Psychology and the Current Situation

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Psychology and the Current Situation
Tony Stavely Department of Psychology Keene State
College http//wcb.keene.edu/tstavely/ tstavely_at_
keene.edu
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Overview

• Who am I and what's this about?
• Some psychology
• Applications
• What is one to do?

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Psychology

• Thoughts, feelings, and actions
• Assessing situations
• Attitudes and social participation
• Stress

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Thoughts, feelings, actions

• Thoughts
• Theory-making, story-telling
• Information, absence of information,
  misinformation, disinformation
• Estimation biased and representative sampling

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Thoughts

• Same vs. different
• In psychology, generalization vs. discrimination
• Distortions of judgment
• Assimilation (underestimating small differences -
  "we" are all alike)
• Contrast (overestimating larger differences
  "they" are very different from us)
• Mainstream culture's tendency to treat marginal
  people as Other, different, beyond normal

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Thinking complexity

• Afghanistan
• Multiple ethnic groups
• Pakhtun, Hazara, Tajik, Uzbek, Turkmen, Baloch,
  Nuristani
• Indo-European, Turkic, Mongol languages
• "Tribal," "urbanized" groups
• Multiple religious groups
• Sunni, Shi'a

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Complexity Afghanistan
from the University of Texas at Austin library
online map collection
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Complexity Afghanistan
BBC map
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Thoughts, feelings, actions

• Feelings
• Questions
• What am I feeling?
• What's causing this feeling?
• What to do about it?
• Response depends on accuracy of answers
• Changes the situation for the better
• Fails to change the situation
• Changes the situation for the worse

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Thoughts, feelings, actions

• Feelings
• Culture teaches range of possible answers
• What can be felt
• What causes such feelings
• Display rules
• These days
• Anger
• Fear, anxiety
• Depression
• Patriotism, courageous determination

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Thoughts, feelings, actions

• Actions
• Based on assessment of situation
• Based on accessible experience
• Subject to social influence
• Produce consequences
• Action/consequence pairs stored in memory
• Memory contents only part of what gets
  "remembered"

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Assessing situations

• Reality vs human judgment

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Assessing situations

• What affects judgment?
• Reality itself
• Our expectations from past experience, other
  people's claims, cultural learning
• Benefits and costs
• Benefits of true positive, true negative
  judgments
• Costs of false positive, false negative judgments

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Attitudes

• Definition thoughts, feelings, actions about
  some target
• like/dislike, attraction/repulsion
• Rooted in self
• Assessing things, situations
• Ego defense
• Ego enhancement, value expression

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Attitudes

• Rooted in community
• Social adjustment
• Social expression
• Social identity
• Objects of attitudes are socially constructed too

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Social participation

• Our narrative the individual is the basic
  element in society
• Many other cultures the individual is a creature
  of the group
• Both individualistic and communal perspectives
  are true - examine both
• Thoughts, feelings, actions have a major social
  dynamic
• Origination, process, target

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Stress

• Heightened tension, vigilance
• Stress equation
• Stress Motivation x (Demands - Coping
  resources)
• Coping resources
• Social support
• Knowledge of the situation
• Action plans
• Self-management capabilities

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Combining thoughts, feelings, actions

• Authoritarian personality syndrome
• Characteristics
• Excessive conventionalism
• Aggression against disobedience
• Submission to superiors
• Importance of power, toughness
• General hostility, cynical worldview
• Increases under threat
• "They" are bad, "we" are good
• Anyone not with us is against us

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Combining thoughts, feelings, actions

• Intractable ethnonational conflicts
• Characteristics
• Totality
• Protractedness
• Centrality
• Violence
• Perception of irreconcilability

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Combining thoughts, feelings, actions

• Intractable ethnonational conflicts
• Example Israel-Palestine confrontation
• Clash of narratives
• Villainization of opponent
• Exclusive legitimacy
• History of victimization
• Intermingled populations
• Double asymmetry of power
• Politicization of religion

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Combining thoughts, feelings, actions

• Intractable ethnonational conflicts
• Psychological dynamics
• Coping mechanisms become societal beliefs, shared
  cognitions
• Our goals are just
• Opponent has no legitimacy
• We can do no wrong
• We are the real victims

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Combining thoughts, feelings, actions

• Intractable ethnonational conflicts
• More psychological dynamics
• Maintenance of societal beliefs
• Biased selection of information
• Biased interpretation of information
• Biased elaboration of information

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Combining thoughts, feelings, actions

• Intractable ethnonational conflicts
• Possibilites of resolution
• Change beliefs that keep sides from negotiating
• Leaders and negotators must change many beliefs
• Society at large must do so too
• Change definitions
• Time is required, especially because narratives
  are self-maintaining, all-encompassing

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What to do

• Keep seeking information
• Treat statements as tentative
• Ask questions
• About own reactions
• About other people's claims
• Clarify values
• Look again

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Afgan refugees
Returning with food BBC photos from refugee camp
near Peshawar