In the past two decades many social psychologists, a vast majority from European universities (Tajfel, 1972; Moscovici,1972; 1986; Parker, 1987; 1990;) but not only (Gergen, 198?;Wexler, 1986), have discussed the crisis faced by the discipline. From our succession of lonely paradigms and methodologies without theories to our desperate search for universality and the rise of evolutionary explanations, many aspects of social psychology have indeed exposed the depth of a crisis. In its first hundred years social psychology has not managed to provide what was expected of it, namely an understanding of the constant duality between the social and the individual. This intersection between individual cognitive existence and the social world should have been the most sought after form of epistemology, for it sheds light on most dimensions of human reality.

Instead we are left with a social psychology imprisoned in an individualistic and positivistic psychology. This isolation has had a two-fold effect. On the one hand, social psychology has failed to address some of the questions of the general public, the social agents we have so often used as objects and subjects in our research. And on the other hand, it has not managed to bridge with the other social sciences, notably sociology and anthropology, forcing most other disciplines to create their own version of social psychology (Moscovici, 19??). So our loss is double. The other sciences do not need us, for they have invented their own social psychology. And the public does not need us either and has preferred to give the center stage to economists who themselves have at least attempted to provide a theory of the world - even with a barely credible Homo Oeconomicus functioning with the rationality of "Deep Blue."

Yet, at the same time, social psychology is one of the few disciplines capable of fully completing the synthesis between the individual and the social. Since the interplay between internal mechanisms and the constantly changing social world is actualized through the interconnectedness of individuals, social psychology should, and in fact has the responsibility to, be concerned primarily with the social nature of thought and the ways in which people change their society. One of the striking characteristics of our modern societies is precisely the changing nature of our reality and the acceleration of these changes in today's world. If anything, advances in communication are multiplying the instances and forms of interaction existing between social agents.

This perspective of social life, anchored in the dynamic relations existing between individuals, is unique to social psychology. Indeed, it goes beyond the concerns of traditional sociology which has often denied the creative participation of individuals. And it also goes beyond that of the cognitive approaches, so dominant in psychology, which tend to focus solely on the processes of information. Social psychology is therefore imperative for a full understanding of our reality. It is in light of this unique epistemological quality, which characterizes the discipline, that I wish to elaborate a series of arguments in favor of a bright and optimistic future for social psychology.

This book is a reflection on the future of social psychology, a discipline still trapped by its focus on a decontextualized individual and impaired by its own methodological obsessions. What have we learned from the past? How can we deal with the crisis? What will be the focus of the field in the future? Those are the basic questions addressed here. Through the examination of the strengths as well as the weaknesses of social psychology, this book seeks to deepen our understanding of the field by reassessing the past, dealing with the present, and projecting onto the future. This tripartite division - past, present, and future - reflects the three major parts of the book.

What have we learned from the past?

Any serious analysis directed toward the future requires first an examination of the past. My account begins with the end of the nineteenth century when social psychology is said to have originated with the appearance of two pioneering publications; one by Gabriel Tarde (1890) and the other by Norman Tripplett (1898). The date of this inception corresponds more to convention than real fact since as early as the 5th century B.C., Plato, Aristotle, and many other Greek scholars had grappled with similar problems that concern social psychologists today. And we should also remember the even more salient fact that Wundt had already way before the time of Tarde and Tripplett elaborated the framework of his všlker psychology.

Wundt's repudiation by some of his contemporaries, such as Hermann Ebbinghaus at Berlin with the study of memory (Danzinger, 1990) and Oswald KŸlpe at WŸrzburg with the study of imageless thought (Farr, 1996), marks the starting point of our historical analysis in the first chapter. After tracing the beginning of this marginalization, we articulate a brief retrospection of the evolution of social psychology in North America to demonstrate how social psychology has been consistently pushed aside. This analysis culminates in a quantitative demonstration of the positioning of social psychology at the end of all major general textbooks in psychology, crystallizing the secondary role of the discipline.

The 1930's and the threat of war in Europe changed the faith of psychology as a result of a massive exodus of many psychologists who were fleeing the Nazi menace. Most of them settled in America. That systematic "brain drain" of European thinkers to North America had a strong impact on the field. The advent of Gestalt psychology on American soil and the perspective of Kurt Lewin introduced a novel approach to social psychology. Lewin, who is remembered as "the practical theorist," was mostly known and admired for his intense social consciousness and his deep social responsibility (Marrow, 1968; Wolf, 1989). In 1944 he became the director of the Research Center for Group Dynamics at MIT. Remaining more radical than most researchers of his time, he passed on his knowledge and passion for research to a whole generation. In chapter two we examine what I have referred to as "the Golden Years" of social psychology fuelled by this generation. This period corresponded to the beginning of the post-war boom, and research in social psychology reflected the spirit and the regained optimism of the time.

When gestalt psychology and the phenomenological perspective took hold in the United States, they opened the way for the cognitive era of psychology. Primarily a reaction against behavioristic principles, the cognitive revolution decentralized the hegemonic position held thus far by the proponents of a Watsonian approach. This paradigmatic shift, crystallized in the switch from a stimulus-response model to a stimulus-organism-response model, provided ironically within psychology a fertile ground for an even more individualistic perspective, with a singular focus on a decontextualized person. In chapter three we examine the application of cognitive principles in social psychology. This perspective, still the dominant one in psychology, has been incorporated within social psychology with the rise of social cognition. We were then only a step away from the use of explanations for social phenomena that derived from genetic arguments and evolutionary reasonings. This is in fact a modern expression of Herbert Spencer's social Darwinism which has always found deep roots in the United States, as a perfect ideological legitimation of individualism (Bellah, 1991; Lasch, 199?; Degler, 1992).

