Sprinkled with humor, social psychology illuminates cognition in Wegner's beautifully written and cleverly crafted book. However, scantily exploiting such themes as psychopathology, development, and neural correlates of consciousness, Wegner's account does not fully project into cognitive neuroscience. Broaching the topic of self-regulation, we outline neurocognitive data supplementing the notion that voluntariness is perhaps more post hoc ascriptions than bona fide introspection.

In this paper I argue for a stronger consideration of the possible relationship between social psychology and architecture and architectural history. After a brief review of some of the ways in which other social psychologists have sought to develop links between social psychology and history, I consider the utility of architecture in more depth, especially to the social psychologist interested in the development of knowledge and understanding. I argue that, especially when knowledge is institutionalised, the (...) design and use of buildings might have a particular contribution to make to the way we can understand how phenomena have been understood and approached in the past. Although many examples are relevant, I consider the case of the psychiatric hospital (or “asylum”) in more detail. (shrink)

Because both the individual and the state call for simultaneous investigation in social psychology, one could argue that in some sense Serge Moscovici, with the publication of Psychoanalysis, put forward the first systematic large scale empirical study of cognitive representations in, as it happily proved, various blocs of French understandings of psychoanalysis, admitting, characteristically, doubts about the individual, bloc, and the state representations.

Experimental studies are not representative of how badly people function. We study people under relatively innocuous conditions, where their self-interests are very low. In the real world, where people's self-interests are much higher, people are much worse a good deal of the time (some illustrations are cited). This is often “adaptive” for the perpetrators, but that doesn't make it “good” behavior. That people function so badly in our experiments, where self-interest is relatively minimal, is what is really terrifying.

Based on our comparison of political orientation and research interests of social psychologists in capitalist Western countries versus post-Communist Eastern European countries, we suggest that Duarte and colleagues' claim of liberal bias in the field seems American-centric. We propose an alternative account of political biases which focuses on the academic tendency to explain attitudes of lower status groups.

Social epistemology is an interdisciplinary project that mobilizes the empirical resources of the "sociology of knowledge" for the purposes of informing a normative philosophy of science. Thus, the social epistemologist gives informed advice on how inquiry should be conducted. Because of its prescriptive character, social epistemology is nowadays most naturally seen as a branch of philosophy. This paper is part of a larger project devoted to removing the obstacles that currently prevent philosophers and psychologists from pooling (...) their resources in the cause of social epistemology. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

School achievement and failure have become growing political and social concerns due to the negative consequences of school failure for individuals and society. The inclusive educational movement, which calls for equal access, permanence, participation, and promotion of all students worldwide, poses many challenges for schools and school systems. As a public policy strategy, some countries have provided additional funds for incorporating non-teaching professionals such as school psychologists and social workers in regular K-12 schools. However, there is lack (...) of research on the effects of these psychosocial professionals on student outcomes. This national multilevel study explored the effect of psychologists (n= 8,469) and social workers (n= 3,524) on indicators of eighth-grade (n= 147,531) and 10th-grade (n= 106,347) students' academic achievement and dropout in Chile. A multilevel secondary analysis was performed using national records of non-teaching professionals working as school staff members, achievement scores on the national SIMCE test, and dropout rates based on official records. Results showed that after controlling for individual and school variables known to affect achievement and dropout, schools with psychologists and social workers working as staff members had lower short- and long-term dropout rates. The presence and higher number of school psychologists per school was positively associated with higher math achievement, with a reduced effect in low-SES schools. Lower-SES schools with more social workers had higher math scores. These results support policies that increase funding for school psychologists and social workers, since their incorporation partly explains better school achievement and less school failure when controlling for individual and school characteristics, but emphasize the need to further explore the mechanisms through which school achievement and failure are developed with the support of psychologists and social workers in schools. We discuss the need to regulate the type of prevention and intervention strategies from a whole-school, evidence-based approach, as well as to incorporate psychosocial training modules and comprehensive guidelines as part of professional training programs and as certified requisites for working in schools. (shrink)

