Imagination and society: the role of visual sociology

The paper presents the field of Visual Sociology as an approach that makes use of photographs, films, documentaries, videos, to capture and assess aspects of social life and social signals. It overviews some relevant works in the field, it deals with methodological and epistemological issues, by raising the question of the relation between the observer and the observed, and makes reference to some methods of analysis, such as those proposed by the Grounded Theory, and to some connected tools for automatic qualitative analysis, like NVivo. The relevance of visual sociology to the study of social signals lies in the fact that it can validly integrate the information, introducing a multi-modal approach in the analysis of social signals.     

The emergence of social cognitive neuroscience

Social cognitive neuroscience is an emerging interdisciplinary field of research that seeks to understand phenomena in terms of interactions between 3 levels of analysis: the social level, which is concerned with the motivational and social factors that influence behavior and experience; the cognitive level, which is concerned with the information-processing mechanisms that give rise to social-level phenomena; and the neural level, which is concerned with the brain mechanisms that instantiate cognitive-level processes. The social cognitive neuroscience approach entails conducting studies and constructing theories that make reference to all 3 levels and contrasts with traditional social psychological and cognitive neuroscientific research that primarily makes reference to 2 levels. The authors present an introduction to and analysis of the field by reviewing current research and providing guidelines and suggested directions for future work.     

Synergistic Information Processing Encrypts Strategic Reasoning in Poker

There is a tendency in decision‐making research to treat uncertainty only as a problem to be overcome. But it is also a feature that can be leveraged, particularly in social interaction. Comparing the behavior of profitable and unprofitable poker players, we reveal a strategic use of information processing that keeps decision makers unpredictable. To win at poker, a player must exploit public signals from others. But using public inputs makes it easier for an observer to reconstruct that player's strategy and predict his or her behavior. How should players trade off between exploiting profitable opportunities and remaining unexploitable themselves? Using a recent multivariate approach to information theoretic data analysis and 1.75 million hands of online two‐player No‐Limit Texas Hold'em, we find that the important difference between winning and losing players is not in the amount of information they process, but how they process it. In particular, winning players are better at integrative information processing—creating new information from the interaction between their cards and their opponents’ signals. We argue that integrative information processing does not just produce better decisions, it makes decision‐making harder for others to reverse engineer, as an expert poker player's cards act like the private key in public‐key cryptography. Poker players encrypt their reasoning with the way they process information. The encryption function of integrative information processing makes it possible for players to exploit others while remaining unexploitable. By recognizing the act of information processing as a strategic behavior in its own right, we offer a detailed account of how experts use endemic uncertainty to conceal their intentions in high‐stakes competitive environments, and we highlight new opportunities between cognitive science, information theory, and game theory.     

心理治疗关系之作用机制研究述评

综述心理治疗理论中有关治疗关系之治疗机制的理论观点。发现主要存在三种不同的观点。其中社会影响观点认为治疗关系的作用在增强治疗者在当事人心中的可信性,从而强化了治疗者的说服性信息对当事人态度改变的影响力;心理动力学观点主张移情性治疗关系使得当事人早期的依附情况及当事人的内部工作模型得以在治疗中显现,从而为分析治疗提供依据并指示方向;当事人中心观点则认为良好的治疗关系降低了当事人的防卫性,从而使得当事人的感受和体验可以无障碍地进入意识,进而促进了当事人的一致性。作者提出这个领域今后的研究应该考虑以“跨理论”的角度,加强理论模型的提炼和实际检验     

