472 BENEDICT M. ASHLEY 



natural science of which psychology itself is only a material 

 part. Some social scientists do in fact consider their discipline 

 simply a branch of psychology, and their position is at least 

 clear and consistent. 



Those who do not like to go this far, nevertheless find it 

 difficult to defend their hesitation. Thus the distinguished 

 social psychologist, Gordon W. Allport writes: 



No sharp boundaries demarcate social psychology from other 

 social sciences. It overlaps political and economic science, cultural 

 anthropology, and in many respects is indistinguishable from gen- 

 eral psychology. ... In spite of this apparent lack of autonomy, 

 social psychology has its own core of theory and data and its own 

 special viewpoint. Its focus of interest is upon the social nature 

 of the individual person. By contrast, political science, sociology, 

 and cultural anthropology take as their starting points the political, 

 social, or cultural systems in which an individual person lives. 

 It is obvious that a complete science of social relations, as Parson 

 and Shils point out, will embrace both the personality system and 

 the many-sided social sj^stems. 



With few exceptions, social psychologists regard their discipline 

 as an attempt to understand and explain how the thought, feeling 

 and behaviour of individuals are influenced by the actuxil, imagined, 

 or implied presence of other human beings^ 



It is certainly very difficult to see why a study of the ways in 

 which human behavior is influenced by the presence of other 

 human beings is not the task of the science of pure psychology. 



The Orientation of Social Theory 



Before we accept this clear but rather radical conclusion, let 

 us ask ourselves what would happen to the actual practice 

 of social research if sociology were to be treated rigorously as a 

 branch of psychology. 



Formerly there was a marked rift between European and 

 American sociology over the question of the relative importance 

 of theory and of empirical research. Today this rift has opened 



* In Handbook of Social Psychology, Gardiner Lindzey, ed., (Reading, Mass.: 

 Addison- Wesley, 1954), p. 3. 



