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The compatibility of two generations of American social psychologists
Author(s) -
Chung Man Cheung
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
journal of the history of the behavioral sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.216
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1520-6696
pISSN - 0022-5061
DOI - 10.1002/1520-6696(200023)36:4<457::aid-jhbs10>3.0.co;2-4
Subject(s) - autonomy , social psychology , psychology , epistemology , cognition , sociology , political science , law , philosophy , neuroscience
This paper examines Greenwood's (2000) evidence for incompatibility between the early and later American social psychologists on the social conception of cognition, emotion, and behavior. The notion of the autonomy of the individual may offer the key to finding a degree of compatibility between them. Both generations, I argue, fundamentally accept the notion of individual persons as autonomous agents who are able to decide and choose to act and, hence, be responsible for their actions. Philosophical analysis can perhaps inform historians of social psychology on how carefully and critically to reexamine evidence for traditional claims of generational, paradigmatic, and/or foundational splits. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.