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Societal Psychology: Social Psychology’s contribution to understanding and changing society. Saadi Lahlou Institute of Social Psychology London School of Economics and Political Science. The problem: “real World” issues. Changing a society, an endeavour that goes beyond psychology. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
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Societal Psychology:Social Psychology’s contribution to understanding and changing society
Saadi LahlouInstitute of Social PsychologyLondon School of Economics and Political Science
The problem: “real World” issues
Changing a society, an endeavour that goes beyond psychology.
Needs understanding (rerum causas cognoscere):- the determinants of individual behaviour- aggregation issues (groups, masses)- organizational issues- culture
To practice : innovation, conflict, structuration, decision-making, agency, negotiation.
outline
1. Societal Psychology: principles and history (Prof. Gaskell)
2. Homo Socius : « group member by design »
3. WIT: culture as a distributed guidance system.
outline
1. Societal Psychology: principles and history (Prof. Gaskell)
2. Homo Socius : « group member by design »
3. WIT: culture as a distributed guidance system.
Some (biased) landmarks of Societal Psychology
1943: Lewin (changing food habits)
1947: Simon (administrative behaviour)
1961: Moscovici (diffusion of Psychoanalysis)
1964 : ISP founded at LSE
(…)
1975 : Societal Psychology (Himmelweit et al.)
…
2011-12: another promotion of ISP trained to change to World
Societal psychology 15 props (Himmelweit & Gaskell, 1975)
• Human beings need to be studied in a sociocultural context. The individual and the collective cannot be separated ontologically. Societal psychology requires a systems approach. And multilevel (micro/macro)
• The ecology of the environment, its objective characteristics, needs to be studied alongside its mediated reality
• Maintain a historical perspective. People create social organizations—but it is the social organizations that recast people
• Innovation is as much an imperative of the social system as is conformity
• Theoretical and methodological pluralism. Cross-fertilization between StP social sciences is indispensable. Including streams of Psychology.
• And between basic and applied research. Adopt a wider range of research tools.• Developing conceptual frameworks rather than search for invariant laws
• There is no such thing as value-free social research
outline
1. Societal Psychology: principles and history (Prof. Gaskell)
2. Homo Socius : « group member by design »
3. WIT: culture as a distributed guidance system.
Biological bricks: Homo Socius and Homo Sapiens
Humans are Cooperative, Competitive, Communicative, Educable, Instrumented
Homo Socius
• Small teams (3 men in a boat)• Groups (football)• Families (gathering)• Hords (demonstration)• Nations (obama election)
Solomon Asch’s « conformity » experiment (1951)
Asch, S. E. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs, 70 (Whole no. 416).
Control : 1 participant out of 35 gave an incorrect answerExperiment : 75% of participants gave at least one incorrect answer
15
real world applications
Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem, Dec. 11, 1961
Nazi extermination camps
Humans are socialized
Humans are a mix of competition and cooperation > groups, hierarchy
Humans communicate, learn, are instrumented > organisations, culture
Individuals have membership (role/status) in specific groups/organisations/cultures.
They feel and act as group members.
individuals tend to: - act as group organs, - behave according to given role- use the environment as storage/ external scaffolding
positive : - individual well-being in groups- emulation, motivation- leverage of agency with labour division- cumulativity of creation
negative :- superorganisms have their own conatus and dynamics- care little about individuals- inertia
Take-away part 1:humans are by design prone to assemble and create social super-organisms
outline
1. Societal Psychology: principles and history (Prof. Gaskell)
2. Homo Socius : « group member by design »
3. WIT: culture as a distributed guidance system.
Societal control: the world as « installation »
1. Physical layer (objects) provide affordances
2. Humans interpret objects and situations
3. Institutions control
Affordances at physical level
James J. Gibson (1904-1981) Davies, CA, 1978.
« Roughly, the affordances of things are what
they furnish, for good or ill, that is what they
afford the observer. (…) they are ecological, in
the sense that they are properties of the
environment relative to an animal. (…)
Affordances do not cause behavior but
constrain or control it. Needs control the
perception of affordances (selective attention)
and also initiate acts.
An observer is not ‘bombarded ’ by stimuli. He
extracts invariants from a flux of stimulation. » [Gibson, 1967, passim]
NB: Jacob Von Uexküll’s notion of connotation
of activity (1952) is more philosophically solid
because not tied into realism, but may be less
usable for didactic/operational purposes.
should I push or pull this door?
Interpretation into action
Social space:institutions
Physical space:objects
Mental space:representations
3. installation theory(Lahlou, 2008)
x
Take-away part 2
Behaviour is simultaneously determined at 3 levels: material, psychological, social
Understanding and changing the system needs to address the 3 levels
Societal psychology’s domain is the psychological level, but the overlaps with the 2 other levels
Societal psychology 15 props (Himmelweit & Gaskell, 1975)
• Human beings need to be studied in a sociocultural context. The individual and the collective cannot be separated ontologically. Societal psychology requires a systems approach. And multilevel (micro/macro)
• The ecology of the environment, its objective characteristics, needs to be studied alongside its mediated reality
• Maintain a historical perspective. People create social organizations—but it is the social organizations that recast people
• Innovation is as much an imperative of the social system as is conformity
• Theoretical and methodological pluralism. Cross-fertilization between StP social sciences is indispensable. Including streams of Psychology.
• And between basic and applied research. Adopt a wider range of research tools.• Developing conceptual frameworks rather than search for invariant laws
• There is no such thing as value-free social research
Some principles
There is nothing so practical as a good theory (Kurt Lewin)
The best way to understand a complex system is to try to change it (Kurt Lewin)
If your photographs aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough (Robert Capa)
Need not hope to endeavour, need not succeed to persevere (William of Orange)
creation, improvement, conservation of artifacts(technology)
education, daily practice guidance
Embodied form of Rep.
Reified form
the reproductive cycle of representations/objects
INSTITUTIONAL CONTROL
« I love this Company ! »http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc4MzqBFxZE