Social interdependence rather than individual cognition should anchor social psychology

Evidence

However, just as important for her was the coupling of methodological rigor with relevance (Brewer, 1985)—relevance through deep theory on outcomes and behaviors that offer great significance to the sciences as a whole. Her writings offered a powerful and principled perspective, where she forcefully presented her empirical tests with convincing and meaningful rationale. Moreover, her theoretical perspectives offer substantial contributions to social psychological phenomena— including intergroup relations, social dilemmas, self and social identity, stereotyping, methodology, and attribution theory—a wide range to be sure. However, her contributions reached beyond that—going wider and farther—by offering a redefinition of and redirection within social psychology itself (Brewer, 1997, 2004). Instead of treating social psychology as a colony of other domains—for example, cognitive psychology, learning theory, or psychophysiology—she argued for a more imperialist view, one in which social interdependence is the basis for shaping human cognition, emotion, and motivation. Her perspective, shared often in her collaborations with Linnda Caporael, builds from core assumptions that the social context exerts a downward force on human psychology. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 80

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘imperialist’ versus ‘colony’ framing of social psychology’s disciplinary position.
• XREF: The downward-causation claim (social context shapes cognition) parallels later work on social capital and institutions conditioning rational choice.