Main economic and political influences on Social Psychology in 20th Century

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What are the main political and economic influences on the development of social psychology during the 20th century especially with reference to 1925 onwards and how have these affected the area or focus of study by social psychologists?

-- Caroline Aston (aston51@freenet.co.uk), April 24, 2001

Answers

Hi Caroline, that's a good question, reminds me of take-home exam questions a prof. of mine used to write. 75 years is a fairly big spread, a lot of social psychology went on, surely too much to cover here. After 1925? You could begin by looking into labor/union politics and psychology research into worker satisfaction. That meets your requirements of politics & economics & social psychology. You might look at some of the Columbia sociologists, Merton or Gouldner? and see what they were doing. Then of course there was WWII, that was at least political, and with regard to it you could look to Kurt Lewin who was at the University of Iowa making big advancements in techniques of social psychology. Also look at the Millgaurd studies addressing athority and submission. A college library ougth to have the past editions of the Handbook of Social Psychology, usually chapter 1 is a historical review. I think there was a journal of 'social psychology and abnormal personality' which you could briefly scan. In the time frame you are working in, social psychology and industrial organizational psychology and personality psychology are all closely related fields so you will have to define your thesis carefully. I hope there is something in the above that helps you out a little. Best, David

-- david clark (doclark@yorku.ca), April 25, 2001.

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