Considering the different paths of knowledge production that Social psychologists have run in Brazil, the text makes a distinction between a stricto sensu Social Psychology and the lato sensu one. The stricto sensu Social Psychologycomprises the trends found in the historical development of the discipline and in scientific modernity: the mainstream "psychological" Social Psychology; the European "sociological" Social Psychology; the "micro-sociological" perspectives, since Mead. The lato sensu Social Psychology comprises the trends that emerged aside the subject's history or very recently, following other epistemological guidelines: the Marxist Social Psychology, institutional analysis, socio-historical Psychology, socio-constructionism, and the philosophical Social Psychology. The eight trends listed are then submitted to evaluations regarding the two basic dimensions of Social Psychology: societal and psychological. A comparative picture of those evaluations discloses differences between the stricto and lato sensu sets of Social Psychology, as well as between the several trends in the scope of each set.
Mainstream Social Psychology; European Social Psychology; critical Social Psychology
