Social Psychological Theory as History: Outlining the Critical-Historical Approach to Theory

Holism: Deep Interdisciplinarity and a Social Structural Approach

Critical-historical theory attempts “a radical analysis, guided by concern for the future, of the historical process” (Horkheimer, 1936/2014, p. 214). To understand the role of history in social psychological phenonema, such theories must be holistic, this term having two basic connotations. First, critical-historical theories seek “deep” interdisciplinarity: such theories must equivalently integrate historical data, contemporary and methodologically precise empirical findings, and philosophical analysis:

Every step rests on knowledge of man and nature which is stored up in the sciences and in historical experience . . . Thus the critical theory of society begins with . . . the help of relatively universal concepts. It then moves further, using all knowledge available and taking suitable material from the research of others as well as from specialized research. (Horkheimer, 1936/2014, p. 215)

Critical-historical theory resists the institutional urge to “demarcate” appropriate and insurmountable boundaries between disciplines and methods, gravitating instead by necessity toward a flexible interplay.

This view of theory is holistic in a second sense, namely, that it always attempts to understand society (or rather, a society) as a whole. Most mainstream theories in social psychology are content to understand an isolated domain within society (e.g., the workplace; advertising media), or to focus on the individual while assuming a vague, malleable background of social contexts or socialized content. At best, mainstream theorists attempt to account for all the forces in a given “life situation,” which, since Lewin’s foundational writings, tends to exclude both the “macro” political-economic context and the historical forces which gave rise to that particular situation. By contrast, critical-historical theory always struggles to link the observations of a particular study of a specified life domain to the societal context in which it is immersed. As a result of this holistic emphasis, these theories must always contend with the complex nature of human existence in particular sociocultural settings, and they must be far more open to modification and tentative speculation—as a reflection of the ever-present potential for historical change—than conventional theories searching for ironbound “laws” of behavior:

The individual parts of a theory which attempts to deduce the complicated reality of [society] . . . cannot be as indifferent to the time-element as the steps in a deductive system of classification are . . . The continuous change of social relationships, due immediately to economic developments . . . does not affect only some areas of the culture. It also affects the way in which the culture depends on the economy and, thus, the key ideas in the whole conception. This influence of social development on the structure of the theory is part of the theory’s doctrinal content . . . Since the theory is a unified whole which has its proper meaning only in relation to the contemporary situation, the theory as a whole is caught up in an evolution. (Horkheimer, 1936/2014, pp. 220-223)

Validity: Historical, Not Deductive, Causality

In direct opposition to Lewin’s Galileanism, Horkheimer advocates a more “Aristotelian” approach to causality for which “historic-geographic” and “frequentist” understandings of validity are paramount. The deductive-nomological model of mainstream epistemology prioritizes (a) classifying individual cases as representative of “exceptionless laws” and (b) determining the adequacy of a theoretical explanation by testing its capacity for accurate prediction of behavior. This results in a tendency for mainstream theory to “spatialize” (or “de-historicize”) its constructs:

[Mainstream theory views] . . . facts as individual cases, examples, or embodiments of classes. There are no differences due to time between the unities in the system. Electricity does not exist prior to an electrical field, any more than wolf as such exists before or after particular wolves. As far as an individual knower is concerned there may be one or other temporal sequence among such relationships, but no such sequence exists in the objects themselves. (Horkheimer, 1936/2014, p. 213)

Critical-historical theory downplays the importance of both lawfulness and deduction, emphasizing instead theory’s capacity to holistically explain how a specific event or psychological attitude emerged out of an observed set of historical circumstances (cf. Calhoun, 1998, on these different understandings of causal explanation). Of course, the observation of psychological or social consequences in a historical context permits the formulation of predictions for future, similar scenarios. But this is not the primary aim of critical-historical theory. Horkheimer (1936/2014) offers the example of a critical-historical theory of capitalism:

It is relatively unimportant that the hypothetical form of statement be used. That is, the stress is not on the idea that wherever a society based on simple exchange prevails, capitalism must develop—although this is true. The stress is rather on the fact that the existent capitalist society, which has spread all over the world from Europe and for which the theory is declared valid, derives from the basic relation of exchange. (p. 215)

Accordingly, a primary function of critical-historical theory is to de-reify constructs by accounting for how they have emerged in time, as a function of actually occurring, reconstructed historic forces. Adorno (1968/2000), Horkheimer’s close co-author, later wrote that the purpose of theoretical interpretation in social science

lies primarily in the fact that history is stored up in phenomena which are seemingly at rest, which seem to be something given and entirely momentary. The faculty for interpretation is essentially the ability . . . to grasp things which purport to be existent and thus given by nature in terms of their having come to be. (p. 146)

