The objective of this work was to discuss the Social Psychology that has been developing in Brazil, placing it in the international theoretical-methodological setting. To achieve this goal, we initially present a brief historical account of the founding of the Brazilian Association of Social Psychology and the Latin American Association of Social Psychology, providing insight into the political struggle that surrounded the emergence of these two organizations and that, to a certain degree, is still present today. We then present the results of research conducted with 150 Brazilian social psychologists concerning the definition of social psychology, the academic training perspective, and the theories used in the conduct of research. The results point to the existence of several contradictions, since, among other matters, they highlight the fact that while most participants advocate research practices tied to a more sociological perspective, the definitions given indicate a more psychological view of social psychology.
Este artículo es una declaración de posición basada en una larga trayectoria de investigación e intervención en el contexto brasileño. El argumento que se presenta es que las experiencias sanitarias son complejas y que la práctica profesional debe basarse tanto en la experiencia técnica como en la erudición. La complejidad no tiene que ver con los distintos puntos de vista: el de la gente saludable, los pacientes, los doctores, los profesionales sanitarios, los administradores y la ciencia, claro está. Tiene que ver con la concomitancia de varias versiones, de las realidades fractales que representan de distintas maneras los muchos actantes sociales y materiales presentes en esta red heterogénea. Este argumento está estructurado en dos partes. La primera de ellas simplemente reafirma la multiplicidad desde la perspectiva de la Psicología como una profesión sanitaria. La segunda propone que la acción en un escenario complejo requiere una amplia base de información basada más en la erudición que en la experiencia técnica: es la familiarización con aquellos temas culturales e históricos relacionados directa o indirectamente con la organización actual de la prestación de asistencia sanitaria la que presentará las prácticas diarias políticas y éticas ; This paper is a position statement based on a long trajectory of research and intervention in the Brazilian context. The argument put forward is that health experiences are complex, and professional practice must be based on both technical expertise and scholarship. Complexity is not about different points of view: that of healthy people, patients, doctors, health professionals, health administrators and science, of course. It is about the concomitance of multiple versions; about fractal realities that are performed in different manners by the many social and material actants that are present in this heterogeneous network. This argument is structured in two parts. The first one merely restates multiplicity from the perspective of Psychology as a health profession. The second, proposes that action in a complex setting requires a broad base of information based on scholarship rather that technical expertise: it is the familiarity with issues that are cultural and historical and directly or indirectly related to present-day organization of care delivery that will anchor political and ethical everyday practices
In this review, I provide an overview of the literature investigating the social psychology of economic inequality, focusing on individuals' understandings, perceptions, and reactions to inequality. I begin by describing different ways of measuring perceptions of inequality, and conclude that absolute measures-which ask respondents to estimate inequality in more concrete terms-tend to be more useful and accurate than relative measures. I then describe how people understand inequality, highlighting the roles of cognitive heuristics, accessibility of information, self-interest, and context and culture. I review the evidence regarding how people react to inequality, suggesting that inequality is associated with higher well-being in developing nations but lower well-being in developed nations, mostly because of hopes or fears for the future. The evidence from developed nations suggests that inequality increases individuals' concerns about status and economic resources, increases their perception that the social world is competitive and individualistic, and erodes their faith in others, political systems, and democracy in general.
In this review, I provide an overview of the literature investigating the social psychology of economic inequality, focusing on individuals' understandings, perceptions, and reactions to inequality. I begin by describing different ways of measuring perceptions of inequality, and conclude that absolute measures—which ask respondents to estimate inequality in more concrete terms—tend to be more useful and accurate than relative measures. I then describe how people understand inequality, highlighting the roles of cognitive heuristics, accessibility of information, self-interest, and context and culture. I review the evidence regarding how people react to inequality, suggesting that inequality is associated with higher well-being in developing nations but lower well-being in developed nations, mostly because of hopes or fears for the future. The evidence from developed nations suggests that inequality increases individuals' concerns about status and economic resources, increases their perception that the social world is competitive and individualistic, and erodes their faith in others, political systems, and democracy in general.
