On the Possible Non-Existence of Emotions: The Passions

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.     

Guanxilization or categorization： psychological mechanisms contributing to the formation of the Chinese concept of ＂us＂

中国社会心理学在面对急速的社会变迁中,需要以变迁与文化的视角来选择研究问题,而中国社会文化中群己关系的社会心理机制,即“我们”概念的形成机制及其转换的可能与条件,正是一个体现着双重视角的基本问题。对这一问题的探讨不仅有助于解释社会凝聚力、群体行动的逻辑,讨论国家与个人、社会与个人、类别与个人的关系;也有助于培植社会转型时期的社会心理资源和社会支持系统,从而促进社会合作。与以往单～机制的分析框架不同,通过对两个个案的讨论,研究提出了一个新的分析框架,即：中国人“我们’概念是在社会情境的启动和价值取向等因素影响之下,经由相互交织的“关系化”与“类别化”双重过程形成的。     

社会变迁与青少年孤独感

近年来,我国青少年孤独感问题日益引起了相关研究者的关注。在已有的研究中,往往重视从心理学的角度对青少年孤独感与其活动和交往的直接环境如家庭、学校等微系统之间的关系进行研究,而较少关注宏观社会环境变化对青少年孤独感的影响。当前我国社会急剧变迁,对青少年及其成长的微系统都产生了深刻影响,导致引发青少年孤独感的因素增多、可能性增大,应加以重视。     

The Theory of Conditionality: An Illustration of the Place of Norms in the Field of Social Thinking

In the field of the central core theory of social representations, research which has focused on the normative aspects is relatively recent as it dates back little more than ten years. The theory of conditionality which developed from research into the periphery of representation results from this. It is a particularly fruitful theory to explain “normative latitudes” and the behaviour accruing to them. One of the particularities of these works stresses the importance of linking the normative aspects with specific methods and/or analyses. In this paper, we will illustrate it via a specific tool developed in the field of traffic psychology: the Conditional Script Questionnaire (CSQ). This approach makes it possible to highlight the interactions between two systems of norms: the legal system and the social system. The implication of norms is fundamental in different processes already studied such as social influence or identity processes, and this article can be considered as an illustration of the place of norms in the field of social thinking.     

旅游目的地影视社会表象与影视旅游——基于传媒学的研究

旅游目的地形象作为一种特殊的社会表象,是刺激旅游行为产生的重要因素之一。在旅游目的地社会表象形成过程中,影视传媒起着十分重要的作用。影视传媒区别于其它媒体的特点、议程设置功能、受众文化心理结构等特点以及大众传媒背景等都会影响旅游目的地影视社会表象的形成。影视社会表象的＂社会共享性＂与＂行为说明性＂决定了影视旅游是一种必然的大众旅游行为。     

New Perspectives on the Study of the Authority Relationship: Integrating Individual and Societal Level Research

The concept of authority crosses many social sciences, but there is a lack of common taxonomy and definitions on this topic. The aims of this review are: (1) to define the basic characteristics of the authority relationship, reaching a definition suitable for the different domains of social psychology and social sciences; (2) to bridge the gap between individual and societal levels of explanation concerning the authority relationship, by proposing an interpretation within the framework of social representations. The authority relationship can be conceived as a negotiation of meanings and it is closely linked to shared value orientation and the attribution of meanings negotiated within a society. We assume that the authority relationship is socially constructed and represents both a shared representation of society and a normative principle of social life. A multidisciplinary approach is adopted, crossing definitions and studies provided in sociology, political science, law and social psychology.     

Falsificationism is not just ‘potential’ falsifiability,but requires ‘actual’ falsification: Social psychology,critical rationalism,and progress in science

Based on an analysis of ten popular introductions to social psychology, we will show that Karl Popper's philosophy of ‘critical rationalism’ so far has had little to no traceable influence on the epistemology and practice of social psychology. If Popper is quoted or mentioned in the textbooks at all, the guiding principle of ‘falsificationism’ is reduced to a mere ‘falsifiability’ and some central elements of critical rationalism are left out – those that are incompatible with positivism and inductivism. Echoing earlier attempts to introduce Popper to social psychology by Paul Meehl and Tom Pettigrew, we will argue that a discussing Popper's ideas in more depth could help social psychology to move forward in view of the ‘crisis of confidence’ (Pashler and Wagenmakers, 2012) that has emerged recently in view of the ‘Stapel affair’ and the reports of failures to replicate social psychological experiments in high‐powered replication attempts.     