Reflexivity: Active, Not Passive, Observers

The historical aspect of Horkheimer’s stance manifests in his stress on holism and historical causality. But this approach also has a critical edge, which manifests first in the theorist’s embrace of “reflexivity.” ⁶ Mainstream epistemology attempts to minimize the presence of the observer to the fullest extent possible, relying on precise and replicable protocols to eliminate the investigator’s normative biases:

The object with which the scientific specialist deals is not affected at all by his own theory. Subject and object are kept strictly apart. Even if it turns out that at a later point in time the objective event is influenced by human intervention, to science this is just another fact. (Horkheimer, 1936/2014, p. 217)

Critical-historical theory sees this not only as a flawed and impossible ideal but also as a handicap preventing social science from achieving its desired aim: the critique of extant society in the hope of its more rational and pluralistically beneficial redesign. This version of theory therefore fully acknowledges the reflexivity of the researcher, that is, his or her position in the processes of empirical investigation and in relation to the individuals and objects under study. This has two primary implications. First, critical-historical theorists maintain an awareness of the dependence of results on methods used. Rather than hypostatize their methods as the ultimate arbiters of “truth,” such theorists recognize the benefits and blindspots of each individual method and discuss them honestly in their reporting of results (this links with deep interdisciplinarity; the only real solution to the limitations of method is not to “perfect” the method, but rather to triangulate using multiple, highly distinct methods). Second, the critical-historical theorist lays bare their own normative perspective, because their aim is to grapple directly with their position within a society that should be understood to be improved. Furthermore, such a theorist recognizes that the very emergence of scientific and social-critical perspectives is a part of the society that needs to be explained; science does not happen in a vacuum, but happens within the very social structures that social scientists seek to elucidate. “A consciously critical attitude is part of the development of society . . . If we think of the object of the theory in separation from the theory, we falsify it and fall into quietism or conformism” (Horkheimer, 1936/2014, p. 217).

Aims: Rational Societal Reconstruction, Not Pseudo-Value Neutrality

The critical aspect also manifests in the acknowledgment of value-laden aims. Mainstream epistemology has long stressed the importance of “value neutrality” in science, that is, preventing researchers’ normative and political stances from coloring the interpretation of results, and, down to this day, methodological procedures are trumpeted as ways of “eliminating” such bias. A large body of literature suggests that true elimination of such biases in science is virtually impossible (Kuhn, 1970; Latour, 1987). Importantly, the social scientist to whom the principle of value neutrality is generally attributed—Max Weber (1949/2011)—stressed the corrosive danger of pseudo-value neutrality: researchers convincing themselves that they had attained a window onto “objective” reality, free of bias, without recognizing subtle ways biases were built into their research.

Mainstream theorists generally perceive their duty to be the elucidation of “facts on the ground”; how those facts are utilized is left to “applied” scientists and policymakers. If a mainstream theoretical perspective suggests human nature is such that oppression will always exist, or if it has no obvious bearing on matters of social consequence and suffering, this is considered not the fault of the theory, but the nature of the object of study. When mainstream theories do speak to the well-being of individuals, they generally accept the categories and contingencies of society as-is and identify ways to best adjust the individual to them (see Adams, Estrada-Villalta, Sullivan, & Markus, 2019). Critical-historical theory, by contrast, asserts that if the purpose of social scientific investigation is to improve social conditions, then it is the immediate task of theory to analyze ways through which society may be improved. This involves critical questioning of status-quo standards as well as the identification of new, more desirable aims. This approach is inherently “suspicious of the very categories of better, useful, appropriate, productive, and valuable, as these are understood in the present order, and refuses to take them as nonscientific presuppositions about which one can do nothing” (Horkheimer, 1936/2014, p. 201). The critical-historical theorist is both scientist and philosopher and makes no attempt to compartmentalize their intertwined roles as an investigator of and an implicated participant in their society (Horkheimer, 1936/2014, pp. 201-203).

Holism: Culture of Honor

Nisbett and Cohen’s (1996) work on the Culture of Honor in the Southern United States (Nisbett & Cohen, 1996) is probably the best-known case of a critical-historical theory in social psychology. It emerged as an attempt to understand the social problem of homicide rates being higher in the southern as opposed to the northern cultural area of the country. Rather than following the torch-type approach of positing some universal dimension on which Southerners differ from Northerners, Nisbett and Cohen (1996) instead made a very specific historical argument concerning the region and its people. The authors contend that a history of Scots-Irish immigration to the South left a cultural inheritance of an “honor” mentality adaptive in herding (versus agricultural) societies. Because their ancestors developed cultural norms in a setting where one’s wealth was easily compromised, and where institutions of social control were largely inaccessible, white Southerners had been strongly socialized to defend their own and their family’s honor against any possible threat or insult. The analysis is supported by certain nuanced patterns in the national homicide data: for example, the South-North discrepancy only occurs among non-Hispanic whites in rural areas, and is especially pronounced when the homicide was prompted by insult or conflict (Nisbett & Cohen, 1996, pp. 81-83).

