Social beliefs and intergroup relations: the relevance of some sociological perspectives

Abstract

Abstract To assimilate information is to organize it. There may perhaps exist highly structured scientific domains in which the explanatory principles used by researchers are sufficient in themselves to produce an ordering of all new information applicable to these domains. At first sight, however, this does not appear to apply to social psychology: the enormous mass of new information which accumulates each year in various journals, essay collections, and monographs is widely disparate. Nevertheless, certain major themes, such as differentiation and group formation, or autonomy and interdependence in interpersonal relations, do permit some organization of this particular area in the social sciences. Furthermore, these different polar themes are complementary, since in-depth investigation of one of these themes entails reference to its opposite; there can be no group formation without differentiation, no interdependence of individuals without autonomy and vice versa (see Doise et al. 1978).Another way of organizing the vast amount of research in social psychology takes into account the nature of the explanatory principles involved as well: these are the explanatory principles which relate to an individual’s organizational processes, to interpersonal dynamics, to asymmetrical social positioning in the context of social relations, and to the impact of social norms and representations. Elsewhere (Doise 1984) I have already demonstrated how important this distinction of levels of analysis is if we wish to account for the specificity of different studies of intergroup relations. It should also be remembered that we have distinguished among these four levels of analysis only so that we may demonstrate the need to articulate them at a theoretical level.