Showing papers in "Theory & Psychology in 1995"

Significance tests die hard: The amazing persistence of a probabilistic misconception.

Abstract: We present a critique showing the flawed logical structure of statistical significance tests We then attempt to analyze why, in spite of this faulty reasoning, the use of significance tests persists We identify the illusion of probabilistic proof by contradiction as a central stumbling block, because it is based on a misleading generalization of reasoning from logic to inference under uncertainty We present new data from a student sample and examples from the psychological literature showing the strength and prevalence of this illusion We identify some intrinsic cognitive mechanisms (similarity to modus tollens reasoning; verbal ambiguity in describing the meaning of significance tests; and the need to rule out chance findings) and extrinsic social pressures which help to maintain the illusion We conclude by mentioning some alternative methods for presenting and analyzing psychological data, none of which can be considered the ultimate method

Social Identity and Affect as Determinants of Collective Action: Toward an Integration of Relative Deprivation and Social Identity Theories

Abstract: The goal of this paper is to compare and contrast relative deprivation and social identity theories in an attempt to form an integrative model of social comparison. The model posits that, depending on the determinants of salience, people come to categorize themselves as individuals or group members. When personal or group self-identities are salient, individuals engage in intragroup or intergroup comparisons respectively. Negative outcomes from these comparisons result in negative social identities. These personal or group self-identities, in combination with perceptions of the position as illegitimate, are hypothesized to result in feelings of personal and group relative deprivation (RD) respectively. Depending on their feelings of RD, individuals adopt individual or collective actions to change their status. When personal RD is experienced, individuals will first attempt normative individual actions to change their status. If these attempts fail, non-normative individual action strategies will be adopte...

In Conversation Joint Action, Shared Intentionality and Ethics

Abstract: The conversational background to our lives is strange in that we cannot turn it around into an object of thought, to be explained like all else in our world in terms of either rules, theories or mo...

Reasoning and Rationality: A Critique of Some Experimental Paradigms

Abstract: This paper considers certain experimental tasks used by cognitive psychologists, performance on which has been thought to show that intelligent and able human subjects are `irrational'. It is argue...

American Behaviorism: A Historical and Critical Analysis

Abstract: Behaviorism dominated mainstream American academic psychology from the 1920s for four or five decades. It emerged slowly under Watson from a background going back to Darwin and involving the development of comparative psychology in Britain, continental Europe and America. Watsonian behaviorism was a mixture of certain methodological principles and certain metaphysical doctrines. The main behaviorists were active experimenters and diligent theorists. They agreed with Watson and with each other on a few methodological principles but they disagreed on others. In respect of content they concentrated on learning, ignored perception and behavior genetics and had little to say on the taxonomy of motivation. Even in their principal field of investigation they could not agree on the nature and conditions of learning. Yet behaviorism has had a significant influence on mainstream empirical American psychology and for that matter elsewhere: while not confining itself to intersubjectively testable data, it has become ...

Sacks and Psychology

Abstract: Sacks's lectures are the historical foundation of conversation analysis (CA), the empirical study of talk as social activity. Sacks developed the implications of his analyses mostly for social science. This review highlights various implications for psychology, and especially for studies of language, cognition and social interaction. Sacks's `social action' rather than `communication' approach to talk, including his notion of `subversion', contradicts common assumptions that CA is inherently consensualist. His legacy provides a challenge to psychological theories of discourse and cultural knowledge, and a rigorous empirical methodology for developing it.

The Necessity of Personhood as Embodied Being

Abstract: The ontology presupposed in discursive psychology takes persons to be originating centres of activity. Since they are ontologically elementary they have no internal psychological complexity. As with the elementary charges and poles that ground the ontology of physics, they are specified wholly in terms of their dispositions and powers. A second important feature of the social constructionist strain in discursive psychology is the thesis that cognitive processes are properties of discourses, and hence have their primary mode of being in interpersonal symbolic interactions. Persons are singularities and each has its unique attributes. Singularity of personhood is tied up with singularity of embodiment, deeply involved in the human sense of self. In a similar manner the discursive thesis that emotion displays are embodied expressions of judgements also brings the fact of embodiment to the centre of psychological theory. These considerations dispose of the greater part of Fisher's (1995) criticisms of the dis...

