Foundations of Experimental and Critical Social psychology Flashcards
Person definition from McDougall
Evolutionary psychology: Person as product of innate biological instincts and drive
Cultural forces act to socialise people into civilised beings
People determined by biology and external factors
Person definition from William James
Stream of consciousness: Person as self-aware and self-determined beings with free will
What’s the division of social psychology? (the crisis in social psychology)
Psychological social psychology = experimental: scientific methods only way of viewing psychology, social world separate from individual people in it –> experimental social psychology
Sociological social psychology = critical: scientific method not the only way to asses psychology (often not the best in social psychology), social world produced by people interacting with each other –> critical social psychology
Origins of experimental social psychology
Kurt Lewin seen as father. Now: Behaviourism, gestalt, social learning theory, cognitive
Origins of critical social psychology
Mead, Goffman, Durkheim: reletively new (70’s): social cunstructionism, postmodernism, discourse analysis
Ideas behind social constructionism
Reality made through social interactions and sharing ideas
rules and norms are internalised - what we know comes first from the world and latterly through internal inductivism
Language most important sign system
key aspects of language
it’s active - constructs meanings and is not a neutral reflection of reality
you draw on culturally available language to create meaning
4 main principles of modernism
Democracy,
Liberal individualism,
Liberal humanism,
science
Arguments in postmodernism
science discovers things in real world
Knowledge is constructed rather than discovered and is a mean of power (not linear relationship) - not just one true knowledge
postmodernism major influence on critical psychology
Aims and ideas in critical psychology
Concerned with the way in which people’s thoughts and actions are socially mediated.
No ‘social world’ out there in nature.
Aims to bring forward influence of culture and history
Ideas in Social constructionism
Process rather than structure
Focus on language and interaction - speech as social practise - discourse ‘make’ the world
People as competent negotiators of the world
Describe retroduction
Critical realism - social actions produced by social structures. Uses a retroductive logic to identify systematic regularities (ie prejudice)
Describe abduction
Critical relativism - using abduction to create a range of ideas about a phenomena. Looks for inconsistencies in a way that challenges mainstream ideas
who’s the lead person in Post-structuralism and what does it focus on?
Foucault: dominant discourses in psychiatry - internalisation and self-surveillance. Focus on power.
Technologies of self (Faucault)
Techniques of self such as self-reflection, self-knowledge and self-realisation.
Self-help: a constant need to revisit emotional experiences –> self-regulation