This chapter introduces psychologism as the thesis that social facts can explained in terms of more basic facts about individuals, their psychological states, their actions, their relations, and their environments. It argues psychologism should be our default stance toward social reality. It reviews psychologistic approaches to shared intention and how shared intentions can help explain conventions, status functions, and organizations. It provides a deflationary account of corporate attitudes. It argues that neither physical nor social externalism about thought (...) content are incompatible with psychologism. It argues that social construction views of the self that conflict with psychologism are implausible. Finally, it points out that it is no objection to psychologism that social facts can change without changes in psychological facts because this is compatible with psychologism as explained here. (shrink)

Given the increase in human rights abuses and suffering in the world, psychologists bear an ethical responsibility to become more vocal and active on issues of social justice. Western psychology has failed to realize its full transformative potential, largely due to its preoccupation with the individual level of intervention, historical tendency to respond reactively to war and violence, and various cultural biases and ethnocentrism that exist within the field. Instead, psychology must take a more proactive, systems-oriented approach to (...) addressing human rights issues. Due to the lack of guidelines in engaging in professional activism, psychologists must first more critically identify, challenge, and clarify relevant ethical concerns, including issues of culture, competence, and nonmaleficence involved in this type of work. This article explores these complex ethical considerations and suggests ways that psychologists can evolve their roles as researchers, therapists, consultants and educators. The aim is to stimulate dialogue about how psychology can embed ethical activism into its professional identity. (shrink)

ABSTRACT To date, the American Psychological Association Ethical Standards and Code of Conduct does not include direct guidance about how psychologists should navigate social media. Given the variety of roles psychologists can choose to engage on social media, it is imperative that guidelines are established. These guidelines should consider the multidimensionality that exists as psychologists may choose to present on social media through a personal presence, a business presence, and/or even an influencer/content creator presence. (...) Specific ethical considerations and recommendations are provided. (shrink)

Social psychologists often describe “implicit” racial biases as entirely unconscious, and as mere associations between groups and traits, which lack intentional content, e.g., we associate “black” and “athletic” in much the same way we associate “salt” and “pepper.” However, recent empirical evidence consistently suggests that individuals are aware of their implicit biases, albeit in partial, inarticulate, or even distorted ways. Moreover, evidence suggests that implicit biases are not “dumb” semantic associations, but instead reflect our skillful, norm-sensitive, and embodied (...) engagement with social reality. This essay draws on phenomenological and hermeneutic methods and concepts to better understand what social-psychological research has begun to reveal about the conscious access individuals have to their own racial attitudes, as well as the intentional contents of the attitudes themselves. -/- First, I argue that implicit racial biases form part of the “background” of social experience. That is, while they exert a pervasive influence on our perceptions, judgments, and actions, they are frequently felt but not noticed, or noticed but misinterpreted. Second, I argue that our unreflective racial attitudes are neither mere associations nor fully articulated, propositionally structured beliefs or emotions. Their intentional contents are fundamentally indeterminate. For example, when a white person experiences a “gut feeling” of discomfort during an interaction with a black person, there is a question about the meaning or nature of that discomfort. Is it a fear of black people? Is it anxiety about appearing racist? There is, I argue, no general, determinate answer to such questions. The contents of our unreflective racial attitudes are fundamentally vague and open-ended, although I explain how they nevertheless take on particular shapes and implications—that is, their content can become determinate—depending on context, social meaning, and structural power relations. (If, for example, a perceived authority figure, such as a politician, parent, or scientist, encourages you to believe that your uncomfortable gut feeling is a justified fear of other social groups, then that is what your gut feeling is likely to become.). (shrink)

Krueger & Funder (K&F) see social psychologists as driven to demonstrate that people's behavior falls below relevant moral and intellectual standards. We suggest that social psychologists search for demonstrations of when it is that people's actual behaviors and decisions deviate from expected or ideal behaviors and decisions, and what these “deviations” tell us about general decision processes, including those that do not produce unexpected actions. Often the discoveries are of positive rather than negative behaviors.