Toward a Wittgensteinian social psychology of human development

Abstract: It has been suggested that Wittgenstein's work on the philosophy of psychology contains the seeds of an anti-individualistic alternative to mentalism and behaviorism. Along these lines, I propose a social psychological reading of Wittgenstein based on Zettel§567 and related remarks. It is argued that Wittgenstein's views are social psychological because he claims that human behavior may be understood only in terms of the background of social practices and group norms, an assumption also shared by the social behaviorists Mead and Dewey. In particular, Wittgenstein emphasizes that psychological concepts, like all concepts, are systems of language-games supported by a complex variety of social practices, which he refers to as a form of life. According to Wittgenstein, people grow into the background assumptions of those around them through a process of socialization. On this view, human development is best understood as a progression through socio cultural sequences of increasingly complicated grammars. Some...

Wittgenstein's Legacy and the Challenge to Psychology

Abstract: The present resurgence of interest in Ludwig Wittgenstein is related to the growing concern in the philosophy and methodology of the behavioural sciences with the role played by conceptual framewor...

Whose Right is it to Define the Self

Abstract: Descartes founded the psychology of the individual with a mind! body distinction that calls for internal dialogue and interactive exchange. Individuals struggle with their nature through an intracommunicative system, emanating not from social exchanges, but, instead, from autonomous rules and constraints inherent in the machine of the body. The attacks on these ideas by social constructionists, such as Gergen, Harre and Shotter, impel me to write this paper. My purpose is to show how rejection of Descartes's Cogito; ergo sum, and of his idea that the human being struggles with feelings directed by the body and beliefs formed in the soul, eliminates criteria necessary for concepts of the self and the person. I argue that social constructionist reductions of mind and body to social process disallow a causal basis for self and its autonomously generated origins. The same reductions substitute contextual determination for cause and effect logic, clouding accounts of an individual's choices and decisions and m...

Ecological Psychology and Naturalism Heider, Gibson and Marr

Abstract: In this paper, Gibson's ecological approach to perception is discussed as belonging to the tradition of naturalist psychology, which focuses on the adaptive role of the perceptual system, and which includes (assumptions about) the structure of the ecological environment in theories of perception. As such, naturalism contrasts with the sensation-based tradition in perception, which is implicitly solipsist in ignoring the distal object, and restricts itself to local causal effects in the senses and subsequent cognitive processing. It is shown that Gibson's work shows traces of his contacts with Heider and Brunswik, and that Marr explicitly picks up (and sometimes criticizes) key elements of Gibson's work. Heider, Gibson and Marr are interpreted as naturalists in their emphasis on the role of the environment as a separate and irreducible level of explanation in theories of perception.

The Limitations of Logic in Defining the Self

Abstract: Three aspects of Fisher's (1995) logical analysis are criticized: (a) his tendency to separate and polarize points of view in such a way that he provides a misconstrued picture of social constructionism, (b) his adherence to a Cartesian view, with the implication that unity and multiplicity, like continuity and discontinuity, are treated as mutually exclusive rather than as coexistent features of the self, and (c) his conception that narrative has no basis in the body.

Lacan and Bion Psychoanalysis and the Mystical Language of `Unsaying'

Abstract: We examine the theory and language of psychoanalysts Jacques Lacan and Wilfred Bion, regarding central issues such as the role of healing, the viability of truth and its location, and the status of the unconscious, including where it is and who can know it. We place Lacan and Bion in a critical dialogue with the language of mystical `unsaying', as exemplified in the writings of Plotinus, John the Scot Erigena, Ibn `Arabi, Marguerite Porete and Meister Eckhart. On the basis of this comparison, we argue that the languages of Lacan and Bion, on the one hand, and that of the above-cited mystics, on the other, are mutually illuminating of a central and often misunderstood human phenomenon, the language of unsaying.

A `Show' of Agency is Enough:

Abstract: Descartes and Cartesians such as Harwood Fisher (1995) claim that human agency is only known to us as such intellectually, through supposed linguistically indifferent concepts or ideas of agency ce...

Constructing Psychological Knowledge Reflections on Science, Scientists and Epistemology in the APA Publication Manual

Abstract: This literary, textual analysis of the APA Publication Manual reveals a text of extraordinary complexity and intricacy which belies its often presented purpose as being merely a `helpful tool'. In it we examine the characters-for example, authors, editors, typists-involved in the production of a document, the nature of their roles and relationships, and the overt and covert demands of informed and powerful voices who are presented as facilitators and allies. We examine messages inherent in the Manual which potential authors are advised to consider to make their work acceptable for publication. In addition, the process of creativity, construction and ownership of the product is addressed in reference to the standards of professional publishing communities.

