Psychology and Sociology; why can't they just get along?

You've probably heard me say before that I'm a psychology graduate. This supposedly gives me a psychological (as opposed to a sociological), approach to life. In reality, I'm not sure it quite works like that. In my case I was always drawn to theoretical approaches that had no problem with criticising the shortcomings of mainstream science. Hence, I found myself attracted to what's broadly known as the social constructionist approach. This standpoint suggests that language is the driving force behind everyone's wholly individual view of reality; that language actively creates reality and doesn't just describe it. This is still pretty much my view.

Psychology symbol

The reason I'm sharing this today is that I've been listening to some great archived radio shows which describe the history and impact of seminal psychology experiments. And I got to thinking about whether I should promote these shows to you. The conclusion I came to was that I should; not because I'm looking to wilfully confuse you (although I've been accused of that more than once...), but because there are occasions when it's an awfully thin line between what's defined as psychology and what counts as sociology.

The social sciences just aren't that tidy. If the family of social sciences were a real family they'd be awfully prone to getting drunk and fighting each other. The Daily Mail would label them as 'FAMILY OF SHAME'. Put it like this; if they had a party there'd be a lot of individuals not prepared to sit next to each other because of some supposed slight uttered in 1935.  

However, my reason for suggesting you look at these radio shows is simpler than that. The social sciences are partly defined by each other-to know what sociology isn't you need to know what psychology is. Also, these shows are very easy to listen to as well and feature key experiments by theorists such as Maslow, Piaget, Ainsworth and Bandura, all of whom are known as psychologists but who you've probably come across on your sociological-based course.

OK. Enough. The radio show is called 'Mind Changers' and you can find the archive of shows here. If you want to reference any of them in assignments just ask for help.