Epistemological models in the consolidation of social psychology

Abstract

Social psychology has become a necessary reference when it comes to understanding current sociocultural phenomena. When approaching this discipline, it is convenient to roughly recognize some currents of thought that have exerted a remarkable influence. Since the Middle Ages, the concept of the soul opened an unprecedented panorama that would later be linked to the object of study of psychology; later, the scientific method offered the possibility of analyzing the human psyche from a more positivist perspective, which, although it continued to focus on the introspective exercise, no longer sought to understand and/or define the soul, but rather the basic psychological processes among which the sociocultural dimension of the human being was included. Two approaches gradually emerged: that of social psychological psychology, based on Wilhelm Wundt’s experimental practice and his proposal of Völkerpsychologie, and that of sociological social psychology, which focuses not so much on the psychic aspects of human socialization, but on the relational fabric that occurs in specific practical contexts. This approach makes it possible to differentiate the main approaches that have inspired the object of study and the modes of intervention proper to social psychology.