A survey form sent to psychologists (Pope, Keith-Spiegel, & Tabachnick, 1986) was adapted and sent to 1,000 clinical social workers (return rate = 45%). Most participants reported sexual attraction to a client, causing (for most) guilt, anxiety, or confusion. Some reported having sexual fantasies about a client while engaging in sex with someone other than a client. Relatively few (3.6% men; 0.5% women) reported sex with a client; training was related to likelihood of offending, though the effect is (...) small and complex. An analysis of eight national studies (data from 5,148 therapists) found significant effects for gender (more male offenders) and year of study (about 10% annual decrease in reported offenses since 1977) but not profession (i.e., no difference among psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers). Most social workers reported no graduate training whatsoever about sexual attraction; only 10% reported adequate training. (shrink)

This paper is about the ways in which psychologists categorise themselves into collectivities. It reports a study of the use of the categories 'mechanist' and 'humanist' in the transcript of an international psychology conference. The analysis documents: (1) the flexibility of category definition with respect to the subject matter, research methods and metaphysical assumptions of the putative membership; (2) the involvement of categories in practical tasks of criticism and evaluation; (3) some of the procedures used to warrant these categories (...) as 'natural'features of psychologists' social worlds. Problems for traditional historical, philosophical and sociological accounts of the development and nature of psychology raised by these findings are discussed and some of the pragmatic motivations for category discourse are assessed. (shrink)

The end of the nineteenth century is remembered as a time when psychology freed itself from philosophy and carved out an autonomous subject matter for itself. In fact, this time of emancipation was also a time of exile: while the psychologists were leaving, philosophers were slamming the door behind them. Frege is celebrated for having demonstrated the irrelevance of psychological considerations to philosophy. Some of Frege’s reasons for distinguishing psychological questions from philosophical ones were sound, but one of Frege’s (...) most influential arguments, which was elaborated upon and advocated by the positivists, vastly overestimated the gap separating the two disciplines. (shrink)

Social cognition refers to a discipline in which researchers seek to understand social phenomena in terms of models which emphasize the role of cognitive processes (e.g., attention, encoding, cognitive organization, storage, memory) in mediating social thought and action. Although social cognition is a relatively new field, it is important to note that social psychologists have long been concerned with many of the same issues that are central to cognitive science, such as how people store (...) and retrieve information about their environment in memory. Thus, it would be inaccurate to portray the emergence of social cognition as the first time that social psychologists have focused on the role of cognition in mediating social behavior. Nevertheless, it is true that in the mid‐to‐late 1970s, a branch of social psychology emerged which was unique in the extent to which it overlapped with the theoretical orientation of, and the methodological tools employed by, cognitive psychologists. It is this time period that most scholars peg as the era in which social cognition grew and matured as a discipline in its own right. (shrink)

Consumer culture and neoliberal political economy are often viewed by social psychologists as topics reserved for anthropologists, economists, political scientists and sociologists. This paper takes an alternative view arguing that social psychology needs to better understand these two intertwined institutions as they can both challenge and provide a number of important insights into social psychological theories of self-identity and their related concepts. These include personality traits, self-esteem, social comparisons, self-enhancement, impression management, self-regulation and social (...) identity. To illustrate, we examine how elements of consumer culture and neoliberal political economy intersect with social psychological concepts of self-identity through three main topics: ‘the commodification of self-identity’, ‘social categories, culture and power relations’ and the ‘governing of self-regulating consumers’. In conclusion, we recommend a decommodified approach to research with the aim of producing social psychological knowledge that avoids becoming enmeshed with consumer culture and neoliberalism. (shrink)

