The Problem of the Concept in Social Psychology

Abstract

Ill-defined and ambiguous concepts are detrimental to definitive theorizing and probative research. Current proposals for meeting this problem are inadequate. To avoid all concepts which are vague and to confine one's self to the quest for exact data and their interrelations is to depart from the actual problems. Merely to discard currently used concepts and to secure new ones brings us back to the same problem. The "operational definition" omits the vital part of the original reference, for the content revelated in the "operational" procedure has by virtue of the operation no conten, and hence the conceptualized item cannot be studied. Another suggestion is that definitions of concepts be legislated after critical analysis of their variant usages; being a purely lexicographical procedure, this effort remains unrelated to empirical experience. Each of the foregoing proposals seeks to handle the problem by avoiding it. Facing the problem requires investigation into the peculiar difficulties involved in applying concepts to human conduct. The observer of human conduct can readily indentify physical action, but the social aspect of that action cannot be reduced to a physical act. Although the nature of the social aspect of the act may be termed an inference, the crucial question is not whether the observation has an inferential character but whether the inference can be validated. It is in that field of human conduct where there is minimal consensus regarding valild inferences that the problem of the ambiguity of concepts becomes most apparent. Many of the primary and basic observations of human conduct are necessarily a matter of judgment and inference. The answer to the problem is not to repudiate such observations but to improve them by enriching the experience of observers so that more dependable judgments may be made.