Role as Resource for Action in Public Service

In this chapter we offer a conceptual framework for the understanding of public service that allows for the incorporation of sociological themes of organizational structure and institutional power. We build on sociological conceptualizations of the self found in role identity theory, using examples from research on health care workers to show how role identities and organizational structures can both limit and enhance the likelihood of principled dissent. Finally, we extend our theoretical framework to better understand how community service is employed to address the structural sources of social problems.     

A Social Psychology of National and International Group Relations

This concluding article provides a framework for a social psychological analysis of intergroup conflict and conflict resolution. The framework highlights the individual and intergroup factors that shape the nature of perceptions of intergroup relations and group representations, and describes how these perceptions lead to cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses toward groups. Included in the framework are the metatheoretical, theoretical, and practical contributions of the articles in this issue toward understanding intergroup relations. The potential and responsibility of social psychologists to move beyond the laboratory to applied national and international issues is also discussed.     

Challenges in Rural Social Work Practice: When Support Groups Contain Your Neighbors,Church Members,and the PTA

Rural social work occurs in unique practice environments with challenges and rare opportunities. Strong social ties, commonly found in rural communities and often missing in urban areas, can serve as sources of resilience for group members facing adverse life circumstances. Therapeutic formal and informal support groups, bolstered by this support and led by social workers in rural communities, can face numerous challenges due to locale, lack of transportation, and potential worker burnout. This article highlights ethical considerations rooted in a theme of rural group work while providing helpful hints based on the IASWG Standards for Social Work Practice with Groups.     

Semiosis,thought and codes: A theoretical framework for social knowledge

I present a theoretical social psychological framework for social knowledge based mainly on the triadic concept of sign relations and the process of semiosis. The framework is based on concepts from authors aligned with interpretative semiotic approaches, such as Peirce, Deely and Eco. After defining signs and sign relations, I propose to conceive social knowledge as sign relations happening in communication processes, and employ the notion of code to account for socially shared group conventions. I suggest that the analysis of code properties such as content, social acknowledgment and history can identify differences in social knowledge forms and the concrete contexts that sustain them. The framework is discussed in comparison with other social and cultural psychological approaches based on semiosis. Finally, methodological implications are commented.     

Smoker-Nonsmoker Conflict: Using a Social Psychological Framework to Understand aCurrent Social Controversy

Over the past two decades, state and federal restrictions of public smoking have become increasingly common. The resulting controversy has generally focused on the research evidence regarding the physiological effects of second-hand smoke while ignoring relevant psychological aspects of smoker-nonsmoker conflict. In this article I review the literature on the psychological consequences of smoker-nonsmoker interaction, interpreting these results from the framework of social psychological research on inter-group conflict. From this review I conclude that: a) smoker-nonsmoker conflict shares many characteristics of other ingroup-outgroup interactions; b) both groups are served by the legislated separation of these groups; and c) such separation can be successfully accomplished only when close attention is paid to subtle environmental cues. Finally, theoretical benefits of studying smoker-nonsmoker conflict from a social psychological perspective are discussed.     

低收入群体心理焦虑的原因探求

低收入群体的心理焦虑是当下构建社会主义和谐社会进程中不容忽视的社会问题。低收入群体心理焦虑突出表现为不公平感、相对剥夺感、受挫感和危机感。收入分配格局调整,公平和效率在某些领域出现非良性循环;资源配置不合理,社会激励机制不健全;不同社会成员享受改革成果与所承担的代价不协调以及价值观念发生变化,是导致低收入群体心理焦虑的深层次原因。     

Working models: A tool for synthesizing psychology,culture, and power in everyday experiences and internal representations

As social beings, we experience ourselves through interactions with others in daily routines that participate in the cultural practices and power relations of broader social structures. Social workers, and social scientists in general, however, have had difficulty conceptualizing and synthesizing this way of being in the world. This paper attempts to respond to that gap by discussing how clinical social workers can use the concept of working models as a tool for listening and understanding in psychotherapy. Utilizing a case example, the paper will discuss three working models, the enactment of power relations, cultural practices, and psychological processes, which provide an integrative framework to inform clinical work.     

Preference for Nature in Urbanized Societies: Stress, Restoration, and the Pursuit of Sustainability

Urbanicity presents a challenge for the pursuit of sustainability. High settlement density may offer some environmental, economic, and social advantages, but it can impose psychological demands that people find excessive. These demands of urban life have stimulated a desire for contact with nature through suburban residence, leading to planning and transportation practices that have profound implications for the pursuit of sustainability. Some might dismiss people's desire for contact with nature as the result of an anti-urban bias in conjunction with a romantic view of nature. However, research in environmental psychology suggests that people's desire for contact with nature serves an important adaptive function, namely, psychological restoration. Based on this insight, we offer a perspective on an underlying practical challenge: designing communities that balance settlement density with satisfactory access to nature experience. We discuss research on four issues: how people tend to believe that nature is restorative; how restoration needs and beliefs shape environmental preferences; how well people actually achieve restoration in urban and natural environments; and how contact with nature can promote health. In closing, we consider urban nature as a design option that promotes urban sustainability.     

