Suggestion: Metaphor and meaning

This paper examines the metaphor of “suggestion” with reference to its origins and construction in the late nineteenth century in France. In addition to some general properties of the metaphorical mode, specific features of the “suggestion” metaphor are identified. It is shown how a network of meanings from a pathological situation (hypnosis) came to be applied to the behavior of crowds. The work of Le Bon was central in this process. This examination shows how metaphorical discourse was an important indicator of the orientation of early social psychology, namely the focus on interpersonal influence.     

W. H. R. Rivers and the war neuroses.

W. H. R. Rivers was the most famous member of the Cambridge Expedition to the Torres Strait. At the time, he was a physician and had an international reputation as a researcher in physiological psychology. The expedition signaled the beginning of his career in social anthropology, but also a long hiatus in his activities in medicine. His clinical interests revived during World War I. As an officer in the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC), Rivers became a leading proponent of "psychological medicine." Today, his war-time psychiatry is remembered mainly in association with his patient, Siegfried Sassoon. This article focuses on his wartime activities, his clinical practices, and his theories concerning the war neuroses and the unconscious. The currently popular view of Rivers as a quasi-Freudian humanist is challenged.     

Comprehensive Soldier Fitness and the future of psychology

Psychology responded to the national needs in World War I and World War II and was itself transformed. National need calls a third time: unprecedented levels of posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, suicide, and anxiety along with a need for a resilient Army capable of meeting the persistent warfare of the foreseeable future. As a large part of the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program, positive psychology is meeting this need with new tests, with new fitness courses, and with resilience training. These developments may transform the practice of psychology and psychology's relation to medicine and education.     

"Be the love of god rather than talk about it": ministers study psychology

After World War II, American ministers successfully drew on training in psychology to nurture their spiritual and vocational development. Contrary to what critics of a therapeutic ethos in American culture have asserted, this social history of ministers shows that their adoption of psychological modes of thinking was neither atomizing nor secularizing. Rather, it helped them become better people and better ministers. It nurtured their faith as well as their social connections. Thus, I argue against critics who have feared the civically enervating effects of psychological outlooks in American society.     

直觉在军事决策中的应用

直觉决策是以决策者经验为基础的无意识的决策过程.现代战争的动态性、不确定性、复杂性和模糊性要求指挥员在战场当中要善于利用直觉进行快速决断.受到决策的双系统理论以及再认启动决策模型思想的影响,美军从20世纪80年代后期开始重视直觉决策在制定作战计划中的作用,相关研究机构积极探索培养指挥员直觉决策能力的方法,作战条令中也逐渐融入了直觉决策的理念.美军的研究发现和实践结果不仅揭示了基于经验的直觉决策过程的内在心理机制,而且对我军培养适合于未来战争的优秀指挥人才具有启示作用.     

The american “colonization” of northwest European social psychology after World WAR II

The term colonization as used in this article does not refer to the suppression of one culture by another, but to a voluntary intellectual submission, eventually resulting in a “neo-colonial” relationship in which, in spite of a “decolonization” movement, much of the dominant culture has been retained. Contrary to the traditional view, Europe had a rich social psychological literature before the Second World War, and much of this early work still is of interest for contemporary social psychology. The Netherlands is used as an example of the “colonization” of Northwest European social psychology after 1945. It is shown that there has been an effort on the part of the older generation to integrate the European heritage and the newer American social psychology. The younger generation, however, according to an analysis of citations, adopted American social psychology, as a guiding model soon after the Second World War. The colonization metaphor draws attention to the power aspects of knowledge transfer. The author concludes that later “de-colonization” does not imply a turning away from everything American, but a cross-fertilization of perspectives, leading to a truly international approach. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Some Lasting Consequences of US Psychology Programs in World Wars I and II

Applied research in psychology not only has contributed directly to societal advances but often has fostered basic research as well. Prominent examples are the programs directed by Yerkes in World War I to develop the Army Alpha test and several programs in World War II, including The American Soldier that assessed soldiers' attitudes during the war; a program for selecting agents for the Office of Strategic Services; and the Aviation Psychology Program to select and classify applicants for flight training in the Army Air Forces. Highlights of these programs are presented here, with special attention given to by far the largest, the Air Forces program. After World War II, many of the hundreds of psychologist veterans became prominent research psychologists. Most became university professors. Among those who continued to work in applied settings was John Flanagan who had served as Chief of the Army Air Forces Psychology Branch. (After the war, Saul Sells succeeded Flanagan as Head of the Aviation Psychology program.) Flanagan founded the American Institutes for Research (AIR), the earliest mission of which was to select flight personnel for civilian airlines. Another part of the AIR mission was to enhance civilian air safety by assuring the widespread use of Flanagan's critical-incident procedures (or near-accident reports) that now serve to reduce accident rates in a variety of industries as well as in aviation.     