What makes the analysis unique is, first, the attempt to very carefully trace and delineate the immediate causal history and spatial distribution of the phenomenon under study (pp. 1-9, 22, 30-32, 88). The researchers investigate and, where possible, rule out alternate historical explanations for the observed patterns (p. 3, 22, 83-85). For instance, they acknowledge that the variable distribution and history of slavery as a practice in the region also played an important, independent role in establishing past and current crime rates (pp. 71-73, 85). Most importantly, Nisbett and Cohen (1996) are committed to a holistic perspective, using multiple methods to capture the dialectical interplay between individual and society (pp. xvii, 78). The direct contribution of a historically transmitted culture of honor to disproportionate Southern violence is demonstrated not only by historical analysis and use of archival homicide data, but by multiple representative surveys of attitudes toward violence and quasi-experiments comparing Southerners and Northerners on behavioral and physiological responses to provocation. Especially important from a critical-historical perspective is the effort to document “collective expressions” of the culture of honor at the societal level, via analyses of regional variation in gun control and domestic violence laws, as well as a field experiment in which newspapers in different parts of the country are asked to produce a journalistic account of an incident of violence (Nisbett & Cohen, 1996, pp. 57-59, 72-73, 75). The Culture of Honor stands out in the recent history of social psychological research as a compelling illustration of how social problems can be explained through concrete historical theories, which can in turn be carefully supported through the creative employ of multi-method triangulation.

Historical Causality: The Politics of Violence

The Watts riot, which occurred in Los Angeles in August 1965, was a watershed historical moment for U.S. society in that era. The riot was a complex, 5-day event that developed out of a single encounter between a Black citizen and a White police officer and eventually involved tens of thousands of (primarily Black) participants, the deployment of National Guard forces, and thousands of arrests. Sears and McConahay (1973) led an interdisciplinary team that carried out a survey on experience of and attitudes toward the riot in 1965-1966 among approximately 600 Black L.A. residents (a representative sample) as well as approximately 100 Black arrestees who had been directly involved. Data were also collected from representative samples of non-Black L.A. residents. The researchers developed a critical-historical theory of the event that differed substantially from most popular accounts.

Specifically, Sears and McConahay (1973) sought to link the individual and group-average attitudes they quantified to broader demographic trends. Through this strategy, they construct and defend a “politics of violence” theory, which first specifies (and demonstrates empirically) that the best proximal predictors of riot participation were high levels of positive Black identity, political sophistication and disaffection, and a subjective sense of deprivation (Sears & McConahay, 1973, pp. 88-89). Next, the theory proposes that documented demographic shifts have led to the emergence of what the authors call the “New Urban Black” population of Los Angeles: Black individuals who come from northern states, live in urban and largely segregated environments, and who tend to be young and well-educated (p. 40). Completing the causal circle linking historic, societal trends to individual attitudes and behavior, this historically contingent group is shown to possess relatively high levels of the characteristics most predictive of riot participation.

The authors employ their data not only to buttress this historically specific account of the riot but also to expose the limitations of more classically “situational” or universalizing causal explanations (e.g., the contagion hypothesis for mob violence). Finally, they document the unique perspective of the impacted community on the event, finding that local Black citizens held a “riot ideology” that framed the event as a political protest against racialized social structures (pp. 185-186, 189, 195). This study provided a starting place for one of the leading critical-historical theorists of contemporary social psychology—David Sears—who has continually integrated standard empiricism and theory with a commitment to historical analysis (as demonstrated by the “Black exceptionalism” hypothesis; Sears & Savalei, 2006).

Reflexivity: Death in Life

Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton (1967/1991) proposed a new approach to psychological research he called psychohistory. This method seeks to illuminate how universal psychological tendencies are shaped by cultural and especially historical variation, and it assumes that unprecedented historical events are actually most likely to reveal the core of human psychology: it is exactly when a society loses its cultural “script” in the face of extremity that people react with their basic existential defenses. As an exercise in such a method, Lifton (1967/1991) visited Hiroshima approximately two decades after the atomic bombing to understand the impact of a truly unique historical moment. His core methodology was a series of 75 interviews with a random sample of Japanese hibakusha—Hiroshima a-bomb survivors. Lifton (1967/1991) found that the experience of the a-bomb, and even the deleterious health effects of contamination afterward, were only an originary wound for survivors, who had to cope with personal trauma and social problems for years afterward. These people—many of whom were visibly marked by radiation exposure—dealt with extreme forms of social stigma and a lack of understanding of their experience, including employment discrimination.

