Culture,context and society – The underexplored potential of critical realism as a philosophical framework for theory and practice

This article explains how the meta‐theoretical framework of critical realism addresses methodological issues of concern to social psychologists and social scientists. The article outlines key tenets of critical realism – its notion of the stratified nature of reality and generative mechanisms as powers in natural and social objects that cause things; its notion of knowledge of reality as stratified rather than only empirical; its acceptance of epistemological but not judgmental relativism; and its monist ontology. The article then introduces realist social theory to provide a framework for understanding the society–person connection. It explains how issues relating to culture, context, and society raised in the indigenous psychology English literature might be addressed from a critical realist perspective. Some implications arising from adopting a critical realist perspective in research practice are outlined and social psychologists and social scientists are encouraged to explore the potential of critical realism as a meta‐theoretical framework and new paradigm.     

Infants' On-line Segmentation of Dynamic Human Action

Identifying the developmental origins of scientific thinking, as well as its endpoint, provides an essential framework for understanding its development. The origins of scientific thinking are claimed here to lie in attainments in epistemological understanding, beginning with the understanding achieved at about 4 years of age that assertions generated by human minds are distinguishable from an external reality against which they can be compared. Despite this achievement, children between 4 and 6 years of age exhibit an epistemological category mistake regarding the source of knowledge. They confuse a theory making it plausible that an event occurred and evidence indicating that the event did occur, as the source of their knowing that the event occurred. Appreciation of this distinction develops rapidly during this age range and reflects increasing mastery of an epistemological understanding we argue to be of foundational status for the development of scientific thinking, defined here as the consciously controlled coordination of theory and evidence.     

Understanding children's and adults' limitations in mental state reasoning

Young children exhibit several deficits in reasoning about their own and other people's mental states. We propose that these deficits, along with more subtle limitations in adults' social-cognitive reasoning, are all manifestations of the same cognitive bias. This is the 'curse of knowledge' - a tendency to be biased by one's own knowledge when attempting to appreciate a more na?ve or uninformed perspective. We suggest the developmental differences in mental state reasoning exist because the strength of this bias diminishes with age, not because of a conceptual change in how young children understand mental states. By pointing out the common denominator in children's and adults' limitations in mental state reasoning we hope to provide a unified framework for understanding the nature and development of social cognition.     

What are theories for? Concept use throughout the continuum of dinosaur expertise

Although it is now well established that object concepts are situated within broader systems of theoretical knowledge, it is less clear how theories influence the use of object concepts at various points throughout the continuum of expertise. Two studies were conducted to investigate the impact of specific theories (concerning dinosaurs) and overarching framework theories (of biology) on children's and adults' performance on categorization tasks involving familiar and less familiar concepts. Although expertise increased the quantity of deep feature knowledge possessed by children and increased their understanding of biologically adaptive relations among features, few aspects of children's performance generalized beyond highly familiar dinosaurs. Children's specific theories related to dinosaurs were empirically constrained and relatively dissociated from other types of biological knowledge. The interaction of specific concept knowledge with broader framework theories of biology throughout the continuum of expertise is considered.     

Sibling correlates of young adults' status attainment: ethnic group differences

I used longitudinal data to examine relationships between sibling variables and young adults' status attainment at different levels, based on earlier measures of adolescents' educational and occupational aspirations. My analyses involved 21-year-old Australians from Anglo-Australian, Greek, and Southern Italian families. Regression surfaces were plotted from models that included terms to test for possible linear, interaction, and curvilinear associations among the variables. My study showed that the number of children in a family and birth order continue to be significantly associated with young adults' status attainment, even after incorporating the mediating influences of adolescents' aspirations. The investigation also suggested ethnic group differences among sibling variables, adolescents' aspirations, and young adults' status attainment.     

Suicide acceptability is related to suicide planning in U.S. adolescents and young adults

The association between adolescents' and young adults' attitudes toward suicide and their own suicidality across five racial-ethnic classifications was studied in a nationally representative sample of 3,301 youth ages 14 to 22 years from the National Annenberg Risk Survey of Youth. Results indicate that adolescents and young adults who most strongly believe that it is acceptable to end one's life are more than fourteen times more likely to make a plan to kill themselves as those who do not have such beliefs (p < .001). Future behavioral prevention and intervention research should take into consideration adolescents' and young adults' approval of suicide as a risk factor for taking their own lives.     

