The concept of American social psychology as a cooperating, unitary community of scholars is hogwash; the true view is much more akin to the popular image of the American Indian “hostile” of the turn of the century—cooperation among ill-defined coalitions of tribes, competition for scarce resources (money and page space), and brutal, primitive war strategies. This paper makes two points: (1) it illustrates these assertions and (2) it illustrates one successful melding of several components of social psychology into theory and data. This is a theory that is unlikely to have been constructed from any single traditional subtopic in social psychology. When a hyperactive stimulus boy is construed in the laboratory to be salient (e.g., loud) or nonsalient (e.g., soft), the “salient” stimulus boy is seen as hyperactive in all respects (e.g., “restless and overactive,” “disturbs other people,” “mood changes quickly,” etc.) (Collins, 1981). Yet journal of Personality and Social Psychology psychologists, who cut their teeth on different conceptions of “salience,” deny the conceptual parallels. This is in spite of the fact that both operational definitions of “salience” draw attention and thus share the central definitional component of “salience.” Best to sign your treaties with a single tribe if you want to survive the winter.