Understanding Leisure with Social Psychology

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Understanding Leisure with Social Psychology

• Chapter One

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What is Social Psychology?

• Social psychologists study attitudes and beliefs,
  conformity and independence, love and hate.
• Social psychology is the scientific study of how
  people think about, influence, and relate to one
  another.

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Hierarchy of Disciplines
Integrative Explanation Elemental
Explanation
Theology Philosophy Sociology Social
Psychology Psychology Biology Chemistry Physics
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Social Science and Quest for Happiness, Health
and Good Life (??????????????????)
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Juggling and Balancing the Demands of Daily Life
(?????????)

• Lifestyle is typically described as a total way
  of living.
• People are bombarded from all sides with
  suggestions for the best way to juggle and
  balance the various aspects of their lives.
• Access to instantaneous electronic communication
  has created widespread awareness of lifestyle
  alternatives even if these choices are not
  available to everyone.

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Juggling and Balancing the demands of Daily Life
(cont)

• Most people believe that their lifestyles
  determine their health and happiness.
• People can create their own lifestyles through
  how they juggle and balance the work, family and
  leisure aspects of their lives.

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People-Watching as a Science (??????????)

• Social science addresses the problems such as
  child abuse, neurosis, alienation, drug abuse,
  stress, unemployment, poor eating habits,
  smoking, lack of exercise.
• Social science also addresses positive aspects of
  life such as altruism, creativity, humor, and
  empathy.

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Contribution of Social Science

• Social science will contribute answers and raise
  social awareness about specific lifestyle issues
  so we will be better able to control our lives.

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What is Leisure

• Activity (e.g., attending a movie )
• Time free from obligations.
• Satisfying experience (e.g., feelings of
  satisfaction, fun excitement, awe, belonging)
• Some combination of activity, time and experience.

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Is Leisure a Problem

• Unemployment and part-time work have grown that
  the number of people working well beyond a
  forty-hour week has increased.
• Other people appear to be thriving on more work,
  and yet for others, work seems to be a form of
  addiction or workaholicism driven by problems.
• On the other hand, for children, retirees, the
  underemployed and unemployed, leisure may count
  for up to two-thirds or more of their time and
  activity,

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Is Leisure a Problem (cont)

• These differences and problems make the study of
  leisure and how people deal with it a fascinating
  topic.
• All the above phenomena are matters of great
  academic, political, and social interest.

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More about Leisure

• Leisure is a big business as people spend money
  on travel, attending sport and cultural events,
  collectables from stamps to paintings, and
  recreational goods sweatbands (???) to sailboats.
• Leisure is also seen as an effective way of
  fostering the quality of community and individual
  life through recreational, cultural and heritage
  activities oriented to people from childhood to
  old age.

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The Psychologization of Leisure Services

• More and more, leisure has been singled out as an
  important vehicle for promoting healthy
  lifestyles and activities.
• Many recreation providers are as concerned with
  the quality of the experiences provided by their
  recreational services as they are with the
  activities and settings they manage.
• Success of leisure services is based on
  structuring the leisure environment and to create
  or encourage predictably satisfying experiences.

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The Psychologization of Leisure Services (cont)

• It has become apparent that an understanding of
  the psychological or experiential nature of
  leisure must be developed.
• Most college and university recreation and
  leisure studies programs encourage their students
  to integrate and understand the interplay between
  people, resource, and policy issues.
• Social science research is devoted to
  understanding not only the antecedents and
  consequences of leisure choices, but also the
  factors that affect the quality and meaning of
  the choices.

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Social Psychology of Leisure
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Forewords

• Leisure behavior and experience are seen to be a
  function of the interplay of internal
  psychological dispositions (e.g., perceptions,
  feelings, emotions, beliefs, attitudes, needs,
  personality) and social contexts (e.g., other
  people, culture, group norms, family, media).
• Bf(P,E)

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Trouble at the Video Arcade

• Please see the description in p.13.

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What Is a Leisure Problem?

• Is the video arcade issue a leisure problem?
• Most of us would agree that video games at the
  arcade is a leisure behavior and a recreational
  activity.
• Leisure problems often take the form of barriers
  or constraints that prevent people from engaging
  in or experiencing satisfying leisure.
• Participating in leisure may result in negative
  outcomes for the individual or society.

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How Would You Approach This Problem?

• What suggestions can you give to the school
  board?
• Has there been an increase in truancy (??) and
  larceny (??) in the school after the opening of
  the arcade?
• Does the presence of the arcade and video game
  affect all students in the school in negative
  manner?
• The link between video game playing and the
  deviant behavior of truancy and larceny in school
  may be irrelevant?

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The Social Psychological Approach(???????)
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Can the Problem Be Studied with Social Psychology?

• The social psychological approach is a scientific
  approach.
• The scientific method is simply a way of making
  observations or gathering information in a
  systematic way.
• The scientific method involves the use of
  controlled, systematic inquiry, and a logical and
  rational approach to explanation.

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Can the Problem Be Studied with Social
Psychology? (cont)

• For the video arcade case, we will ask
• Have incidents of crime in the school increased
  since the arcade opened?
• Are students from the school using their leisure
  time to hang out in the arcade?
• Are there any link between crime and video
  arcade?
• If there is evidence of a link, what are the
  social and psychological explanation for the link
  between playing at the arcade and the deviant
  behavior at school that might help to understand
  and ultimately deal with the problem?

