Difference between psych and soc?

November 15, 2005 4:42 PM

What is the real difference between psychology and sociology? Does a concise and thorough explanation exist anywhere? I'm thinking particularly in terms of social interactions and The Self. Both seem to be viable topics in both sociology and psychology. I perceive a lot of overlap between the two disciplines. Am I wrong? Do sociologists and psychologist agree with me?
posted by lalalana to society & culture (13 comments total)

They both started out from different domainsof knowledge and as a result the bulk of research within both fields tends to reflect a definite skew.

A pretty basic view might be to say that sociology tends to proceed from the premise that the self is constructed from the outside in, whereas psychology tends to proceed from the premise that the self is constructed from the inside out.

Both fields tend to meet in the middle, with social constructivism and social psychology exhibiting a great deal of concordance.

Western sociology "began" as moral statistics, that is, an analysis of differing rates of suicide within different French localities. Western psychology is somewhat older, with many people tracing it back to Augstine's Confessions and its modern incarnation to Descartes' idea of a unitary, solitary consciousness.
posted by meehawl at 4:54 PM on November 15, 2005

Sociology is the study of social lives, processes, rules and interactions -- it has more to do with the group, even when looking at the individual. Psychology is the study of the mind and behaviour -- as it pertains to the individual. Wikipedia outlines the differences between sociology and psychology.
posted by acoutu at 4:54 PM on November 15, 2005

There's definitely plenty of overlap in the area of social psychology, a field which exists in both sociology and psychology. I would say that once you exclude social psychology, the two disciplines are completely different. Of course, naming that difference is much harder.

The study of Suicide that meehawl mentions is a classic and early work in sociology, but it's hardly the "beginning" (In fact it's not even Durkheim's first study) and much early sociology had nothing to do with statistics or variable-based models of any sorts. . My social theory class started from Plato and covered a whole lot of ground before we got to Durkheim. Certainly even if you only considered modern sociology, you would have to include Auguste Compte, who coined the term, and Karl Marx, both of whom predated Durkheim.

But getting back to the difference...At it's core, yes sociology is more about interactions between people how these interactions work and what their consequences are. It is inherently about the social, and deals with the individual only insofar as the individual is necessary to understand the social. Psychology is the opposite: Interested in the individual and examining the social only to better understand the individual.

That's a quick and dirty description. Why do you ask? The difference between psych and soc, is one of those "I know it when I see it" distinctions, so if you're looking to choose a discipline to work in or investigate further, why not tell us the kinds of questions you're interested in and we can talk about how well they fit into each field?
posted by duck at 5:26 PM on November 15, 2005

Oh, and I also meant to note, one of the common critiques of Durkheim's Suicide is that it psychologizes the problem (and he does all sorts of acrobatics to try to pretend he's not using psychological explanations, but he sort of is). So probably not a shining example if you're looking to disentangle the distinction between psych and soc.
posted by duck at 5:29 PM on November 15, 2005

well, that and his ridiculous sexism which affects the lens through which he views women and their rates of suicide.
posted by yonation at 5:40 PM on November 15, 2005

I know this is simple, but I heard it said once that:
"Sociology is the study of the psyche of society."
-
posted by Independent Scholarship at 5:42 PM on November 15, 2005

much early sociology had nothing to do with statistics or variable-based models of any sorts

And therein lies the core of what is sociology, vs economics, vs history, vs scholasticism. That's why I, like you, used the "". You could spend, and people have, entire seminars arguing over what is "in", and what is "out".

Two books I count as early Western proto-sociology:

Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

Anicius Boethius's The Consolation of Philosophy.
posted by meehawl at 5:47 PM on November 15, 2005

Its probably fair to say that Sociologists are somewhat hostile to Pyschology. meehaul's point about the overlaps would be where it gets confusing. I am less sure about what Psychologists think of Sociology but theirs is an inane discipline best ignored so it doesn't really matter.
posted by anglophiliated at 5:53 PM on November 15, 2005

I'm a sociologist and I don't think we're hostile to psychology. Now economics, that's another story.

But anyway, I was posting again to say that when I said early modern sociology was generally not statistical or variable based, I didn't just mean pre-Durkheim, but also much of Durkheim (Division of Labour, Elementary Forms of Religion) as well as Weber, Simmel, Goffman, and really much of Sociology until the emergence of the fast cheap computers.
posted by duck at 6:21 PM on November 15, 2005

This is my personal belief, simply put - psych is about the person, sociology is about the people. And yes, there is a lot of overlap in social psychology.
posted by jetskiaccidents at 7:16 PM on November 15, 2005

Well, hrm. From a psych point of view, psychology is concerned with the ways in which individual organisms, primarily human beings, interact with their environment. At the one end, you have some very basic stimulus + nerve + chemical reaction sort of thing. At the other end, you have social psychology, and somewhere in the middle you have things like semiotics, perception, memory, emotion, gestalt, schema, language, development, etc.. But still a lot of social psychology centers on how a person's perceived reality radically changes in the company of others.

Fundamentally, (and I say this from the psych end of things) I don't think that contemporary psychology has really gotten away from the methodological behaviorism of stimulus->response. Certainly us cognitive folks have no objection to cracking open Skinner's black box and making inferences about what wires we might find. But still the basic model for psychology is watching what individual organisms do in a variety of environments and trying to build better theories of what goes on in that organism's head.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 8:06 PM on November 15, 2005

Psychology is, as some people pointed out earlier, the study of mind and behavior. It's possible to study mind and behavior as they affect social interaction, but that's only one small part of the picture. There are other, very different arms of psychology, such as those that overlap with neuroscience, linguistics, and computational theory.

Sociology overlaps significantly with social psychology, but it's also clearly allied with history, political theory, and social anthropology.

Statistical techniques play significant roles in the contemporary versions of both, as they do in any discipline that considers itself "social science". (If you're asking because you're trying which to study, you'll have to take the class in either case.)
posted by tangerine at 8:15 PM on November 15, 2005

Um, that's trying to decide. Sorry.
posted by tangerine at 8:15 PM on November 15, 2005