European Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 16, 3-15 (1 986)

Forum and focus: A personal view of European Social Psychology

JOS JASPARS' Department of Expertmentat Psychology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3VD. U.K.2

Abstract

The article presents a personal history of European social psychology as advanced by the European Association of Experimental Social Psychology during the last twenty years. It is argued that this association did indeed create a new forum for European social psychologists through organizing summerschools, general meetings, workshops, east-west conferences and through the foundation of a scientific journal and a series of monographs. The Association may also have promoted a different perspective in social psychological research by emphasizing more the collective nature of social behaviour rather than interpersonal processes and by favouring substance over method.

A PORTRAIT OF EUROPEAN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

A year or two ago I reviewed for this journal the collection of studies and essays by Henri Tajfel on Human Groups and Social Categories which had just been published by Cambridge University Press (Tajfel, 1981). In the review I described the book as the autobiography of Henri Tajfel as social psychologist, because the nature of his research was so intimately related with his personal experiences in life.

In trying to sketch a portrait of European social psychology in this article I would like to present an equally personal view. My reasons for preferring a personal portrait rather than a detached analysis is not that I regard my personal opinion of particular importance but the fact that my academic career and my research have been determined to a very large extent by the development of European social psychology during the last two decades. Whether it was by participating in summerschools, workshops, east-west exchanges and general conferences or by being involved in editing a variety of European publications, I have done so because I believed that social psychology needed another forum, intellectually independent from the one provided by our colleagues in the U.S. Provincialism of the mind is the kiss of death for any field of intellectual endeavour, however large that province is. Progress in psychology and the social sciences has generally

'Now deceased. 2Repnnts obtainable from Ann McKardry at above address.

0046-2772/86/010003-13$05.30 0 1986 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 5 November 1984

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thrived in a cosmopolitan atmosphere as Deutsch, Senghaas and Platt (1971) have shown. It is perhaps worth quoting Boring at this point, because he had a deep knowledge of the history of psychology and devoted an interesting study to the value of controversy in science. He wrote:

‘After much thought about the matter I have come reluctantly to the conclusion that scientific truth, like juristic truth, must come about by controversy. Personally this view is abhorrent to me. It seems to mean that scientific truth must transcend the individual, that the best hope of science lies in its greatest minds being often brilliantly and determindedly wrong, but in opposition with some third, eclectically minded, middle of the road nonentity seizing the price while the great fight for it, running off with it and sticking it into a text book for sophomores written from no point of view and in defence of nothing whatsoever. I hate this view, for it is not dramatic and it is not fair; and yet I believe it is the verdict of the history of science’ (Boring, 1929, p. 98).

If this is indeed the verdict of history one can understand why Boring concludes that we cannot afford to condemn controversy be it ever so emotional. The only consolation Boring has to offer to assuage the personal pain and social conflict which so often are a part of scientific controversies, is to cultivate a dissociation of our personalities so that we can be our own judges and prosecutors. European social psychology has been accused of biting the American hand that fed it (Israel and Tajfel, 1972), but with the benefit of hindsight it seems clear that American social psychology often functioned as a strawman in the process of creating another forum and focus for social psychology.

That at least was the explicitely stated aim of the European Journal of Social Psychology. The journal ‘is intended’, the editors wrote, ‘as a source of information about current empirical research and new theoretical developments. It is of course recognized that the several national journals dealing with social psychology serve a valuable function, but by their very nature they cannot contribute much towards the cross-fertilization this new journal aspires to and which hopefully may lead both to closer cooperation across national boundaries and to a general strengthening of social psychology in Europe’ (Editorial, 1971, 1, 5 ) . The editors added later on in their statement that the term ‘European’ in the title was not meant to be narrowly restrictive either in terms of contents or contributors. I have often been asked what is European about European social psychology and I usually retort by askmg what is British about the British Museum. It would seem to me that the objectives of cooperation and strengthening of social psychology in Europe provide sufficient justification for the founding of a journal, association or bookseries under that name, but the suggestion that the focus and not just the forum might be different still leaves us with perhaps the most important question, which is to what extent there is something special about the recent developments in European social psychology.

