(Social) constructionism and social psychology

Abstract

In the second half of the 20th century a number of alternative approaches to positivistic and individualistic traditional social psychology appeared. Among them most important are social representations, social identity theory and especially a variety of different orientations usually labelled as social constructionism. What all those approaches have in common is radical change on the metatheoretical level. It could be said that new approaches are quite promising, but it seems that epistemological and ontological questions as well as problems of social motivation are not yet satisfactory clarified. It seems that the identity of psychology depends on the resolution of this theoretical uncertainties.

Keywords

• social psychology
• constructivism
• social representations
• social identity
• epistemology