Lifton (1967/1991) frequently practices very explicit reflexivity in connection with this highly sensitive work: “With a problem of this kind it is particularly mischievous to pretend that the investigator undertakes his study as a tabula rasa or an uncontaminated ‘instrument,’ totally free of bias or preconception” (p. 5). From the side of his participants, Lifton had to find ways to cope with their reticence and suspicions, including fears that he was simply a representative of the U.S. military seeking instrumental information about the effects of atomic bombing. For his own part, Lifton found that he was deeply disturbed by the firsthand accounts he heard and observed himself developing his own defense of “psychic numbing,” assimilating information to theoretical categories rather than processing it on its own, raw terms (pp. 8-10, 508). Lifton’s documentation of his experience as part of the research process testifies to the inseparability of research and researcher. He concludes that the ultimate significance of his work is its revelation that the social psychological reaction to Hiroshima is an emblematic case study of trends toward psychic numbing in the wake of disastrous violence that have reached global proportions.

Value-Laden Aims: The Meaning of Things

In their investigation on The Meaning of Things, Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton (1981) set out to address a seemingly simple question: What is the relationship between people and the most important objects they possess? In formulating their answer, however, these researchers were driven by the holistic goal of understanding the dialectic of influence between individual and society, to facilitate critical statements about the collective well-being of the modern United States. In 82 sampled households in suburban Chicago, interviews were conducted with family members representing three generations who identified and discussed 1,694 objects in their possession. Through a comprehensive process, the data were sifted to generate a large set of “meaning” codes, the latter representing the kinds of meanings participants associated with their objects. The primary finding was that people were overwhelmingly likely to prioritize objects that had egocentric, differentiating, and hedonistic functions; in other words, either objects that represented the owner’s unique self (e.g., a chair a father had built) or facilitated leisure (e.g., a television set). Households were also differentiated in terms of their “affective environment”: “warm” families (in which more members expressed highly positive attitudes toward the home) were more likely than “cold” families to possess connections to the broader community outside the home, for instance, by participating in civic activities (pp. 153-155; 167).

From this empirical foundation, the authors build up a value-laden theoretical interpretation. They identify a historical ailment dubbed “pathology of privacy” (pp. 214-224): a tendency, more pronounced in some households, to feel disconnected from any broader community or sense of social generativity, resulting in compensatory materialist behavior filling the void left by meaningless relations to objects. This pathology is traced to broader historical forces of capitalism, urbanism, and individualism, which leave people increasingly isolated and insecure:

By becoming entirely dependent on a market economy, we have become vulnerable to fears that we have tried to assuage by developing increasingly expensive symbolic demonstrations of our autonomy and power. Material possessions serve as pacifiers for the self-induced helplessness we have created. (Csikszentmihalyi & Rochberg-Halton, 1981, p. 230)

In the ultimate step of their critical-historical theory, Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton link this family-level analysis to societal and global trends toward mass environmental exploitation. With families and individuals increasingly burdened by contemporary anxieties and continually driven to purchase objects as status symbols or hedonistic distractors, the relationship between humanity and the natural world will gradually fade from consciousness; the ecosystem and our long-term survival will be cashed in for the short-term succor of the latest iPhone. The rich blend of data and theory offered in The Meaning of Things are a testament to the fact that even the most basic of questions—how do people relate to their possessions?—can be answered from a critical-historical perspective if researchers step outside dominant paradigms.

Bringing the Four Elements Together: Narrative and the Politics of Identity

The intergroup contact literature in mainstream social psychology has often been invoked in what is undoubtedly the best-studied intractable conflict in the discipline: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In his critical-historical theory, Phillip Hammack (2011) seeks to bring a new methodological and theoretical perspective to bear on this well-researched problem. In Narrative and the Politics of Identity, Hammack (2011) draws on both narrative analysis of longitudinal qualitative data and historical theorizing to sketch an account of why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is so resistant to (social psychological) intervention.

Hammack (2011) insists on the necessity of theorizing the interlocking nature of individual and collective narratives (pp. 16-18, 22, 38-39, 63). His major goal in the study is to employ a developmental approach to narrative and identity, which, when situated in a societal analysis of power structures, can document how history is reproduced, and identity reified, through individual psychological constructions (what he calls the “psychological cycle of history,” p. 331; cf. pp. 338, 340). Hammack’s (2011) primary data derive from a longitudinal narrative interview design. He would conduct autobiographical interviews (using a “lifeline” method) with Israeli and Palestinian youth, in locations within both Israel and Palestine, approximately 1 month prior to their participation in a “conflict resolution” program in the United States. Hammack would then engage in participant observation of his informants during their 1-month period of program participation. Crucially, Hammack would also conduct a follow-up interview with each participant between 2 and 3 years after program participation and their return to the Middle East. Hammack (2011) ultimately submitted 45 individuals to this intensive longitudinal procedure and analysis, reasonably representative of diversity in the region (pp. 105-106).