Having been at the forum of European social psychology for the last twenty years I would like to record my experiences and then reflect upon the different focus which might be present there.

Forum and focus 5

THE EUROPEAN FORUM

The short history of the European Association has been described before (Tajfel, 1972; Jaspars, 1980; Doise, 1982) in various presidential addresses of the Association, but such accounts are of necessity rather impersonal.

My first attendance at a conference of the European Assocition was in 1966 at Royaumont. There had been meetings before in Sorrento in 1963 and in Frascati in 1964. Even an east-west meeting in Vienna and a research training seminar or summerschool in the Hague had been organized in 1965. However, the meeting at Royaumont has been regarded as the first official plenary conference of the Association. Still, the prehistoncal events of the Association were important because those had brought together in Royaumont for the first time a large group of European social psychologists. In my case the prehistory consisted of a short visit to the Hague summerschool where, as I remember it, one of the groups was subjecting Mulder’s power distance theory to a critical test. I still recall vividly the excited and Babylonian discussions that went on, and the surprise I experienced because Mulder was a leading figure in Dutch social psychology at the time. I think that what fired our imagination most at that time was the fact that we were discussing a thoroughly European theory. This was no American Import. Even though Mulder used an experimental paradigm that had been developed in the States, the fundamental theoretical notions came straight out of a European philosophical tradition as exemplified by the work of Hobbes and Nietsche. People in those communication experiments were not simply looking for self realization, but they seemed to have a ‘restless desire of power after power’. It is less important that subsequent research has put several question marks behind Mulder’s theory (Brinkman, 1977; Extra, 1983); what is of some significance, it seems to me, is that Mulder’s research shifted the focus of the research on communication networks not by rejecting the form of an experimental approach but by imbuing it with a totally different social, philosophical and theoretical substance.

I have dwelled upon this first memory at some length because I believe that similar transformations have occurred more often. Let me illustrate this with another personal experience from the prehistorical period. In the early sixties I had been trained, like so many other members of the European Association, in the US. and I came back full of knowledge about multivariate analysis, data theory and multidimensional scaling. Henri Tajfel then invited me to participate in what must have been one of the first joint European research projects (see Tajfel, 1981; chapter 9). I delighted in applying some of the new multidimensional scaling techniques I had learned to the Dutch part of the study (see Jaspars, van der Geer, Tajfel and Johnson, 1973), and I remember feeling rather proud that the Dutch study was so much more technically sophisticated than the other parts of the project. It took another 15 years before I realized that I had missed a very important point. In the study I had measured the preferential judgements of children by constructing Thurstone scales using the method of paired comparisons. Comparing age groups I was able to show that preference for one’s own country was the first one to be differentiated from the preferences for other countries and I interpreted this result in terms of individual cognitive development. It was many years later when Colin Fraser, on the way to another European activity, explained to me that attitudes should be regarded as social representations in the sense of

6 Jos Jaspars

Moscovici and hence should be expected to differentiate better between social groups than between individuals within social groups (Jaspars and Fraser, 1984). It suddenly dawned upon me that Thurstone scales made the implicit assumption that individual cognitive processes could be equated with collective representations by substituting in the CaseV variation of the Law of Comparative judgements replications of stimulus presentations by replications over subjects. What I had interpreted as cognitive differentiation was in fact an increase in agreement between subjects. A minor technical change turned out to be a matter of theoretical substance to which Moscovici has already drawn attention in a general way (Moscovici, 1963). The study of social representations does not require a radically different methodology. It is the change in interpretation which seems to make the difference.

