NARRATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL REALITY IN INTRODUCTORY SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY TEXTBOOKS

International audienceSociological and historical analyses of scientific narratives have shown how these have functioned in the performance of “boundary work”, the rhetorical demarcation of scientific activity and knowledge from competing forms of knowledge and practice. The discipline of psychology, in general, and social psychology, in particular, have had—because of their reflexive nature—to perform a particularly delicate kind of narrative and rhetorical work from which other natural and social sciences appear to be exempt. This paper demonstrates the utility of narrative analysis of introductory textbooks for critical reflection on such boundary work, and more broadly, on the nature and practice of psychological science. Focusing on the genre of introductory social psychology textbooks, it examines the role of anecdotal or journalistic narratives (typically of shocking or counterintuitive events) used to introduce or illustrate social psychological topics in performing three rhetorical or discursive functions: (i) simultaneously establishing the real-world significance of social psychological research for lay or student readers, while (ii) distancing social psychological explanations from lay or non-scientific explanations for events, and (iii) "hailing" or interpellating readers into the subjective reality of social psychological theories and explanations. In doing so, the paper addresses the role of “origin myths” as well as the “aesthetic” dimensions of textbook writing in fulfilling the contradictory aims of both popularizing and disciplining the boundaries of social psychological science