Attitude Changes and Paradigm Shifts: Social Psychological Foundations of the Kuhnian Thesis

Abstract

A little more than ten years ago the provocative book by Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, was published, setting off debates within the disciplines of philosophy of science, history of science, and the social sciences which continue to this day.' It can be argued that Kuhn wrote the book as a direct challenge to the traditional explanations of science offered by philosophers of science. And, indeed, the typology of criticisms that this book has generated constitute almost a classic example of the very thesis of the book itself, namely the aetiology and process of paradigm change. The term 'paradigm' has been popularly accepted by many social scientists and some have attempted to apply the paradigm thesis directly to political science.2 However, the reverse cannot be said, since there has been virtually no effort to explicate the social-psychological foundations of Kuhn's thesis using the research of social scientists. However, as will be demonstrated, theories of attitude development and attitude change yield significant validation of Kuhn's thesis of paradigm change. Furthermore, since theories of attitudes have figured prominently within subdisciplines of political science, it can be argued that