How Social Psychology Can Build Bridges to the Social Sciences by Considering Motivation, Cognition, and Constraints Simultaneously

Thepot ential (and probably increasing) relevance of social psychology for the social sciences may lie in the fact that in the social sciences, there is an increasing need for theories on individual behavior and interaction that help explain how collective phenomena come about. By collective phenomena, I mean phenomena such as many people doing similar things (like committing crime or divorcing or discriminating), or doing things cooperatively (like joining a movement or working in teams), or doing things competitively (like competing in the market place or in politics), some combination of these (as in social exchange and social dilemmas), or the collective results of these actions (such as rates or social norms). This requires theories that can deal with a great variety of different influences on behavior at the same time. For example , if one wants to explain the difference in divorce rates between, say, Moroccan and autochthonous Dutch couples in the Netherlands, one would have to be able to trace theoretically the simultaneous (and possibly interactive) effects of relevant factors. Looking at the literature of empirical studies, one would be able to compile a list of factors that have come up in various studies, such as the information about the partner before marriage, age at marriage, investments in the relationships (such as joint children and property), norms of 151