Remarks on usefulness of historical comparisons in social psychology

The usefulness of historical comparisons in social psychology is limited because, first, they are not based on experimental tests of hypotheses, and second, the historical sources used usually are not sufficiently credible and represent cases that are not representative for relevant historical periods (epochs). Such comparisons serve various goals, but mainly they act as a supplement to cross-cultural comparisons which help assess the universality of theories. In order to increase the usefulness of historical comparisons, it is necessary to diversify the analyzed historical contexts and, if possible, to draw cases for comparison from various, relatively isolated systems of phenomena. peerReviewed publishedVersion