GERGEN VERSUS THE MAINSTREAM - ARE HYPOTHESES IN SOCIAL-PSYCHOLOGY SUBJECT TO EMPIRICAL-TEST

K.J. Gergen's (1982) argument that hypotheses in social psychology are not empirical propositions is critically examined and shown to be err oneous. Nevertheless, this article demonstrates that, without necessar ily appearing obvious, some hypotheses can be derived from proposition s that are like tautologies and that their confirmation as such is of little interest. An analysis of hypotheses in recent articles in the J ournal of Experimental Social Psychology and the Journal of Personalit y and Social Psychology suggests that hypotheses derivable from propos itions very much like tautologies may not be infrequent. Implications are considered for what kinds of social psychology experiments are of value to perform.