Social Psychology in Malawi: Historical or Developmental?

Abstract

It is now over two decades since Gergen (1973) argued that social psychology is historical, and this paper re-examines his arguments in the light of more recent social changes in Tropical Africa. Malawi has experienced major sociopolitical upheavals and from the outside, with much of the agenda based on foreign historical foundations, Gergen's hypothesis implies that social psychology should be radically inappropriate. From the inside, however, the discipline has garnered substantial student enrolments, sustained by four possible modes of applied re search in addition to cross-cultural refutation ( for instance, similarity-attraction), namely, rejuvenation (of observer bias, among aid donors), realisation (that "aid" is transactional), reconstitution (into a principle of incremental improvement), and restatement (of competitive motives, reflecting clashes with collectivist peers and security conscious superiors). In contemporary Malawi, social psychology is "developmental" rather than "historical", casting doubt on the universality of Gergen's historicity hypothesis.