This unflinching effort critically traces the attempt of social psychology over the past half century to forge a scientific understanding of human behaviour based on the systematic use of experiments. Having examined the record from the inception of the field to the present, Brannigan suggests that it has failed to live up to its promise: that social psychologists have achieved little consensus about the central problems in the field; that they have failed to amass a body of systematic, non-trivial theoretical insight; and that recent concerns over the ethical treatment of human subjects could arguably bring the discipline to closure.

Author Biography

Augustine Brannigan is professor of sociology, in the department of sociology, at the University of Calgary. He is the author of The Social Basis of Scientific Discoveries and of various social science publications.