Ambivalence under scrutiny: Returning to the future

Abstract

This Special Issue on the study of ambivalent processes in psychology integrates issues from contemporary evolutionary, cognitive, and cultural psychology with new directions of formal models that are available in qualitative mathematics. Tribute is paid to the pioneer of the study of ambivalence—Else Frenkel-Brunswik. Her work antedates most of our contemporary efforts in this field. Becoming free from the limits of its obsession with numbers in lieu of “measurement”, psychology at our time faces the challenge of investigation of dynamic psychological complexity. Contemporary mathematics—which is qualitative in its nature—provides new opportunities for psychology. New mathematical models—based on topology (Morse functions) and from intuitionistic formal logic (theory of locales)—are shown to provide promising new directions for future research on ambivalence. The emphasis on mathematical tools as enablement devices for psychological theorizing leads psychology to the need to create new kinds of generalized understanding of complex psychological processes.     

To Live Is to Know,to Know Is to Change: Change in Personal Construct Psychology and Psychological Constructivism

This article deals with the subject of personal change. As such, one could be tempted to say that it deals with psychology as a whole: What else should psychology be concerned with? But this is not exactly how things are, as I will argue by answering a first question: Is psychology, as a discipline, mainly concerned with the study of human change? To a second question—whether personal construct theory (PCT) in particular is mainly concerned with the study of human change—I give an affirmative answer, after some necessary qualifications. I would like to dwell particularly on answering a third question: Can the way personal construct theory deals with change be regarded as centering around a peculiarity? I am convinced that the revolutionary and cutting-edge nature of PCT can be fully appreciated only by pinpointing and highlighting such a peculiarity. In discussing this, I find it convenient to answer a last question: Is the way PCT deals with change akin to the way other theories handle it? After having discussed personal change as it is treated in PCT, I give a bird's eye view of the contribution of personal construct psychology to the fields of psychology more concerned with change—namely, developmental and educational psychology. The last part of the article will focus on the role of change in clinical psychology, and on what Kelly pointed out as the focus of convenience of his theoretical construction: personal construct psychotherapy as a relational process aimed at favoring a personal change.     

Procedural Justice and Culture

The past fifteen years have seen the development of a considerable research literature on the social psychology of procedural justice (see Lind & Tyler, 1988, for a review). Procedural justice research reveals some serious shortcomings in the exchange theories that have traditionally dominated Western analyses of the social psychology of groups, and in so doing, the procedural justice literature has important ramifications for cross-cultural psychology. Results from a number of studies conducted in the United States and Western Europe show that individualistic, self-interest based models of human behaviour are insufficient to explain procedural justice phenomena. Instead, procedural justice effects frequently reveal strong group-oriented concerns and motivations even in cultural contexts generally thought to be characterized by individualistic orientations. The research literature also shows that if a group's procedures are judged to be fair, people are more likely to show group-oriented behaviour and to hold more favourable attitudes toward the group and its leaders. These findings have led to the development of a theory of justice judgments—the Lind and Tyler group-value theory—which is based on group norms and relations rather than on social exchange theory. We describe a general model of social behaviour that integrates group- and individually-oriented behaviour, and we discuss the implications of the model for social and cross-cultural psychology.     

Organisation: What levels of processing are levels of

The psychology of thought and memory has historically been concerned with a struggle between associationism and its opponents. Organisation theory—in part an offspring of Gestalt concepts—has been the most successful and vocal of these contenders. The levels-of-processing framework has been a part of the effort to overcome associationist predilections. Aspects of principles of organisation and of the recent history of organisation theory are presented, followed by an analysis of the levels-of-processing approach in terms of organisational concepts.     

Expert and referent power: A framework for understanding and maximizing consultation effectiveness

This paper describes consultation as an influence process and, in particular, describes the two forms of social power—expert and referent power—which allow school psychologists or any mental health professional to influence the consultees with whom they work. Several hypotheses are presented derived from social psychology research and theory on these forms of power which have practical importance for the school psychologist.     

Challenging Design: How Best to Account for the World as It Really Is

Evolutionary psychology and intelligent‐design theory both need to be able to account for the empirical world, or the world as it is. This essay is an attempt to clarify the challenges these theories need to meet, if the relevant empirical findings are replicable. There is evidence of change in the biological world and of modularity of mind, and there is a growing body of work that finds evolutionary theory a convincing and fruitful account of the “design” of the mind. Three major empirical findings within evolutionary psychology are presented and discussed. The author claims that Cartesian dualism, as it is usually meant within psychology—a split between body and mind—is false, but that Descartes' original division between body and soul has not been challenged and is not challenged by the evidence that the mind is also a biological entity. The article concludes that the convergence of theology and science is to be found in the onus to discover the truth about the world as it really is, and this calls for an ability on both parts to account for the empirical world.     

