Embodied Situationism

Drawing on empirical material from social psychology, ‘situationism’ argues that the astonishing susceptibility of moral behaviour to situational influences undermines certain conceptions of character. The related, albeit more limited, thesis proposed in this paper, ‘embodied situationism’ (ES), engages a larger number of empirical sources from different fields of study and sheds light on the mechanisms responsible for particular, seemingly puzzling, situational judgments and behaviours. It is demonstrated that the empirical material supports the claims of ES and that ES is immune to some important objections against situationism.     

Situationism and Moral Responsibility

In section 1, I will describe how moral responsibility requires normative competence. In section 2, I will introduce an influential social psychology experiment and consider one of its philosophical interpretations, situationism. In section 3, I will discuss the possession response in defense of normative competence. This is an approach to save normative competence via possession, and in turn the concept of the morally responsible agent, by relinquishing the need for exercising normative competence. After discussing its pros and cons, section 4 will focus on the exercise response, which emphasizes each singular exercise of normative competence. Given these two responses, I will argue that we are faced with a dilemma. If we admit that the concept of the morally responsible agent is grounded in the mere possession of normative competence, then the concept becomes useless in a practical sense, forcing us to embrace a concept that is tied to the exercise of normative competence. If we admit that the morally responsible agent is grounded in only the exercise of normative competence, the concept of the morally responsible agent no longer aligns with common sense.     

Non-Ideal Virtue and Situationism

Several philosophers, known as situationists, have argued that evidence in social psychology threatens to undermine Aristotelian virtue ethics. An impressively large amount of empirical evidence suggests that most people do not consistently act virtuously and lack the ability to exercise rational control over their behavior. Since possessing moral virtues requires these features, situationists have argued that Aristotelianism does not accurately describe the character traits possessed by most people, and so the theory cannot lay claim to various theoretical advantages such as explanatory power and egalitarian character education. In contrast to previous defenses which either downplay the relevance of psychological evidence or revise philosophical conceptions of virtue to fit the data, this paper appeals to previously neglected psychological evidence on self-efficacy and mental contrasting in combination with “non-idealized” interpretations of Aristotelian moral virtue to support the view that the available empirical evidence is compatible with widespread possession of virtuous character. These “non-idealized” interpretations of virtuous character allow for serious deviations from virtuous conduct, especially in the contexts described by the psychology experiments. Furthermore, decades of research on mental contrasting and self-efficacy suggest that subjects in the psychology experiments acted for reasons and possessed the ability to exercise rational control over their behavior. Hence, situationists are mistaken in thinking that, based on the empirical data, Aristotelianism is deprived of various theoretical advantages.

     

Situationism,capacities and culpability

Philosophical Studies - The situationist experiments demonstrate that most people’s behaviour is influenced by environmental factors much more than we expect, and that ordinary people can be...     

This is a Tricky Situation: Situationism and Reasons-Responsiveness

Situations are powerful: the evidence from experimental social psychology suggests that agents are hugely influenced by the situations they find themselves in, often without their knowing it (this, roughly-speaking, is the thesis of situationism). In our paper, we evaluate how situational factors affect our reasons-responsiveness, as conceived of by John Fischer and Mark Ravizza, and, through this, how they also affect moral responsibility. We argue that the situationist experiments suggest that situational factors impair, among other things, our moderate reasons-responsiveness, which is plausibly required for moral responsibility. However, even though we argue that situational factors lower the degree of our reasons-responsiveness, we propose that agents remain moderately reasons-responsive to the degree required for moral responsibility. Nonetheless, those (adversely) affected by situational factors are arguably less morally responsible than those who are not subject to similar situational factors. We further evaluate an understanding of reasons-responsiveness (developed by Manuel Vargas in the light of situationist data) which relativizes reasons-responsiveness to agents’ circumstances. We argue that the situationist data do not warrant this kind of divergence from Fischer’s and Ravizza’s account. We conclude by discussing what situationist experiments tell us about our relationship to non-reasons.     