In: Smith , L , Livingstone , A & Thomas , E 2019 , ' Advancing the social psychology of rapid societal change ' , British Journal of Social Psychology , vol. 58 , no. 1 , pp. 33-44 . https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12292
In this introduction to the special section on rapid societal change, we highlight the challenges posed by rapid societal changes for social psychology and introduce the seven papers brought together in this special section. Rapid societal changes are qualitative transformations within a society that alter the prevailing societal state. Recent such changes include the election of right-wing populist governments, the Arab Spring revolutions, and devastating civil wars in the Middle East. Conceptually, such events require consideration of how societal-level events relate to more proximal psychological processes to bring about the often abrupt, nonlinear (as opposed to incremental and linear) nature of rapid societal change. They also require empirical approaches that allow such qualitative transformations to be captured and studied. This is true both in terms of directly addressing rapidly-unfolding societal events in research, and in terms of how rapid, discontinuous change can be analysed. The papers in the special section help to address these issues through introducing novel theoretical and methodological approaches to studying rapid societal change, offering multiple perspectives on how macro-level changes can both create, and be created by, micro-level social psychological phenomena.
This paper is under embargo until 19 July 2020. ; The aim of this paper is to discuss how social psychology might go about studying social hostility in public life that goes beyond mere disagreement on political matters. The paper addresses the case of online misogyny against women active in public life. In the context of a profound coarsening of political debate in Britain and elsewhere, women who are active in public life come regularly up against a barrage of abuse and intimidation online. The paper argues that manifestations of misogyny cross ideological lines and takes an array of forms. Misogyny is a specific class of prejudice that harms the dignity of women by calling into question women's (human) rights to participation in public life, freedom of expression, and personal safety. In order to fully understand the intricacies of online misogyny social psychologists need to draw upon more directly on communications and media theories of mediated communication and connective action.
In this accessible, unique study of a forgotten but noteworthy figure, the author tells the story of the life of Kurt Baschwitz (1886—1968), a scholar who fled from the Nazis. He wrote six books, never translated into English, on four related themes: the press, propaganda, politics, and persecution. Baschwitz independently developed concepts that are now seen as key to communication science and social psychology, and the author places Baschwitz's ideas in the wider context of his dramatic life and times.
Economics and social psychology come from different traditions in social science, and in the past they seldom met. Their territories seemed to be well delimited. The former discipline's mainstream focused on market mediated interactions, making sense of an asocial concept of action by referring it to "the ordinary business of life" (Marshall, 1920, I.II.1) where agent's choices supposedly are independent from those of other parties in the transactions (Sugden, 2002); on the other hand, the second discipline descends from the more romantic view of man as a social being, and was stimulated by questions on why and how the immersion of individuals in the multitude, or the simple presence of others, appeared to transform behaviour. Lately, however, economics has started moving in a direction that reduces this gap. In a double but interrelated move, economics is adopting experimental methods familiar to those of social psychology, and is becoming more concerned with the relevance of rational choice in contexts where there is clear inter-individual dependence, raising questions to which social psychologists have already devoted considerable time and effort. As a part of this movement, social dilemmas, that is, "situations in which (a) individual group members can obtain higher outcomes (at least under some circumstances) if they pursue their individual interest while (b) the group obtains higher incomes if all group members further the group interest" (Dijk and Wilke, 1998: 110) have become the focus of shared interest of both economists and social psychologists. The motivation for the study of social dilemmas does not differ much in economics and social psychology and it arises out of two major types of challenges. The first (Fontaine, 2002) is related to the growing consciousness of the pervasiveness of market failures (combined with government failures) concerning issues of major social urgency like pollution and the use of scarce resources. The second, (Dawes, 1991) cropped up out of the finding that people both in real-life and experimental contexts fail to behave systematically in the way depicted by standard game theory, often opting for more benign strategies. Interest in social dilemmas is thus related, on the one hand, with the concern with problems that the market cannot solve, and, on the other, with understanding the reasons