Between adolescents and aging grandparents: Midlife concerns of adults in the “Sandwich generation”

This study examined whether the midlife transition of men and women in the “sandwich generation” was related to their 15- to 19-year-old adolescent's psychosocial development and their relationships with their own aging parents (i.e., the grandparents). One hundred eighty-six (186) respondents representing adolescents, mothers, and fathers from 62 families completed questionnaires that assessed adolescents' psychological autonomy and involvement in adult-type roles, adults' midlife transition and marital quality, and adults' relationships with their aging parents. Analyses conducted by domain revealed that women reported greater concerns with midlife issues when their adolescents demonstrated fewer signs of psychological autonomy and involvement in adult-type roles whereas men reported more intense midlife concerns when they experienced more strain in their relations with their own parents. When adolescent, grandparent, and marital factors were considered conjointly, the results indicated that women's level of midlife concerns was still related to their adolescents' development, but men's level of concerns was most strongly related to their satisfaction with the quality of their marriages. The discussion focuses on adult women's and men's experience of the midlife transition in relation to adolescents' development, parents' relationships with aging grandparents, and marital quality.     

Psychotherapy’s Philosophical Values: Insight or Absorption?

According to insight-oriented psychotherapies, the change clients undergo during therapy results from insights gained into the “true” nature of the self, which entail greater self-knowledge and self-understanding. In this paper, I question such claims through a critical examination of the epistemological and metaphysical values underlying such forms of therapy. I claim that such psychotherapeutic practices are engaged in a process that subtly “absorbs” clients into the therapist’s philosophical framework which is characterized by a certain problematic conception of subjectivity, knowledge, and reality. Through mechanisms which are intrinsic to the therapeutic encounter, such as suggestion and power, such therapies construct and reconfigure clients along the lines of socially accepted norms and values. Consequently, insight-oriented psychotherapy results in a deceptive form of social control.     

On the Possibility of Naturalistic and of Pure Epistemology

This paper deals with two opposite metaphilosophical doctrines concerning the nature of philosophy. More specifically, it is a study of the naturalistic view that philosophical, hence also epistemological, knowledge cannot be distinguished from empirical knowledge, and of the antinaturalistic view that philosophical, hence also epistemological, knowledge, is pure, that is, independent of empirical knowledge and particularly of the special sciences. The conditions of the possibility of naturalistic and of pure epistemology are studied in terms of phenomenological philosophy. It is concluded that pure epistemology is possible under relatively strong conditions but that the version of naturalistic epistemology which denies the pure basis leads to contradiction. That, however, does not shake the possibility of cognitive science. Following Husserl, we may argue that studies of human cognition are possible on the condition that a first basis is assumed which is not naturalized.     

What Is Integral Theory?

Integral theory is a way of knowing that helps foster the recognition that disparate aspects of reality—such as biological constitution, cultural world‐views, felt‐sense of selfhood, and social systems—are all critically important to any knowledge quest. Integral theory provides an “all quadrants, all levels” (K. Wilber, 2006, p. 26) metatheoretical framework that simultaneously honors the important contributions of a broad spectrum of epistemological outlooks while also acknowledging the parochial limits and misconceptions of those perspectives. In other words, integral theory affords a perspective that allows counselors to situate diverse knowledge approaches in such a way that they synergistically complement, rather than contradict, one another.     

Introverted Metaphysics

This paper pulls together three debates fundamental in metaphysics and proposes a novel unified approach to them. The three debates are (i) between bundle theory and substrate theory about the nature of objects, (ii) dispositionalism and categoricalism about the nature of properties, and (iii) regularity theory and production theory about the nature of causation. The first part of the paper suggests that although these debates are metaphysical, the considerations motivating competing approaches in each debate tend to be epistemological. The second part argues that the two underlying epistemological pictures supporting these competing views lead to highly unsatisfying conceptions of the world. The final part proposes an alternative epistemological picture, which I call “introverted empiricism,” and presents the way this alternative provides for a more satisfying grasp of the ultimate nature of objects, properties, and causation. It is a consequence of this alternative picture that there is a kind of intimate self‐understanding that underlies our understanding of the deep nature of reality.     