UNDERSTANDING THE POW EXPERIENCE: STRESS RESEARCH AND THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE 1955 U.S. ARMED FORCES CODE OF CONDUCT

Facing accusations about weak military discipline following the supposedly poor behavior of American soldiers held captive during the Korean War, President Dwight Eisenhower instituted a Code of Conduct for the Armed Services in 1955. In response, military leaders hired numerous social and behavioral scientists to investigate the nature of the prisoner‐of‐war (POW) experience. These researchers not only challenged official government accounts of POW activities but opened up a new field of study—stress research. They also changed military training policy, which soon focused more on stress inoculation training, and, in so doing, helped lead the shift in psychology away from behaviorism to ego and cognitive psychology. In this sense, my article ties shifts within the social and behavioral sciences in the 1950s to the military history of the early Cold War, a connection generally missing from most accounts of this period.     

The changing psychology of culture in German‐speaking countries: A Google Ngram study

This article provides evidence for the long‐term affiliation between ecological and cultural changes in German‐speaking countries, based on the assumptions derived from social change and human development theory. Based on this theory, the increase in urbanisation, as a measure of ecological change, is associated with significant cultural changes of psychology. Whereas urbanisation is linked to greater individualistic values and materialistic attitudes, rural environments are strongly associated with collectivistic values like allegiance, prevalence of religion, and feelings of belonging and benevolence. Due to an increase in the German urbanisation rate over time, our study investigates whether Germany and the German‐speaking countries around show the presumed changes in psychology. By using Google Books Ngram Viewer, we find that word frequencies, signifying individualistic (collectivistic) values, are positively (negatively) related to the urbanisation rate of Germany. Our results indicate that predictions about implications of an urbanising population for the psychology of culture hold true, supporting international universality of the social change and human development theory. Furthermore, we provide evidence for a predicted reversal for the time during and after World War II, reflecting Nazi propaganda and influence.     

中文语境下的“心理”和“心理学”

“心”或“心理”等词语在汉语中有相当长的历史,对这些词语的理解反映了中国人关于“心理”的认识。中文的“心”往往不是指一种身体器官而是指人的思想、意念、情感、性情等,故“心理学”这三个汉字有极大的包容性。任何学科都摆脱不了社会文化的作用,中国心理学亦曾受到意识形态、科学主义和大众常识等方面的影响。近年中国学者对心理学自身的问题进行了反思。从某种意义上说,中国人对“心理”和“心理学”的理解或许有助于心理学的整合,并与其他国家的心理学一道发展出真正的人类心理学     

抗战时期周先庚的军事心理学实践与思想

周先庚在汉字心理学、教育心理学和工业心理学等多个领域做出了重要学术贡献或进行了开创性研究, 但是他在抗日战争时期军事心理学领域的贡献至今未能获得心理学界的深入认识。周先庚自1943年末开始在国民党第五军中筹办军官心理测验所, 从事军官心理测验工作。自1945年4月开始与主题统觉测验创始人默里合作从事伞兵选拔心理测评工作。在开展军事心理学实践的过程中, 周先庚提出了“创造中国本位军事心理学”的主张。周先庚在与默里开展的军事心理学合作中建立了深厚的友谊。周先庚将心理学知识用于抗日军官、伞兵的选拔上, 既体现了他的抗日精神, 也体现了他的实践精神、开创精神和中国本位精神。     

Whatever happened to the group in social psychology?

For a decade following World War II social psychologists tended to view the individual as an element in a larger system. Research on small groups prospered, and attitudes and social perceptions were conceived to be antecedents and consequences of group activity. But by the 1960's social psychology had become much more individualistic. Interest in the group as a system had waned and research was generally focused on intraindividual events or processes that mediate responses to social situations. We now appear to be passing through a period of transition during which both the content and methodology of past research are being re-evaluated, and from which new trends are likely to emerge.Possible explanations of the changing orientation of social psychology are discussed, and predictions are advanced concerning future developments. It is suggested that social psychologists are responsive to the mood of the times, and that recent social and political unheavals presage a revival of the collectivistic approach.     

Psychology's public image in "Topics of the Times": commentary from the editorial page of the New York Times between 1904 and 1947

Between 1904 and 1947, the New York Times published in a section of its editorial page, "Topics of the Times," 196 commentaries on psychology. Prior to World War I, the majority of editorials centered on Hugo Münsterberg; psychological topics most frequently examined after the war were the mental test, child rearing advice, and psychoanalysis. Although the Times was enthusiastic in its support for psychology in the years immediately before and after World War I, editorial opinion soon turned negative. Critical of psychology for promising more than it could deliver, being inconsistent in its assertions over time, and not rising above the level of common sense, Times editorials weighed heavily on the side of undermining, rather than promoting, psychology's credibility from the late 1920s to 1940s.     