In his analysis of the narratives, Hammack (2011) is particularly sensitive to indicators of their ideological setting: the ways in which historically transmitted collective themes infuse youths’ personal life stories, subjecting them to a “regime of identity essentialism” (p. 45). Jewish-Israeli youth draw on master narratives of the Israeli state as a source of strength compensating for an eternity of Jewish persecution (p. 117), Palestinian youth evoke master narratives of resistance in response to dispossession (p. 160), and both groups use rhetoric to delegitimize the identity claims of the other. The consequence is what Hammack (2011) terms a “narrative stalemate” as a “cycle of identity polarization . . . ensures its pernicious survival into another generation” (p. 288). What is most revealing from Hammack’s (2011) study, however, is not necessarily the content of the narratives at a summary level, but rather his documentation of how their content changes as a function of the narrator’s immediate environment.

Hammack observed that, immediately after their immersion in the “safe space” of the conflict resolution camp, participants invoked narratives of identity transcendence. They would break down in tears as they realized that the “others” they had been demonizing all their lives were indeed people just like them, with their own hopes, fears, and tragic stories to tell. Thus, at least in the short term, the conflict programs appear remarkably effective. But what primarily interests Hammack (2011) is whether his participants would continue to construct narratives of transcendence 2 to 3 years after program participation and re-immersion into the existentially insecure setting of their native region (pp. 271, 285-289). More often than not he found the opposite: Whatever gains youth had made during their time at the peace camp, once they had become re-accustomed to the constant anxiety of living in spaces occupied by the military and threatened by political violence, they often shifted toward narratives of identity accentuation, becoming even more polarized in their construction of the conflict as an apologetic response to their previous lapse of judgment. Thus, Hammack’s (2011) design not only attests to the viability of longitudinal and contextually sensitive approaches to narrative psychology but also to their fundamental importance. What people say in a unique and artificial environment—even if these are the kinds of environments most conducive to intervention or data collection—does not necessarily reflect what they will continue to believe in their routine social contexts.

Hammack (2011) takes an actively reflexive position vis-à-vis his research. He believes that his own experiences of embodied terror during fieldwork in Israel and Palestine contributed substantially to his ability to grasp the psychological essence of his participants’ narrative dilemmas and resolutions (pp. 7-13, 58-59). Furthermore, he developed his unique epistemic stance out of a critical desire to avoid perpetuating “insular” and “depoliticized” forms of psychology (pp. 47-49). By refusing to acknowledge real, empirical barriers to successful intergroup contact, social psychology may actually serve to reproduce the conditions of conflict, by promoting utopian visions of contact which can easily be attacked as straw men by embattled individuals on the ground. By contrast, directly confronting these barriers—beginning with documentation of their historical embeddedness—sets the stage for emergence of a “transformative, rather than reproductive, social science” (p. 342).

Embrace Epistemological Questions and Define Your Own Epistemology

As stated earlier, social psychologists have been strangely reticent to articulate their epistemological views. This suggests that methodological battles dating to the 19th century have been largely resolved within the field, and the kind of theoretical exposition characteristic of Lewin and Heider is no longer considered necessary for scholars working under the dominant paradigm. In contemporary presentations of research, the standard methods have long been assumed ideal; at some point epistemology ceased to be up for discussion, let alone debate.

If there is any unequivocal good that has come out of the current replication crisis (e.g., Funder et al., 2014), it is that scholars on all sides of this issue are revisiting foundational questions of epistemology. This is progress: scientists should not simply inherit theoretical and methodological frameworks without understanding their philosophical underpinnings and questioning their aptness if necessary. Yet despite divergent positions of advocates in current replication crisis debates, there is often general (tacit) convergence on the soundness of the mainstream epistemology. Herein lies the primary difference between the crisis sparked by Gergen and the contemporary crisis; whereas the former questioned the general usefulness of mainstream epistemology and methods, the latter primarily stops at considering their accuracy and functioning. Hence, propositions are made, for instance, to resolve the crisis by reducing the alpha level for concluding significance (Benjamin et al., 2018).

Throughout the history of mainstream social psychology, “crisis”-style discussions of epistemology have invariably been resolved by an almost naïve conviction in methodological innovation. The answer is never to radically question the philosophical foundation of our research; it is instead always to “double-down” on statistical methods that will “correct” the biases of the investigator; the theoretician’s gaze is always subsumed to (more) data and (new, better) means of collecting it. This means the field increasingly moves toward a conception of “statistical objectivity” (Freese & Peterson, 2018), a view of the world in which meta-analysis and big data actually render our empirical image of the world accurate and extensive enough so as to make theory obsolete (Anderson, 2008; Greenwald, Pratkanis, Leippe, & Baumgardner, 1986). On this view, theory is simply a means of organizing the data, subject to the error of human values and distortion, and we should control, reduce, or eliminate this subjective barrier between us and the data as much as our techniques allow. The social values that drive science in the first place must be sacrificed if they threaten to compromise “the truth” evident in (enough) data.

