional text to make the entry read a little less like an outline, and divided the topic areas so they wouldn't be so long. In the next few days, I'd like to add a history section, as well as a section on applied social psychology. Jcbutler 16:16, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I added the history section and removed some of the excessive amount of boldface throughout the article. My long range plan is to convert the "areas of social psychology" to paragraphs rather than their current outline format. I'll wait a bit to make sure that there is a consensus on all the bulleted items though. Jcbutler 21:58, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I just want to say that what Jcbutler has done for this page is wonderful. I applaud both the effort he has put forth and the quality of his work. Fine job! -DoctorW 20:15, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Wow. This page is immeasurably better than the bloated blob of a page that formerly attempted to encompass social psychology and sociology's version thereof. Hooray, Nick, Jcbutler, et al!!! --Anon.

I think jcbutler deserves much of the credit. His contributions to this page are the primary reason for its excellent quality. -Nick^talk 23:46, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I must admit that I had plenty of help from Lewin, Festinger, Milgram, Latane, etc. And I want to keep reworking it and improving it, with anyone who wants to help. Thanks for the compliment though! Jcbutler 05:23, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Article "quality" status

I'm not too familiar with this process, and there are no criteria on the Assessment page, but this article is already better than a psychology article I read that was a "featured article" on Wikipedia. If anyone feels it falls short in some way, please mention desired improvements here. -DoctorW 02:54, 8 January 2007 (UTC).

Hi! An user wrote a peer review which features comments and tips to increase the quality of this article. You can read it here.Frédérick Lacasse 21:36, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the constructive input. I just completed some initial, cosmetic changes in response, and I agree that the article needs to be more extensively referenced. Does it actually need footnotes though? I thought APA (or Harvard) style was considered equally good here. I'm not sure how to address the "weasel words" as psychology tends to use a lot of qualifiers because our predictions are never exact or singly caused. We can go over the wording regarding this, and the references will surely help. We may also have to break up the sections a bit more, e.g. attitudes and persuasion, self and self-justification, interpersonal phenomena. --Jcbutler 22:34, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

The peer review has been written by a semi-bot created by AndyZ, thus some advices might not be applicable for this article. Maybe more accurate comments will follow on the peer review page. If not, you can take a look on this page for FA guidelines and other interresting (and useful) links. Frédérick Lacasse 00:11, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

About "Famous experiments" subsection

According to me, this too "listy" subsection is maybe one of this article's (small) weaknesses. Maybe it should be all merged to the History subsection or each experiment to its related concept in the Areas of social psychology subection. What do you think about this idea? Frédérick Lacasse 00:52, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

That list is one of the remaining pieces of content from the page as it existed prior to the split between sociology and psychology. It is a bit listy, but some of those experiments are highly notable, and not easy to integrate with the other sections. I wouldn't necessarily be averse to a revision though. I've got another review in progress by User:Zaui so I'd like to wait for his response before making any major organizational changes.

Another issue, by the way, is the placement of cognitive dissonance in the "self" section. I did this because I think the theory fits there, and for the sake of economy of presentation, but not all social psychologists would agree. There are several competing theories to explain dissonance. The significance of the self-concept and/or self-affirmation is perhaps the most popular view, but not quite a consensus. This is something that should be detailed on the cognitive dissonance page.

As long as I'm posting here, I've been giving some renewed thought to the social psychology disambiguation page. I think the split was a good idea, but what do the rest of you think about making social psychology (psychology) the main social psychology page, with a disambiguation phrase refering people to social psychology (sociology)? Most social psychology is done by psychologists, so it would make sense to have this be the default page. --Jcbutler 15:04, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Discussion about the move

I have made an official request to move Social psychology (psychology) to Social psychology. Please state your position and reasons here, but note that discussion is also taking place at Talk:Social psychology.

• I support the move because social psychology is primarily a branch of psychology, along with personality psychology, developmental psychology, etc. Most of the people that work in this field are psychologists, and most of their work is published in psychology journals. I do not believe that sociological social psychology is any less valid, but they employ concepts (e.g. social structures) and methods that are not frequently used in psychological social psychology. As is the typical case on Wikipedia, I think that the psychological branch should be the main page, with a disambiguation statement at the top directing people to the sociological branch as an alternative. --Jcbutler 21:08, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

There is no consensus on the other page, so I withdraw my proposal. --Jcbutler 22:24, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

request for comments

On race and intelligence, please [2] Slrubenstein | Talk 16:29, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Self-concept section

Breaking apart self-schema as cognitive from self-esteem as evaluative is a disputed issue in the literature (see Self-Esteem: Issues and Answers, Ed. Kernis, M.H., 2006). Self-esteem is a cognition about the self - "I am a good person", and self-schema are emotion-laden - "I care a lot about some of my attributes".

Also disputed in the literature is the idea that self-esteem is a basic human motivation. Some self-esteem researchers don't even believe self-esteem is a valuable construct (see Baumeister et al., 2003 for a review). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.113.119.192 (talk) 20:54, 12 March 2007 (UTC).

Self-concept is one area of study within the Self and Identity subdiscipline of Social Psychology. In addition to research on the self-concept, social psychologists study the self's active processes, such as self-control and self-presentation. This section should be re-written so as to highlight the main area of research interest (Self and Identity) and then the major subdisciplines and theories within the area. Nicolemead (talk) 16:28, 18 August 2008 (UTC)Nicolemead

OK Nicole, I just paraphrased what you said and stuck it in there ;). I also softened the language about the self-concept being divisible into self-schema and self-esteem. Personally, I like this conceptual breakdown-- it's a traditional and useful distinction between thought and affect-- but I'm open to other interpretations. The section could still use some work, though anyone who is seriously interested in these topics might want to put their efforts into the main self-concept article. --Jcbutler (talk) 23:40, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Change to Footnote Reference Format

I think it's time we move the article over to Wikipedia's standard reference format rather than the semi-APA style that we have now. As such, any articles/sources listed in the current reference section should be cited somewhere in the article. -Nick^talk 21:30, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia has two recommended ways of doing references. Footnotes and Harvard referencing [3], which APA style is a variant of. It would probably be a lot easier to convert to standard Harvard referencing, but I don't see any burning need to go with one or the other. Certainly User:SandyGeorgia's criticism that the article is uncited is not warranted, so I am reverting back to the previous quality rating.

By the way, the new section on interpersonal perception is interesting, but I wonder if it is mainstream enough to warrant such coverage in this article. This terminology is not any of the social psychology textbooks I checked, and that is a good benchmark for what should go into this article. Maybe a brief mention and then give it an entry of its own? --Jcbutler 17:26, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

I didn't want to change the reference format because it seemed like unnecessary work, but I think Nick might be right about this. It looks like footnotes are becoming the preferred citation method, and they avoid the occasional problem of content being revised or removed and unused references left hanging around. So who wants to do the conversion? Any volunteers? Maybe if everyone did three references... --Jcbutler (talk) 22:28, 18 April 2008 (UTC)