the debate between michel plon and morton deutsch: some related comments

The debate between Michel Plon and Morton Deutsch: Some related comments

JOHN CHADWICK-JONES

Saint Mary3 University, Halifax, Canada

Plon (1974a) has criticised certain tendencies in social psychology especially as the discipline has developed mainly within the cultural and political context of the United States. One conclusion which can be taken from his criticisms is that social psychologists trained in this context are likely to assist (with or without realising it) monied, favoured, elite groups maintaining positions of power or manipulating other sections or classes of society. At this point the debate grows hot and becomes confused by obscurely ideological or ad hominem arguments (Deutsch, 1974; Nemeth, 1974; Plon, 1974b).

When I first read Plon’s article as a pre-publication draft, I thought .that his critique had a definite value from a more practical point of view. It was not merely destructive because it hinted at the possibility of alternative ways and certainly revealed assumptions other than those which we normally accept within social psychology. For me, this was a useful message, if it asked us to question assumptions which previously had not emerged into explicit discussion. Not that it meant that these assumptions were going to be dropped, it seemed more an issue of perceiving the assumptional position from the outside in the sense that Plon gives a view of the discipline free of the constraints of these assumptions so we can better see our own assumptions for what they are, embedded in a set of culturally prestigious values. Plon affords us some momentary detachment from them. True, we have had criticisms of the subject matter of social psychology over the last decade which have pointed to the suspect quality of conventional objectivity. But Plon’s criticisms go deeper by denying that there can be neutrality on the part of social psychologists in a given society. True, also, that the root of this criticism is a Marxist ideology but Plon shares, and partly represents, the views of other social psychologists of the French culture, and therefore his position should be understood as part of a general critique from that cultural source. As an illustration of this, there is Moscovici’s (1972) statement that when he visited the United States and remained for some months, he began to understand some aspects of

Eur. J . soc. Psychol. 6 ( I ) , p p . 129-137

I30 John Chadwick-Jones

American social psychological theory for the first time. So, American explanations of social behaviour may not be adequate for psychologists of another culture. This gives us an arresting thought, but a useful one, if it produces wider discussion of the ethos and content of current socjal psychology.

The wider critique by French authors is found most recently in the articles by Bruno, Pecheux, Plon and Poitou (1973), Pecheux (1970), Plon and Preteceille (1972), Moscovici (1972) and Apfelbaum (1975). In the view of these writers, the options available to social psychologists, in choosing problems or methods, are often foreclosed by the influence of existing loci of power in society or in academic hierarchies. For instance, Michel Pecheux (1 970) discussing ideological influences on social psychology refers to the ‘illusion of autonomy’, an illusion which over- looks that a set of problems, a ‘problematic’, is defined by a view of what is an appropriate scientific and (or) ideological approach.

Basically, the criticism is aimed at the experimental situation in social phy- chology and is intended to demonstrate that its subject matter is either trivial or, if not trivial, is ‘sinister’ as a means to more effective social controls by established sections of society. Plon (1972) had drawn attention to the limited nature of problems investigated in two-person games. Pecheux (1970) and Bruno et a!. (1973) were especially critical of the experimental paradigm of the game, or payoff design, regarding it as the most behaviouristic of social psychological models and representing nothing more than the experimenters’ own ideas of strategies and counter-strategies. Thus, the experimental game is attacked on two fronts, both as a flight from reality, a diversion of attention to trivial topics and (or because of the diversion) as a sinister control technique. The critique is a fundamental one. from a Marxist position, drawing attention to the implicit aims of the discipline as it suits the purposes of segments of society, the capitalist society, of which it is a product. It points to the influence of a political and social context on the choice by social psychologists of research topics, of a set of methods, of certain designs and problems. The same influence results in the avoidance of others.

