Sociology: A Lost Connection in Social Psychology

Abstract

For the first half of the 20th century, sociology was one of the closest allies of social psychology. Over the past four decades, however, the connection with sociology has weakened, whereas new connections with neighboring disciplines (e.g., biology, economics, political science) have formed. Along the way, the sociological perspective has been largely lost in mainstream social psychology in the United States. Most social psychologists today are not concerned with collective phenomena and do not investigate social structural factors (e.g., residential mobility, socioeconomic status, dominant religion, political systems). Even when the social structural factors are included in the analysis, psychologists typically treat them as individual difference variables. Sociologist C. Wright Mills famously promoted sociological imagination, or the ability to see distal yet important social forces operating in a larger societal context. By comparing sociological perspectives to psychological perspectives, this article highlights the insights that the sociological perspective and sociological imagination can bring to social psychology.

Afterword to the Special Issue on Knowledge in Practice

“…Although one of the distinctive features of this line of inquiry is a blending of philosophical and empirical concerns, reflecting the broader turn toward cognitive science on the part of philosophers that is revolutionizing subfields like philosophy of mind, rarely has it been informed by sociological investigation. Research by "cognitive sociologists" like Cerulo and Zerbuavel has been carried out at arms length from work on situated cognition, despite the thematic overlaps (Oishi et al 2009; some of Vaisey's work is an exception), while sociological theorists writing about embodied knowledge have often assumed epistemic embodiment rather than exploring its empirical contours (though there are exceptions here too, like Wacquant). To this body of work Pagis brings a healthy dose of sociological empiricism.…”

The Psychology of Anomie

“…Just as importantly, bringing this classic concept under closer scrutiny and developing a scale to measure it is an important first step for further theory building on how the state of society affects individuals (for a similar argument, see Oishi et al, 2009). …”

“…Given that collective-level phenomena cannot be understood solely by studying individuallevel processes and outcomes (Tajfel, 1982;Turner, 2006; see also David & Bar-Tal, 2009, Oishi, Kesebir, & Snyder, 2009, we argue that an appropriate measure of anomie must distinguish between the collective-level phenomenon of anomie from its individual-level outcomes.…”

“…A social psychological approach seems to be ideally suited to such a dynamic approach as it studies individuals within a social context (Oishi, Kesebir, & Snyder, 2009;Passas, 1995). Utilizing a social psychological approach to understand anomie would also help us to distinguish anomie from its psychological outcomes.…”

“…As a discipline, psychology specializes in understanding the interaction of individuals and their social contexts, including how individuals respond to broader socio-structural change (see Oishi, Kesebir, & Snyder, 2009;Tajfel, 1982). Nonetheless psychologists do not as yet have a solid theoretical paradigm from which to understand societies that are crumbling.…”