Excursion from the Pure to the Applied in Experimental Social Psychology: A Reaffirmation of Faith

This paper evaluates from the author’s points of view, the current status of experimental social psychology as a positive science and a means of solving problems faced by potential users of social psychological knowledge. Furthermore, it describes five different experiments conducted by the author. The first two experiments focussed on theoretical issues. In the remaining three experiments, attention shifted to applications in organizational and consumer behaviour areas. All but the fifth experiment were hypothetico-deductive in nature and explicitly derived from distinctive middle-range theories in social psychology. All but the second experiment dealt with social influence process of one sort or another.