Social psychologists have found that stereotypes correlate with moral judgments about agents and actions. The most commonly studied stereotypes are race/ethnicity and gender. But atheists compose another stereotype, one with its own ignominious history in the Western world, and yet, one about which very little is known. This project endeavored to further our understanding of atheism as a social stereotype. Specifically, we tested whether people with non-religious commitments were stereotypically viewed as less moral than people with religious (...) commitments. We found that participants’ moral appraisals of atheists were more negative than those of Christians who performed the same moral and immoral actions. They also reported immoral behavior as more consistent for atheists, and moral behavior more consistent for Christians. The results contribute to research at the intersection of moral theory, moral psychology, and psychology of religion. (shrink)

Analyzing Social Knowledge argues for both socialized and naturalized epistemology. J. Angelo Corlett takes social epistemology in a new direction, applying the findings of experimental cognitive psychology to theories of social knowledge. Corlett analyzes social knowlegde in terms of group belief, individual belief, truth, justification, coherence, and reliability and responsibility. He provides a critique of leading theories of social knowledge and defends his analysis against respected criticisms of naturalized epistemology. The far-reaching implications of Analyzing (...) class='Hi'>Social Knowledge will interest epistemoloogists, philosophers of the mind, and cognitive psychologists. (shrink)

As is true for most small divisions, membership in PIRI overlaps with membership in all other APA divisions. Thus, our members include hardcore experimentalists teaching in Christian colleges, social psychologists focusing on research in the psychology of religion, pastoral counselors, transpersonal psychologists, religiously-committed psychologists attempting to integrate psychology and theology, and numerous others. Our roots lie in the American Catholic Psychological Association; our branches point to religion in all its forms. Our common commitment is to the (...) assertion that religion is a critical psychological variable. Examples are given of our theoretical and philosophical interests, including Philosophy of Science; Anthropologies/Theories of Human Nature; Spiritual or Religious Development; Psychology, Politics, and Ethics; Religion as a Significant Psychological Variable; and Critique of Psychological Theories. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

I first summarize the central issues in the debate about the empirical adequacy of virtue ethics, and then examine the role that social psychologists claim positive and negative mood have in influencing compassionate helping behavior. I argue that this psychological research is compatible with the claim that many people might instantiate certain character traits after all which allow them to help others in a wide variety of circumstances. Unfortunately for the virtue ethicist, however, it turns out that these (...) helping traits fall well short of exhibiting certain central features of compassion. (shrink)

This paper is a critical examination of Wittgenstein's view of the limits of intelligibility. In it I criticize standard analytic readings of Wittgenstein as an advocate of transcendental or behaviourist theses in epistemology; and I propose an alternative interpretation of Wittgenstein's view as a social contextualism that transcends the false dichotomy between Kantianism and psychologism. I argue that this social contextualism is strikingly similar to the social account of epistemic practices developed by Pierre Bourdieu. Through a comparison (...) between Wittgenstein's and Bourdieu's view and an analysis of the notion of habitus, I try to show how social contextualism can account for the distinction between sense and nonsense without falling into transcendental constructivism or social behaviourism. (shrink)

Guided by the APA Ethics Code and social justice, this book helps psychologists solve ethical dilemmas while empowering those impacted by their work.

Psychologists tend to examine their activities in experimentation with the same objective scientific attitude as they routinely assume in the experimental situation. A few psychologists have stepped outside this closed expistemic practice to undertake reflexive analysis of the psychologist in the laboratory. Three cases of such critical reflexive analysis are considered to better understand the strategies and consequences of confronting what Steve Woolgar has called ‘the horrors of reflexivity’. Reflexive work of William James, Horace Mann Bond, and Saul (...) Rosenzweig are examined: working in the early years of modern experimental psychology these scientists identified limitations in the dominant natural science model of experimentation. Attending to the scientist's own cognitions, social status, and unconscious processes respectively, James, Bond, and Rosenzweig criticized this natural science model and presented methodological and epistemic alternatives. The relative neglect of their constructive observations underscores the resistance to addressing psychology's reflexive dimensions. (shrink)

