Semester 1 Module 8 - Critical social psychology Flashcards
What significant belief did Armistead (1974) and Harre & Secord (1972) push?
Social psychology had lost touch with the real world and needed to be reconstructed. Believed it blindly followed “natural science” models and was over-reliant on statistics and experiments, failing to interact with the real world.
What were some of the key influences to tackle the proposed crisis of social psychology’s detachment from the real world?
Marxism, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and social constructionism.
Explain Marxism.
Psychology is an “ideological strategy” to promote individualism. Believes there is a need to study the influence of social class and power inequalities and psychology should be about social change.
What does androcentric mean?
theory based on research with males, females as “others”. This is what social psychology is viewed as according to feminism.
Explain feminism.
Focus on individualism is culturally biased and well as gender-biased. Question of “gender essentialism” much research explores M-F differences.
Explain psychoanalysis.
Focus on relationships and social environment challenges dominant model of the individual. Methods and insight of psychoanalysis have inspired the rise of “psychosocial studies”.
Explain social constructionism.
Meaning is not fixed and inevitable, it is the product of historical events, social forces, and ideology. The social construction of a phenomenon can be uncovered by destructing it.
What are key arguments in critical social psychology?
The distinction between individual and society is largely trivial. There are few if any aspects of psychology that are truly timeless and universal. Knowledge and claims to truth are fundamentally rhetorical statements. Psychologists are encouraged to use to discipline for challenging taken-for-granted ideas.
Differentiate mainstream social psychology from critical social psychology.
Mainstream social psychology includes social identity theory, the focus is on artificial groups and imaginary situations, and uses experiments, psychometric scales, and statistics. Critical social psychology is more discursive psychology which focuses on “real world” social interaction. Uses discourse and conversation analysis and qualitative methods.
What was Danziger’s (1990) perspective?
How research methodology has shaped what we “know” about psychology.
What was Rose’s (1985) perspective?
How the emergence of “psy-“ industries has influenced society more generally.
Explain Tajfel (1969) Cognitive Theory of Prejudice.
Saw prejudice as the outcome of inevitable processes such as (mental) categorisation. Nazism is an extreme case of this tendency. Formed the basis for social identity theory.
How did Billig (2002) respond to the cognitive theory of prejudice?
believed “prejudice” was too bland a term for racial hatred, believed “bigotry” better fit. Believed bigotry and its extreme manifestations not reducible to inter-group prejudice.
