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Personality and Social Psychology... Nov 2023Social psychology's disconnect from the vital and urgent questions of people's lived experiences reveals limitations in the current paradigm. We draw on a related...
ACADEMIC ABSTRACT
Social psychology's disconnect from the vital and urgent questions of people's lived experiences reveals limitations in the current paradigm. We draw on a related perspective in social psychology-the sociocultural approach-and argue how this perspective can be elaborated to consider not only social psychology as a historical science but also social psychology of and for world-making. This conceptualization can make sense of key theoretical and methodological challenges faced by contemporary social psychology. As such, we describe the ontology, epistemology, ethics, and methods of social psychology of and for world-making. We illustrate our framework with concrete examples from social psychology. We argue that reconceptualizing social psychology in terms of world-making can make it more humble yet also more relevant, reconnecting it with the pressing issues of our time.
PUBLIC ABSTRACT
We propose that social psychology should focus on "world-making" in two senses. First, people are future-oriented and often are guided more by what could be than what is. Second, social psychology can contribute to this future orientation by supporting people's world-making and also critically reflecting on the role of social psychological research in world-making. We unpack the philosophical assumptions, methodological procedures, and ethical considerations that underpin a social psychology of and for world-making. Social psychological research, whether it is intended or not, contributes to the societies and cultures in which we live, and thus it cannot be a passive bystander of world-making. By embracing social psychology of and for world-making and facing up to the contemporary societal challenges upon which our collective future depends will make social psychology more humble but also more relevant.
Topics: Humans; Psychology, Social; Psychology
PubMed: 36628932
DOI: 10.1177/10888683221145756 -
Annual Review of Psychology Jan 2024Social psychologists attempt to explain how we interact by appealing to basic principles of how we think. To make good on this ambition, they are increasingly relying on... (Review)
Review
Social psychologists attempt to explain how we interact by appealing to basic principles of how we think. To make good on this ambition, they are increasingly relying on an interconnected set of formal tools that model inference, attribution, value-guided decision making, and multi-agent interactions. By reviewing progress in each of these areas and highlighting the connections between them, we can better appreciate the structure of social thought and behavior, while also coming to understand when, why, and how formal tools can be useful for social psychologists.
Topics: Humans; Psychology, Social; Social Perception
PubMed: 37540891
DOI: 10.1146/annurev-psych-021323-040420 -
Journal of Affective Disorders Dec 2016There is a lack of clarity regarding specific risk factors discriminating generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) from panic disorder (PD).
BACKGROUND
There is a lack of clarity regarding specific risk factors discriminating generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) from panic disorder (PD).
GOAL
This study investigated whether GAD and PD could be discriminated through differences in developmental etiological factors including childhood parental loss/separation, psychological disorders, and maternal and paternal attachment.
METHOD
Twenty people with adult generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), 20 with adult panic disorder (PD), 11 with adult comorbid GAD and PD, and 21 adult non-anxious controls completed diagnostic interviews to assess symptoms of mental disorders in adulthood and childhood. Participants also reported on parental attachment, loss and separation.
RESULTS
Childhood diagnoses of GAD and PD differentiated clinical groups from controls as well as from each other, suggesting greater likelihood for homotypic over heterotypic continuity. Compared to controls, specific phobia was associated with all three clinical groups, and childhood depression, social phobia, and PTSD were uniquely associated with adult GAD. Both maternal and paternal attachment also differentiated clinical groups from controls. However, higher levels of subscales reflecting maternal insecure avoidant attachment (e.g., no memory of early childhood experiences and balancing/forgiving current state of mind) emerged as more predictive of GAD relative to PD. There were no group differences in parental loss or separation.
CONCLUSIONS
These results support differentiation of GAD and PD based on developmental risk factors. Recommendations for future research and implications of the findings for understanding the etiology and symptomatology of GAD and PD are discussed.
Topics: Adolescent; Adult; Anxiety Disorders; Comorbidity; Female; Humans; Male; Panic Disorder; Parenting; Phobia, Social; Phobic Disorders; Risk Factors; Young Adult
PubMed: 27466747
DOI: 10.1016/j.jad.2016.07.008 -
Topics in Cognitive Science Apr 2019What place should formal or computational methods occupy in social psychology? We consider this question in historical perspective, survey the current state of the...