This paper argues that a class of popular views of collective intention, which I call “quasi-psychologism”, faces a problem explaining common intuitions about collective action. Views in this class hold that collective intentions are realized in or constituted by individual, mental, participatory intentions. I argue that this metaphysical commitment entails persistence conditions that are in tension with a purported obligation to notify co-actors before leaving a collective action attested to by participants in experimental research about the interpersonal normativity of collective (...) action. I then explore the possibilities open to quasi-psychologists for responding to this research. (shrink)

A major contribution to the social scientific understanding of how people make sense of their lives, Ideological Dilemmas presents an illuminating new approach to the study of everyday thinking. Contradictory strands abound within both ideology and common sense. In contrast to many modern theorists, the authors see these dilemmas of ideology as enabling, rather than inhibiting: thinking about them helps people to think meaningfully about themselves and the world. The dilemmas within ideology and their effects on thinking are explored (...) through the analysis of what people say in specific key situations: education, medical care, race and gender. The authors identify common ideological themes running through the common-sense discourses they analyse. They highlight the tensions between themes of equality and authority, freedom and necessity, individuality and collectivity. Time and again, the contradictions between these ideological themes crop up as respondents argue and puzzle over their social worlds. Written with refreshing clarity, the discussion cuts across the boundary which often separates sociology from social psychology. Sociologists are reminded that the reproduction of ideology involves individual processes of thinking; social psychologists are urged to recognize the ideological nature of thought. (shrink)

This paper starts from the premise that Spinoza and Hume share a realisticnaturalistic approach to human nature. Human beings are finite parts of nature, and as such strongly interdependent creatures. This interdependence is reflected in the central social-psychological principles that Hume and Spinoza employ, respectively sympathy and affectuum imitatio. Both principles show the immediacy of the communication of passions, and the strong influence that other people’s passions exert over our own affective lives. Central to this paper are an analysis (...) and comparison of the working of sympathy and imitation of affects. As it turns out, both philosophers consider humans to be limitedly social beings. Social, because we tend to be moved by the pains and pleasures of our fellows. Limitedly social, because our egoistic side limits the scope of our fellow-feeling, and may turn the other’s pain into our pleasure and vice versa. This puts a pressure on groups; their living together can never be truly harmonious without external interference. Spinoza and Hume, therefore, regard a further stabilisation and harmonisation of collective affective life as a key political concern. As will finally be argued, the precise way in which this concern is fleshed out in their political theories makes them occupy a shared, distinctive position in early modern political thought. (shrink)

This book develops a systematic philosophical theory of social action and group phenomena, in the process presenting detailed analyses of such central social notions as 'we-attitude' (especially 'we-intention' and mutual belief, social norm, joint action, and - most important - group goal, group belief, and group action). Though this is a philosophical work, it presents a unified conceptual framework that may be useful to social scientists, especially social psychologists, as well as philosophers. The book (...) puts forward and defends a number of systematic philosophical theses, resulting in not only a theory of social action but, more broadly, a philosophical theory of society, or at least those aspects of society with which social psychology is supposed to deal (individuals in groups, groups, joint action, and the like). (shrink)

Employing three methods of assessing meaning, this book demonstrates that the thousands of human identities in English coalesce into groups that are recognizable as role sets in the contemporary social institutions of economy, kinship, religion, polity, law, education, medicine, sport, and arts. After establishing a theoretical and a methodological framework for his empirical work, David Heise presents the results obtained when meanings are assessed via dictionary definitions, collocates, and word associations. A close comparison of the results reveals that similar (...) outcomes are obtained through each of these three different approaches of defining meaning. The final chapter summarizes the study, considers the benefits and limitations of studying society via language, and applies the results to describing how individuals operate social institutions via their daily social interactions. Aspects of this book will be of interest to social psychologists, sociologists, and linguists. (shrink)