This resistance to holism and willful shackling of our theoretical ambitions leaves our value-laden aims stillborn, or, what is potentially worse, supplants them with the aim of upholding methodological canon. The problem is that the strong position of statistical objectivity ignores the very real issues of reflexivity: that we are all implicated in the social phenomena we study, that science itself is part of contemporary society, that there can be no “neutral” position outside of a social phenomenon, and that inaction is also a form of action with respect to social problems. What is increasingly lost in these debates and methodological innovations is a sense of what was once considered the social scientist’s most significant asset: their capacity for reason in an Enlightenment-philosophical sense (Horkheimer, 1947). Our perennial fear that the theorist’s subjectivity will cloud their judgment blinds us to the fact that both data and theory are useless unless they are harnessed to the service of rational societal reconstruction, the ultimate and only justification for social science (Weber 1949/2011). The critical-historical approach sees the purpose of theory as offering the scholar a thorough and actionable account of the data, these latter being the actual manifestation of social phenomena at a given point in history. Thus, it is essential to keep one’s aims in mind when evaluating the functionality of a theory (Cudd, 2005; Laudan, 1977). The aims and practicability of a theory are not an attractive bonus weighed in funding decisions; rather, they are integral to the scientific value of the theory. The “adversarial” model of science (Sears, 1994), in which the strength of competing theories is tested in the court of rational public opinion (rather than in the “impartial” court of “method”), is the only viable model for adjudicating theories from the critical-historical perspective.

At the very least, theorists working under mainstream assumptions need to articulate for themselves what those assumptions are. If one ultimately believes in the severe limits of individual reason and the compromising nature of subjective values, then one may well embrace a strong notion of statistical objectivity. But a minimal implication of the critical-historical approach is that these epistemological issues must be understood and articulated. The mainstream epistemology emerged from a particular philosophical vision of science, and alternate visions have existed and continue to exist within our field. There is undeniable value to mainstream quantitative methods—such as the ability to carefully weigh effect sizes in multiple regression or to relatively quickly isolate causal factors in lab experiments—and tool- and torch-type theories are often needed to organize and interpret the results of such work. But there is also clear value to the critical-historical approach, including the potential to critique and revitalize mainstream techniques when they fall short of achieving important social aims, and the ability to sensitize scholars and policymakers to the factors that have been historically important in generating a contemporary situation or which may be most important in a period of current transition. To facilitate these potentials, social psychologists should minimally grant critical-historical theory an “equal status partnership.”

Grant Critical-Historical Theories an “Equal Status Partnership” With Mainstream-Epistemological Theories

Since Lewin (1931/1935) oriented the field away from “Aristotelian” theories, mainstream social psychologists have been skeptical of work that attempts a more historical perspective. Nevertheless, the most significant implication of the preceding review is not only that the critical-historical approach to theory is possible but also that it exists and has existed as an alternate tradition throughout the course of the discipline. Indeed, some of the studies discussed have quite comfortably occupied a place of honor at the fringes of the mainstream literature. What is essential is not the question of whether tool-type, torch-type, or critical-historical theories represent the most “generative” or “appropriate” form of social scientific theorizing. Rather, what is essential is to acknowledge that all three types of theory co-exist, and that, if they can be constructively recognized as equally worthy of scientific status (Sampson, 1978), a more robust and comprehensive social psychology will result.

I encourage theorists of all backgrounds to consider how the strengths of these different approaches might be combined to yield more disciplinarily comprehensive and politically actionable maps of contemporary social problems. In the current division of academic labor, historians fail to benefit from the insights into causality that can be provided by social psychological methods, just as mainstream social psychology proceeds with almost complete indifference to the socially decisive nuances of political and economic history. Yet deep interdisciplinarity and an eclectic epistemological approach, blending the strengths of tool, torch, and critical-historical theories, is almost certainly required for social scientists to have major societal impact. A positive example of these possibilities being pursued can be found in recent developments in attachment theory. A classic torch-type approach, attachment theory reduces not only the great complexity of human relationships but a variety of other psychological phenomena across the lifespan to a core set of factors and the simple dimensions of anxiety and avoidance. Yet, interdisciplinary scholars have recently come together to propose a systematic revision of the theory, based both on a critical assessment of its shortcomings when applied to public policy and a recognition of its narrow historical, cultural, and sociological vision (see esp. Carlson & Harwood, 2014; Gaskins et al., 2017; Rosabal-Coto et al., 2017). These efforts represent a productive example of wedding mainstream theory to a more critical-historical approach and generating a new framework in the process, rather than discarding wholesale contributions from one epistemological vantage.