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Theory and Cause-and-Effect Relationships

• The theory suggested by the newspaper article
  seems to be the presence of the arcade provides
  opportunities and causes students to engage in
  the leisure behavior of playing video games which
  leads to addiction which in turn leads to truancy
  and larceny.
• However, there is little or no evidence provided
  in the article to support this theory.

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Stimulus-Response Approach (??-????)

• S?R
• Behaviorists argued that since peoples
  attitudes, thoughts, feelings and motives cannot
  be seen, they are not worth studying or using in
  theories to explain human behavior.
• Situationism suggests that social situations or
  settings act as stimuli to elicit a response
  (behavior) and that this predictable response
  occurs because it leads to positive consequences
  or rewards.

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Stimulus-Response Approach (cont)

• You might theorize that the mere presence of the
  video arcade stimulates the response of video
  game playing. The rewards maintaining this
  behavior might be admiring words of peers or the
  wining of free games.
• In fact, only a small number of students involved
  in arcade video game playing. The mere presence
  of the video arcade seems insufficient to explain
  this problematic leisure behavior.

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Organism-Response Approach (??-????)

• The O-R approach is based on the assumption that
  people demonstrate stable and enduring
  differences in their needs, motives, attitudes
  and personalities, independent of situation,
  which lead them to behave consistently across a
  wide range of situation.
• If you want to understand why some students are
  attracted to the video arcade and engage in crime
  at school, you need to look for those
  characteristics that they carry around with them
  in their minds and that distinguished them from
  their more law-abiding peers.

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Organism-Response Approach (cont)

• In this arcade case, sensation seeking (need for
  excitement) might explain why some students are
  involved in the arcade and others are not, and
  why this activity leads to deviant school
  behavior for some.
• A persons inflated belief in the importance of
  person factors for explaining behavior, together
  with the failure to recognize the importance of
  situational factors, has been termed the
  fundamental attribution error.

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Stimulus-Organism-Response Approach

• This interactionism assumes that peoples
  behavior and experience can be best understood by
  taking into account both the influence of social
  situation and personal traits.
• In the case of the video arcade problem, this
  approach suggests that the key to understanding
  the students behavior lies in developing an idea
  of how they think and feel about the arcade and
  school settings.

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Stimulus-Organism-Response Approach (cont)

• Students who are members of peer groups that
  value video playing expertise (social situation
  influence) would more likely to be addicted and
  commit deviant acts at school.
• If we were to examine sensation seekers who are
  also members of peer groups who value video
  playing and find that a very high percentage of
  these students were hanging out at the arcade and
  engaging in deviant behavior at school, we would
  have a situation by person interaction and a much
  better explanation of the behavior in question.

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Stimulus-Organism-Response Approach (cont)

• It was only when these situation (peer group,
  video game arcade) and personal variables
  (sensation seeker) were both present or
  interacting that they have a strong influence on
  behavior.
• When outside the peer group context, personality
  differences may have a stronger influence on
  participation or nonparticipation in video game
  playing.

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Defining the Social Psychology of Leisure
(?????????)

• Social psychology is the scientific study of the
  behavior and experience of individuals in social
  situation.
• Social psychology of leisure is the scientific
  study of the leisure behavior and experience of
  individuals in social situation.
• Social psychology of leisure applies the
  scientific method of systematic observation,
  description, and measurement to the study of
  people.

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Defining the Social Psychology of Leisure (cont)

• The social psychology of leisure focuses on the
  individual.
• Sociologists are more interested in how
  collectives of people, such as small groups,
  organization, and societies as a whole operate.
• Social psychology is concerned with how
  individuals behave and perceive their social
  world how they learn about it remember what
  they experience in it and appraise and evaluate
  it.

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Defining the Social Psychology of Leisure (cont)

• Researchers can observe experience by
  communicating with people, that is, having people
  tell them what is on their minds.
• The social psychology of leisure involves the
  study of experience and behavior.

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Limitations and Challenges

• First, there has been growing concern that the
  social psychology of leisure has been
  predominantly the study of male leisure behavior
  and experience until quite recently.
• Second, there have been criticisms that leisure
  studies during the past two decades have been too
  psychological too myopically (????) focused on
  the individual.
• Third, the frame of this book is strongly
  influenced by the social psychological traditions
  of North American psychology.

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Quantitative Study vs. Qualitative
Study(?????????)

• A quantitative study is an inquiry into a social
  or human problem based on testing a theory
  composed of variables, measured with numbers, and
  analyzed with statistical procedures in order to
  determine whether the predictive generalizations
  of the theory hold true.

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Quantitative Study vs. Qualitative Study (cont)

• A qualitative study is defined as an inquiry
  process of understanding a social or human
  problem, based on building a complex, holistic
  picture, formed with words, reporting detailed
  views of informants, and conducted in a natural
  setting.

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Final Notes

• Social science can never be completely value
  free.
• Many scientists today do not believe that science
  can ever be completely unbiased and objective.
• Good science is the effort to shake ourselves
  free of preconceptions, or at least become aware
  of them.

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The End... Thank You!
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Experience and Behavior

• What a person perceives, feels, learns, or
  remembers is often inferred from behavior.
• Researchers can observe experience by
  communicating with people, having people tell
  them what is on their mind.
• The researcher will be interested in both leisure
  behavior and experience defined objectively by
  outside observers and subjectively by the
  individual herself or himself.

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