What place should formal or computational methods occupy in social psychology? We consider this question in historical perspective, survey the current state of the field, introduce the several new contributions to this special issue, and reflect on the future.
Topics: Cognition; Humans; Interpersonal Relations; Models, Theoretical; Psychology, Social; Social Behavior; Social Perception
PubMed: 31025547
DOI: 10.1111/tops.12424 -
The British Journal of Social Psychology Jan 2023This article introduces the special issue 'Towards a Social Psychology of Precarity' that develops an orienting lens for social psychologists' engagement with the...
This article introduces the special issue 'Towards a Social Psychology of Precarity' that develops an orienting lens for social psychologists' engagement with the concept. As guest editors of the special issue, we provide a thematic overview of how 'precarity' is being conceptualized throughout the social sciences, before distilling the nine contributions to the special issue. In so doing, we trace the ways in which social psychologists are (dis)engaging with the concept of precarity, yet too, explore how precarity constitutes, and is embedded within, the discipline itself. Resisting disciplinary decadence, we collectively explore what a social psychology of precarity could be, and view working with/in precarity as fundamental to addressing broader calls for the social responsiveness of the discipline. The contributing papers, which are methodologically pluralistic and provide rich conceptualisations of precarity, challenge reductionist individualist understandings of suffering and coping and extend social science theorizations on precarity. They also highlight the ways in which social psychology remains complicit in perpetuating different forms of precarity, for both communities and academics. We propose future directions for the social psychological study of precarity through four reflexive questions that we encourage scholars to engage with so that we may both work with/in, and intervene against, 'the precarious'.
Topics: Humans; Psychology, Social; Adaptation, Psychological; Individuality
PubMed: 36637066
DOI: 10.1111/bjso.12618 -
Psychological Bulletin Jul 2008An integrative social identity model of collective action (SIMCA) is developed that incorporates 3 socio-psychological perspectives on collective action. Three... (Meta-Analysis)
Meta-Analysis
An integrative social identity model of collective action (SIMCA) is developed that incorporates 3 socio-psychological perspectives on collective action. Three meta-analyses synthesized a total of 182 effects of perceived injustice, efficacy, and identity on collective action (corresponding to these socio-psychological perspectives). Results showed that, in isolation, all 3 predictors had medium-sized (and causal) effects. Moreover, results showed the importance of social identity in predicting collective action by supporting SIMCA's key predictions that (a) affective injustice and politicized identity produced stronger effects than those of non-affective injustice and non-politicized identity; (b) identity predicted collective action against both incidental and structural disadvantages, whereas injustice and efficacy predicted collective action against incidental disadvantages better than against structural disadvantages; (c) all 3 predictors had unique medium-sized effects on collective action when controlling for between-predictor covariance; and (d) identity bridged the injustice and efficacy explanations of collective action. Results also showed more support for SIMCA than for alternative models reflecting previous attempts at theoretical integration. The authors discuss key implications for theory, practice, future research, and further integration of social and psychological perspectives on collective action.
Topics: Cooperative Behavior; Group Processes; Humans; Models, Psychological; Power, Psychological; Social Identification; Social Justice
PubMed: 18605818
DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.134.4.504 -
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal... Jul 2021Social information is immensely valuable. Yet we waste it. The information we get from observing other humans and from communicating with them is a cheap and reliable... (Review)
Review
Social information is immensely valuable. Yet we waste it. The information we get from observing other humans and from communicating with them is a cheap and reliable informational resource. It is considered the backbone of human cultural evolution. Theories and models focused on the evolution of social learning show the great adaptive benefits of evolving cognitive tools to process it. In spite of this, human adults in the experimental literature use social information quite inefficiently: they do not take it sufficiently into account. A comprehensive review of the literature on five experimental tasks documented 45 studies showing social information waste, and four studies showing social information being over-used. These studies cover 'egocentric discounting' phenomena as studied by social psychology, but also include experimental social learning studies. Social information waste means that human adults fail to give social information its optimal weight. Both proximal explanations and accounts derived from evolutionary theory leave crucial aspects of the phenomenon unaccounted for: egocentric discounting is a pervasive effect that no single unifying explanation fully captures. Cultural evolutionary theory's insistence on the power and benefits of social influence is to be balanced against this phenomenon. This article is part of the theme issue 'Foundations of cultural evolution'.
