Elliot Aronson's interesting and thought-provoking article does social psychology a favor. By calling attention our field's low interest in relatively broad and integrative theoretical generalizations, it will, I hope, help spur researchers cast their conceptual nets more widely over a range of problems and issues now slighted by discipline. In total agreement with observations that Trish Devine and I published some time ago (Berkowitz & Devine, 1989), Aronson notes that there is more payoff for analysis than for in contemporary experimental social psychology. The field seems be far more oriented toward the careful delineation and differentiation of [its] theoretical concepts and propositions than toward expansion of these formulations in hope of accounting for apparently disparate phenomena, and as a consequence, social psychological theories may not be as efficiently integrative as they otherwise could be. This is not say that social psychologists focus exclusively on detailed examination of particular effects and/or concepts (such as, say, priming or availability heuristic). Some investigators have broadened their theoretical horizons beyond these fine-grained issues or other specific questions (e.g., whether violent scenes in mass media can promote aggressive behavior or whether people give greater weight feature positive information than diagnostic information in testing their initial hypotheses about other persons) and have developed conceptual schemes that can apply a broader variety of situations. Some examples in addition self-affirmation and selfverification conceptions Aronson mentions are Petty and Cacioppo (1986) elaboration likelihood model and Tesser's (1988) self-evaluation maintenance model. Nevertheless, many of these schemes are usually confined a fairly narrow social psychological domain, such as (in these latter two cases) persuasion and attitude change or social comparisons, and even self-affirmation and self-verification formulations are not nearly as ambitious and far-ranging as dissonance theory. Before going further I should spell out more clearly just what is meant by synthesis. This notion involves more than mere extension of one's theoretical ideas over a wide variety of situations (although this was only aspect explicitly discussed by Berkowitz and Devine). Swann's (1990) self-verification conception is not necessarily truly synthetic simply because its central thesis is stretched over many different types of actions and sees people frequently striving confirm their views of themselves. As Aronson indicates, a true synthesis is theoretically rich in meaning. The Grand Unified Theory that physicists are seeking develop is a truly synthetic formulation because it acknowledges different physical forces at same time that it attempts account for them as separate manifestations of a more general, unified field. Aronson's version of dissonance theory has same quality, he contends, because it encompasses three different self-motivations-the wish see oneself as competent and as morally good as well as desire have a predictable sense of self-and thus is richer and more integrative than other formulations focusing on only one of these strivings. The physicists' theorizing offers some lessons that I believe are instructive for social psychology. Most obvious, Grand Unified Theory that is ultimately formulated will explicitly specify conditions under which separate physical forces operate. Psychological theories must provide much same kind of analytic detail. Aronson points out how necessary it is for scientists to painstakingly find conditions under which one or other [theoretically expected reaction] is more likely occur (in this case, conditions under which individual will seek out selfenhancement or stability). Dissonance theory date has not identified these conditions. It does not tell us clearly and precisely just when separate self-strivings arise and what are factors that influence their strengths. An adequate theory of self must do this. Physical theorizing is a good model for us in another way. Maxwell's efforts construct a theory of electromagnetism did not focus on establishing boundary conditions limiting operation of magnetism but on variables influencing strength of magnetic field. Similarly, physicists seeking a unified field theory are concentrating on variables affecting electromagnetic, strong, and weak forces rather than on separate and unique properties of these forces. Social psychologists employing now-prevalent analytic perspective seem be following a very different research strategy, typically aimed at defining boundary conditions within which their favored theoretical conception should be confined. In essence, many of them appear be taking a yes-or-no categorical approach rather than a continuum approach, saying, in effect, that phenomenon of interest them has certain defining attributes and occurs only when these attributes are clearly present. Dissonance theory research in past several decades has been especially prone taking this categorical view. Instead of envisioning their task as identification of factors governing magnitude of experienced discomfort and/or reaction that occurs (continuum questions), most investigators have asked what conditions presumably are necessary for arousal of cognitive dissonance. And so, taking only two examples, Brehm and Cohen (1962) held