The real issue with this critique is whether true knowledge can be obtained in a capitalist society by bourgeois social scientists. Thus Plon’s criticisms are within the critical Marxist tradition, which is not aimed at showing the error of certain approaches so much as their selective nature and especially at calling attention to what they leave out. Gouldner (1973) expresses this last point in his excellent essay in which he suggests how the critical view be applied to Marxism itself. Gouldner (1973, p. 427) writes that ‘a critique is as much concerned with the “silences” of a theory as with what it dramatically accentuates. A critique, then, is an hermeneutic. It seeks an interpretation of the meaning of a theory of belief- system by linking it to the society or culture in which it lives - to show that the

The debate between Michel Plon and Morton Deutsch 131

theory was not born of mind alone - and thus to undermine its false consciousness. It seeks to establish the matter in which the theory relates to and serves the larger society, especially its leading elites, and to show how this relation has shaped a theory itself‘. Concerning the topics which are avoided in American social psychology, the French authors are agreed that the foremost one is certainly the distribution, or redistribution, of power in society, the reform of social, economic or political institutions and the study of actual institutions and power elites.

So we would expect that a Marxist critique would consider current experimental models as diversions from real issues, a flight from the reality of social behaviour. Worse than this, American social psychologists may be actively supporting a power structure by improving and implementing control methods, where the control is over the less privileged, the less powerful by the more powerful in society. 1 will consider the positive value of these criticisms, in a moment. It may be that they force us to reconsider our assessment of what is important, or trivial, and even in such minor topics as, say, hyperactivity in children, we might want to question our definitions of the point at which hyperactivity becomes a matter of applying behavioural control methods by psychologists. However, let us first discuss a specific point of disagreement between Plon and Deutsch - the Prisoner’s Dilemma design.

The prisoner’s dilemma

Plon and Deutsch disagree over the meaning of the Prisoner’s Dilemma design - yet, this has always been a source of controversy; there has never been agreement among theorists, experimenters or participants about the meaning of the different choices which are available in the game. Even in the adoption, by analogy, of the anecdote about the dilemma of two prisoners (confess or not confess?) to the experimental game with numerical payoofs (shall I gain five points or three, or possibly lose one?), the meaning of the outcomes has changed considerably. Ex- perimenters have modified the scale,of gains and losses so many times; they have taken their samples of subjects from different social or cultural groups, giving further variations in meaning. The design has attracted many criticisms in current social psychology, most of which emphasise that it is an arid, over-abstract presentation of material payoffs, hardly representing a social relationship at all. But it must be recognised that Plon in attacking this specific design has not recognised the interesting recent developments in modifying the original classic form of the game by introducing communication of various kinds, by the use of interviews and questionnaires together with observation of the process of taking

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decisions. Above all others, we should not fail to mention the exploration of cultural influences by a large group of researchers including Deutsch, in the Transnational Project (1970).

While the P.D. design is extremely resilient in face of criticisms, it could also be that it has become a lure, a trap, in which the efforts of researchers are dispersed in endless, trivial modifications. And this is Plon’s main attack when he adds to the list of criticisms (Nemeth, 1972) that this design is ahistorical. In the Prisoner’s Dilemma, he argues, the experimenter is making his own projection of conflict and ignoring the realities of conflict such as exist in actual situations within a given social structure. This argument has a positive and practical value in that it is unconventional, perhaps novel.

In order to illustrate this let us recall the original anecdote of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Here the two men arrested on suspicion have a choice: Either to confess or not to confess. If they both confess they receive a moderate sentence; if they both do not confess they get off with an extremely light one, but if one does not confess and the other does, the former receives a heavy sentence, the latter gets off scot free. Plon reminds us that in the original anecdote concerning the dilemma between two prisoners there was also a third person, the judge, who places before them the alternative - ‘confess and take a relatively light sentence. Otherwise, if you do not confess and the other man confesses, I will throw the book at you.’ (see Luce and Raiffa, 1957, p. 95; Ost, Allison, Vance and Restle, 1969). From this viewpoint the situation of the two prisoners results from a strategem invented by the judge, representing the established order, in order to settle the conflict between the latter and the two prisoners. Plon argues that the judge has invented a conflict between the two prisoners and has substituted it for the true conflict which is actually between him and the prisoners. The Prisoner’s Dilemma, created by the judge, now makes it difficult for them to remain allied against him - instead of co-operating with each other, they are under pressure to collaborate with him and to defect, leaving the other with the ‘sucker’ option. Looking at the P.D. design in this way, the end result is not an expression of mutual confidence between the two players in making their co-operative (not confess) choice, considered by some to be the rational choice. On the contrary, the result is to divide the two players, to prevent them remaining allied against the experimenter who is now in the judge’s place. Plon sees, in the experimental construction of this dilemma, a means by which a person can be persuaded to follow his ‘individual rationality’ at the ex- pense of maximising a joint outcome. So, yet another meaning is added to the controversy about how the experimenter should present, and how he should interpret, the P.D. design. Plon may have done us a service in stating this criticism forcibly. Deutsch uses the Prisoner’s Dilemma in order to understand how to overcome