叙事心理治疗在社会工作中的应用

叙事心理学是在后现代心理学思潮影响下兴起的一种新的研究取向。叙事心理治疗在社会工作运用,需要社会工作者能够建立良好的关系,耐心倾听故事叙说,在咨询中将问题外化,形成积极有力的自己观念。     

Child Protection Social Work: Risks of Fears and Fears of Risks – Impossible Tasks from Impossible Goals?

This article examines the relationship between the causes and effects of fear in child protection social workers, and the effects of risk assessment and risk management policies on this area of work. The focus on risk assessment and risk management has become a major area of attention within practice, policy and management of child protection work in the UK in recent years. Concepts of risk as constructed by the media, government and the public are increasingly impacting upon professional practices. This article examines the basis and validity of risk assessments in the social professions field, and particularly within the child protection arena. The article goes on to examine the experiences of fear arising from the risk agenda, which affects frontline workers, managers and child protection agencies. This agenda arises from centrally produced risk assessment frameworks, alongside unrealistic expectations from central government of prediction of risk by the use of current risk assessment tools. Such controlling policies from central government can lead to fear and anxiety in social work professionals of not assessing and eliminating risk, as the government and their employing agencies are expecting them to do. The article also proposes that this risk agenda fails to address a key element in the assessment of risk – how social workers experience threats and stress in their work, and the pressures they can be subject to within it, particularly in relation to violence and threats from parent service users where their children are being investigated for possible child abuse.     

An account of the experiences of 51 families involved in an initial child protection conference

This paper reports on one part of a research project, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, to evaluate the effects of involving parents in 83 initial child protection conferences in a northern city between May 1991 and June 1992. The experiences of two groups of families are recounted and compared, those who attended the conferences and those who did not An analysis was made of the degree to which the parent's participation in the conference affected their overall attitude to the intervention. There were differences between the two groups with regard to their feeling fairly treated, and in their relationship with their social worker. The factors most strongly associated with attitude were whether the child had been removed from the family or statutory action was recommended, and whether the parents agreed abuse had taken place. The fear of removal of the child had an independent influence on the overall attitude, irrespective of whether or not the parents attended the conference. The parents who attended were glad they had gone but found the experience emotionally difficult Although their positive feelings of involvement did not extend to a conviction that they had influenced the decisions, their on-going relationship with their social worker was less likely to have been impaired where they had been invited and attended.     

Identity Dynamics, Action and Context

The aim of this article is to present an investigation of the action-representation relationship, via the processes which arise from the effects of one's action and the effects of one's capacity (normative and subjective). These effects are, in our view, of major importance, for they link social legitimation and the personal skill necessary for the preparation and carrying out of action. We look at this complex relationship, and propose a model, the capacity model, which situates action as an executory regulator of representation, which allows us to take some steps towards an explanation of the processes which link action and representation within the identity dynamic.     

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.     

Resident interaction and social well-being in an oil boomtown in western North Dakota

Previous studies on the social well-being of residents living in energy boomtowns focus primarily on demographic characteristics of residents. These studies do not consider that there could be a relationship between residents’ social well-being and whether they interact with new residents moving into their community. The current study includes a measure of interaction with new residents as it examines five dimensions of the social well-being of residents living in an oil boomtown in western North Dakota. Surveys were distributed door-to-door to residents living in Williston North Dakota during the fall of 2015. Research findings show that people who reported that they interact with new residents moving into their community felt safe from crime and violence in their community; felt more socially integrated in their community; had high levels of community trust and community satisfaction, and believed that they could count on their neighbors. These findings are important because they highlight the significance of social interaction in communities that experience rapid population growth resulting from increased energy production.     

The implications of dialogicality for ‘giving voice’ in social representations research

Social representations research is often undertaken by scholars who seek to ‘give voice’ to knowledge(s) that are held by socially disenfranchised individuals and groups. However, this endeavour poses a number of problems in practice, not least because it assumes that the ‘voices’ voiced by individuals and/or groups in social research will be unambiguous and uniform, and unchanged by the research encounter. Despite the growth of attention to the critical potential of social representations theory, there remains a lack of scholarship on the relationship between the theory's emphasis on the relational, or dialogical, nature of social life (the Ego‐Alter‐Object relation) and the implications of this for critical research. In this article, I argue that the dialogical epistemology from which social representations research must depart incites reflection upon (i) the design of empirical studies, which must equally attend to both ‘Ego’ and ‘Alter’, and (ii) the researcher‐researched relationship, which may itself be best viewed as an Ego‐Alter interaction. I make the case for adopting dialogical epistemology in critical social psychology, and argue that this is essential to undertaking ethical social research. I conclude by suggesting that claims to ‘giving voice’ have little place in critical social psychology in general, and social representations scholarship in particular.     

