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Abstract
Wilhelm Wundt distinguished between “experimental psychology” and Volkerpsychologie. It is often claimed that Wundt maintained that social psychological phenomena, the subject matter of Völkerpsychologie, could not be investigated experimentally but must be explored via comparative-historical methods. In this article it is argued that it is doubtful if many of the passages usually cited as evidence that Wundt held such a view actually support such a view. It is also argued that if Wundt did hold such a view, it was inconsistent with his own general theoretical position and methodological practice. It is suggested that it is anachronistic to attribute such a view to Wundt, because he appears to have had little interest in the experimental analysis of the synchronic social dynamics of psychological processes. Most of Wundt’s arguments about the inappropriateness of experimentation were directed against the introspective analysis of diachronic historical processes.
Traditional histories of American social psychology regularly celebrate the progressive triumph of scientific and experimental methods (Cartwright, 1979; Jones, 1985, 1998). Revisionist critics of such Whig histories often treat the commitment to experimentation as one of the historical sources of the impoverishment of American social psychology (Danziger, 2000; Farr, 1996). Such critics generally credit Wilhelm Wundt with an early recognition of the social dimensions of cognition, emotion, and behavior. Wundt is held to have recognized that certain forms of cognition, emotion, and behavior are oriented to the represented cognition, emotion, and behavior of members of social groups (i.e., certain beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors are held or engaged by individuals because they are represented as held or engaged by, e.g., other family members, Democrats, Catholics, bankers, or gang members). Wundt maintained that these social forms of cognition, emotion, and behavior constitute the subject matter of “social psychology,” which he explored in his 10-volume Völkerpsychologie (Wundt, 1900–1920), sometimes characterized as his “second psychology” (Cahan & White, 1992).
Historical critics of experimental forms of social psychology also frequently credit Wundt with the view that social psychological phenomena cannot be investigated experimentally but must be explored with comparative-historical methods. Indeed, Wundt is...