The Virtue of Epistemological Dualism

The article tries to answer the following question: what is the most promising epistemological strategy if my objective is the construction of a theory which gives me the opportunity to decrease the risk of getting to what is actually absolute, that is, to irreversible negative actions (irreversible as a theory might not be, but as an action often is)? The answer proposed is a form of epistemological dualism which means that I metaphysically believe (that is, I programmatically and systematically believe, without certainly knowing it) that the epistemological relationship between any theory and any reality is dualistic. More specifically, I metaphysically believe that the epistemological relationship between any theory and any reality is not saturated: in any theory there is an ideal error, because there is no theory which is totally saturated by reality, and any reality can actualize the ideal error, because there is no reality which is totally saturated by theory.     

On the construction of reality and truth. Towards an epistemology of community social psychology

An expression of community social psychology based on the need to transform social reality, and to consider people as the constructors of that reality, is examined from an epistemological point of view. Dualism, the position considering that object and subject are separate entities, and monism, the perspective stating that there is only one substance, are discussed. The consequences of both conceptions for community social psychology, and their incompatibility, as well as the notions of reality and truth are analyzed. That analysis deals with the problems of defining reality, of separating subject and object of knowledge, of language's role, and of relativism and truth. Finally, a constructionist view of monism based on relatedness, and action, is proposed, stating the mutually influencing union of subject and object in the construction of reality.     

The curse of knowledge in reasoning about false beliefs

Assessing what other people know and believe is critical for accurately understanding human action. Young children find it difficult to reason about false beliefs (i.e., beliefs that conflict with reality). The source of this difficulty is a matter of considerable debate. Here we show that if sensitive-enough measures are used, adults show deficits in a false-belief task similar to one used with young children. In particular, we show a curse-of-knowledge bias in false-belief reasoning. That is, adults' own knowledge of an event's outcome can compromise their ability to reason about another person's beliefs about that event. We also found that adults' perception of the plausibility of an event mediates the extent of this bias. These findings shed light on the factors involved in false-belief reasoning and are discussed in light of their implications for both adults' and children's social cognition.     

Epistemological beliefs and thinking about everyday controversial issues

The authors investigated the relationship between individuals' beliefs about the nature of knowledge and the nature of learning (epistemological beliefs) and their thinking about everyday controversial issues. Adults (N = 174) ranging in age from 17 to 71 years old with a mean age of 38 completed the Schommer Epistemological Questionnaire (M. Schommer, 1990), which assessed their beliefs in the certainty and organization of knowledge and the speed and control of learning. After they had completed the questionnaire, they responded to a series of questions about two controversial issues that had been discussed in the local newspaper. Regression analyses indicated that the more the participants believed in complex and tentative knowledge, the more likely they were to take on multiple perspectives, be willing to modify their thinking, withhold ultimate decisions until all information was available, and acknowledge the complex, tentative nature of everyday issues. Epistemological beliefs that are heavily influenced by a higher level of education appear to relate to thinking beyond the classroom, and introducing controversial issues into the curriculum may reciprocally foster the development of epistemological beliefs.     

Critical realism: distinguishing the psychological subjectivity of the analyst from epistemological subjectivism

To clarify the concepts of critical realism, subjectivity, and subjectivism, distinctions are drawn among ontological subjectivism, moral subjectivity, psychological subjectivity, and epistemological subjectivism. Psychological subjectivity, including the ongoing affective life of the analyst, is an essential aspect of the analyst's response to the patient, and may either facilitate or distort an adequate observation of transference and countertransference dynamics and of the psychic reality of the patient. Subjectivism in current psychoanalytic literature involves an argument that there is an "irreducible" subjectivity in the analyst, who is bound to see things from an incorrigibly personal point of view, such that there is no substantial subject-object differentiation between analyst and patient. Issues of authoritarianism in the analyst, or of pathological certainty, should not be confused with the issues of epistemological objectivism. The concept of critical realism or scientific objectivism includes the essential idea that there is no pure knowledge, no complete knowledge, that often evidence is insufficient for knowledge of some aspect of nature, and that care must be to taken understand what is sufficient knowledge in a given area, in this case clinical psychoanalysis. The question is raised whether "projective identification" makes the sorting out of "what comes from whom" impossible. It is argued that when free association is sufficiently facilitated, when there are enough corrections of the distortions wrought by transference and countertransference, when defenses are analyzed, and when sufficient subject-object differentiation is recovered, the analyst can get to know enough of the patient's psychic reality for the therapeutic and scientific purposes of psychoanalysis.     