The early incidents in the development of European social psychology were indicative of what was to come. When we met at the first official plenary conference in Royaumont American social psychology was still very much in evidence. When Germaine de Montmollin described Leon Festinger in a splendid farewell speech as the Pope of Social Psychology she hit the (association) nail on the head. Intellectually and financially the Association was still very dependent on help from our American colleagues. I remember making an interaction diagram of the participants, which produced a splendid status hierarchy with the American visitors at the top. Still we got to know each other as well. Being interested in cognitive consistency theory at the time, I was quite eager to seek the opinion of Claude Flament, whose work impressed me very much. His application of graph theory to social psychological problems, which was ahead of American work (Flament, 1963; Harary, Norman and Cartwright, 1965), seemed to offer the possibility of a sophisticated formalization of Heider’s balance theory, but it was at variance with the mental representation model I had suggested (Eiser, 1980). Talking to Flament I discovered not only that he understood my approach, but that he shared my reservation about the ‘logical’ nature of the balance model. This first meeting of minds led to a European workshop in Aussois two years later and to a research group m the Konstanz summerschool, which in turn was followed by a symposium in the same place on social judgement, marking the beginning of several authentic and original lines of research (see European Journal of Social Psychology, 1971, 1-4). I could illustrate similar developments with different examples, but perhaps the most important advance was made at the summerschool which was held in Leuven in 1967. Comparing the various summerschools which have been held in the past twenty years the summerschool of Leuven occupies a special place, at least in my memory.

It was not just the splendid old world elegance and style which surrounded the summerschool, nor the fabulous facilities and well-oiled organization supporting the scientific activities, which made it such a special occasion. What fascinated me most was the opportunity I had as Associate Dean’ to observe social psychological research in the making. I planned to write a Iengthy study based on my observations, but as Festinger predicted, nothing, apart from a short report, came of it. Still I have never realized as vividly as on that occasion how much is missing in the reports of our research in monographs and scientific journals of what is actually

*A grand title signifying that I was too old to be a student and too young to be a member of staff.

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going on when one plans, conducts and analyses an experimental study. It is not that we try to hide the truth from the reader in order to save our pet theories, although I realize that this must happen to some extent. No I am referring to differences in style which are entirely legitimate within the confines of scientific rigour. Here are some examples. They are first impressions and are not meant to be more than that. One of my treasured possessions is a photograph of the design of the experiment on deindividualization conducted by Zimbardo’s group. It fills the length and height of a large blackboard. Running the experiment itself was a major operation requiring complicated logistics. I am using these pseudomilitary terms on purpose, because I can still see Phil Zimbardo standing on the observation bridge above the experimental cubicles in the Leuven laboratory signalling to his students when they had to act. Like a captain on a ship or a director on a film set he ran the show. It was great fun but the results of the study were disappointing since the experiment was run with groups of six subjects at a time. Variance between sessions overwhelmed any differences between experimental conditions. As Bob Zajonc remarked afterwards, ‘It all depends on how much variance you put into your design with your big mouth’. Not that he had any more luck with his group. As anyone who is familiar with both Zajonc’s and Zimbardo’s research can guess, their style of experimenting was radically different. The social facilitation study his group conducted lacked the excitement and the flamboyance of the Zimbardo circus, but it still had its moments of drama, which normally were overcome by holding on firmly to the theory but improvising at the instrumental level. Interference from distracting noises between cubicles was overcome by putting a fan in each one, drowning any unwanted sound from outside. Still, as far as I remember, they were defeated by a totally unexpected factor which shows the dangers of using a limited population in psychological experiments. As a dependent measure in the social facilitation experiment planned, reaction times were used. Since a subject does not have to be able to read or write to push a button it was thought that a group of illiterate soldiers which the Belgian army supplied could be used. It turned out that their R.T.’s were ten times longer than any reported in the literature wiping out any effects of the presence of others.

Even more different from Zimbardo’s group was the research team led by Rommetveit. For four of the five weeks of the summerschool one might have considered whether there was anything going to happen at all. The group seemed capable of endless discussion which sometimes reached esoterical and metapsychological heights which must have been totally incomprehensible to a casual visitor. However towards the end of the penultimate week, it all seemed to come together; two experiments were designed in rapid sequence; they were carried out in one day and the write up and analysis was accomplished in the next few days. The success of the group led to another meeting in Oslo in 1968 and eventually the two experiments which were published as part of the first volume of the European Monographs.

