European Social Psychology as a Wise “Other”

This chapter adopts the analytical perspective of disciplinary institutionalization and its related disciplinary intellectual evolution to study the historical process of the emergence of the main research paradigms in contemporary Western social psychology, using the growth trajectory of European social psychology as a thread. It begins by examining the institutionalization process of European social psychology as it evolved from Americanization to Europeanization, outlining the main activities of the European Association of Experimental Social Psychology and the authoritative publication system of European social psychology. Based on this, it carefully summarizes the unique characteristics of societal concern and the intellectual development process of hegemonic deconstruction in European social psychology. The chapter concludes that, through relentless efforts over half a century, European social psychology has successfully deconstructed the symbolic hegemony of American social psychology and, together with it, forged a new alliance of symbolic hegemony in international social psychology that has shaped the main research paradigms of contemporary Western social psychology. The chapter provides a brief review of these dominant research paradigms, such as social cognition research, social identity research, and social representation research, hoping to provide insights and inspiration for the intellectual renaissance and cultural self-awareness of Chinese social psychology.