The crisis of confidence in social psychology.

Abstract

Social psychologists once knew who they were and where they were going. The field's major scientific problems were obvious, and means to solve them were readily available. Particularly during World War II and the two subsequent decades, the total number of social psychologists increased rapidly, exciting new research discoveries were often reported, and theoretical developments seemed to promise dramatic advances in the understanding of human behavior. One observer, after visiting a number of researchers, noted,