The War Memoirs: Some origins of the thought of W. R. Bion

The work of W. R. Bion changed the shape of psychoanalytic theory in fundamental ways, one of the most important of which was Bion's insight into the nature of normal projective identification. No other psychoanalytic theorist has Bion's ability to represent the horrors of psychic abandonment and the converse, the absolute necessity of the presence of another mind for psychic survival. Through a discussion of Bion's War Memoirs 1917–1919 ( Bion, 1997 ), Attacks on linking and A theory of thinking (1993), this paper explores the link between war, masculinity, the maternal and Bion's sensitivity to the significance of everyday interpersonal contact. It is argued that Bion's apocalyptic experiences as a teenage tank commander gave him shattering insight into the extent to which mind is inter-mind, self is inter-self. Bion's life writing has the quality of survivor insight: 'And only I am escaped alone to tell thee' (Job 1: 14–19), as he returns repeatedly to the events of the day when he 'died ', 8 August 1918. His insight into the elemental passions nature of love, hate and mindlessness are borne of his experiences on the battlefield, and exquisitely crystallized in his repeated explorations of an encounter with a dying soldier.     

Reflections on intersections between cognitive and social psychology: A personal exploration

I appreciate the opportunity offered by the editor to reflect on the relationship between cognitive and social psychology. This topic has interested me my entire professional life, because I was admitted to graduate school to study social psychology and then eventually migrated to cognitive psychology. The organization of this paper is as follows: I first relate my (somewhat puzzling) personal experiences that led me to wonder about relations between cognitive and social psychology. I suggest that, for many topics, the placement of a topic of study in one field or the other is arbitrary. Next I selectively review some common historical influences on the development of both fields, ones that have made them similar. Both grew from common seeds, which include Gestalt psychology as it became applied to a wider array of topics, experimental psychologists becoming interested in attitude change during and after World War II, and Bartlett's famous book on Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. Next I review some research from my lab that picked up themes from Bartlett's work and that, in some aspects, combines cognitive and social approaches. I also discuss the issue of memory conformity or the social contagion of memory, and conclude with thoughts about how social and cognitive psychologists might collaborate on an exciting new arena, creating empirical studies of collective memory. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“和平餐桌”心理学:马斯洛的和平心理关切

马斯洛是对人类命运带有强烈人道主义关怀的人本主义心理学家,终其一生,一直以促进社会和平、幸福、构建"和平餐桌"心理学为己任。美国社会现实对新价值体系的呼唤、二次战争的影响、对人性的深刻反思、核武器的威力造成"价值中立"科学迷梦的破碎、美国和平运动的发展表现出的和平诉求等均构成了和平餐桌心理学的社会背景。从安全到幸福的需要层次论、从人性恶到人性向善的人性论、从外在教育到内在教育的和平教育论、从存在价值到自我实现的和平人格论等观点成为马斯洛和平餐桌心理学的主要观点,从二岐到整合的心理学方法论对后来的和平心理学方法论也具有重大的启示意义。     

Historical generations and psychology. The case of the Great Depression and World War II

The author assembles a theory of historical generations from dispersed sources in the social and behavioral sciences and in the humanities, differentiates the theory from formulations of other generation concepts, and applies it to central features in the lives of persons in the generation of the Great Depression and World War II. The application of the theory to historical materials explains how a commitment to social interdependence emerged as the signature orientation of the generation of the Great Depression and World War II. Challenges to the perspective of contextualism stem from the theory's hypotheses about linkages that mediate between cataclysmic events and psychological processes, the influence of historical generations on many of psychology's everyday concerns, and instructive comparisons with a body of growing research on processes involving adaptations to different cultures.     

Finding "meaning" in psychology: a lay theories approach to self-regulation, social perception, and social development

Much of psychology focuses on universal principles of thought and action. Although an extremely productive pursuit, this approach, by describing only the "average person," risks describing no one in particular. This article discusses an alternate approach that complements interests in universal principles with analyses of the unique psychological meaning that individuals find in their experiences and interactions. Rooted in research on social cognition, this approach examines how people's lay theories about the stability or malleability of human attributes alter the meaning they give to basic psychological processes such as self-regulation and social perception. Following a review of research on this lay theories perspective in the field of social psychology, the implications of analyzing psychological meaning for other fields such as developmental, cultural, and personality psychology are discussed.     

‘Historicising Common Sense’

This essay is an expanded set of comments on the social psychology papers written for the special issue on History and Social Psychology. It considers what social psychology, and particularly the theory of social representations, might offer historians working on similar problems, and what historical methods might offer social psychology. The social history of thinking has been a major theme in twentieth and twenty-first century historical writing, represented most recently by the genre of ??cultural history??. Cultural history and the theory of social representations have common ancestors in early twentieth-century social science. Nevertheless, the two lines of research have developed in different ways and are better seen as complementary than similar. The theory of social representations usefully foregrounds issues, like social division and change over time, that cultural history relegates to the background. But for historians, the theory of social representations seems oddly fixated on comparing the thought styles associated with positivist science and ??common sense??. Using historical analysis, this essay tries to dissect the core opposition ??science : common sense?? and argues for a more flexible approach to comparing modes of thought.