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This paper examines one aspect of early twentieth century debates over the meaning of scientific methodology and epistemology within the social sciences: the tendency of sociologists to invoke 'laboratory' as a multivalent concept and in reference to diverse institutions and sites of exploration. The aspiration to designate or create laboratories as spaces of sociological knowledge production was broadly unifying in early American sociology (1890-1930), even though there was no general agreement about what 'laboratory' meant, nor any explicit acknowledgment of that lack of consensus. The persistence of laboratory talk in sociology over decades reflects the power of 'laboratory' as a productively ambiguous, legitimizing ideal for sociologists aspiring to make their discipline rigorously scientific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates three conflicting reconstructions of the historical relationship between personality and social psychology and addresses questions they raise regarding the subdisciplinary status of personality in the 1920s and the way in which the field gradually emerged as a separate area of psychology. Contesting claims that Floyd Allport first connected social psychology to a separate “branch” of personality psychology in the 1920s, I argue that he drew upon earlier work of psychologists and sociologists who treated personality as a central topic of social psychology. I compare Floyd Allport's views with those of Gordon Allport, who endeavored to establish personality as a separate subdiscipline. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]