210 Stephanie Amedeo Marquez
group? Asch’s findings confirmed most respondents ‘conformed’ based
upon the necessity to fit in with the group or to obey authority.
Interest in scientific examination of conformity as a concept in social
psychology is shared by two disciplines, psychology and sociology.
Although most social psychologists are psychologists working in
psychology departments, an important minority are sociologists. The two
groups share an interest in many of the same research problems such as
those posed by Asch’s study of conformity, but their approaches are
distinct. Psychological social psychology tends to focus on how an
individual’s perceptions of a social situation affect thoughts, feelings, and
behaviors. Sociological social psychology focuses rather specifically on
the interaction embedded within the relationship between the individual
and the larger social system milieus (e.g., group dynamics, ranking,
norms), and explains results in the context of cultural influences such as
collectivism.
According to Keith Tuffin (2009) “critical work within social
psychology is a relatively recent development” (p. 3). If Tuffin is correct,
then “it makes little sense to criticize the philosophies and methods of a
discipline before first coming to understand what is being criticized”. A
key aspect to move forward with a critical social psychology would be to
critically examine how social is the academic portrayal of social
psychology within the two disparate disciplines. Tuffin (2009) suggests
critical social psychology should examine presentations of social
knowledge. The goal would be to determine how and in what ways such
investigations are utilizing the essential notion of social psychology: “Is
reality socially constructed?” (p. 9).
How specifically, then, is the discipline of social psychology being
interpreted? In order to examine this question critically, it is necessary to
analyze social psychology, its experiments, research methods and findings.
In the distinctly social area of conformity, to look at how it is elaborated to
students within the introductory textbooks in psychology.