Fear of crime and participation in associational life

Fear of crime is studied extensively as a potential contributor to the decline of a community. People who fear crime are expected to stay indoors and seek shelter, which then encourages more crime, setting in motion a vicious cycle that ultimately bodes ill for community engagement. However, there is little research that examines directly the relationship between fear of crime and participation. We explore such a relationship with Canadian survey data by looking at whether fear of crime can explain participation in a variety of associational activities. Our models show a relationship between fear of crime and participation, but the nature of that relationship varies according to the type of activity. A high level of fear, as well as reciprocity, explain participation in “vertical” associational life, while the absence of fear explains participation in “horizontal” associational life, although this latter pattern is mediated through reciprocity.     

推进失地农民市民化的社会工作方案探索

伴随着我国快速的工业化和城市化进程,失地农民的市民化问题日益受到各界的关注。失地农民市民化,并不单指失地农民身份转变和居住地点的转变,它包括经济、政治、社会、心理这四个层面的适应过程。失地农民经济上的市民化相对容易完成,而政治、社会、心理上的市民化是一个更复杂的过程,靠政府单方面的努力是难以完成的．需要引入专业的社会救助方法,调动失地农民自身的积极性,实现最终的市民转变。本文分析了失地农民市民化进程中存在的问题并简要分析了原因,最后提出了相关的社会工作方案,以期把失地农民市民化推向更深层次的发展。     

社会的制造与集体表象

本文通过对涂尔干思想中的社会概念尤其是集体表象理论的解读,深入剖析现代社会自我证成上的困境。涂尔干一方面继承了契约论传统对社会的人为制造性的强调,另一方面又反对该传统将社会还原为个体之间约定行为的结果。集体表象理论针对的正是这一理论困境。涂尔干认为,集会或集体欢腾之际所产生的集体表象犹如化合作用,不能还原为个体的约定或契约,它是社会的产物,优先于个体。它不仅表达了个体对社会的情感,而且在定期的社会再造中创造这一情感。图腾标记对集体表象的具体化,既构成了个体认识社会的中介,又成为社会定期再造的依凭。涂尔干反对将法国大革命诠释为个体意志主导的结果,而试图通过集体表象将其诠释为社会定期再造的体现并强调社会之于个体的优先性。集体表象的神圣性既不依靠凌驾于社会之上的彼岸化的上帝,也不是个体意志的产物,而是社会性的,来自于社会的自我生产和再造。     

Autism, Empathy and Questions of Moral Agency

In moral psychology, it has long been argued that empathy is a necessary capacity of both properly developing moral agents and developed moral agency ( Blair, 2008 ; Hume et al., 1978 ). This view stands in tension with the belief that some individuals diagnosed with autism—which is typically characterized as a deficiency in social reciprocity (including empathy)—are moral agents. In this paper we propose to explore this tension and perhaps trouble how we commonly see those with autism. To make this task manageable, we will consider whether high functioning individuals diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder are capable of empathetic responses. If they are, then they possess a capacity that, on the view above, is required for moral agency. If they are not so capable, and yet sometimes engage in moral behaviour, this casts some doubt on the claim that empathy is required for moral agency. This second possibility will necessitate an exploration of the capacity of some individuals with autism to engage in moral behaviour, giving us further grounds to re-see these individuals as moral agents.     

Social psychology as a stable interpretative framework irrefutably committed to the scientific study of persons and society

Despite repeated opportunities to reconsider their natural science ambitions, social psychologists have not done so, and there are no obvious signs of this changing. Why? This paper pursues an answer to this question by defining the field after the fashion of Michael Polanyi's thought. According to Polanyi, interpretative frameworks develop from our primitive bodily encounters with the world and then are shaped by language into the vast conceptual systems of our culture. Concerning frameworks erected on our most fundamental beliefs (e.g., science), he says that we “live in [them] as in the garment of our own skin.” Frameworks such as this are not objects of critical evaluation but of commitment, and social psychology, as an outgrowth of positive philosophy, is an interpretative framework in this sense. Professionals' recent responses to the field's political makeup and replication failures demonstrate this. They aim primarily at preserving a natural science understanding of social psychology and point to the influence of belief-stabilizing mechanisms Polanyi finds operative in folk religious practices. These mechanisms appear at work also in psychology as a whole. They are implied, for instance, in the field's resistance to Sigmund Koch's authoritative judgement against its scientific self-conception in the latter half of the 20^th century. Noting this reveals the broader implications of this paper's definition of social psychology, but it also urges questions about truth and relativity that cannot be ignored. These questions are addressed briefly in the end where it is suggested that what psychology needs most of all is a change of heart, and that this will happen, if at all, not primarily through argument and evidence, but through persons who authentically believe in the veracity of a different framework.