Postmodern, Post-Cartesian Positionings on the Subject of Psychology

Abstract: Descartes's philosophical position, founded upon a mind/body dualism, has had a strong influence on psychology. His dualistic system has supported the creation of a discipline in which individuals are viewed both as systems affected by mechanistic bodily emanations and as self-regulating agents replete with self-awareness and the capacity for moral responsibility. The purpose of Harwood Fisher's (1995) paper is to demonstrate that this Cartesian view is crucial to the continuation of a psychological science, which has this form of being as its subject. The major antagonists of these goals are those involved in the postmodern move in psychology, and he focuses especially on the work of Kenneth Gergen, Rom Harre and John Shotter. My attempt here is to expose the manner in which Fisher masks his desire as reason, and to invite him to accept his desires as a foundationless, a priori commitment. Further I contend that possibilities other than chaos among faceless automatons can result from the erasure of the C...

Information and Time

Abstract: The conceptual roots of the modern notion of information are traced. One of the most prominent of these roots stems from an unlikely source-western views of time. This root is perhaps the main reason for the wide appeal and explanatory power of our current conception of information, particularly in cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, however, this appeal and power have led many theorists and researchers to overlook problems with this conception. Psychology's dominant assumption of time not only underlies these problems but also prevents their solution. An alternative assumption of time-hermeneutic temporality-is thus described. This alternative is shown to avoid the more problematic aspects of the dominant view and offer a more promising basis for conceptualizing information.

The reporting and ethics of the research relationship in areas of interpersonal psychology, 1939-89.

Abstract: This study examined research reports published in the interpersonal areas of psychology from 1939 to 1989, focusing on authors' descriptions of the relationship between investigators and research participants. Analysis of 3001 articles published at 10-year intervals in seven US journals and one Canadian showed that researchers employed participants as data sources only and typically did not report consent, debriefing or feedback; authors generally described participants but not data collectors and settings, heavily used the term `subjects' and seldom acknowledged participants. Overall, hierarchical research and depersonalized reporting prevailed. The findings also illuminate the historical role of women researchers and participants' gender and underscore recommendations for including social and ethical processes in journal reports.

Adult Mother-Daughter Relationships: Subjectivity, Power and Critical Psychology

Abstract: Theoretical developments are considered in two waves of research which inform our understanding of adult mother-daughter relationships. The first wave introduces the perspective of feminist object relations theory. The second addresses the issue of re-visioning sister-hood. Both combine a concern for feminist issues and psychoanalytic theory, exploring the unconscious relational dynamics of mothering and daughtering as they are implicated in the reproduction of, and resistance to, socially stratified power/gender relations. Three main issues are addressed: (i) the critique of object relations theory on grounds of essentialism; (ii) reasons for viewing individuation-separation theory as a patriarchal myth; and (iii) the argument that the standing of adult mother-daughter relationships can be enhanced, as a metaphor for understanding women's relationships more widely, by invoking the concept of female desire. The implications of the various controversies and debates for critical psychology are considered. I...

Modes of Thinking Reflecting on Psychological Concepts

Abstract: This article is a contribution to theoretical psychology. It is composed of three parts. The first part is postulatory; it explicates the minimal logical prerequisites for scientific cognition. Cognition requires at least a goal, an object, means of cognition and a cogitating subject. This set will be called the logically demanded voids of cognition. It will be shown that a `psychologizing' of the process of cognition leads to logical antinomies. The second part distinguishes between clearly distinctive programmes of psychological research, called modes of thinking. To become operative the differentiated set of voids of cognition has to be filled by content. Each specific mode of thinking is a consistent contentbased specification of this set. This will be explained by examples. The third part deals with the question of how to relate the conceptually separated modes of thinking. Is there a possibility of doing this with conceptual clarity and empirical productivity?

A Teleological Critique of Modern Cognitivism

Abstract: This paper summarizes a teleological critique of modern cognitivism in terms of four points that address the suitability of such mechanistic accounts to explain human cognition: (1) Final-cause for...

