An exciting challenge to social psychology, this volume advances a realist interpretation of psychological theories that surmounts the problems of traditional empiricist accounts and repudiates the relativism of more recent social constructionist critiques. The author demonstrates that realism offers many more theoretical possibilities than are recognized by these two alternatives.

The book illustrates that a realist account is entirely compatible with theories of the social dimensions of mind. Greenwood develops an original theory of the intrinsically social dimensions of identity and emotion; he documents many areas that have been neglected by both empiricist and constructionist accounts, and demonstrates that the social dimensions of mind and behaviour pose no threat to the objectivity, or to the prospects for empirical evaluation, of psychological theories of identity and emotion.