This paper highlights the achievements of the past decade, together with the shortcomings and future needs, of the Australian Psychological Society (APS) in addressing its social and professional responsibilities towards Australia's Indigenous peoples. A selective chronology of events and initiatives since the 1988 International Congress in Psychology in Sydney is presented and critically examined. Reference is made to parallel national and international developments by Indigenous peoples in reclaiming direction, control, and appropriate partnership in their own mental health issues. The establishment of the APS Interest Group on Aboriginal Issues, Aboriginal People and Psychology represents one such partnership. While psychology's response to the reflection and reconciliation processes underway in Australian society in recent years might be described as sluggish, the accomplishments of the last decade provide a solid foundation for the development of culturally inclusive systems of education, training, and professional service delivery.

The Australian Psychological Society and Australia's Indigenous people: A decade of action

La psicologia social de las relaciones intergrupales se ocupa de los procesos psicologicos a la base de fenomenos como los estereotipos, el prejuicio y la discriminacion. La investigacion en el area ha producido una amplia gama de modelos explicativos. Algunos de ellos ponen toda su atencion en los procesos motivacionales, mientras otros se ocupan exclusivamente de los mecanismos cognitivos. Algunas de las teorias enfatizan en variables intraindividuales, mientras que otras resaltan el papel de factores contextuales en la emergencia de la hostilidad intergrupal. En la actualidad la investigacion integra explicaciones cognitivo-motivacionales y diferentes niveles de analisis. Esta literatura muestra, sin embargo, dos vacios importantes: a) la falta de teorias generales que permitan integrar la gran cantidad de informacion hasta ahora acumulada y b) faltan tambien estudios llevados a cabo en (y desde) Asia, Africa y America Latina.

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La psicología social de las relaciones intergrupales: modelos e hipótesis

This study offers new views to the problems of the human mental by assuming that its primitives, atoms, molecules, and structures are formed by our memory representations of entities and the mental states caused by them. With the system models of human concepts and mind the eternal problems of human knowledge, values, motivation, language, action, and organisational culture are approached from a new point of view. The human experienceable world is produced by our brain-systems emergent abilities to transform the material afferent action potentials into the mental descriptions of the sensed environment and its meanings. The memory structures and functions are seen as metaphors of our brains' emergent abilities to process, store, and view memory representations of the sensed, thought, or imagined entities of the being. The system models of man, his memory representations, and his concepts and mind are postulated in Chapters 2, 3, and 4. The other transformation process of our brain-system is the steering effect, in which our thoughts, plans, and decisions are formed into situation relevant flows of efferent action potentials. They, in turn, have a causal control of our speech and other motor actions. The RA-model of man and his mental steering system built in this study aims at finding natural explanations for some of the eternal problems of psychology, philosophy, management, and, in fact, all human sciences. These problems mostly circle around the relations between the human body and mind. In the RA-model these problems are left hidden behind the above named two transformations, which offer a challenging research fields for future neurobiology, neuropsychology, brain researches, human scientists, and philosophers. Though sciences do not have good explanations of how our mental experiences are produced in our central nervous system, we can build memory-based tools to describe and better understand the substance, structures, and functions of the human mental and through them the human actions. In the RA-model, the dorsal and ventral streams, mirror neurons, and man's testable memory representations are seen as a set of facts of which one can build a system model of man and his interactions with his environment. Man's concepts as structures of his memory representations function as situation relevant and handy tools for thinking, planning, and decision-making. RA's concepts enable a natural explanation of the human mental. Concepts can be used to disclose the mental dimensions of cultures, which seem to be hidden in the values, norms, language, and action models adopted by the members of the culture. Thus, they serve also the conscious control of man's mental and materially manifesting actions and activities.

Concepts and mind as dynamic memory-systems structuring the human mental : new interpretations of human knowledge, values, motivation, and culture, which steer the rationality in man's reasonings and actions

What would make anti-bullying initiatives more successful? This book offers a new approach to the problem of school bullying. The question of what constitutes a useful theory of bullying is considered and suggestions are made as to how priorities for future research might be identified. The integrated, systemic model of school bullying introduced in this book is based on four qualitative studies and incorporates theory from systemic thinking; cognitive, social, developmental and psychoanalytic psychology; sociology, socio-biology and ethology. The possible functions served by bullying behaviour are explored. Consideration is also given to the potential role of unconscious as well as conscious processes in bullying. The model suggests a number of causal processes within one-to-one relationships and peer groups, and highlights factors within individuals and schools that shape the form, intensity and duration of bullying behaviour in practice. The issue of 'difference' is also addressed, focusing on childhood deafness.

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Rethinking School Bullying: Towards an Integrated Model

Across the last four decades, applied social psychology has sought to apply theories to 'real world' social problems, hoping for some insight into intractable social issues. This paper reviews applied social psychology discourse on the application of theory in the resolution of social problems, with a focus on the 'post-crisis' literature. This analysis suggests that much of applied social psychology lacks serious theoretical analysis and has yet to use the kind of theory needed to understand social problems. While exceptions to these trends are noted and discussed, current mainstream applied social psychology, as exemplified by a survey of recent texts, seems highly individualistic, rarely focused on important social issues, and generally atheoretical. Two themes, which run counter to these trends—the emergence of critical psychology and renewed attention to the limits of generalizability, along with the importance of knowing contexts— may set the agenda for further theoretical efforts in applied social psychology.

Theory in Applied Social Psychology Past Mistakes and Future Hopes

`Could certainly be used as a stand-alone text. Aimed primarily at advanced undergraduates, it could also be read by others who may be prompted to identify yet further dimensions with which to map contemporary social psychology and define their position in relation to others' - The Psychologist 
This clearly structured textbook presents a broad overview of the key issues that underpin social psychology. These include: the nature of science and `psychology as science'; descriptive, emancipatory and critical theories; and the different ways in which social psychology is applied in the social and political world. 
Drawing upon a number of different perspectives, this volume will introduce students to the important debates around what constitutes valid argument and research in social psychology, its aims, scope and subject matter, and the degree to which social psychology can be said to be itself a social institution and a part of the network of social regulation and definition. 
Theory and Social Psychology is one of four books which form the core of The Open University's course Social Psychology: Personal Lives, Social Worlds.

Richard Stevens

Papers

Theory and Social Psychology