I think that what I observed in Leuven at the time were three quite different styles of experimenting reflecting fundamentally different views of experimentation. Zajonc and Rommetveit seemed to be concerned with what Campbell has called internal validity. They and their groups tried to make a theoretical point and were searching for the best way to create the right conditions to show the effect they were interested in. Zimbardo and Rabbi on the other hand

8 Jos Jaspars

were constantly busy trying to create a social world in miniature for which external validity was of the greatest importance. But what about Kelley and Gerard, the remaining two team leaders? They seemed to occupy an intermediate position being equally concerned with both external and internal validity in a unique fashion. It seemed as if they did not have an overriding theoretical conviction like Zajonc and Rommetveit, nor could one recognize in their experiments such broad social issues as Zimbardo and Rabbi were concerned with (aggression, prejudice), but previous experiments in game theory or dissonance theory constituted their external reality and they used the experimental approach as a way of thinking about such problems. Kelley’s group for example, could study a particular article and after discussing the study at length, they would usually get stuck. At such a moment, someone, usually Kelley, would suggest a simple experiment which they then would try out on themselves and sure enough some new idea would emerge. The group continued in this way by trial and insight until they got the design right and were able to carry out a crucial experiment with respect to a previous study. Gerard’s group seemed to work in a similar way except that they seemed to be concerned with instrumentational variations. ‘What if we had a wire running from here into the corner’, Gerard would say. It seemed to work except for an occasional subject who was forgotten in the process and had to spend 14 hours with Festinger’s and Carlsmith’s boring task of turning wooden slats around.2

What is perhaps most remarkable about these quite different ways of working is that there did not seem to be a clear distinction between the European and American group leaders. Style or basic concerns in experimentation did not seem to reflect national or geographical distinctions. Although all groups were following the same acceptable experimental approach, the problems they were concerned with seemed to introduce a different style of working bringing with it quite remarkable stylistic variations in procedure. The method of experimentation seemed to allow for a fair amount of diversity of approach, even though publications based on these studies may have been strikingly similar. Similarity in appearance may in fact hide differences of substance carrying with it the insipid danger that any publication which does not conform to the methodological prescripts of the dominant journals must be wrong and that those that do are also acceptable from the point of view of Science or society.

It is, I feel, one of the most important issues we must try to resolve. The problem manifests itself perhaps more clearly on the European forum than in American scientific journals. I still remember the horror I experienced when, as editor of the European Journul, I discovered that there was absolutely no correlation (r = 0.00) between the recommendations of the separate reviewers (after having received the first 40 independently reviewed manuscripts). Does this mean that what we do is purely chance? No, I do not think so. When I took a closer look at the various reviews I discovered that they rarely contained clear contradictions. Different reviewers would simply be concerned with different aspects of the same publication. After a while reviewers seemed to become rather predictable, different scientific traditions playing quite an important role in such discrepancies. French authors and reviewers by and large seemed to be more concerned with theory and ideas than with presentation of procedure and discussion of statistical analysis,

2He rated the task as very interesting!

Forum and focus 9

whereas English reviewers would put empirical content first and Germans the technical aspects of a study. It almost seems a caricature that fits national stereotypes, but it certainly creates problems for editors.

Similar differences can easily be observed in group meetings or summerschools of the Association. I remember for example, during a recent visit of Dutch social psychologists to Oxford how superior their knowledge of research design and statistical analysis was compared to the ability of British students in this respect. There seemed to be however one clear drawback. None of them had made much progress with their research, whereas the Oxford students with blissful ignorance of the statistical complexities had gone ahead and had some results which could at least be criticized.

