American Psychological Association The Digitized Self in the Age of the Internet: What Would Arnheim...

Preview:

Citation preview

American Psychological Association

The Digitized Self in the Age of the Internet: What Would Arnheim and McLuhan Have

to Say about This?

Gerald CupchikUniversity of Toronto

www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~cupchik

American Psychological Association

Teachers

Mr. Eisenstein Daniel Berlyne

Bob Zajonc Kurt Danziger

Guy Swanson Paul Bouissac

Howard Leventhal

American Psychological Association

What I Have Learned From Research in General

- Primacy of the phenomenon (Goethe)

- Empirical discourse with myself

- Empirical narratives within scholarly communities

American Psychological Association

Fundamental Substantive Problems

1. Everyday versus Aesthetic Processing

a. Everyday figure against ground.

b. Aesthetic figure in relation to ground.

- e.g., untrained viewers of art & everyday processing...

American Psychological Association

2. Inside versus Outside Perspective

- Bullough (1912): aesthetic distance- Finding the right distance

Subjective experience (engaged)versus

Objective knowledge (detached)

American Psychological Association

Engaged Self: Emergent Meaning

Soft-edge images invite us to resolve them.

American Psychological Association

Multilayered images can resonate with our histories.

American Psychological Association

American Psychological Association

Design objects can move us.

American Psychological Association

Detached Self: Eternally Defined Meanings

Hard-edge images which provide Gibsonian “affordances”

American Psychological Association

American Psychological Association

American Psychological Association

3. Fundamental Methodological Problem

Reconciling...

- phenomenology and behaviourism- quantitative and qualitative data

Inside Experience of phenomenon versus

Outside Reduction through measurement

American Psychological Association

Narratives of the self

Poetry writing and performance

Dutch television advertisements

Method for qualitative analysis:www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~cupchikwww.web.net/~michellehilscher

American Psychological Association

The Idea of the Self:

Ego is a collection of skills

Self is the ego of which I am aware

Identity is the ego that my self approves of

How Can These Lessons Be Applied to a New Domain?

American Psychological Association

19th Century

- Emergence of self as a modern concept.- Existential realities: isolation, alienation, compartmentalization.

- Comte: “How can a person both shape and be shaped by society?”- Darwin and adaptation- Veblen (1899): “conspicuous consumption” in The Theory of the Leisure Class

American Psychological Association

Early 20th Century

- Pragmatism and Symbolic Interactionism

- George H. Mead: the “Generalized Other”

- Charles Cooley: the “Looking Glass Self”

American Psychological Association

Mid 20th Century (1960s)

- Miller & Swanson: Entrepreneurial Personality becomes Bureaucratic Personality

- Reisman, Glazer & Denney: The Lonely Crowd; The Other-Directed Personality

- Other-directed persons “want to be loved rather than esteemed.”

American Psychological Association

- Berger & Luckmann: “Reality maintenance” through conversation which creates a “collective order.”

- Erving Goffman: Theatrical aspects of performance in face-to-face interaction.- Public vs. private

American Psychological Association

Turn of the 21st Century

- “Belief propagation theory”

- “I am responded to, therefore I am”- Cogito ergo sum

- Smart et al. “Our social networks constitute a particularly potent source of bio-external scaffolding...”

American Psychological Association

Realities of Mass Media

If: “method is not ontologically neutral”(Danziger)

Then:“media are not ontologically neutral”

What are the hidden assumptions behind different media?

American Psychological Association

Rudolf Arnheim on the Problems of “Cultural Transportation”

- 1953: A Forecast of Television

-TV is a “means of cultural transportation” whereby the “wide world itself enters our room.”

- yet, “a mere instrument of transmission”

American Psychological Association

- “the more perfect our means of direct experience, the more easily we are caught by the dangerous illusion that perceiving is tantamount to knowing and understanding.”

- TV “may also keep the individual citizen from meeting his fellows” such that “the more isolated will be the individual in his retreat” as a “lonesome consumer of spectacles.”

American Psychological Association

McLuhan: “The Medium is the Message”

- New media: “cool” media that promote interaction helping us regain our tribal consciousness.

- Less isolated as members of a “global village.”

American Psychological Association

- Nick Carr (2007): the user is “wrapped in a cocoon of text.”

- Internet “encourages participation but it also sucks up our attention and dominates our senses.”

- Media transmit information to us but also gather information about us.

American Psychological Association

- Carr quoting McLuhan from Understanding Media:

- “Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit by taking a lease on our eyes and nerves, we don’t really have any rights left.”

American Psychological Association

The Internet and the Digitized Self

The real and the virtual...

And the virtually real.

If media are not ontologically neutral...

Then how do they affect the individual?

American Psychological Association

1. Paradoxical realities:

- The “there and now” (Zhao, Temple U):- Zero time lag; overcoming spatial distance

- Contrasted with sequential & telegraphic speech in chat rooms...

- Problem in face-to-face context?

American Psychological Association

2. The need for validation when we “conspicuously display ourselves”...

- Modern version of Veblen’s “conspicuous consumption”

- Disposition to conspicuous display an extension of Reisman’s “other-directed” personality.

American Psychological Association

- Implications for presentation of illusory or false self...

- Interaction and the false validation of the Self or validation of a false Self.

- Parallel worlds that are self-focused.

American Psychological Association

- Zosia Belski’s report on Facebook and a culture of narcissism- Sara Konrath (U of Michigan): loss of empathy

Hypothesis:

If there is an ideal-self versus real-self discrepancy, there is a greater need for validation.

American Psychological Association

3. What about the public versus private self?

- The Web and the end of forgetting.

- Jeffrey Rosen article in New York Times.

- Rosen affirms “the need for new ways of defining ourselves without reference to what others say about us and new ways of forgiving one another for the digital trails that will follow us forever.”

American Psychological Association

4. Mass Media manipulation and Facebook

- e.g., targeted personal advertising based on preferences and interests.- Are we conscious of this?

Hypothesis:

The greater the need for validation, the more these sites are treated as real; the less aware people are of potential manipulation.

American Psychological Association

5. The Virtual Reinforcer

- Matt Richtel in New York Times: Hooked on Gadgets; Bursts of information; stimulation and the dopamine squirt.

- Fragmented attention

- Appliance operator

American Psychological Association

6. Are you relating to the internet as subject matter or form (style)?

Hypotheses:

- Relate in terms of social networking subject matter: need for personal validation.

- Relate in terms of style/form: affirmation of personal agency.

American Psychological Association

Thank You

Gerald Cupchik, Professor of PsychologyUniversity of Toronto

www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~cupchik

cupchik@utsc.utoronto.ca

Recommended