Is Psychology Still a Science of Behaviour? Dariusz Doliński 1 1 Faculty of Psychology, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Wrocław, Poland Corresponding author: Dariusz Doliński (SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Faculty of Psycho- logy in Wroclaw, ul. Ostrowskiego 30B, 53-238 Wroclaw, Poland. E-mail: ddolinsk@swps.edu.pl) Received: 21 December 2017 • Published: 29 May 2018 Citation: Doliński, D. (2018). Is psychology still a science of behaviour? Social Psychological Bulletin, 13(2), Article e25025. https://doi.org/10.5964/spb.v13i2.25025 Abstract Since the 1970s, social psychology has examined real human behaviour to an increasingly smaller degree. Tis article is an analysis of the reasons why this is so. Te author points out that the oth- erwise valuable phenomenon of cognitive shif, which occurred in social psychology precisely in the 1970s, naturally boosted the interest of psychologists in such phenomena like stereotypes, attitudes, and values; at the same time, it unfortunately decreased interest in others, like aggres- sion, altruism, and social infuence. In recent decades, we have also witnessed a growing con- viction among psychologists that explaining why people display certain reactions holds greater importance than demonstrating the conditions under which people display these reactions. Tis assumption has been accompanied by the spread of statistical analysis applied to empirical data, which has led to researchers today generally preferring to employ survey studies (even if they are a component of experiments being conducted) to the analysis of behavioural variables. Te author analyses the contents of the most recent volume of “Journal of Personality and Social Psy- chology”, and argues that it is essentially devoid of presentations of empirical studies in which human behaviours are examined. Tis gives rise to the question of whether social psychology remains a science of behaviour, and whether such a condition of the discipline is desirable. Keywords social psychology; behavioural research; dichotomic variable; uncertainty principle This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Forum Paper