conditions producing divisiveness. Plon argues, on the contrary, that the Prisoner’s Dilemma may enable better understanding of how to create them.

Parochialism

This French critique has most value because social psychology, like other branches of psychology in North America, has become extremely parochial. If the justifica- tion of our discipline is the attempt to understand social behaviour then it is parochial when this attempt appears as the study of local social problems and reference is not made to other cultural contexts. Of course, it is not a bad idea to examine local problems. On the other hand, if in our analysis of them we do not refer to what has been done or is being done elsewhere. possibly with a different set of starting assumptions, then it is our assumptive position which is parochial. Parochialism in this sense, then, involves the assumption of self-sufficiency for a particular cultural or national context of research or scholarship.

A survey of current introductory texts in general and social psychology reveals that very few references are made to studies outside of the United States, and this may be largely because of the kind of topic that is selected. Wrightsman (1972), McNeil (1973), Krupat (1975), Dyal, Coming and Willows (1975) are typical American texts in the sense that the problem and topics which they present are taken almost totally from the United States. The textbook market in that country seems to demand that attention be given to violence, race, drugs, student protest, feminist movements and hippy communes. These are serious, important problems but in the form they are dealt with, they are still the narrowly parochial problems of the United States. They are topics which may scandalise, slightly, some readers and may, at least, arouse greater interest from students than any others. It appears that if psychologists write for wide United States readership about social questions they must select ‘relevant’ problems or, even better, sensational ones. Racism, poverty, school integration, sexual deviations, hippy communes are some of these topics which clearly constitute a formula for successful marketing in introductory social psychology, with a few exceptions such as Lindgren (1973) and Secord and Backman (1974).

Up to now the greatest degree of progress against such parochialism appears in the effort by Wrightsman and colleagues to include ‘Canadian-relevant materials’ in the current revision of Social psychoZogy in the seventies with the declared intention of making it a ‘North American’ rather than a strictly ‘American’ text . . .


Reductionism

Plon mentions, among his criticisms of Deutsch’s work on conflict, the charge of reductionism, and this is always a sensitive question for social psychologists as they stand uneasily between psychology and sociology. From a Marxist position it is obvious that social psychologists avoid the really significant problems of power structures, dominant institutions and class interests. However, Plon’s charge of reductionism is a paradoxical one because the Marxist position is itself reductionist in another sense - that of a reduction upwards into sociology. Social psychology takes sub-institutional behaviour as the unit of study, whereas, by defini- tion, Marxist social science is concerned with the macro-structures of society. There has been no Marxist social psychology. Plon is a reductionist because the Marxist view of social science is reductionist, in the sense of a reduction upwards, and when he suggests that the existing discipline of social psychology be abandoned this is no more than what has already been done de fact0 in previous Marxist thinking. Social psychology has either been rejected or ignored. Plon’s attack is therefore a familiar one against an interpersonal social psychology in which no account at all is taken of institutions and history. However, the social psychologist is protected from loss of confidence at this point because he can present a certain kind of evidence concerning the effects on institutions, of sub-institutional behaviour. He knows it is sub-institutional behaviour which forms, operates, changes or breaks institutions.