The ethical ideologies of psychologists and physicians were compared using the Ethics Position Questionnaire. The findings reveal that psychologists tend to be less relativistic than physicians. Further, we explored the degree to which physicians and psychologists report being influenced by a variety of factors in their ethical decision making. Psychologists were more influenced by their code of ethics and less influenced by family views, religious background, and peer attitudes than were physicians. We argue that these differences (...) reflect the varied professional cultures in which practitioners are trained and socialized. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article introduces the challenges of providing psychological assessments of people seeking asylum in the wake of their reported torture. These challenges invite professionals to consider ontology and epistemology. Critical realism is well-positioned to underlabour for the process of understanding a human rights violation, in which the complainant is both the key, and often sole, witness and claimed victim. For instance, the layered reality of critical realism allows practitioners to use retroduction to describe deeper structures and mechanisms of torture. The (...) judgemental rationality of critical realism allows practitioners to distinguish between competing interpretations of the evidence. Critical realism also avoids both the positivistic assumption that assessors can be value-free; and the relativist social constructionist position that, because assessors cannot av... (shrink)

In the United States, prohibitionist policies are used as the primary approach to combat the negative effect of substance use on society. An extensive academic literature spanning the disciplines of economics, political science, and multiculturalism documents the great social costs of the United States’ “War on Drugs” both nationally and internationally. These costs come with at best marginal effect on substance abuse and other crimes linked to the drug trade. In many cases, there is a reason to believe that (...) these policies exacerbate the problems they aim to address. This article explores psychologists’ ethical commitments to social change concerning such drug policy, given the field of psychology’s expanding commitment to social justice. We examine arguments regarding the boundaries between psychologists’ personal and professional ethics with regard to political participation. Using drug prohibition as an exemplar, we suggest that many psychologists’ political actions and professional ethics may be misaligned. Ultimately, we conclude that the endorsement of prohibitionist drug policies is in direct conflict with the guiding ethical principles put forth by the American Psychological Association’s Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct. (shrink)

This article explores the rise and fall of an Afrikaner psychological association: the Psychological Institute of the Republic of South Africa (PIRSA). It presents rhetorical, discursive and social analyses of presidential addresses delivered at PIRSA congresses between 1962 and 1977, identifying the emergence of a discourse of volksdiens (ethnic-national service) during the 1960s that called for the ethnic-national relevance of the discipline. With the Afrikaner nation vulnerable to the triple threat of communism, capitalism and egalitarianism, PIRSA insisted that psychological (...) research be dedicated towards addressing these and other dangers. In the 1970s, however, such appeals became less prominent as discussions of South African issues slipped off the agenda. Curiously, at a time when the apartheid state was in decline, PIRSA’s psychologists were concerned with everything but the survival of Afrikanerdom. The unraveling of PIRSA’s quest for ethnic-national relevance mirrored the disintegration of the state’s apartheid rationality, which resulted from a concatenation of political, economic and cultural upheavals. (shrink)

The social psychology of science is a compelling new area of study whose shape is still emerging. This erudite and innovative book outlines a theoretical and methodological agenda for this new field, and bridges the gap between the individually focused aspects of psychology and the sociological elements of science studies. Presenting a side of social psychology that, until now, has received almost no attention in the social sciences literature, this volume offers the first detailed and comprehensive study (...) of the social psychology of science, complete with a large number of empirical and theoretical examples. The volume's introductory section provides a detailed analysis of how modern social psychology might apply to the study of science. Chapters show how to analyze science in terms of social cognition, attribution theory, attitudes and attitude change, social motivation, social influence and social conformity, and intergroup relations, weaving extensive illustrations from the science studies literature into the theoretical analysis. The nature and role of experimentation are discussed, as are metaanalytic methods for summarizing the results of multiple studies. Ways to facilitate the generalization of causal inferences from experimental work are also examined. The book focuses on such topics as interactions among small groups of scientists, and the impact of social motivation, influence, and conformity on scientific work. Also covered are scientists' responses to ethical issues in research, differences in cognitive style distribution, creativity in research and development, and the sociologists's view of the social psychology of science and technology. In addition, the book provides two annotated bibliographies, one on the philosophy of science and the other on social psychology, to guide readers in both disciplines to salient recent works. Valuable to the entire science studies community, this text will be of special interest to philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, and historians of science interested in the nature of knowledge development in science. Because of its novel application of social psychological theories and methods, this book will be useful as a primary text or a secondary text in courses on science studies in psychology, sociology, or philosophy departments. (shrink)