During the last summerschool at Aix-en-Provence something similar could be observed in my own group. Initial discussions seemed to show quite rapidly who knew something about statistics. Not surprisingly German and Dutch participants appeared to be more familiar with and concerned about the possible methodological pitfalls, but it was an Italian member of the group who, despite the problem of being less able to communicate in English or French and handicapped by a lack of training in statistics, put her finger on the fundamental weakness of the study.

So far I have tried to determine in a personal way what the European forum in social psychology amounted to for one of its members. If the presidential addresses have not convinced perhaps everyone that there is such a thing as European social psychology, I hope that these personal notes have. I do not have to point out the obvious. After Leuven the association developed rapidly. The European Journal was founded; the European monographs followed; more east-west meetings were held; summerschools in Konstanz, Oxford and Aix-en-Provence were held; plenary conferences in Leuven, Bielefeld, Weimar, Sussex and Tilburg were organlzed; and a European laboratory with an associated series of European studies came into being. Quite a forum without any doubt. But how European is it? There is of course a difference in style. This may not be immediately obvious by comparing advanced monographs or journal publications but take a spate of European and American textbooks or introductions. The European textbooks have been criticized for being too demanding, not integrated enough or simply for being dull. American textbooks seem to show an ever-increasing tendency to trivialize the study of social behaviour by including more and more cartoons, which led me to propose once to a publisher that I should do a nonvetbaI introduction to social psychology consisting only of cartoons! The publisher liked the idea! Perhaps if the ultimate American introduction consists of cartoons, the ultimate European textbook might consist only of footnotes! But I digress; the real question is whether a concomitant difference in substance, a difference in focus, exists.

A DIFFERENT FOCUS

Colin Fraser and I have just completed the preparation of the two volumes edited by Henri Tajfel about European developments in social psychology (Tajfel, 1984). Although the two volumes are probably not a completely representative selection of European research in social psychology, with 33 chapters and 41 authors they

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present a fairly comprehensive view of current research in Western Europe, even though almost half of the contributions come from Great Britain. What we should be looking for, however, is to what extent the content of these volumes shows a trend or development away from what is to be found in American textbooks or handbooks of social psychology. As Henri Tajfel wrote in the introduction: ‘the mark of these developments has been their diversity . . . and yet, amidst the variation, there seems to exist a very general common denominator: in a phrase it can be referred to as the social dimension of European social psychology. . . . In much work-whatever its background, interests, theoretical approach or research directions-there has been a constant stress on the social and interactive aspects of our subject. Social psychology in Europe is today much more social than it was twenty years ago’ (Tajfel, 1984, page 1).

The perspective that the two volumes present consists of the view that social psychology can and must include a direct concern with the relationship between individual psychological functioning and large scale social processes which shape this functioning and are shaped by it. The integration of the study of the individual and society can take many different forms and it does in recent research. Traditionally social psychology has narrowed down the social world to the presence or absence of a few strangers in unfamiliar laboratory surroundings, but in the reports of current research authors are concerned with social interaction between parents and children, between friends, partners, husbands and wives. There used to be a time in social psychology when sex was regarded as an independent variable, now we talk about love and bereavement. One could argue that this change is not unique to developments in European social psychology and that is probably true. American research has led the way in this exodus from the laboratory. But the social dimension in European social psychology manifests itself in an even more radical sense. In the two volumes I am discussing there is a chapter on thinking about socio-economic systems in children, a chapter on social differentiation in the scientific community, a chapter on unemployment, on religion, on ideology and the last two sections of the second volume deal with group processes and intergroup relations. A superficial impression of all this research might be that Tajfel did include a good deal of applied social psychology in these volumes, but I do not think that this is the case. In fact Tajfel points out in the introduction that it was impossible to do so for practical reasons, but he adds ‘although no chapters have been devoted explicitly to “applied” topics, this has not prevented many contributors from making clear the social relevance and applications of the ideas and research they have presented’ (Tajfel, 1984, page 2). It seems to me that this expresses indeed a difference and a change that has taken place. Comparing The Social Dimension with the latest Handbook of Social Psychology, the change should be clear. No separate volume devoted to applications, but topic by topic an attempt to integrate theory and application; individual and society. That the shift of focus is not merely a confusing rearrangement of chapters can be appreciated by realizing that the same theory, or at least the same view, is expressed with respect to quite different topics. How to characterize this perspective? I believe that it is a view of human nature in which the individual person is primarily regarded as a social agent. An agent whose behaviour is social in the threefold Durkheimian sense: social in origin, collective in nature and concerned with the social world he lives in. The first and the last sense have always been recognized in social

