Psychodigms of Theory in Personality and Social Psychology

It is the contention of this paper that personality psychology and social psychology have developed different orientations to theory. Pronouncements of crisis emanating from each area are presumed to reflect these divergent developments. The orientation of social psychology, by means of situationism in social learning theory, is toward data-driven, empirical constructs and theories with a major cognitive content. The data-driven, empirical nature of constructs and theories in situationism emphasizes the primacy of the data in developing the constructs and of asking limited, focussed questions. The orientation of personality psychology, by means of person-situation interactionism, is towards the more traditional concept-driven constructs and theories which emphasize the importance of extensive conceptual systems and broad semantic descriptions. These two orientations are seen as representing Kuhnian paradigms—herein called psychodigms—of different degrees of development. Situationism has developed from and within the Lewinian tradition and has achieved the status of a fully developed psychodigm for social psychology. Interactionism has developed more recently as a result of attacks by situationists on the psychoanalytically relevant constructs of motivation and trait and functions to conserve these constructs as concept-driven and as part of the person in the interaction. The newness of interactionism as the major orientation for personality psychology has produced, at most, a partially developed psychodigm. It is expected that the energizing and conformity-producing effect of a fully developed psychodigm is overwhelming as compared to the undetermined, and incompletely formed, power of a partially developed psychodigm. Judgments about the state of theory in, and future of, personality and social psychology may require consideration of the divergent psychodigms of theory.