Topics: Cultural Evolution; Humans; Information Dissemination; Psychology, Social; Social Learning
PubMed: 33993762
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2020.0052 -
Canadian Medical Association Journal Feb 1965There are four lines of development that might be called psychosomatic principles. The first represents the work initiated by Claude Bernard, Cannon, and others, in...
There are four lines of development that might be called psychosomatic principles. The first represents the work initiated by Claude Bernard, Cannon, and others, in neurophysiology and endocrinology in relationship to stress. The second is the application of psychoanalytic formulations to the understanding of illness. The third is in the development of the social sciences, particularly anthropology, social psychology and sociology with respect to the emotional life of man, and, fourth, there is an increased application of epidemiological techniques to the understanding and incidence of disease and its causes. These principles can be applied to the concepts of comprehensive medicine and they bid fair to be unifying and helpful in its study. This means that future practitioners, as well as those working in the field of psychosomatic medicine, are going to have to have a much more precise knowledge of the influence of emotions on bodily processes.
Topics: Anthropology; Emotions; Humans; Psychoanalysis; Psychology, Social; Psychophysiologic Disorders; Psychosomatic Medicine; Sociology
PubMed: 14259334
DOI: No ID Found -
Social Cognitive and Affective... Jan 2021Many group-living animals, humans included, occasionally synchronize their behavior with that of conspecifics. Social psychology and neuroscience have attempted to... (Review)
Review
Many group-living animals, humans included, occasionally synchronize their behavior with that of conspecifics. Social psychology and neuroscience have attempted to explain this phenomenon. Here we sought to integrate results around three themes: the stimuli, the mechanisms and the benefits of interactional synchrony. As regards stimuli, we asked what characteristics, apart from temporal regularity, prompt synchronization and found that stimulus modality and complexity are important. The high temporal resolution of the auditory system and the relevance of socio-emotional information endow auditory, multimodal, emotional and somewhat variable and adaptive sequences with particular synchronizing power. Looking at the mechanisms revealed that traditional perspectives emphasizing beat-based representations of others' signals conflict with more recent work investigating the perception of temporal regularity. Timing processes supported by striato-cortical loops represent any kind of repetitive interval sequence fairly automatically. Additionally, socio-emotional processes supported by posterior superior temporal cortex help endow such sequences with value motivating the extent of synchronizing. Synchronizing benefits arise from an increased predictability of incoming signals and include many positive outcomes ranging from basic information processing at the individual level to the bonding of dyads and larger groups.
Topics: Acoustic Stimulation; Attention; Auditory Perception; Brain; Cortical Synchronization; Emotions; Humans; Interpersonal Relations; Social Interaction; Temporal Lobe
PubMed: 32128587
DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsaa024 -
Patient Education and Counseling Sep 2019Since publication of Unequal Treatment by the Institute of Medicine in 2003, there has been a growing recognition of the role of provider implicit racial bias in patient...
Detecting implicit racial bias in provider communication behaviors to reduce disparities in healthcare: Challenges, solutions, and future directions for provider communication training.
Since publication of Unequal Treatment by the Institute of Medicine in 2003, there has been a growing recognition of the role of provider implicit racial bias in patient care. Provider implicit racial bias has been consistently negatively associated with both care satisfaction and provider trust among racial/ethnic minority patients. This suggests provider implicit racial bias likely manifests through their communication behaviors, which in turn may offer a means of addressing racial disparities in healthcare and ultimately in health. However, identifying provider communication behaviors that mediate the links between provider implicit racial bias and patient outcomes is challenging. In this paper, we argue that identifying these provider communication behaviors requires (1) taking into account findings from social psychology research of implicit racial bias and (2) incorporating the perspectives of racial/ethnic minority patients into patient-provider communication research. We discuss the utility of mixed methods research designs as a framework for resolving this complex scientific question. Research that draws on social psychology research of implicit racial bias and incorporates the racial/ethnic minority patient perspectives can inform the development of communication skills training programs for students and residents in various healthcare fields. Such programs are one element of a broader effort to reduce racial/ethnic disparities in healthcare.
Topics: Attitude of Health Personnel; Communication; Cultural Competency; Education, Medical; Healthcare Disparities; Humans; Patient Satisfaction; Physician-Patient Relations; Racism; Trust
PubMed: 31036330
DOI: 10.1016/j.pec.2019.04.023