As far as a social and political context is concerned, for the social psychologist it is still a matter of studying cells within the structure, of studying direct interpersonal relations, small groups and the allocation of rewards and status, of voting behaviour, communications and transactions between leaders and followers. It is a matter of studying how the small group operates against, as well as within, the larger structure. It may be true that much of everyday social behaviour is trivial, and we are to that extent contaminated by our subject matter. On the one hand, if we choose to discuss ‘equity’ or ‘inequity’ in the marriage ‘transaction’ when an elderly professor marries a glamorous young wife, then we may have taken up a trivial subject for testing the validity of our propositions. On the other hand, there is nothing to prevent social psychologists from observing the behaviour of poli- ticians or of members of interest groups at different levels of society - except the opposition of those groups.

This question of opposition raises practical difficulties for the social psychologist which Plon completely fails to raise or discuss. For instance, such groups may control access to funds or they may refuse facilities for research if there is any possibility that the results may not favour their current policies; they may prevent


publication. These are deterrents which operate particularly against field projects in actual social situations, and now we have come to a major flaw in Plon’s critique. He does not refer to field studies at all.

Perhaps this would have given a more constructive point to the critique. In directing all his criticisms against a predominant experimental paradigm, Plon does not mention the failure in current social psychology to develop a strong line of research in field studies. Yet the earlier traditions at Harvard and the Institute for Social Research at Michigan were very much in this direction.

Field studies

Field projects are, in any case, often unattractive for researchers because of the long periods of time required for preparation and access. There are also the demands of working within an actual situation without disturbing it and, by no means least, of presenting results acceptable to the sponsors. Simply by reporting the evidence, the researcher may appear to intervene in an existing power structure, and this will inevitably bring a denial of further access to that situation. Seeing things from the side of the underdog may make it impossible to collect more evidence. It is almost to be expected that one of the most recent discussions of the many problems in studying any segment of society by field research is provided by a sociologist and not a social psychologist - by Gouldner (1973). He condemns the biases of American liberal sociologists and their own attachment to ‘master institutions’, although there is no way of knowing, from his paper, how far his condemnation is justified, Gouldner’s comments on the problems of bias for researchers observing actual social relations refer to the (somewhat parochial) case of the American liberal sociologist loyal to the Democratic Party. Gouldner gives particular attention to ‘dominant conceptions of reality, sustained and fostered by the managers of society.. .’ (1973, p. 36). He argues that liberal sociologists are protagonists of deviant groups against local officialdom, the middle- men of bureaucratic agencies, but they are at the same time uncritical of the top officialdom - who happen to control the supply of research funds. This is a strategy which Gouldner terms, rather cynically, ‘how to remain a liberal although well-heeled’ (p. 49).

Gouldner discusses a number of obstacles to objectivity. For example, it is not easy to know one’s own value commitments. Secondly, we may have to acknowl- edge, in order to be objective, the significance of hostile information, which is detrimental to our own purposes. Nor is objectivity to be obtained by achieving such technical criteria as replicability of research since the bias of its auspices may


be replicable also. It is undisputable that there are far more risks involved in undertaking field studies, by comparison with the safer option of laboratory designs. The French critics have simply not recognised the field study in social psychology. Nevertheless, it is a method which, together with the variety of experimental and role-playing designs, constitutes, at this moment, empirical social psychology.

One man’s notion of social psychology is different from another’s and 1 shall use, as an illustration of this, Peter Blau’s Exchange and power in social life because it adds to social psychology in this one aspect which has escaped the attention of the aforementioned critique. Blau’s preferred method is that of field observation, and he provides us with potentially useful speculations on the inter- action of social structure and interpersonal behaviour. Blau’s recent influence is seen both in role-playing studies by Katz and Danet (1973) which explore rule- bending in bureaucratic agencies and field study by Schwartz (1974), who describes the ‘strategy of delay’, that is, waiting and the duration of time in delay of services, in formal organisations as a function of status or rank. Studies as these should be encouraged in social psychology, and the fact that, in general, they are not, no doubt contributes to a situation where a critique, such as the one from these French sources, is even possible.

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the debate between michel plon and morton deutsch: some related comments

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