On the meaning of the notion of conflict and its study in social psychology

This study is an attempt, based on historical materialism (the science of the history of social formations), to critically analyze the notion of conflict as social psychology has defined it and as social psychology has developed it with models of non-zero sum games imported from game theory. Whether it concerns the postulate of conflict resolution (which governs this domain of social psychology), or the ideological foundations of the notion of conflict, the structure of a game of the ‘PDG’ type and the imaginary trap it orms, or even the staging which the psycho-sociologist produces in utilizing this model, it is shown that this whole proceeding is an ideological construction which functions principally as an obstacle to true scientific knowledge of the field it covers — which can be defined as constituted by the relationships between the subjective and the political — and secondly as the raw material for a theory of ideology, which is understood as having the double function of recognition and misappreciation. Both tasks demand intensive theoretical study as part of the development of storical materialism and, from that point of view, this work should be considered only as a preliminary study.     

(Re)Applying social psychology to organizational work,well‐being,and leadership

Research on organizational behavior is fundamentally an application of social psychology theory and phenomena. While much of organizational psychology is inherently grounded in social psychological research, these two disciplines are largely disconnected from one another. More visibility of the commonalities may encourage discussion, collaboration, and integration between these two fields—an integration that will only benefit each discipline. The present article briefly reviews the historic overlap between these disciplines, the resulting divide between them, and then discusses recent developments demonstrating the potential power of reconnecting social psychology with organizational‐relevant research. We then examine how the six empirical articles in this Special Issue benefit from applying social psychological theory to organizational research. We will conclude by identifying potential areas ripe for future research.     

On a question of orthodoxy

Judging from the main point of the replies received, a Marxist position which does not accept a dialogue with social psychology is not allowed. To indicate that such a position is Marxist only in name, and thus usurped, we are rapidly accused of economism, qualified as ‘orthodox’ and finally, last but not least, given the label ‘Stalinist’. The psycho-sociologists are firmly locked up in the rhetoric of the dilemma. The two positions — theoretical and political — which are presented in the reply by Morton Deutsch are in reality complementary: Their common characteristic is that they forget the main point of Marxism-Leninism, the thesis of the primacy of the class struggle. To accept social psychology without asking oneself questions about its meaning, or to ignore social psychology by considering it as an out-of-date ideology, leads to the same result, namely, leaving open the place of a Marxist-Leninist theory of ideology.     

Social Judgement Theory

This paper first explores a number of themes in the psychological system developed by the Austrian-American psychologist, Egon Brunswik, focusing on those that had a formative influence on Social Judgement Theory. We show that while perception was a recurring ground for Brunswik's empirical and theoretical work, his psychology was a psychology of cognition in the broadest sense. Next, two major themes in Social Judgement Theory— functionalism and probabilism— are described, and the elegant formulation known as Brunswik's Lens Model is introduced. Some methodological and theoretical implications of these themes are presented. The paper concludes with Hammond's Cognitive Continuum Theory (CCT), which is a theory describing modes of cognition and how those modes are influenced by task characteristics.     

The Discursive Frames of Political Psychology

The aim of this article is to apply elements of contemporary social theory to the major theoretical, methodological, and ideological divisions across political psychology and to consider both the origins and the impact of a range of theories and models. In so doing, we clarify some of the complexity surrounding the discursive and cultural origins of political psychology. On the basis of this analysis, we aim to overcome the redundant binaries and dualisms—both conceptual and geo‐spatial—that have characterized the field up to now. These binary pairs relate to matters of epistemology, ideology, and methodology, and we show how each pair has been the basis of claims made regarding continental differences. As we shall see, such black‐and‐white thinking limits our capacity to understand the nature and potential of political psychology. Instead we wish to encourage a greater degree of universalism and globalism that is appropriate to political psychology as it evolves into a broader global discipline. We argue that political psychology as a field must attempt to deal with the consequences of an increasingly borderless world in which political identities are becoming more fluid, increasingly hybridized, and open to transformation.     

Decompositional Equivalence: A Fundamental Symmetry Underlying Quantum Theory

Decompositional equivalence is the principle that there is no preferred decomposition of the universe into subsystems. It is shown here, by using a simple thought experiment, that quantum theory follows from decompositional equivalence together with Landauer’s principle. This demonstration raises within physics a question previously left to psychology: how do human—or any—observers identify or agree about what constitutes a “system of interest”?     