Developmental psychologists identify propensities for social engagement in human infants that are less evident in other apes; Sarah Hrdy links these social propensities to novel features of human childrearing. Unlike other ape mothers, humans can bear a new baby before the previous child is independent because they have help. This help alters maternal trade-offs and so imposes new selection pressures on infants and young children to actively engage their caretakers’ attention and commitment. Such distinctive childrearing is part (...) of our grandmothering life history. While consequences for other cooperative activities must surely follow, the novel rearing environments set up by helpful grandmothering can explain why natural selection escalated preferences and motivations for interactivity in our lineage in the first place, and why, unlike other aspects of infant development, social sensitivities are not delayed in humans compared with genus Pan. (shrink)

Social psychologists have been in the forefront of the development of modern theories of cigarette smoking and obesity. These theories are reductionist: they account for behavior in purely physiological terms and regard cognitive, value, personality, and social class factors as secondary or irrelevant. Yet, from their beginnings, these theories have failed to account for major aspects of the behaviors under investigation, aspects apparently related to personal intention and social background. While it may seem suprising that work (...) by social psychologists denies social and psychological reality, the theories discussed here actually reflect broader trends in social psychology, trends with rather large implications for our ideas about individual and social efforts at change. (shrink)

Using the example of the American motivational psychologist David C. McClelland, this article analyses how psychologists in the long 1960s acted as generous purveyors of knowledge in order to bring about far reaching social change, without having to enter the field of institutionalised politics. The article thus explores a supposedly passive form of activism beyond lobbying and consultating that was intended to encourage citizens to self-direct in order to bring about changes that were supposedly beyond the reach of (...) structural planning policy. Using two case studies, it is argued that the principle of self-direction often associated with neoliberalism developed in parallel with planning policy in the long 1960s, rather than as a consequence of its failure in the 1970s and 1980s. Since this was often done in an entrepreneurial way, it led to the emergence of the entrepreneurial scientist who ran science, educational training and social reform as a business. Unlike political influence through lobbying, this form of scientific political activism wasdirectin that it directly impacted individual social groups, but it was alsoprecariousin its chances of success, because whether those approached were willing to accept what was offered to them depended on conditions over which the scientists involved had no control. As early as the long 1960s, it is concluded, privately run programmes aimed at activating the individual were part of what we know as state-directed welfare policy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Social Psychology and Contemplative Science Perspective on Character and VirtuePaul Condon (bio)Character Trouble: Undisciplined Essays on Moral Agency and Personality. By John M. Doris. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.The early years of experimental social psychology showed the power of situations to discourage people from helping others. The murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964, allegedly witnessed by 38 nonresponsive bystanders, sparked interest in the situational forces that (...) shape social behavior.1 Experimental research later confirmed that the presence of nonresponsive bystanders led to a reduction in helping behavior, called “the bystander effect” (Latane and Darley 1968; Fischer et al. 2011). Surprisingly, situations also reduce helping behavior among those who have dedicated their lives to virtues such as compassion. In a highly cited study, seminary students who were on their way to deliver a lecture on generosity, under time pressure, were less likely to help an actor portraying a homeless man compared with those students not under time pressure (Darley and Batson 1973). Stanley Milgram’s (1963) research on obedience demonstrated the overwhelming tendency of people to obey authorities who encouraged ostensible harm toward others, thereby sacrificing an impulse for compassionate intervention. Social psychology has repeatedly shown that situations override people’s virtuous inclinations.For over 20 years, John M. Doris and other self-identified character skeptics—also sometimes called situationists—have drawn on empirical results from social psychology to challenge the concept of moral character and virtue. In their view, empirical data from social