Defining Principles

1
The Socio-Cultural Approach

• Defining Principles

2
Volkerpsychologie

• German Psychology of Peoples
• A comparative and historical, social and
  cultural psychology dealing with the cultural
  products (language, myth, custom etc) resulting
  from social interaction.
• Dominated from 18th to 20th century
• Central assumption importance of the cultural
  and linguistic community in which the formation
  and education of the individual personality takes
  place.
• Language is the medium through which a community
  shapes its individual members, who then actively
  contribute to that language, which is thus a
  social product. (Markova , 1983)

3
National identity and Germany

• Today we tend to talk about society as a social
  context which shapes experiences and the
  individual but Volkerpsychogie focused more on
  national and cultural community
• Volkerpsychologie raised many questions of
  national importance relating to politics of the
  time in Germany.

4
Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)

• founding father of experimental psychology
• practiced introspection- looking inwards to
  analyse mental life as it happened
• realised this was subjective mental events are
  expressed or communicated and possibly shaped by
  language
• believed that an adequate study of mind should
  start by examining its major objectifications,
  such as language, myth and custom and account for
  their cultural and historical variations
• believed that experimental psychology of the
  decontextualised subject must be complemented
  by a study of the major manifestations of mind.

5
Growth of Social Psychology

• began to forget the cultural element of
  Volkpsychologie
• worked on becoming more empirical in its methods
  (social experiments) rather than focusing on
  qualitative data collection
• construction of meaning aspect handed over to
  sociology, anthropology etc.
• Recently rediscovered by European social
  psychologists
• Wundts final belief that experimental psychology
  is only half of what psychology can be is finding
  more and more supporters, (Hewstone and Stroebe,
  2001).

6
Carmichael, Hogan and Walter (1932)

• An experiment to try for yourselves to
  demonstrate that language shapes thinking.
• hogan and carmichael sheet.pdf

7
Ludwig Wittgenstein
The limits of my language mean the limits of my
world
8
Language shapes thinking

• Pormpuraaw a small Aboriginal community on the
  western edge of Cape York, in northern Australia
• the Kuuk Thaayorre have no words for left and
  right and instead use the compass points at all
  times dependent upon their spatial orientation
• http//www.edge.org/3rd_culture/boroditsky09/borod
  itsky09_index.html

9
Language shapes thinking

• English speakers tend to talk about time using
  horizontal spatial metaphors
• "The best is ahead of us,"
• "The worst is behind us
• Mandarin speakers have a vertical metaphor for
  time
• the next month is the "down month"
• the last month is the "up month".
• Mandarin speakers talk about time vertically more
  often than English speakers do, so do Mandarin
  speakers think about time vertically more often
  than English speakers do?

10
Language shapes thinking

• English speakers prefer to talk about duration in
  terms of length
• "That was a short talk,"
• "The meeting didn't take long
• Spanish and Greek speakers prefer to talk about
  time in terms of amount, relying more on words
  like "much" "big", and "little"
• If you show English speakers a line on a screen
  they are likely to confuse how long they saw it
  for based on how long the line was this doesn't
  happen for Spanish/Greek speakers but the effect
  does happen if you show them a shape of differing
  size!
• If you teach English speakers to describe time in
  same way as Spanish or teach Spanish to describe
  time like English, then they begin making similar
  errors as native speakers demonstrating that
  language does affect thinking.

11
Crowd/Mob Psychology,Le Bon.(1895)

• The study of the mind and behaviour of masses and
  crowds the experience of individuals in such
  crowds.
• Where did these ideas stem from?
• Hypnosis
• Bacteriology
• Criminology

12
Hypnosis and social influence

• Anton Mesmer had discovered that he could put
  people into a trance a lowered state of
  consciousness.
• argued that this rendered the mind more primitive
  and open to suggestion.
• developed by Scotsman James Braid who coined the
  term hypnosis from the Greek god of sleep
  Hypnos
• used for both diagnostic and treatment purposes
• revealed as a model of social influence
• Led to interest in social situations which can
  lead to similar primitive state
• People began to think that when people are in
  crowds they are influenced to become more
  irrational, primitive and emotional.

13
Bacteriology

• Medical breakthroughs by 19th century scientists
  demonstrated the process of bacteriological
  contagion.
• Influenced thinking about the spread of
  affect/emotion in crowds social or mental
  contagion
• also the spread of anomie (term used by
  sociologist Durkheim a state in which dominant
  social norms are questioned, ignored or
  rejected)

14
Criminology

• Ideas stemmed also from the field of criminology
  diminished responsibility subconscious and
  affective state of mind of the individual
  submerged in the crowd.
• In the crowd the individual becomes...
• more primitive
• more infantile
• less intelligent
• less guided by reason
• less responsible

15
Social/political climate

• threats to the established political, social and
  moral order
• the masses were feared and thought responsible
  for social evils
• science was required to analyse what was going on
  and eventually learn to control the masses.
• Medical/criminal model was popular.

16
American Social Psychology

• Allport the science that studies the behaviour
  of the individual in so far as his behaviour
  stimulates other individuals or is itself a
  reaction to this behaviour.
• social psychology became more experimental
  enhanced credibility/funding
• began to divide Pps from the social context again
• move away from the study of social issues until
  economic and political crises such as the great
  depression and WW2
• Attitude measurement and change measurement
  helped enhance scientific status
• But social psychology called to account in 70s as
  having lost sight of social meaningfulness and
  social relevance methods over problems

17
Society for the psychological study of social
issues

• 1930s and 1940s
• Social psychologists in the free countries not
  only helped try to win the war but planned for a
  better world of democratic societies.
• Kurt Lewin (Jewish refugee from Berlin), came up
  with idea of field theory focused on group
  dynamics the primacy of the whole
  interdependence.
• Worked with groups to change conduct, morale,
  prejudice, style of leadership etc.
• Developed action research

18
Euro-American Social Psychology

• Heider social psychology of interpersonal
  relations, consistency and attribution
• Many American Social psychologists (e.g. Sherif
  and Asch) had emigrated from Europe
• ideas became Americanised as they attempted to
  fit into American society.
• Social behaviour and interaction became less
  interesting than social cognition the cognitive
  representation of this of social interaction

19
Social psychology in post war Europe

• Henri Tajfel and Serge Moscovici campaigned for a
  more social social psychology
• the cultural ethos of self contained
  individualism having shaped the discipline beyond
  recognition of its original conception.
• Tajfels interests
• degree to which experience and behaviour are
  embedded in and shaped by the properties of the
  culture and society we live in
• Social psychology can and must include ...
• a direct concern with the relationship between
  human psychological functioning and the large
  scale social processes and events which shape
  this functioning and are shaped by it. (Tajfel
  1981).
• Studied ...
• stereotypes, prejudice, intergroup behaviour,
  social influence, minorities, and social
  representations

20
Full circle!

• Growing concern for language and its role in
  interpersonal and intergroup communication
• Social construction of a shared reality asking
  questions about how individuals construct a
  common reality (shared beliefs, norms, values,
  expectations, norms, roles socialisation
  process)