It should also be recognized that, unless one subscribes to a strong understanding of the lawfulness of psychological effects that is probably inappropriate for the human context, it is methodologically and conceptually difficult to produce positive evidence for a psychological universal (Berry, Poortinga, Breugelmans, Chasiotis, & Sam, 2011; Norenzayan & Heine, 2005). Yet, if one is in pursuit of such elusive universals, not only a broad contemporary evidence base (Henrich et al., 2010) but also a broad historical view is almost certainly required. I submit that if torch-type theorists are interested in identifying human universals, they would do well to conduct systematic historical inquiries over the course of only the past 100 years. It has long been recognized and statistically documented (Bell, 1976; Dicken, 2007) that the time since the 19th century has seen the most rapid global economic and technological changes of any anthropocentric historical period. There is likely no better way to test the universality of a particular human characteristic than to observe (through historical documents and studies) its resistance or malleability in the face of such sweeping change.

In conducting such historical inquiries, social psychologists will be forced to engage in certain forms of theorizing with which they may be less familiar or comfortable. Here again, interdisciplinary collaboration may prove essential. At the very least, if social psychologists working in the mainstream tradition recognize the potential contribution to be made by critical-historical theories, they can encourage their development—as well as the further development of standards by which they may be judged—rather than condemning them out-of-hand as “unscientific.”

Critically Assess the Limits of Research Produced From the Mainstream Epistemology

Greater recognition in the discipline of the validity of critical-historical theorizing would eventually lead to a strengthening of social psychology’s overall contribution to society. As should be clear, critical-historical theories stand to complement those from the mainstream epistemology, in part by offering a critique of such theories rooted in substantive engagement with long-standing or changing societal conditions. The reviewed studies demonstrate how the discipline’s constriction to a singular, a-historical epistemology leads to significant problems, for instance in the mainstream intergroup contact literature. Studies such as Politics of Violence, Racial Encounter, and Narrative and the Politics of Identity all criticize psychological interventions built according to tool-type theories from a body of lab experiments, which refuse to engage with the complexities of diverse geo-historical conditions and which instead artificially delimit the field of inquiry to the search for controlled optimal conditions. Hammack’s (2011) work in Israel documents how interventions designed explicitly according to mainstream psychological standards fail to gain traction under situations of intractable intergroup conflict (very different from the conditions of U.S. desegregation under which the mainstream contact hypothesis was developed).

A social psychologist defending the traditional intergroup contact model would doubtless argue that the theory already predicts that contact will not lead to improved relations under conditions of insecurity and lack of institutional support. However, it is not a question of whether the theory has correctly specified the right set of universal mechanisms for healthy contact. It is instead an issue of reflexivity, the appropriate role of the scientist in society, and the unavoidable entanglements between theory, method, and social reality. If the “optimal conditions” for contact fail to hold in some of the most prominent modern settings where we might wish to apply the theory, then what is the ultimate benefit to society of specifying and endlessly testing optimal conditions in the lab? If the theory specified a key condition that repeatedly fails to materialize in relevant social situations, then why, instead of searching for a new theory more appropriate to reality, do we consider ourselves beholden to the theory and search for the right conditions in the lab to “prove” it?

However sophisticated, our quantitative methods are practically useless if they remain divorced from theories that directly engage contemporary social conditions, and their historical origins, in all their dizzying complexity. Simply waiting for other researchers or disciplines to “do the job” will leave the job perennially undone. We already have prominent contemporary examples of social psychologists making the effort to connect lab-based theorizing with concrete social problems (e.g., Paluck’s, 2009, work on media interventions in Rwanda, or the many interventions cataloged in the SPARQ database run by Jennifer Eberhardt, Hazel Markus, and Alana Conner). Acknowledging the scientific validity of the critical-historical approach to theory will enhance such efforts at the fulfillment of specified social aims, which can sometimes only occur through historically grounded critique and modification of mainstream theories.

Consider Gergen’s Proposal for Social Psychology as a Discipline Focused on “Sensitization” Rather Than Prediction

A final way in which granting “equal status” to critical-historical theories stands to enrich the discipline is by offering new criteria for establishing causal validity. In contrast to the traditional focus on deductive causation—ultimately determined by a theory’s capacity for the “prediction and control” of behavior—the critical-historical approach fosters an emphasis on compelling historical accounts of observed behavior. The implication is that a more epistemologically eclectic social psychology would recognize both prediction and what Gergen (1973) called “sensitization” as important theoretical aims. The fruits of social psychological theory should not be restricted to the ability to predict what an individual will do in a rigorously delimited situation; (some of) our theories should also have the capacity to sensitize citizens and policymakers to the key characteristics of people in a given society at a given moment, if possible even permitting prediction of future historical trends (Varnum & Grossmann, 2017).