Forum and focus 11

psychology, I believe. Even the narrowest conception of social psychology as the study of behavioural interdependence of interacting individuals recognizes this fact, but it is the second facet which until 20 years ago was hardly recognized. An individual action is not just caused by or directed at other human beings, it is in many ways also a reflection of the society he or she lives in. The individual often acts as a representative of a social category and employs such categories to achieve a social identity and self-evaluation, as Tajfel, Turner and others have argued. He or she shares attitudes, opinions and understanding with others who define themselves in a similar way. Such a view of human social behaviour may seem more in line with the sociological tradition and in many ways it is. However, as Tajfel and Moscovici have pointed out, it is not simply a matter of sticking some sociological variables into a psychological experiment (Moscovici, 1979; Tajfel, 1979; Taylor and Brown, 1979). The very nature of socially shared behaviour requires a different level of explanation. Individual differentiation is not the same as social agreement, even though the method of measurement is exactly the same.

This consideration brings me back to the point I have stressed in describing the forum of European social psychology: the issue of method versus substance. I believe that the shift of focus in European social psychology might well be related to the priority that is assigned in the balance between the Scylla and Charybdis of social or theoretical relevance and methodological sophistication.

To illustrate the comparison I have in mind I would like to refer to a recent study by Fisch and Daniel (1982) of recent trends in social psychotogy which can be inferred from publications in the European Journal of Social Psychology, the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and the Zeitschrifi fur Sozialpsychologie during the 1970’s. The comparison of the trends in the first two journals is of course not representative of the whole of social psychology in the U.S. and Europe. However both journals are probably fairly comparable in rate of publication and emphasis of the experimental approach to the study of social behaviour. From the table which forms the backbone of the analysis of Fisch and Daniel I have selected the topics which occur twice as often in either journal as compared to the other and which have appeared more than ten times between 1970 and 1980. Table 1 gives the results together with a list of topics which occur almost equally often in both journals.

Those who are familiar with European social psychology will not be surprised by the relative preponderance of social influence and intergroup studies in the European Journal. The emphasis is of course associated with the names of

Table 1. Popularity of topics in JESP and EJSP between 1970-1980. (After Fisch and Daniel, 1982)

~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~

JESP > EJSP EJSP = JESP EJSP > 2 JESP

Attribution theory Risky shift Social influence Helping Aggression Intergroup processes Interpersonal Attraction Attitude change Equity theory Group perception Self awareness Comparison of theories Attitude behaviour correlation

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Moscovici and Tajfel. The popularity of attribution research in the JESP is equally unremarkable. Taking these topics for the moment as indicative of possible differences between social psychology in the U.S. and Europe, what can a comparison possibly tell us about the focus of European social psychology?

Research on social influence processes in the sense of Moscovici began with a radical reinterpretation of the studies on conformity initiated by Asch. The experimental approach was not abandoned but neither was it central to the point of view presented by Moscovici in later publications (see e.g. the appendix of Moscovici’s book on social influence of which the appendix of the French edition IS

devoted to the case of Solzhenitsyn). Moscovici is fundamentally concerned with what he calls the functionalist model of society in which systems are taken for granted and social positions are regarded as immutable. Innovation and influence by active minorities are hard to reconcile with such a view of society as functional analysis in sociology shows. The study of conformity as a microsocial equilibrium process fits a functional and structural analysis of social problems in the sense of Durkheim and Merton rather than an approach which emphasizes social change and conflict as suggested by Sorokim and Dahrendorf. Perhaps the significance of the Faucheux-Moscovici reinterpretation of conformity research was to introduce into social psychology the long-standing sociological debate about the explanation of innovation and social change. Viewed in this way the study of the effect of active minorities by Moscovici is just one of the ways in which he has introduced in social psychology a more sociological orientation; the study of social representations and mass psychology being other examples.