Integrating the study of conformity and culture in humans and nonhuman animals

Conformity--defined here by the fact that an individual displays a particular behavior because it is the most frequent the individual witnessed in others--has long been recognized by social psychologists as one of the main categories of social influence. Surprisingly, it is only recently that conformity has become an active topic in animal and comparative biology. As in any new and rapidly growing field, however, definitions, hypotheses, and protocols are diverse, not easy to organize in a coherent way, and sometimes seriously in conflict with one another. Here we pursue greater coherence by reviewing the newer literature on conformity in behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology in light of the foundational work in social psychology. We suggest that the knowledge accumulated in social psychology can be exploited by behavioral ecologists and evolutionary biologists to bring conceptual clarity to the field, avoid some experimental pitfalls, and help design new and challenging experiments. In particular, we propose that the notions of informational and normative conformity that, until now, have been little recognized in recent literature can resolve some important controversies. In turn, research on animal culture should be of great interest to social scientists, because understanding human culture and human uniqueness requires an evolutionary analysis of our cognitive capacities and their evolutionary origins. Our review suggests excellent opportunities for social and natural scientists to join forces in building an interdisciplinary and integrative approach to the pervasive phenomenon of conformity.     

纳米伦理:规范分析和范式转换

鉴于纳米技术目前显现出的启发式控制活力,可以将其作为伦理学一个重要的潜在探索领域。这就要求把对纳米技术的规范分析从一般技术制品和后果评估扩大到技术隐喻、想象和语言评估,由此认为目前占据主流地位的德莱克斯勒式纳米机器是一种机械隐喻,必然导向决定论式的单向度社会命运,但其论敌斯默莱的生物模拟隐喻实际上意味着一种范式转换,因为它为人在纳米技术发展中提供了表达责任感的道德机会。沿着这一线索,目前倡导伦理导向的纳米技术发展,就是要把它作为一个多学科背景依赖领域,把参与其社会意义塑造的各种主客体要素引导到人道主义立场上来,以使纳米世界建构真正体现人的全面发展。     

Beliefs as signals: A new function for belief

Beliefs serve at least two broad functions. First, they help us navigate the world. Second, they serve as signals to manipulate others. Philosophers and psychologists have focused on the first function while largely overlooking the second. This article advances a conception of signals and makes a prima facie case for a social signaling function for at least some beliefs. Truth and rational support are often irrelevant to the signaling function. If some beliefs evolved for a signaling function, then we should expect various biases that aid in the manipulation of others.     

Acoustic interaction in animal groups: signaling in noisy and social contexts

It has long been known that individuals of many species vocally communicate with one another in noisy environments and in rich contexts of social interaction. It has recently become clear that researchers interested in understanding acoustic communication in animal groups must study vocal signaling in these noisy and socially complex settings. Furthermore, recent methodological advances have made it increasingly clear that the authors can tackle these more complex questions effectively. The articles in this Special Issue stem from a Symposium held at the June 2006 meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, and illustrate some of the taxonomic and methodological diversity in studies aimed at understanding how acoustic communication functions in social grouping. This introduction to the Special Issue provides a brief overview of the articles and key ideas in this field of inquiry, and suggests some future directions to take the field to help us understand how social pressures in animal groups may influence, and be influenced by, acoustic signals.     

Behavior analysis and social constructionism: some points of contact and departure

Social constructionists occasionally single out behavior analysis as the field of psychology that most closely resembles the natural sciences in its commitment to empiricism, and accuses it of suffering from many of the limitations to science identified by the postmodernist movement (e.g., K. J. Gergen, 1985a; Soyland, 1994). Indeed, behavior analysis is a natural science in many respects. However, it also shares with social constructionism important epistemological features such as a rejection of mentalism, a functional-analytic approach to language, the use of interpretive methodologies, and a reflexive stance on analysis. The current paper outlines briefly the key tenets of the behavior-analytic and social constructionist perspectives before examining a number of commonalties between these approaches. The paper aims to show that far from being a nemesis to social constructionism, behavior analysis may in fact be its close ally.     