Collective citizenship: From citizenship and mental health to citizenship and solidarity

Although the concept of citizenship is a widely used theoretical framework within political philosophy, its use in the field of mental health remains underexplored. Within this context, citizenship emphasises the social inclusion and participation of people who are marginalized and offers a more social and relational view of services and support for people with mental health problems than has been common in mental health systems of care. At the same time, however, the citizenship approach has operated in the context of systems of care in the United States that favour highly individualized conceptions of, and approaches to, care, and these systems of care operate in the social and political context of highly individualized concepts of the citizen. In this article building on the work of other citizenship scholars, we argue that a collective form of citizenship, grounded in the 5Rs framework, holds the individual and collective in creative tension. Furthermore, the paper applies this model to the domain of mental health, where people are treated in individualistic ways and experience marginalisation, making the collective dimension imperative and promoting participation, empowerment and the contribution for social change to people with mental health problems. Our theoretical framework of collective citizenship, while geared toward the needs of persons with mental health problems, also contributes to recent citizenship theory on the inclusion of marginalized, stigmatised, and excluded groups. We illustrate the application of this approach through an ethnographic-participant observation case study of a collective citizenship group with which we are associated.     

Social work programmes in the social democratic welfare regime

In this article we examine the emergence of social worker training in the Nordic countries and discuss the possible effects that the social democratic welfare regime has had on such training. We also discuss the development in recent decades of the academisation of the training and the establishment of social work as a subject of research and teaching. The early history of social worker education is based on archival material, national inquiries and secondary sources. Our presentation of the recent history of social work education is based on the responses to a questionnaire sent to teachers of social work in 33 Nordic social work programmes, and on a survey of course syllabi and prospectuses. It is also based on the reading lists for the social work courses in these programmes.     

Abstracts

Taking Rom Harré's social constructionism as a focus we point to and discuss the issue of the a priori psychological subject in social constructionist theory. While Harré indicates that interacting, intending beings are necessary for conversation to occur, he assumes that the primary human reality is conversation and that psychological life emerges from this social domain. Nevertheless, we argue that a fundamental and agentive psychological subject is implicit to his constructionist works. Our critical analyses focus upon Harré's understandings of persons, human development and human agency. Our intention is neither to suggest that this latent entity must be understood in a Cartesian sense nor is it to ask for an explicit accounting of an autonomous agent. Rather, our claim is simply that psychological subjectivity is reflexively entailed in Harré's human psychology. We suggest that this pertains more generally to social constructionist theory. This paper attempts to demonstrate, at least for the passions, that while emotions are important elements of common sense psychological thought, they are not psychological, neural, or mental entities. People talk of emotions, we claim, in two sorts of cases: Firstly, when it is believed that someone has done something that she shouldn't because she has been overwhelmed by desire (a motive) and secondly, when someone is found to be compelled to devote cognitive resources to an act she knows she will never carry out. In this case motivational states command attention and cognitive and physiological resources, distract us, even though they will not issue in action. In either case pointing to an emotion is pointing to a partial, aborted, or misdirected desire. We discuss why emotions are considered important in common sense and professional psychology though they do not exist. This paper explores new avenues of research on social bases of cognition and a more adequate (than those extant) framework to conceive the phenomena of the human mind. It firstly examines Bartlett's work on social bases of cognition, from which three pertinent features are identified, namely multi-level analyses, evolutionary perspective and embodied mind approach. It then examines recent works on social origins of cognition in ethology and paleoanthropology, and various forms of the embodied mind approach recently proposed in neuroscience and cognitive science. The paper concludes that extending the embodied mind approach would provide the most potent framework to enable, amongst others, the conceptual integration of the biological, psychological and social bases of the human mind, which have in the past been treated mainly as competing alternatives. A conception of parental experience is proposed to enhance the move of the study of parenting into the interpersonal realm by describing parental subjectivity from the parent's point of view. Explanations are based on that which the parent can be accountable for, on parental dialogues with observers/clinicians about their dialogues with their infants. This conception of parental subjectivity is compared with other conceptions which define parental subjectivity as the mental apparatus of the parent and not as representing the evolving relation of the parent with the infant, and with explanations which consider parental reports in terms of the parent's psychodynamics and cognitive abilities rather than in terms of the on-going dialogues between themselves and their infants. The paper introduces a typology of parental dialogues with observers/clinicians about their dialogues with their infants, within the context of the non-verbal nature of the infant's communication. The findings from empirical examinations of this typology are presented, and their implications for the proposal that the study of parental relations with their infants should consider the parent's accountability are discussed.     

The Role of Dominance Hierarchy in the Evolution of Social Species

A number of animal species from different lineages live socially. One of the features of social living is the formation of dominance hierarchy. Despite its obvious benefit in the survival probability of the species, the hierarchical structureitself poses psychological and physiological burden leading to the chronic activation of stress related pathways. Considering these apparently conflicting observations, here we propose that social hierarchy can act as a selective force in the evolution of social species. We also discuss its role on social psychology.     