A similar development can be detected, I believe, in the work of Henri Tajfel. Already in his earliest work on size estimation of coins he turns an individual, motivational problem into a problem of values and subsequently into a question of the effect of social categorization on individual judgments. I do not have to belabour here that Tajfel has argued passionately for different levels of analysis in his later work, nor that his studies on intergroup relations, although originally experimental in approach, developed into a more sociological analysis with an emphasis on social myths and social justice in his last publication.

Are these typically European developments? No, I do not think so. After all there has been for a long time, as Farr has recently pointed out, a sociological social psychology as distinct from a more psychologically oriented study of social behaviour and although this approach had its roots in Wundt’s Volkenpsychologie i t was primarily associated with the Chicago school in sociology. However it seems to me incontrovertable that an interest in this direction has developed more strongly in Western European social psychology in the last twenty years than among experimental social psychologists in the U.S. In a way one might regard it as a return to the earliest scientific attempt to study social behaviour as advocated by Lazarus and Steinthal. To what extent these recent developments in European social psychology are in fact only a reflection of historical changes in society or the expression of personal interests of the main contributors to these developments is particularly hard to say in this case because the personal experiences of both Moscovici and Tajfel were so much part of these developments.

Let us now compare these European research activities with research interests in the U.S. There is no doubt that attribution theory captured the attention of experimental social psychologists in the U.S. during the 1970s. Although one can

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point at different origins of the theory it is clear that Heider’s psychology of Interpersonal Relations and Kelley’s 1967 Nebraska symposium paper have been tremendously influential, although the idea did not seem to catch on in Europe as it did in the U.S. Why not? I do not have a general answer to this question, but I suspect that some personal experiences may give us a clue. At the Leuven Summerschool in 1967 several members of staff gave general lectures to complement the research conducted in the various groups. Kelley was one of them and he presented his Nebraska symposium paper. I still have a preprint copy of the paper with my notes in the margin made at the time. The paper did not leave a lasting impression. I even forgot that I had a copy of it until I rediscovered it among my reprints quite recently. There is nothing in my notes indicating that I expected it to have the great influence it later appeared to have. One of my notes says ‘another cube’. I should perhaps explain that we had first had another lecture by Fiedler who also presented his theory in the form of a three-dimensional diagram. Another note simply states ‘Kelly-Kelley’. I distinctly recall what made me write down the cryptic remark. I had completed my doctoral thesis a year earlier and in the thesis George Kelly’s theory was the central theme. In an oversimplified way I meant that George Kelly had argued for the view of man-the-scientist and suggested as a model of man’s cognitive activities the dominant model of analysis in psychology which was factor analysis. What Harold Kelley seemed to suggest was apparently an extension of this notion by arguing that people might also be capable of conducting a mental ANOVA. An implicit representation approach in person perception was complemented by the study of implicit explanations. In a general sense the idea was not new, of course and Kelley was quite explicit about the origins of attribution theory. What was new, was that Kelley suggested a model of the cognitive process involved in making causal inferences which was similar to the dominant method of analysis of experimental data in (social) psychology. In a way he turned method into substance. I missed the significance of this move completely at the time, even though I was quite familiar with the relevant literature (van de Geer and Jaspars, 1966) and had completed a few years earlier a longitudinal study of parents’ explanations of the success and failure of their own children (Jaspars, 1968). I wonder to what extent this failure on my part had anything to do with the difference between the developments in experimental social psychology on both sides of the Atlantic. It seems to me that a good case could be made for arguing that social psychology in the U.S. has been strongly influenced by the methods and procedures which were an intrinsic part of the experimental approach to the study of social behaviour. Normative models of analysis like Bayes’ theorem, analysis of variance, game theory, correlation analysis became ways of describing and explaining cognitive and social processes.