Dewey Between the Lines: George Kelly and the Pragmatist Tradition

In his own somewhat sly and sardonic way, George Kelly always insisted that personal construct theory could not be assimilated into any other kind of psychology. We believe this was not an example of Kelly being difficult or protecting his turf, but that he resisted such efforts at categorization because he formulated personal construct psychology from an entirely different set of assumptions than those which have traditionally guided the construction of psychological theories. We begin by looking at the unusual life path Kelly took in order to enter the field of psychology and what it reveals about the independent turn of mind he brought to creating his own theory of personality. We then examine what we believe is the single most important influence on Kelly's thinking—the tradition of American pragmatism, in general, and the philosophy and psychology of John Dewey, in particular. We argue that Kelly embraced the pragmatic epistemological assumptions that guided Dewey's work, and that he used these assumptions to develop the only pragmatic theory of personality and psychotherapy. It is, in fact, the influence of Dewey and the pragmatists that makes personal construct psychology so different from and, at times, more difficult to understand than other, more traditional, “realist” theories, but it is also this pragmatic orientation that makes Kelly's theory such an important contribution.     

Resonance and radical embodiment

One big challenge faced by cognitive science is the development of a unified theory that integrates disparate scales of analysis of cognitive phenomena. In this paper, I offer a unified framework that provides a way to integrate neural and behavioral scales of analysis of cognitive phenomena—typically addressed by neuroscience and experimental psychology, respectively. The framework is based on the concept of resonance originated in ecological psychology and aims to be the foundation for a unified theory for radical embodiment; that is, a unified theory for that dissident part of cognitive science that shares a methodological commitment to dynamic systems theory and remains skeptical about the adequacy of mechanism and representationalism as the guiding ideas in the field. In the course of my presentation, I analyze different issues regarding the requirements and constraints unification poses to radical embodiment.

     

In Search of a More Reliable Truth: Mourning and Donald Capps’s Psychological Portrait of Jesus

This article is an abridged version of a chapter in my dissertation. In my dissertation, I examine the relationship between personal experience and public theory within certain strands of contemporary psychology of religion and pastoral theology. My guiding theory is Peter Homans’s “mourning religion” thesis. In this chapter, I examine the life and work of Donald Capps, who is the most prolific contemporary writer in the fields of psychology of religion and pastoral theology. I argue that Capps addressed various personal losses in a deeply personal way during his fifties, and I believe that the key moment for Capps in overcoming his melancholia occurred after his application of his melancholia theory to Jesus, because there Capps was able to integrate and to sustain in a satisfying way his various selves and, therefore, open himself up to mourn in a non-defensive way—the way of humor.     

A comparison of the common-sense and ‘scientific’ conceptions of extroversion—introversion

From research on the organization of implicit personality theory, and on the fakability of psychometrically sophisticated scales a general argument about the conceptual overlap between implicit personality theory and ‘scientific’ theories of personality is developed. This is tested in the case of the common-sense conception of extroversion—introversion, and that of Eysenck. The convergent validity of these two conceptions are found to be high enough to support the argument. The implications of the argument are discussed in relation to the correspondences between implicit personality theory and personality theory, and the functions of personality theory in psychology and implicit personality theory in everyday life.     

A grand theory of motivation: Why not?

Baumeister asks what a grand theory of motivation might look like, and he identifies the key problems, challenges, and opportunities that need to be considered in its pursuit. I address four of these challenges—how to define motivation, whether motivation is a state or a trait, the primacy of motivation in psychology, and the necessity to not only manage motivational conflict but also to vitalize motivational assets. I focus primarily, however, on the key obstacle that prevents a grand theory—our non-shared assumptions about the nature and dynamics of motivation. I suggest we capitalize on new advances in statistics, methodology, and technology to test what used to be untestable assumptions about motivation. Shared assumptions are necessary for a coherent science, and only a coherent science is capable of constructing a general theory.     

A critique of prospect theory and framing with particular reference to consumer decisions

Prospect theory is criticized in this article for being borrowed from psychology without appropriate acknowledgement, for requiring mathematical calculations that are beyond the average person, for not investigating information processing during prospect theory choices, and for lacking application to real‐world decisions—such as important product and service choices made by consumers. Further criticism is leveled at the prospect theory‐derived technique known as “framing,” which is based on one‐sided presentation of information and would be unethical in most consumer behavior situations.     

How Can We Study Heroism? Integrating Persons,Situations and Communities

Heroism—an individual's commitment to a noble purpose, usually aimed at furthering the welfare of others, and involving the willingness to accept the consequences of achieving that purpose—has received little attention from political psychologists, even though a person is arguably as liable to act heroically as she is to act in a morally reprehensible manner. Specifically, important questions remain in how heroes can be identified beforehand and how such behavior can be successfully studied and promoted. We posit that recent work in genocide studies, positive psychology, personality psychology, ecological psychology, and moral psychology provides new and promising directions for better understanding heroic behavior. These developments can provide the tools for understanding the complex interplay of factors—including traits, situations, and communal beliefs—motivating heroic behavior.