An Understanding of Character from Holistic Thinking: What Asian Psychology Teaches Us about the Debate on Situationism

The situationist challenge to virtue has convinced many philosophers to adopt an empirically grounded methodology. I argue that this methodology requires us to reconsider conceptualizations of and evidence on character from experiments involving Asian subjects because it is precisely in these experiments that we see a remedy for the problems exposed by situationism. Since both situationists and defenders of virtue fall short of abiding by the part of their methodological commitment associated with remediation, evidence from the experiments is relevant for most participants in the debate. I show that the evidence indicates something important about remediation: the point is not to avoid the concept of virtue or character, but to deploy a holistic thinking style that has been observed among some populations in Asia. Holistic thinking involves (a) a tendency to explain behavior in terms of the interaction between person and situation variables and (b) an incremental understanding of character. The paper ends with a brief sketch of an account of character from holistic thinking that also highlights the role of social support in managing situations.     

Situationism and Confucian Virtue Ethics

Situationist research in social psychology focuses on the situational factors that influence behavior. Doris and Harman argue that this research has powerful implications for ethics, and virtue ethics in particular. First, they claim that situationist research presents an empirical challenge to the moral psychology presumed within virtue ethics. Second, they argue that situationist research supports a theoretical challenge to virtue ethics as a foundation for ethical behavior and moral development. I offer a response from moral psychology using an interpretation of Xunzi—a Confucian virtue ethicist from the Classical period. This Confucian account serves as a foil to the situationist critique in that it uncovers many problematic ontological and normative assumptions at work in this debate regarding the prediction and explanation of behavior, psychological posits, moral development, and moral education. Xunzi’s account of virtue ethics not only responds to the situationist empirical challenge by uncovering problematic assumptions about moral psychology, but also demonstrates that it is not a separate empirical hypothesis. Further, Xunzi’s virtue ethic responds to the theoretical challenge by offering a new account of moral development and a ground for ethical norms that fully attends to situational features while upholding robust character traits.     

Culture and Stereotyping Processes: Integration and New Directions

Stereotyping is one of the largest and most enduring research areas in social and personality psychology; many of the processes by which stereotypes are formed, maintained, and applied are now well understood. Yet, little is known about the degree to which stereotyping processes apply outside of North American and Western European contexts. This theoretical paper aims to serve as a starting point for researchers interested in the intersection of culture and stereotyping. We review the nascent literature documenting similarities and differences in intergroup perception across cultural groups and note areas in which the cross-cultural and stereotyping literatures have explored common mechanisms that could be profitably integrated. Finally, we offer suggestions for future research that will greatly improve our understanding of how culturally influenced cognitive tendencies influence the perception of social groups and their members.     

Introduction: New Directions in Educational Practice

Ce texte presente I'ensemble des articles d'un numero special sur la psychopedagogie. Les auteurs vanes y defendent le point-de-vue que les modtles d'enseignement qui sont couramment utilises dans les systtmes educatifs devraient être reconsiderks de fason drastique, parce qu'ils ont survtcu A leur utilite. Neanmoins, ils sont optimistes sur le fait que la psychopkdagogie est bien placke pour conseiller enseignants, tducateurs et politiciens dans la course A entreprendre. Je poserai en premier lieu la question: pourquoi un changement drastique? Ensuite, je presenterai les differentes notions Cmises par les auteurs et defendrai I'idee que I'acquisition du savoir est un processus graduel qui coQte des efforts et fait jaillir des emotions. Pour conclure je ferai le point sur les nouvelles directions de recherche et de pratique pkdagogique.
This article introduces the papers in the special issue on educational psycho-logy. The various contributions defend the view that instruction models that are currently in vogue in education should undergo drastic changes, because they have outlived their usefulness. Nevertheiess, they are oitimistic that educational psychology is in a position to advise teachers, educators, and policy makers about the course of action that should be taken. I will start with the question: Why is drastic change in order? Next, I will introduce the ideas presented by the various authors, and defend the view that knowledge acquisition is a gradual process that costs effort and elicits emotions. In the concluding section, I will point to some new directions for research and for educational practice.     

Education and Mental Health: New Directions for Interaction

Traditionally, mental health workers (psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers) provide diagnostic evaluations and individual or group psychotherapeutic or casework treatment. With the advent of the community mental health movement, a new role model, that of “mental health consultant,” has emerged. This paper outlines the functions of the “mental health consultant” in the Job Corps program as a way of highlighting the functions of the mental health professional working in this new way. Educational, training, and work programs may be enriched by mental health consultation, and the new directions for interaction between education and mental health are described in this paper.