Advances in the Microfoundations of Sociology: Recent Developments and New Challenges for Social Psychology

Social psychology is no longer a coherent label for the broad class of work that spreads across its two parent disciplines: psychology and sociology. In many ways the work within these disciplines has developed over the past two decades in two quite different directions. Within psychology, social psychologists have focused primarily on cognitive processes and the influence of social factors on intra-individual phenomena, blurring the boundaries between social and cognitive psychology. As psychology has focused more upon cognition and its link to neuroscience, it has become less social in its emphasis. Social psychologists within sociology, in contrast, have increasingly addressed the links between their research and work at more macro levels of analysis. This trend was fueled in the early to mid-1980s by sociology's growing interest in what came to be called micro-macro linkages. In this essay I discuss some of the developments within sociological social psychology that provide key insights into the microfoundations of sociology. Given space constraints, I focus primarily on recent developments within the United States (with only brief reference to related work in Europe). In addition, I identify five major challenges to the field of social psychology in the future: the evolutionary challenge, the cross-cultural challenge, the challenge of understanding intergroup conflict and the politics of identity, the challenge of finding new modes of cooperation, and the challenge of developing a larger worldview.