Action unit classification using active appearance models and conditional random fields

In this paper, we investigate to what extent modern computer vision and machine learning techniques can assist social psychology research by automatically recognizing facial expressions. To this end, we develop a system that automatically recognizes the action units defined in the facial action coding system (FACS). The system uses a sophisticated deformable template, which is known as the active appearance model, to model the appearance of faces. The model is used to identify the location of facial feature points, as well as to extract features from the face that are indicative of the action unit states. The detection of the presence of action units is performed by a time series classification model, the linear-chain conditional random field. We evaluate the performance of our system in experiments on a large data set of videos with posed and natural facial expressions. In the experiments, we compare the action units detected by our approach with annotations made by human FACS annotators. Our results show that the agreement between the system and human FACS annotators is higher than 90% and underlines the potential of modern computer vision and machine learning techniques to social psychology research. We conclude with some suggestions on how systems like ours can play an important role in research on social signals.     

A Methodologically Pragmatist Approach to Development Ethics

This paper suggests that lessons from the field of environmental ethics and sociological perspectives on knowledge are important tools for rethinking what type of ethical analysis is needed for building up further the field of development ethics and, more generally, for addressing some of the most fundamental ethical problems related to global poverty and development. The paper argues for a methodologically pragmatist approach to development ethics that focuses on the interplay between facts, values, concepts and practices. It views development ethics as a hybrid between a public moral–political philosophy and a public conception of social science. Ethical analyses of poverty and development must lead to fundamental changes in the ways knowledge is produced and justified and must challenge the dominance of global institutions and orthodox economics as the single sources of expert knowledge for development. Two of the main tasks of ethical analysis is to provide tools for the formulation of alternative knowledge for development centred on the equal moral worth of all human beings, and to influence global policy making as well as multilateral institutions' goals and policies. The last section of the paper argues that Amartya Sen's version of the Capability Approach is already methodologically pragmatist and points to some convergence between Sen's work and John Dewey's. Further sociological and methodologically pragmatist analysis of the approach is needed to assess the ways in which it is influencing debates on human development and leading to policy changes, and the possible distortions it suffers when adopted by multilateral agencies and policy makers.     

Action unit classification using active appearance models and conditional random fields

In this paper, we investigate to what extent modern computer vision and machine learning techniques can assist social psychology research by automatically recognizing facial expressions. To this end, we develop a system that automatically recognizes the action units defined in the facial action coding system (FACS). The system uses a sophisticated deformable template, which is known as the active appearance model, to model the appearance of faces. The model is used to identify the location of facial feature points, as well as to extract features from the face that are indicative of the action unit states. The detection of the presence of action units is performed by a time series classification model, the linear-chain conditional random field. We evaluate the performance of our system in experiments on a large data set of videos with posed and natural facial expressions. In the experiments, we compare the action units detected by our approach with annotations made by human FACS annotators. Our results show that the agreement between the system and human FACS annotators is higher than 90% and underlines the potential of modern computer vision and machine learning techniques to social psychology research. We conclude with some suggestions on how systems like ours can play an important role in research on social signals.     

Critical consciousness: current status and future directions

In this chapter, the authors consider Paulo Freire's construct of critical consciousness (CC) and why it deserves more attention in research and discourse on youth political and civic development. His approach to education and similar ideas by other scholars of liberation aims to foster a critical analysis of society--and one's status within it--using egalitarian, empowering, and interactive methods. The aim is social change as well as learning, which makes these ideas especially relevant to the structural injustice faced by marginalized youth. From their review of these ideas, the authors derive three core CC components: critical reflection, political efficacy, and critical action. They highlight promising research related to these constructs and innovative applied work including youth action-research methodology. Their conclusion offers ideas for closing some of the critical gaps in CC theory and research.     

Movement in social orientations: a commentary on Kelley

After reviewing some classic contributions to the truly social social–psychological literature (Lewin, Horney, Festinger), this commentary outlines how and why Kelley's analysis extends and complements more traditional approaches to interdependence. Three strengths are emphasized, suggesting that Kelley's analysis (a) offers a much-needed situation-based taxonomy for different social orientations and interpersonal phenomena, (b) serves the ecological validity of social orientations, and (c) potentially helps us understand why classical dimensions of person judgment include not only goodness versus badness, but also movement-related orientations such as dominance versus submission, strength versus weakness, or activity versus passivity. Kelley's analysis can be extended by developing further domain-specific theory and methodology for examining the temporal and sequential aspects of social orientations, and by applying a means–end analysis to differing social orientations identified in Kelley's analysis. Finally, following Chuck McClintock (1972), it is argued that the field should reserve the concept of social value orientation to define allocational preferences relevant to valuing outcomes for self and others. This basic orientation should meaningfully ‘drive’ the ways in which we approach interdependent others, solve interdependence problems, and utilize interdependence opportunities. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Notes towards a description of Social Representations

