The need for theory-driven research on real phenomena

I was recently given the assignment of preparing a state-of-the-art report for social psychology, with the request to focus on the advances and key developments in the field, as well as on promising research perspectives for the next decade (Scherer, 1992). In trying to go beyond my personal prejudices, I informally polled a number of colleagues in Europe and the United States with respect to their opinions on key developments and shortcomings in our discipline, and looked at the evolution of different content areas in major social psychology journals and textbooks (assuming that it is here that a discipline tries to put its best foot forward). I concluded that in spite of the explosion of research and publication activity in the field, real advances in knowledge that could figure prominently in our textbooks have been few and far between in the past two decades. Although there has been much progress in our understanding of human social cognition and interaction, our ability to explain some of the central social psychological phenomena (such as person perception, group dynamics, or the effects of culture on behavior) and to unravel the processes involved leaves much to be desired.

In attempting to analyze the causal factors responsible for this situation, I became convinced that social psychologists might lean too much toward paradigm-driven rather than phenomenon-driven research. This has resulted in an impressive number of elegant and methodologically sophisticated studies on ever more complex paradigms that, however, may not always contribute to the understanding of real-life phenomena.