Social Constructionism and the Pragmatic Entente: A Reply to Osbeck

Abstract: Recently in these pages, Osbeck (1993) assessed the suitability of strong vs weak constructionism as an explanatory model for psychology. The evaluative criteria adopted by Osbeck were based on a pragmatic standard of usefulness to society. This standard included the concept of generativity, which eschews moral relativism by enshrining the dignity of the individual. Osbeck concluded that only weak constructionism has the capacity to fulfil the criteria entailed in the pragmatic standard. An inspection of the evaluative issues addressed by Osbeck shows that the relative advantages ascribed to weak constructionism are equivocal and stem mainly from its typically prescriptive presentations. Moreover, weak constructionism, as described by Osbeck, does not eliminate concerns about relativism as much as it banishes them from its neo-Kantian framework. Although a re-examination of the pragmatism of William James may offer hope for alternative psychologies, its promise may resonate more strongly with Wittgenstein...

Aggression Research: A Critical-Historical, Multi-Level Approach

Abstract: In a recent article Fowers and Richardson raised epistemological eyebrows by recasting the cognitive aggression formulation of Huesmann, Eron and associates within a critical hermeneutic analysis. ...

Groping in the Light

Abstract: Even though Fisher's (1995) own `solution' to the alleged problems brought on by social constructionism in regard to the self is questionable in that positing internal causes leads to much the same moral impasse as those more external formulations he seeks to criticize, it is nevertheless of value both to call attention to the limits of the movement and to imagine alternatives that might better allow human agency and moral responsibility into their reach. He is therefore to be commended for thinking against the grain as well as for following his apparent intuition that there may be more to selfhood and moral life than the conventional wisdom would indicate. After having drawn out the implications of this intuition, some direction is provided for thinking about moral life in a manner different from the social constructionists and from Fisher himself.

Empty Sets or Empty Self A Response to Comments on `Whose Right is it to Define the Self?'

Abstract: Responses to my critique of social constructionism (Fisher, 1995b) aver not only that my concepts of self appear dualistic, re-evoking Cartesian and neo-Cartesian dualities, but also that my claims about the self lack evidence. Freeman, Gergen, Harre, Hermans and Shotter (all 1995) reassert consciousness and conscience as social constructions. Yet, their reductionism splits mind from body. I argue to the contrary-that mind and body interrelate within the same metaphysical structuring and without such splits as Harre's proposed metaphysical/ontological. Ironically, constructionist reduction of the self to a derivation within social context multiplies dualities and disjunctions for two reasons: the use of reduction to theorize about the self, and the focus on rhetoric-not only as context for the metaphysical structuring of theoretical concepts, but also as substitute for logic in evaluating theory. I reject as fallacy the argument that it is my burden of proof to show evidence for the psychobiology of self ...

Social Constructionism and the Pragmatic Standard Revisited: A Reply to Botschner

Abstract: The argument that only a weak version of social constructionism allows for a generative psychology and therefore honors the pragmatic standard is challenged by Botschner, who claims that the proposed advantages of weak constructionism are not clear. Botschner's comments seem to stem from a number of misconceptions about the original argument and from some points of divergence in the reading of Wittgenstein and James. These misconceptions are addressed and the original argument is clarified.

Computational Psychology and Naturalism: A Comment on Looren de Jong

Abstract: Looren de Jong traces Gibson's ecological approach to perception to the tradition of Heider and Brunswik, and from Gibson to Marr. In this commentary I first discuss the use of classifying traditions. Then I discuss Looren de Jong's classifications of naturalism and rationalism. I then argue that Marr's position is accordingly misrepresented.

Physio-Sociology or Psychology of Conscience? Reply to Smith

Abstract: Smith (1995) argues that low nervous reactivity predicts sensation-seeking and psychopathy. Recent evidence strongly suggests that low reactivity, usually designated as low trait anxiety, does not predict primary psychopathy or anti-social behavior. This evidence also indicates that there is more than one type of sensation-seeking. The type which involves physical risk-taking was completely unrelated to psychopathy or anti-social behavior. Smith takes exception to the introduction of moral universals into the controversy over the sources of psychopathy. A very strong case can be made for the existence and relevance of such universals. The psychological theory of psychopathy is reprised and a suggestion is made for further research.

Psychopathy One more Time: Comment to Levenson

Abstract: Levenson (1992) has proposed a subjectivist perspective on psychopathy focused on the choices/assumption made by the individual, and he extrapolates to corporations and other aggregates as perpetrators of `institutional psychopathy'. He examines arguments from biological, sociological and developmental perspectives and finds them wanting. This comment looks again at these dismissed areas, suggesting Levenson recapitulates them at times idiosyncratically, and constructs his own alternative on the questionable foundation of abstract universal (etic) values in the face of concrete marketplace (emic) values with which psychopathy spectrum behavior shows marked congruence.