Social Psychology from the Standpoint of a Structural Symbolic Interactionism: Toward an Interdisciplinary Social Psychology

Abstract

Publisher Summary Social psychology is ideology and relates to the way human beings are conceptualized. This chapter discusses the structural symbolic interactionaism and developments in the two social psychologies. The common developments and developments in psychological and sociological social psychology are reviewed in the chapter. The ultimate end of an interdisciplinary social psychology and the more immediate goals of maintaining contact and benefitting from one another obviously require that the separate social psychologies be open to mutual influence. There are two main social psychologies with important internal variants––one with a disciplinary base in psychology and the other in sociology. The attack on the theories and methods of contemporary sociological and psychological social psychology that asserts their ideological character follows closely from what has already been said about relevance. The social psychologies have, of course, been criticized from a variety of metatheoretical perspectives implying very different conceptions of human beings, of social interaction, and of society.