The theory of social representations occupies a place apart in social psychology both by the problems it raises and the scale of the phenomena with which it deals. This provokes many a criticism and misunderstanding. Such a theory may not correspond with the model of social psychology as it is defined at present. One attempts however to show that it answers important social and scientific questions, in what it differs from the classical conception of collective representations and, from the very beginning, adopts a constructivist perspective which has spread in social psychology since. Several trends of research have confirmed its vision of the relations between social and cognitive phenomena, communication and thought. More detailed remarks aim at outlining the nature of social representations, their capacity to create information, their function which is to familiarize us with the strange, according to the categories of our culture. Going farther, one insists on the diversity of methodological approaches. If the experimental method is useful to understand how people should think, higher mental and social processes must be approached by different methods, including linguistic analysis and observation of how people think. No doubt, social representations have a relation with the more recent field of social cognition. But inasmuch as the former depend on content and context, i.e. subjectivity and sociability of people, they approach the phenomena differently from the latter. Referring to child psychology and anthropology, one can contend, despite appearances, that it is also a more scientific approach. There is however much to be learned from criticisms and there is still a long way to go before we arrive at a satisfactory theory of social thinking and communication.     

Understanding others by doing things together: an enactive account

Enactivists claim that social cognition is constituted by interactive processes and even more radically that there is ‘no observation without interaction’. Nevertheless, the notion of interaction at the core of the account has not yet being characterized in a way that makes good the claim that interactions actually constitute social understanding rather than merely facilitating or causally contributing to it. This paper seeks to complement the enactivist approach by offering an account of basic joint action that involves and brings with it basic forms of mental understanding. The paper turns to theories of joint action rather than theories of perception as some enactivists have done (cfr. Gallagher in Conscious Cognit 17(2):535–543, 2008; Thompson in J Conscious Stud 8(5–7):1–32, 2001), to gain insight into the kind of interactions that underpin our understanding of other minds, and in that way, supplement the interactionist-enactive account. In line with Enactivism, the paper argues that this kind of social understanding is practical rather than theoretical and that it is cognitively more basic and developmentally prior when compared to other ways we come to understand other minds.

     

试析论证研究中语境及社会性因素的介入——从语用论辩术的理论视角看

由于逻辑进路下的论证研究在还原形式论证的过程中会忽略掉主体性、社会文化性、目的性和语境依赖性等重要特征,从而无法全面描述并恰当评价作为一种社会活动的论证。为解决这一问题,本文尝试从语用论辩术的理论视角出发,分析如何将语境及社会性因素纳入论证研究。首先,说明该视角下的论证分析是一种关注于语言使用的功能分析;其次,对作为社会性因素的用法惯例展开讨论;继而,分析语境因素如何介入讨论规则;最后,阐释如何将不确定的微观语境因素和确定的宏观语境因素纳入论证的重构、分析与评价之中。     

Functional analysis and the problem of rationality

Functional analysis rescued religion from the oblivion to which positiviste would have consigned it, by taking ‘society’ rather than the individual act as the unit of analysis. The history of functionalism has been a record of increasing concern with such holistic units as societies and social systems. One consequence of this shift away from social action (in the Weberian sense) is that the issue of rationality has become largely redundant. Yet the problem remains: How do we account for ‘contributions’ to the social system in terms that make sense of the perspectives of social actors? An examination of unit actions as they are understood by social actors suggests that functionalism in fact incorporated many of the tenets held by positivists, and that it makes untenable (and implicit) assumptions concerning the ‘objectivity’ of the scientific observer.