What is it about?
Areas of study such as "cell biology" or "cultural anthropology" are fuzzy concepts with uncertain boundaries, and are defined by tradition as much as content. In this paper, I use empirical methods such as network and text analysis to examine the relationship between or within the areas of personality and social psychology.
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Why is it important?
What should a program, department, or curriculum in psychology look like? Most would agree that it should include "social psychology," but there is less agreement about what this means. Is personality part of social psychology, or is it largely separate? And, within social psychology, what areas of study are particularly central? In this study, I find that interpersonal relationships (and attachment) lie at the center of social psychology, and that the study of personality is largely distinct.
Perspectives
I am a personality psychologist who continues to believe that the study of human individuality matters. In this paper, I examine the extent to which personality exists as a separate area of psychology. The real contribution, I think, is not so much in these results, but in (a) the argument that one should look at this question using data rather than anecdote, and (b) the cool methods and data visualizations that are used to illustrate the structure of the field.
Kevin Lanning
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: What is the Relationship Between “Personality” and “Social” Psychologies?
Network, Community, and Whole Text Analyses of The Structure of Contemporary
Scholarship, March 2017, University of California Press,
DOI: 10.1525/collabra.70.
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