Thinking of you: Relations between mind‐mindedness,theory of mind,and social anxiety traits in middle childhood and adulthood

The mapping of developmental relations between social cognition and real‐world social behaviors has theoretical and practical importance. In the domain of social anxiety, however, studies examining links between social cognitive ability and anxiety have produced mixed results. One potential explanation is that varied facets of social cognition are differentially linked to social anxiety across development. To better understand how social cognition relates to social anxiety, we assessed multiple facets of two important social cognitive capacities—mind‐mindedness and theory of mind— in school‐aged children aged 7–12 and young adults aged 18–24. We also measured social anxiety traits. We found that, across ages, mind‐mindedness and theory of mind were not related to each other. Additionally, for children and adults, higher levels of social anxiety correlated with higher levels of mind‐mindedness toward close social partners, indicating an increased propensity to describe partners using mental state terms. By contrast, social anxiety was not correlated with theory of mind, which measured the ability to decipher or attribute mental states to photographs, videos, or story characters. These findings offer insight into how different components of social cognition are related and how more naturalistic measures of social cognition involving relationships may relate to social anxiety across development.     

Social work programmes in the social democratic welfare regime

In this article we examine the emergence of social worker training in the Nordic countries and discuss the possible effects that the social democratic welfare regime has had on such training. We also discuss the development in recent decades of the academisation of the training and the establishment of social work as a subject of research and teaching. The early history of social worker education is based on archival material, national inquiries and secondary sources. Our presentation of the recent history of social work education is based on the responses to a questionnaire sent to teachers of social work in 33 Nordic social work programmes, and on a survey of course syllabi and prospectuses. It is also based on the reading lists for the social work courses in these programmes.     

Understanding My Culture Means Understanding Myself: The Function of Cultural Identity Clarity for Personal Identity Clarity and Personal Psychological Well‐Being

Culture is acknowledged to be a critical element in the construction of an individual's identity; however, in today's increasingly multicultural environments, the influence of culture is no longer straightforward. It is now important to explore cultural identity clarity—the extent to which beliefs about identity that arise from one's cultural group membership(s) are clearly and confidently understood. We describe a novel theoretical model to explain why having a clear and confident understanding of one's cultural identity is important for psychological well‐being, as it clarifies one's understanding of personal identity. We propose that a clear cultural identity clarifies one's personal existence, by providing a clear normative template, reducing personal uncertainty, providing an individual with a sense of continuity, and buffering an individual against the fear of death. We discuss the implications of this model within our complex cultural worlds.     

Psychosocial and relationship-based theories for child and family social work: political philosophy, psychology and welfare practice

Psychosocial perspectives on children’s development are allied to theories that recognize the ‘self’ as essentially a social entity. The quality of relationships that children experience in their social environment have a profound effect on their socio-emotional development, personality formation and social competence. To this extent, psychosocial theories of children’s development and wellbeing can provide child and family social workers with a powerful framework within which to analyse, assess and practise. However, it is also recognized that the character of child welfare practices and policies are influenced by prevailing political climates. A simple dichotomy is described between political philosophies of the right and left; libertarianism and communitarianism; individual freedom and collective action. It is argued that the present swing to libertarian individualism has brought about major changes in the policy and practice of much child and family social work, including a preference for theories that emphasize people’s psychological independence, rationality and personal responsibility. In such a climate, child and family social work becomes more legalistic, orientated towards principles of justice rather than welfare, and towards rights and responsibilities rather than personal relationships and social competence. Psychosocial developmental theories, with their emphasis on the importance of social relationships and the emotional interconnectedness of people in community, fare less well under the rigours of psychological individualism and free-market economics. The paper concludes that if children’s psychosocial development and competence are a product of their social history, practices that psychologically ‘disembed’ people from their relationship environment are unable to consider children’s needs within a coherent, well-grounded theoretical framework. If child and family social work is premised on helping children develop social understanding and emotional wellbeing, theory and practice are best served by taking a psychosocial perspective.     

中国网民的意识形态立场及其形成——一个实证的分析

本文以4 000多份网民的调查问卷数据为依据,对中国公众的“左”“右”意识形态立场的现状、特征及其起源进行了分析。研究发现,中国“左”“右”派网民与西方国家的“左”“右”派在基础性政治心理特性上恰好相反,中国的“左派”相对于右派而言,具有更为显著的威权人格特征,也更倾向于维护现有社会秩序和传统价值,在对外态度上更为强硬和排外。右派比“左派”更关注社会公平、限制公权力和赞同后现代价值。从信息接触和政治心理两个理论视角进行分析后发现,媒体影响和威权人格对网民意识形态立场的形成均有明显影响。笔者认为,在新媒体时代,随着信息源日益多元,相对于外在的信息而言,个体内在的威权人格对个人意识形态立场形成的影响可能会更强。