that may drive people to act in ways that are not in line with rational self-interest. For economics those questions are arcane questions 1 that were never ignored by the best minds in this discipline. Marshall's sentence in epigraph is a clear instance of this concern. This essay does not intend to cover the whole scope of existing approaches to social dilemmas since it only deals with dilemma situations that somehow fit into the economist's category of public good provision problems and with the experimental studies in economics and social psychology2. On the basis of an exploratory joint survey of experimental literature from both disciplines, it focuses on their differences in theoretical framing and their use of the experimental method. The following points will be argued: (a) Twenty five years of experimental research in both disciplines have produced an impressive accumulation of coherent results showing that in spite of the free-riding prediction, there is a tendency to voluntary contribution in "small" groups; (b) Notwithstanding the abundance of experimental studies, several interesting problems remain unexplored. In economics, the research focus has been on "are the game theoretical predictions corroborated by experimental evidence?", whereas in social psychology it has been on "what may cause the voluntary disposition to contribute". Questions pertaining to "what institutional contexts might hinder or foster voluntary contribution" still offer a vast domain of unexplored possibilities. (c) In spite of all efforts, the conceptual framework that may account for the contributive disposition in public good dilemma situations and help "discover how this latent social asset can be developed" remains rather sketchy.
Evolutionary mismatch is an important concept in evolutionary social psychology and may play a significant role in accounting for numerous maladaptive choice preferences of humans living in evolutionary novel environments. Here we review evidence in support of mismatched preferences in the context of romantic relationships, work settings, politics, and healthy and sustainable lifestyles. In developing interventions to change mismatched preferences (e.g., via nudges or incentives), it is crucial to consider the constraints and opportunities of our evolved psychology.
The purpose of this research was to examine how non-Aboriginal Canadians might respond if the label genocide is used to describe the historical mistreatment of the Aboriginal Peoples' of Canada. In two studies, I manipulated the perception of Residential Schools as genocide by informing (or not informing) undergraduate student participants that some people believe what happened should be labeled genocide. I also assessed the potential moderating role of knowledge by either measuring participants' pre-existing knowledge of Residential Schools or manipulating how much participants learned about Residential Schools through a passage. Overall, participants' reactions to the label depended on what they knew about Residential Schools such that participants with a superficial level of knowledge responded defensively to a description of Residential Schools as genocide, while participants with no knowledge or high levels of knowledge responded positively. Findings provide theoretical insight into how knowledge affects perpetrator group members' reactions to historical harms. ; October 2012
The paper presents a historiographical review of the works of historians, psychologists, and philosophers on the named subject. The author develops the idea of social psychology being a multilateral phenomenon in history. The investigator should take into account social-individual and group-psychology of actual event partakers – representatives of different social groups and classes as well as social psychology of event contemporaries and non-contemporaries, who had assessed the events before him. Examples of how underestimation of this can lead to distortion or modernization of reality are given. Social psychology assists in deeper analysis of not only political life, class struggle and culture but economic life as well. Reference is made to sources to be addressed in the investigation of social psychology in the past. ; Straipsnyje analizuojama socialinės psichologijos samprata, jos objektas, metodai, teorinis statusas bei jos taikymo istorijos tyrimuose galimybės. Teigiama, kad tyrimo objektas yra grupinė (kolektyvinė, masinė) psichologija, kuri pasireiškia kaip bendros veiklos pagrindu atsirandantis tarpusavio psichologinis bendrumas, taip pat psichinė individo padėtis kolektyve ir jo elgesio ypatybės. Socialinės psichologijos objekto turinį arba jos kategorijas sudaro reikmės, interesai, jausmai, nuotaikos, įpročiai, papročiai, tradicijos, mados, susižavėjimai, įsitikinimai, valia, visuomeninė nuomonė. Socialinė psichologija labiau už ideologiją priklauso nuo ekonominių-socialinių sąlygų, todėl ji judresnė, joje stipriau pasireiškia stichiniai elementai. Ideologija, mokslas ir socialinė psichologija atspindi tam tikros epochos visuomenės sąmonę. Socialinės psichologijos uždaviniai yra susiję pirmiausia su priežastingumo istorijoje supratimu, taip pat su visuomenės struktūrine analize. Daroma išvada, kad socialinės psichologijos problemų sprendimas istorijos tyrimuose padeda objektyviau atskleisti visuomenės vystymosi dėsningumus, spręsti bendrus istorijos metodologijos klausimus.