Expanding our notions of theoretical validity and aims entails a willingness on behalf of researchers to recognize circumstances where the critical-historical approach might be the most appropriate for a given social problem or dataset. The review of studies above (see Table 1) suggests that there are three primary types of critical-historical theory addressing different research situations:

Hopefully, theorists in the mainstream tradition will not find it controversial to acknowledge that critical-historical approaches may be more appropriate in the first two research cases—moments of major social change and cases where we are trying to understand the identity of a delimited group of people caught up in particular circumstances. What will perhaps be controversial is that I encourage mainstream theorists to consider the possibility a critical-historical approach may even be appropriate when we are trying to understand how our convenience samples react to conventional stimuli. For instance: How did our society develop such that the majority of our studies are now done on a platform called “Mechanical Turk” using people called “MTurk workers?” Who are these people, and what are the sociohistorical circumstances that have made such an arrangement possible?

Here, we arrive at the “modernity study” and the fact that social psychology, in its a-historical orientation, has failed to develop an adequate theory of the influence of neoliberalism on psychology. This is a significant omission, as the emergence of neoliberalism is probably the most important economic event of the last half-century. Indeed, when reading all of the works reviewed in Table 1, one encounters a surprisingly complete chronological account of the slow emergence of neoliberal culture, economics, and politics over the course of the 20th century, from the early transformation of U.S. townships to industrial centers around 1900 (Middletown) through the consolidation of ideologies justifying income inequality in 1970s Britain (Learning to Labor) all the way up to Bhatia’s (2018) documentation of the disparate impact of globalization in contemporary India. This body of critical-historical theory documents how collective and individual psychologies have been progressively shaped by the growth of the neoliberal movement, that is, through the dismantling of social and governmental structures that promote interpersonal solidarity and buffer personal risks, and the emergence of a notion of the ideal self as one who focuses on self-interest, commits to consumerism and work as their sole life goals, and is personally responsible for any setbacks (Adams et al., 2019).

Exactly, this vision of the individual—free to move between relationships and groups at will, and compelled to exert agency in the pursuit of happiness—has been assumed or actively promoted by most major strains of mainstream social psychology, including positive psychology (Binkley, 2011), social identity theory and health psychology (McDonald, Gough, Wearing, & Deville, 2017), attachment theory (Carr & Batlle, 2015), and even the psychology of culture and social class (Adams & Estrada-Villalta, 2016). Although it is highly doubtful that the researchers in these areas emphasize a construction of the individual that suits the neoliberal agenda explicitly for that reason, it is also unnecessary to point out that virtually none of them acknowledge the possibility that this construction is rooted in a particular political-economic era in history. Thus, lacunae in theorizing can contribute directly to the scientific reification of a historically contingent category endorsed by a political movement that many social scientists believe is negatively impacting global human flourishing. Moreover, because of social psychology’s reticence to engage in holistic, historical theorizing, the field has uncovered many phenomena that are directly related to the triumph of neoliberalism—including the effects of growing income inequality (Oishi, Kesebir, & Diener, 2011) and consumerism (Markus & Schwartz, 2010) on unhappiness, processes of gentrification (Oishi, Miao, Koo, Kisling, & Ratliff, 2012), rising levels of anxiety (Twenge, 2000), rising levels of individualist subjectivity (Santos, Varnum, & Grossmann, 2017), and growing political polarization (Haidt, 2012)—while failing to interpret all of them in terms of their common sociohistorical origin. Thus, lacunae in theorizing lead to a failed opportunity for social psychology to actively engage with a contemporary political issue of major importance. Finally, many other phenomena brought about by neoliberalism that are substantially impacting people’s lives—for instance, the spectacular rise in levels of consumer debt (Lazzarato, 2012)—are entirely overlooked by contemporary social psychology.

It is not necessary that every social psychologist incorporate a theoretical understanding of neoliberal capitalism into their research. Minimally, however, social psychologists should be expected to have at least a working understanding of the political and economic trends occurring in their society, if they are to truly understand how the individual is shaped by social processes.

While lip service is often paid in mainstream research articles to the need for future work that will adopt a more integrative perspective, address structural causes, or directly influence policy, the cold reality is that these “future studies” will never be carried out unless we embrace a more pluralistic epistemology. As long as social psychologists are incentivized to restrict their work to mainstream methodological boundaries, and to avoid “speculation” on social problems from a “value-laden” perspective, our theories will never reach their potential for revolutionary social impact:

Psychology would greatly benefit from a de-emphasis on particular methods in favor of constructing particular research questions that address real problems of human living. Psychology can continue to (rightfully) lay claim to the individual as primary unit of analysis, and the mind as its primary object of study. But an openness to methodological [and theoretical] pluralism means that we can ask more research questions that can be answered outside of the laboratory. I believe this shift in research practice, away from a methods-driven science and toward a problem-focused orientation, creates new challenges for our received paradigms. Yet it is precisely toward new paradigmatic formulations that we must look to address the unique problems we face in the twenty-first century. (Hammack, 2011, p. 361)

As social psychology moves forward, it must learn that the act of awaking from Joyce’s “nightmare” of history occurs not through forgetting, but through remembrance.