The three perspectives differ greatly on this issue of methodology and how psychology should be defined. Experimental psychology has its foundations firmly in the belief that it is a science and scientific approaches should be found for measuring, describing, and explaining social psychology. Experimentalists want arguments to be objective, and based on controlled empirical studies which produce quantitative scientific data, which is open to statistical analysis. When experiments produce results the findings are put to use often in health care, for example to predict a person’s vulnerability to a particular medical condition.
Humanistic psychology is a more subjective approach and uses real life experiences from which to draw conclusions and sees itself as a ‘moral science’ (Stevens, 2002, p.9). The theories derived from observation and interview techniques are applied to understanding the meaning people attach to experiences and other people. As well as using phenomenological analyses of lived experience. This is qualitative research and gives subjective accounts of experience as results.
Critical social psychology comes from the approach of being a ‘political science’ rather than a natural or moral science (Wetherell, 2002, p.11). Critical social psychologists are completely unsupportive of experiments and focuses on social structure and its effects on people as well as relationships between groups and individuals and importantly the study of relationships over a long period. It is not solely concerned with these issues and looks outside of the traditional psychological realm to politics and other social sciences for answers. Research findings are used to examine societies view on identity, stereotyping, community histories, and reference groups.
An important similarity between the perspectives is the consensus that we are part of a social matrix which includes factors like history, structure, material world, and gender. These factors produce an equation which equals the society that we live in and which is subject to change our behaviour and have effect on a person living in this social world. What this means is that no matter what direction you’re coming from before analysing any results you have from any type of experiment or experiential analyses these variables need to be taken into account. They cannot be controlled or worked round as they are with us all the time and you become institutionalised into the social world you are in.
Critical social psychology seems to have the most effective and sensible way of studying social psychology. The use of observation to study an element of social life within a whole context allow for natural meaningful results to be generated. Compared with experiments which seek to isolate one element from society and study it under laboratory conditions. This is liable only to give artificial and inconsistent results. Experimentalists claim that total objectivity is not possible yet still try to achieve this by controlling extraneous variables, giving the result of unnatural behaviour, which is then used to build theories and prove a hypothesis. Where as methods used in the humanistic approach are equally fallible. Collecting accounts on lived experience from the horse’s mouth as it were are open to fantasable exaggerations and total fabrication, over time people’s recollection of events changes and blurs and moves far away from the original account.
Qualitative evidence is produced allowing valuable descriptions and theories to be developed which can be used to understand elements of social life. Instead of quantitative results that stand up to statistical scrutiny and support a hypotheses but do not give results rooted in the actualities of being a person in a social world but in a laboratory.
In practice for example in the case of Leonard described in Book one (Sacks, 2002, p.5) critical social psychology would study his whole being. A particular aspect of him maybe of interest for example his view of identity, but this would not be isolated and removed from gender, a sense of self or the institution in which he has no choice but to live. Leonard’s situation would give a view of identity far from that of others and this must be understood in the context of Leonard as whole, or it means very little as single subject.
After an encounter with an individual for example Leonard a critical social psychologist would want to gain knowledge about who has power over Leonard and in what context. For most us somebody with power over us could be a parental figure at a young age, a teacher, politicians, or the police. In the case of Leonard far more people control him and even his basic decisions such as what time he will wake up, when he goes back to bed, meal times and what he eats. Most of us experience a control figure such as a politician as distant and having an abstract control, for Leonard the case is very different. As well as this issue a critical social psychologist would be looking at relationships in this situation, these are likely to be between Leonard, other patients, doctors and nurses. Leonard would also provide an opportunity to study identity and stereotypes in a setting that is outside of a mainstream one.
In contrast an experimental psychologist would have approached Leonard with a hypothesis and an experiment with which they will hope to prove or disprove the hypothesis abjectly. This would involve isolating a particular aspect of Leonard to give concise information. However the results this would give would be far removed from anything a critical or humanistic approach would provide, and of little use outside of a laboratory. Equally the method likely to be put in place by a humanistic psychologist of personal accounts would be extremely subjective as Leonard is vulnerable to depression and mood swings and the accounts you could get would vary day to day. The longevity that a critical social psychology methodology values would give the most valid result.
Critical social psychology is a more rigorous and in depth study of people as social animals. It includes studies of communities histories which is common sense if we expect to be able to explain what modern day behaviour based on, this is particularly useful in explaining interactions between different groups in a multi-cultural society and where there maybe long running disputes. Longevity it is an advantage of this perspective not only when looking at a community’s social history, but when explaining the effects of relationships, and the development of self. Seeing these features of a social life over time can not be substituted by a laboratory based experiment. Which does not give enough time to a subject to produce an objective valid result that can be generalised.
In conclusion critical social psychology uses the most practical methodologies if you want to gain reliable data. The data may not be quantitative and so unable to be statistically analyses but this does not mean that it doesn’t deserve to be recognised for what it can and has achieved. The use of observation by a psychologist in a natural not staged environment, who then analyse this data must be the most rigorous and truthful way in which to gain information on the study of social psychology. Using a wide focus and using knowledge from other disciplines only strengthens its validity and integrity as a perspective of psychology. When critical social psychology is compared with other disciplines and analysed in depth it is evident that other perspectives are too narrow minded in their approach to methodologies and suitable subject areas for research.