The current analysis considers the HIV prevention research record in the social sciences. We do so with special reference to what has been termed "AIDS Exceptionalism"— departures from standard public health practice and prevention research priorities in favor of alternative approaches to prevention that, it has been argued, emphasize individual rights at the expense of public health protection. In considering this issue, we review the historical context of the HIV epidemic; empirically demonstrate a pattern of prevention research characterized by systematic neglect of prevention interventions for HIV-infected persons; and articulate a rationale for "Prevention for Positives," supportive prevention efforts tailored to the needs of HIV+ individuals. We then propose a social psychological conceptualization of processes that appear to have influenced developments in HIV prevention research and directed its focus to particular target populations. Our concluding section considers whether there are social and research policy lessons to be learned from the record of HIV prevention research that might improve our ability to addresses effectively, equitably, and in timely fashion future epidemics that play out, as HIV does, at the junction of biology and behavior. At the first quarter century of the AIDS epidemic, it is important to weigh our accomplishments against our failures in the fight against AIDS…Future historians will conclude that we cannot escape responsibility for our failure to use effective, scientifically proven strategies to control the AIDS epidemic…They will also likely regard as tragic those instances when we allowed scarce resources to be used to support ideologically driven "prevention" that only served a particular political agenda. Editorial: A Quarter Century of AIDS. American Journal of Public Health. (Stall & Mills, 2006, p. 961)
"The substance of the following pages was delivered as the Martha Upton lectures in religion for 1922, at Manchester College, Oxford, under the title 'Three great religions'. Parts of chapters I., III., IV., and V. were delivered at King's College of the University of London, in the fall of the same year, under the title 'The religion of democracy'. The main thesis to which the work is devoted was presented to the Aristotelian Society of London in January 1923, in a paper entitled 'The problem of classification in religion'."--Pref. ; Printed in Great Britain. ; Mode of access: Internet.
Mainstream social science has struggled to explain the appeal of suicide terrorism to so many Muslim youths, relying as it does on standard socio-economic indicators and research meant to identify suicidal tendencies. The existential emphasis is missing. This commentary is inspired by the work of clinical psychologist Erich Fromm (1900-1980) and his investigation of the social psychology of modernity, as well as how this intermingles with existential fears related to mortality (death-related fears) and the passage of time (the end of the world or apocalypse). Modernity, explained Fromm, makes one feel small, insignificant and isolated in the larger scheme of things. This demands a violent response, often involving self-sacrifice, to reassert the balance, which allows Islamists to take advantage of death-related anxieties and exaggerate the sense of confrontation with the world through apocalyptic prophecies. Current psychological research on death and studies of terrorism and religious extremism both confirm many of Fromm's findings and expand on them. In this commentary I argue that the religion of Islam, far from being a source of suicide terrorism, has historically restrained both suicidal tendencies and political violence directed at civilians, but it is the slow yet sure encroachment of modernity that has eroded these theological and communitarian defences. Other problems, such as household politics, gender roles, and theological teachings concerning death likewise feed this process, as documented by Arabic researchers in contexts other than political violence. ; peerReviewed ; publishedVersion
