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CRISIS IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY:

THE RELEVANCE OF RELEVANCE


IRWIN SILVERMAN J
University of Florida

Let us reflect first on the reasons why social


F the trend of the 1970s continues, this era in
the social sciences and elsewhere may be called psychologists have not provided much data that are
the "age of relevance." The demands for relevant to social ills. Is it because we have not
relevance made on our discipline are mere particles engaged in the study of appropriate issues? Peruse
of a larger national movement, but psychologists the major headings in the index of any social psyand especially social psychologists are particularly chology textbook and note the topics that have
vulnerable to them. Thus, the working social psy- occupied us for the past 30 or so yearsaffiliation,
chologist is confronted by pressures from below aggression, attitudes and attitude changes, eomhis undergraduate and graduate students who oc- munication, competition, conformity, decision makcupy the center of the movementand abovehis ing, group dynamics, impression formation, intergranting agencies who have one after another given group relations, leadership, negotiation, persuasion,
the message that proposals related directly to cur- prejudice, social power, socialization, and the like.
rent social problems have the inside track. Re- One could hardly construct a list with more posponses to these pressures, in perspective of the tential social relevance.
If the multitude of social-psychological findings
customary snail-like evolution of scientific movecannot aid the planners of society, it is apparently
ments, have been instantaneous and massive.
To illustrate: 1 was given the task not long ago not because we have been researching the wrong
of finding a "community social psychologist" to topics. It must be that our data are not generalizadd to our faculty. As I wandered through conven- able to the objects of our studies in their natural,
tion lobbies on my Diogeneslike quest, all I did ongoing states. This is a basic inadequacy of
find was a lot of other people looking for the same methodology rather than direction, and it will not be
kind of bird. Everyone seemed as vague as I resolved by pontifical edicts from any source about
about what the species looked like or where it what to study and where.
Such edicts, in fact, may compound the disaster.
nested.
According
to Koch (1969), the proliferation of
I am confident, though, that the slack will soon
pseudo-knowledge
within psychology can be atbe taken up by Zeitgeist-minded young PhDs, not
tributed
to
our
past
nai've acquiescence to externally
yet contaminated by published laboratory research,
imposed
mandates.
"Psychology," he says, "was
who will accrue to themselves the label and its
unique in the extent to which its institutionalization
attendant benefits. I wonder, however, if programs
preceded its content [p. 64]." It is the only diswill then each acquire one "community man" so
cipline that did not achieve status as a separate
that the less relevant members can continue to science by the nature of its contributions; rather it
watch undergraduate subjects on closed-circuit tele- was "created by edict," "stipulated into life v on
vision monitors in renewed peace, albeit with lighter the unquestioned assumption that the epistemobudgets.
logical strategies appropriate to the established
It seems like a peculiar way for science to natural sciences were equally fitting to the study
proceed, and it certainly seems to be a time for of human behavior.
The result has been a persistent, slavish obsession
sober reflection.
to
fit the study of behavior into existent models
1
Requests for reprints should be sent to Irwin Silverman,
Department of Psychology, University of Florida, Gaines- of other experimental sciences. This has caused us
to give selective inattention to the most important,
ville, Florida 32601.

583

AM KIUCA N PSYCHOLOGIST
but pithy, facet of behavioral research, the "ecological validity" (see Brunswick, .1947) of our
observations, that is, their generalizability outside of
the experiment proper. And if this "generalization
gap" permeates all areas of psychological inquiry,
it is perhaps most visible in social psychology.
.But. the past decade has offered encouragement
for a way out of our dilemma, in the form of a
viable, widespread movement within social psychology. Heralded by the discoveries of Orne,
Rosenthal, Rosenberg, and others (reviewed in
Rosenthal & Rosnow, 1969) on the many sources
of artifact in human psychological research, the
movement has led to extensive recvaluations of
methods and data in such traditional areas of
social psychology as conformity (Schulman, 1967;
Strieker, Mcssick, & Jackson, 1967), group dynamics (Criswell, 1958; Mills, 1965), and attitude
change (Silverman & Shulman, 1970). The core
concept of the movement is that the model of psychological subject as object that has pervaded our
research since postintrospectionist times is painfully
flawed, and the data we acquire may relate very
much to the motives and feelings and thoughts of
subjects about their role in the experiment and
very little to their lives outside of it.
This movement deals also with the issue of "relevance," but in the broader, scientifically credible
sense of the relevance oj data to the construct to
which they pertain. U, too, seeks more valid research models for social psychology, but it does not
attempt this by assumption or edict, but by painstaking conceptual and empirical analyses of the
deficits of the present model. Thus, the "new
social psychology," if we are allowed one chance
to develop from within, may well lead to the
direct study of social problems in some cases and at
some stages, but it may as readily lead to improved
methods for studying the more basic questions
that have traditionally absorbed us, perhaps along
the lines of nonreactive strategies as discussed by
Webb, Campbell, Schwartz, and Sechrcst (1966).
It may lead, too, to models for social research that
are not yet apparent.
The critical point is that the movement from
within should not be distracted or hampered by
the movement from without. I f we have learned

nothing else, we ought to be aware that a science


cannot begin to build meaningfully by accepting
externally imposed prescriptions for its procedures
and problems.
We must impress those who woidd direct us that
we cannot achieve relevance in their sense until we
achieve it in ours. ff we do not acquire the
insights to generate social-psychological data that
are veridical to behavior outside of the specific research paradigms from which they were spawned,
we will find that it is just as easy to proliferate
pseudo-knowledge about social problems as anything else.
Further, scientific value and instrumental value
in social psychology are inexorably tied. Given
the topics we do study, once our data have relevance
in the larger sense, it is inevitable that they will be
relevant in the narrower sense, to today's social
problems and those of tomorrow.
REFERENCES
BRUNSWICK, E.
Systematic and representative design of
psychological experiments with results in physical and
social perception. (Syllabus Scries No. 304) Berkeley:
University o[ California Press, 1947.
CKISWELI,, J. IT. The psychologist as perceiver. In R.
Tagiuri & L. Pelrullo (Eds.), Person perception and
interpersonal behavior.
Stanford: Stanford Universify
Press, 1958.
Kocir, S. Psychology cannot be a coherent science. Psychology Today, 1969, 3, 14, 64-08.
Mm.s, T. M.
Social psychology.
The observer, the
experimenter, and the group. In VV. E. Vinacke (Chm.),
Ethical and methodological problems in social psychological research. Symposium presented at the meeting
of the American Psychological Association, Chicago,
September 1965.
KosiiNTjrAi,, R., & ROSNOW, R. T,. (Eds.) Artifact- in behumoral research. New York: Academic Press, 1969.
S C I L U I / M A N , G. 1. Asch conformity studies: Conformity
to the experimenter and/or to the group. Sociomel-ry,
196V, 30, 26-40.
SII.VEK.MAN, I., & STIULMAN, A. D. A conceptual model of
artifact in altitude change studies. Sociometry, 1970,
33, 97-107.
STKICKEK, L. J., MESSICK, S., & JACKSON, D. N. Suspicion
of deception: Implications for conformity research. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1967, S, 379389.
WKIIU, E., CAMPBELL, I). T., SCHWARTZ, R. D., & SECUREST,
!. Jnoblrusive measures: Nonreactive research in the
social sciences.
Chicago: Rand-McNally, 1966.

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