How can we deal with the crisis?

The currently prevailing socio-biological explanations lend themselves to an exacerbated depiction of the individual which eliminates the social dimension of our existence as interconnected agents. This reduction has put the very notion of the social in psychology in question. The second part of the book deals with the crisis faced by the discipline and tries to elaborate a coping strategy for it. It is probably worth mentioning that there is certainly more than just one way of dealing with the crisis faced by social psychology. I have opted for an approach which requires social psychology to assert, or precisely reassert, a primary focus on an individual within his or her social context. Such a perspective takes for granted the fact that individuals do not form their thoughts in isolation but as a result of influence from each other. And this is the basic idea introduced in the three chapters comprising part two.

Reconstructing the subject is the first step towards a resolution of our crisis. In chapter four we look at how the individual we have used in our studies is an implicit being, solely defined for the purpose of experimentation and thus created outside of its field. By field, drawing from the Lewinian perspective, I am referring to all the forces acting on an individual at a particular time. In social psychology we should be concerned with the person's life space, a phenomenological perspective, which consists of the totality of facts determining the behavior of an individual at a certain moment. Such an angle offers immediate advantages. For one, it reduces the risk of demand characteristics (Orn, 1964; Rosenthal, 19??) and evaluative apprehension (Snyder, 19??), the fundamental problems of external validity. And, by giving the subjects some degree of freedom, we allow them to become complete entities with a history and a social existence.

The reconstruction of a complete subject sets a precedent for a fuller and more complete social psychology. This should make possible stitching back together of all the different components of social psychology (e.g. health, school, organizational, criminology, environmental, feminist studies, etc.), that are now scattered within psychology and evolving in total isolation from one another. In chapter five we address this question. In doing so, we wish to de-emphasize the drive towards overspecialization encouraged in American universities (Moghaddam, 1997). This need for specialization, itself of minimal epistemological value, is well inscribed in the functionalist spirit of American psychology, a pragmatic perspective supported by grants from foundations and validated through professional licensing.

Yet the only way to "stitch back together" the subdivisions of social psychology is to have well integrated theories. The lack of such theories in the field has produced a succession of research that says very little about the world. While such research may be endowed with strong internal validity, without a theoretical foundation it is of limited use for the understanding of the world around us. Theories allow us to observe and interpret our social reality. By integrating knowledge into a consistent framework, they allow us to formulate research ideas which apply this knowledge. In chapter six we discuss some theoretical frameworks in which the social and the individual are well integrated.

The study of attitudes and behavior

The crisis faced by social psychology and the difficulties we have faced in resolving this problem are in part due to our inconsistent perception of the relationship between attitudes and behavior. In part three, which includes chapters seven and eight, we examine the unresolved issue of attitudes and behavior. As the original object of study in North American social psychology, attitudes have been extensively studied in the course of our brief history. From the mainstream point of view, which has remained loyal to the Allport's brothers, Floyd as well as Gordon, attitudes have always been thought to be an internal dimension shaping individual behavior.

Do attitudes shape behavior or is it the behavior which determines attitudes? This question is addressed in chapter seven. It was Leon Festinger (1956; 1957) who provided the answer upon which everyone could finally agree. He demonstrated, with his study of Mrs. Keech and her followers, that it is the behavior which guides the attitudes. In doing so, he has placed the social within the head of individuals. From a historical perspective we can say that there has been an asymmetric focus of research on the influence attitudes may have on behavior. This research agenda is a clear illustration of a psychological form of social psychology. It is also the expression of a reductionism, which has transformed attitudes into an individual measurement and has localized them in the head, as the result of cognitive processes. This tradition of research has never left us, to the point where today we have forgotten cognitive dissonance theory, the only empirically validated theory of social psychology. In rethinking social psychology, I suggest that we reintroduce cognitive dissonance theory in its fullest implications.

If we accept the proof that the social is in our head, we need to ask ourselves next how it gets there. Vygotsky answered this question by pointing to higher mental functions through which the individual absorbs the social (Kozulin, 1990; Yaroshevsky, 1989). The locus of the mind is then not to be found within the individual but rather in meaningful action and interaction and in cultural artifacts which have a shared symbolic significance for individuals in a given society. As cognitive dissonance brings the social into the minds of individuals, it fills their heads with social representations. Moscovici (1961; 1976), who elaborated a theory of social psychology around this concept, viewed social representations as rooted in our cultural background and permeating our social life. Taking us back to a conception of attitude similar to that of Thomas & Znanieski (19??-19??), the implications of Moscovici's social representation theory are analyzed in chapter eight.

What will be the focus in the future?

The past undeniably leaves inedible marks on the present. It is only through an understanding of the past that the present makes sense. However, the future also defines clear paths to the present. It is through its collective creation that as social agents we can establish new points of convergence. In the case of social psychology, the transformation of social life has led to if anything more instances of interactions and possibilities of creating connections between individuals.

Social psychology has, in my opinion, a strong, brilliant, and challenging future. One may even project the upcoming era of social psychology as the means by which a full understanding of society and social life can be achieve. The social dimension of our existence is a key question. As we are converging more and more towards new forms of interactions, and despite the Internet and other mediated communication we have accentuated our interconnectedness.