Taking a long range view, it is perhaps an almost inevitable consequence of the emancipation of social psychology during the last century. Social psychology started off with a much wider brief (Jaspars, 1983) but it narrowed down its task to gain scientific acceptance by employing experimental methods. In the U.S. this may have led to a heavy investment in the methodological training of graduates, but also to a relative neglect of substantive questions. It is not just a question of restricting research to what can be studied by particular methods, but of methods becoming the model for the issues they are supposed to study. Perhaps it is significant in this respect that McGuire devoted a long chapter in the latest Advances of Experimental

14 Jos Jaspars

Social Psychology to techniques for generating hypotheses. Is this not a terrible testimonium paupertatis, methods in search of ideas? Should not ideas, problems, issues come first? Perhaps this is in part where the difference in focus between European and American social psychology is to be found. The most noticeable contributions to European social psychology in the last twenty years were not hindered by a knowledge of sophisticated and advanced methods and hence took on problems of a much wider scope, because personal experience, philosophical analysis and historical developments demanded it. Methods were a means to an end. Sometimes they were ingenious and successful, as in the minority group experiments with colour stimuli; sometimes they were open to criticism, as in the minimal group experiments and mainly served a heuristic purpose. In contrast research in attribution theory appears to have been (mis)guided much more by the ANOVA method as a model of human activity which is primarily social rather than cognitive.

I do not want to leave the impression, however, that the European approach is right and the American wrong. I see the development much more as interdependent. European research reacting to American studies and shifting the focus to some extent which may have an effect on the other side of the Atlantic and so on. In that sense Boring’s verdict on historical developments in psychology would seem to be vindicated. If this is indeed the case social psychology, in the long run, can only benefit from the diversity which European social psychology may have helped to create, by establishing both another forum and perhaps a different focus.

REFERENCES

Boring, E. G. (1929) ‘The psychology of controversy,’ Psychological Review 36, 97-121. Brinkman, W. (1977) ‘Machstuitoefening en satisfactie.’ Nederlands Tijdschrifi voor

Deutsch, K., Platt, J. and Senghass, D. (1971) ‘Conditions favonng major advances in social

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L‘article pr6sente une histoire personnelle de la Psychologie Sociale Europtenne telle qu’elle a progress6 ces vingt dernibres annees dans I’Association EuropCenne de Psychologie Sociale Experimentale. On y defend I’idte que cette association a de fait crCe un nouveau forum pour les psychologues sociaux europeens en organisant des Ccoles d’CtC, des reunions gknirales, des ateliers, des conferences Est-Ouest, et en fondant un journal scientifique ainsi qu’une collection de monographies. II est possible kgalement que I’Association ait promu une perspective differente dans la recherche en psychologie sociale en insistant plus sur la nature collective du comportement social que sur les processus interpersonnels et en favorisant la substance plut8t que la methode.

ZUSAMMENFASSUNG

Der Artikel legt eine personliche Geschichte der Europaischen Sozialpsychologie vor, so wie sich diese Geschichte wahrend der letzten 20 Jahre in der E-uropaischen Vereinigung der expenmentellen Sozial-psychologie entwickelt hat. Es wird die Idee verteidigt, wonach diese Vereinigung durch Sommerschulen, Vollversammlungen, Ateliers und Ost-Westkonferenzen und nicht zuletzt durch die Grundung einer Wissenschaftlichen Zeitschrift und die Herausgabe von Monographien faktisch em neues Forum fur die Europaische Sozialpsychologie in die Welt nef. Es 1st ebenfalls moglich, dass die Vereinigung neue Perspektiven eroffnete indem sie mehr Gewicht legte auf die kollektive Natur sozialen Verhaltens als auf interpersonale Prozesse und insofern mehr die Substanz als die Methode unterstrichen wurde.