Community Psychology: Chapter 1 Flashcards
What is the largest contributing factor to homelessness?
Nothing to do with the individual. The largest contributor to homelessness is a lack of affordable housing.
What does listing factors such as substance abuse, mental illness, and domestic violence as contributors to homelessness indicate?
The individualistic perspective (in comparison to a structural perspective).
What is a structural perspective?
Requires you to think about how organizations, neighbourhoods, communities, and societies are structured as systems and how those systems impact the lives of individuals and families.
What is another name for the structural perspective?
Ecological perspective.
Define: Problem definition
Human beings are rarely content to just observe something. We want to understand it, and we will, almost automatically, construct some sort of explanation. If you view an issue through an individualistic perspective, your definition of the problem will center on individual-level variables. How we define a problem shapes the questions we ask, the methods we use to answer those questions, and the way we interpret those answers. Problem definitions are now considered an ethical issue.
What is the context minimization error?
The ignoring or discounting the importance of contexts in an individual’s life.
What is the fundamental attribution error?
The tendency of observers watching an actor to overestimate the importance of the actor’s individual characteristics and underestimate the importance
of situational factors.
How does the context minimization error relate to the fundamental attribution error?
Context minimization refers to contexts and forces that include those beyond the immediate situation.
What is community psychology?
Community psychology concerns the relationships of individuals with communities and societies. By integrating research with action, it seeks to understand and enhance quality of life for individuals, communities, and societies.
Define: participant–conceptualizer
The community psychologist’s role has often been described as that of a participant–conceptualizer, actively involved in community processes while also attempting to understand and explain them
Define: First-order change
First-order change alters, rearranges, or replaces the individual members of a group. This may resolve some aspects of the problem. However, in the long run, the same problems often recur with the new cast of characters, leading to the conclusion that the more things change, the more they remain the same.
Define: Second-order change
A group is not just a collection of individuals; it is also a set of relationships among them. Changing those relationships, especially changing shared goals, roles,
rules, and power relationships, is second-order change
What is involved in the macrosystem of the ecological levels of analysis?
More distal to the individual (less immediate to the person yet having broad effects): cultures, societies, governments, etc.
Why are the overlapping concepts (localities, microsystems, and organization) closer to the individual in the ecological levels of analysis?
Because they are closest (proximal) to the individual and involving the most face-to-face contact.
What is the nesting doll metaphor?
A nesting doll is egg-shaped and contains a succession of smaller dolls. When opened, each doll reveals a smaller doll inside. The nesting doll metaphor calls attention to how the smallest doll exists within layers of larger dolls—just as each individual exists within layers of contexts.