psychology convincingly show that situational forces can override the values and motivations that stem from individual personality traits and moral character. Doris’ latest iteration, Character Trouble, chronicles the evolution of his thought over his career, applying social psychology to examine and question the project of virtue ethics, moral character, and agency. The book begins with chapters from Doris’ initial work, responses, and applications over time, then concludes with two original chapters and a methodological primer for those who wish to engage scientific psychology to develop philosophical theory. [End Page 527]Throughout the book, Doris reviews an impressive range of experimental literature across social and cognitive psychology that will be of interest to philosophers and psychologists. The coverage includes classic studies and important revised accounts in light of new historical research and replication efforts, for example, concerning Milgram’s obedience studies and Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment. Doris cites various examples in which subtle situations surprisingly override character traits (e.g., the presence of noise pollution from a lawnmower reduced helping behavior; discovering a dime in a phone booth increased helping behavior). Indeed, findings that subtle situational cues can decrease or increase prosocial behavior have been a hallmark throughout the history of social psychology. Doris also describes various phenomena that pose challenges to the normative ideals of reflection and deliberation, including self-delusion, the correspondence bias (in which people are biased to attribute others’ behaviors to traits and ignore situational influence), the limits of self-report, and positive illusions about one’s own capacities.Doris shows that philosophers and psychologists need not fear interdisciplinary work, and that we can venture beyond the bounds of our disciplinary training through intentional, thoughtful conversation with colleagues across disciplines. The appendix offers practical suggestions for scholars who wish to incorporate lessons and material from beyond their home discipline to achieve a generative, undisciplined body of work. Doris also gives the reader a valuable tutorial on methodological and statistical considerations. As an experimental social psychologist who studies compassion training—a program that one might call a normative project of moral and emotional training—I read Doris and his interlocutors with great interest. Other reviewers of Character Trouble are more qualified to speak to the philosophical contours of this debate (i.e., Robertson and Spencer in this issue; Fileva 2022). Here, I focus my review on three themes concerning social psychological research and their implications for normative projects related to virtue and character. In the end, inspired by Doris, I offer some original thoughts on the potential to reconcile situationism with normative ideals through dialogue with Eastern contemplative traditions.The Person-Situation DebateThe crux of Character Trouble’s position on virtue ethics and character skepticism is the parallel debate... (shrink)

Positivists since the time of Comte have defined objectivity in science in terms of the absence of prejudice on the part of the scientist towards the phenomena with which he deals. It has been assumed that if the observer would contemplate the facts himself, this objectivity—an absence of bias—could be attained. However, social psychologists, notably C. H. Cooley and G. H. Mead, have shown that this is not necessarily the case. In the study of culture, an outstanding positivist, (...) W. G. Sumner, in his discussion of folkways and mores, has shown that this objectivity is impossible to attain. These men have described the process through which objects arise in one's experience, and come to be defined in terms of that experience, so that the same object may mean different things to different people. This seems to be the case with certain areas of social theory. (shrink)

Psychologists are increasingly interested in embodiment based on the assumption that thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are grounded in bodily interaction with the environment. We examine how embodiment is used in social psychology, and we explore the ways in which embodied approaches enrich traditional theories. Although research in this area is burgeoning, much of it has been more descriptive than explanatory. We provide a critical discussion of the trajectory of embodiment research in social psychology. We contend that future (...) researchers should engage in a phenomenon-based approach, highlight the theoretical boundary conditions and mediators involved, explore novel action-relevant outcome measures, and address the role of individual differences broadly defined. Such research will likely provide a more explanatory account of the role of embodiment in general terms as well as how it expands the knowledge base in social psychology. (shrink)