The Legacy of European Social Psychology

An online compendium of ideas, schools and people in the field of Social Psychology

From Seminars to Meetings to ...

From Specialised Seminars to Small Group and Midsize Meetings

Already in the early years ‘specialized seminars,’ as they were then called, were being organized. These can be considered the pre-runners of what later became the small group and medium size meetings. The early specialized seminars were few in number, partly because of the limited finances available at the time. The situation nowadays is radically different. On average the Association now funds about seven of these meetings every year. They cover a great variety of topics and they often lead to continued joint research and joint publications. We have now gone full circle in that the current Executive Commitee has again decided not to differentiate between small and medium sized meetings, but simply to establish a minimum of participants (20) and a maximum of funding per meeting (now 8.000 Euro).

General Meetings

Aside from these smaller meetings, every three years the Association organizes its grand ‘General Meeting.’ Today’s General Meetings can hardly be compared to the early ones, although still serving the same goals. In the very early General Meetings, all sessions were plenary and everybody knew everybody. With the growing membership it did not take long before an organizer of one of the General Meetings began to experience difficulties with the selection of papers to be presented, the overload of the conference’s timetables etc., leading them to suggest (almost whispering) that the Executive Committee should consider to have parallel rather than plenary sessions.

Considering that the Amsterdam General Meeting (2014) had 1400 people attending, with 12 parallel sessions every day of the conference, with over 1500 submissions and close to 1500 individual and poster presentations, it is obvious that the organization of the scientific program of today’s General Meetings is radically different from before. And whereas in the past even hotel reservations were being handled by the Association itself, the logistics of today’s Meetings are now entrusted to external agencies. Still, the goals are the same as before, only the means differ. Of course, achieving the ‘close-knit family feeling’ characteristic of the early Meetings becomes more difficult.

Summer Schools

As described earlier, Summer Schools have been around ever since the beginnings of the ssociation. They were considered a crucial tool towards ensuring the future quality of European research in social psychology and the development of networks among young social psychologists. Putting the description of the early summer schools (by their organizers, staff members, and participants) side by side with those of today one is struck by the similarities. The goals are still the same, the basic format is still the same and—importantly—the spirit among the participants is still the same. In addition it should be observed that the experience at the Summer School stimulated some participants to later become very active and leading members of the Association (as editor of the European Journal, as organizer of a General Meeting, as member of an Executive Committee, even as its President).

Of course there are differences between then and now. The very early summer Schools lasted five weeks, they now last (only) two weeks. Today’s participants speak a much better English and they have a stronger background in research methodology and in the field of social psychology in general. A number of them have the additional advantage of already being integrated in a social psychology research groups at their home institutions. Still, even when taking the above differences into account, it still remains a fact that an intensive two week training period with like-minded students proves extremely beneficial, not only in terms of one’s own intellectual development and one’s future academic career, but also in terms of its networking effect. Last but not least there is the experience of interacting with students from other countries which serves as an eye-opener for many.

Finally, whereas in earlier days participation in our Summer Schools was restricted to Europeans, since some years some five North American students and five Australasian students can now also participate. Conversely, a comparable number of European students can now participate in the Summer Schools organized by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and by the Society of Australasian Social Psychology.