The influence of sexually explicit Internet material and peers on stereotypical beliefs about women's sexual roles: similarities and differences between adolescents and adults

Previous research on the influence of sexually explicit Internet material (SEIM) on adolescents' stereotypical beliefs about women's sexual roles has three shortcomings. First, the role of peers has been neglected; second, stereotypical beliefs have rarely been studied as causing the use of SEIM and the selection of specific peers; and third, it is unclear whether adolescents are more vulnerable to the effects of SEIM than adults. We used data from two nationally representative two-wave panel surveys among 1,445 Dutch adolescents and 833 Dutch adults, focusing on the stereotypical belief that women engage in token resistance to sex (i.e., the notion that women say "no" when they actually intend to have sex). Structural equation modeling showed that peers who supported traditional gender roles elicited, both among adolescents and adults, stronger beliefs that women use token resistance to sex. Further, the belief that women engage in token resistance predicted adolescents' and adults' selection of gender-role traditional peers, but it did not predict adolescents' and adults' use of SEIM. Finally, adults, but not adolescents, were susceptible to the impact of SEIM on beliefs that women engage in token resistance to sex.     

PSYCHOANALYSIS IN SCANDINAVIA: PART ONE

During recent years, the neurosciences have entered into a dialogue with psychoanalysis, which has opened new perspectives for their integration. Despite these developments, reservations remain concerning the reducing effects of the neurosciences by overtly or covertly hiding the core elements of psychoanalysis. However, Freud made an explicit parallel between psychoanalysis and physics in their relationship with the unknown reality, and in their task of filling in gaps in knowledge. Freud's epistemological view implies that the relationship with the unknown reality unites rather than separates psychoanalysis from other sciences. On the other hand, in the clinical realm, Freud emphasized the autonomy of psychoanalysis. Instead of offering causal explanations, the value of the neurosciences to psychoanalysis depends on how well the knowledge derived from them can be integrated in psychoanalysis and given a clinical meaning. The primacy of clinical relevance also pertains to the findings of empirical outcome research.     

THE ESCHATOLOGICAL CHARACTER OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

In this essay, I show how Thomas Aquinas circumscribes epistemological questions concerning both the possibility and character of our knowledge of God within a larger eschatological framework that acknowledges the beatific vision as the ultimate good that we desire as well as the ultimate end for which we were created. Thus, knowledge of God is possible and actual on Aquinas's view because it is eternally rather than merely temporally indexed—that is, properly attributable to the blessed in heaven and only derivatively attributable to persons of faith. I further argue that interpreting Aquinas's account of faith in the light of his account of the beatific vision allows us to carve out polemical space for the theologically realist claim that there can be and in fact is objectivity in our knowledge of God, whether that knowledge comes through faith (in this life) or the beatific vision (in the next life).     

Client-centredness, sociological awareness and counsellor training

The nature of school counselling courses is examined in the light of the claim of counsellors to be client-centred, with particular reference to the sociological perspectives of the course and their treatment of social 'facts' and knowledge. It is suggested that they lack, in varying degrees, a comparative perspective, a total picture of society, and a notion of the social construction of reality. Consequently, counsellors show (a) an inability to move outside established frames of reference, (b) a concentration upon micro-problems concerning the child, his family and his neighbourhood in isolation from the wider societal context, and (c)an acceptance of 'commonsense' assumptions about education as absolute realities rather than as social constructs. Though intending to be change agents safeguarding the interests of pupils, counsellors are insufficiently helped to examine critically the institutional and societal framework of education, and will be likely therefore to continue to operate primarily as the servants rather than the critics of their employing institutions.