Good prospects: ecological and social perspectives on conforming, creating, and caring in conversation

Abstract

Ecological approaches (e.g. [Gibson, J.J., 1979. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Houghton-Mifflin, Boston]) to psychology and language are selectively reviewed, focusing on social learning. Is social learning (e.g., acquiring language) a matter of conformity [Tomasello, M., 2006. Acquiring linguistic constructions. In: D. Kuhn, R.S. Siegler, W. Damon, R.M. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of Child Psychology, Cognition, Perception, and Language, sixth ed., vol. 2., Wiley, Hoboken, NJ, pp. 255–298], creativity [Chomsky, N. 1965. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA], or something else? Ecological approaches [Reed, E.S., 1996. Encountering the World: Toward an Ecological Psychology. Oxford University Press, Oxford; Hodges, B.H., Baron, R.M. 1992. Values as constraints on affordances: perceiving and acting properly. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 22, 263–294] put the focus on values. Reed’s account highlights the collective appropriation of affordances, the precocious perception and enactment of “unfilled meanings,” and children’s becoming persons through the active structuring of their environment (e.g., gestural games, story-telling). Hodges and Baron’s account of values as multiple, heterarchical, dynamical, and legitimating constraints on actions is applied to cases of pragmatic rule violations, particularly Hodges and Geyer’s [Hodges, B.H., Geyer, A.L., 2006. A nonconformist account of the Asch experiments: Values, pragmatics, and moral dilemmas. Personality and Social Psychology Review 10, 2–19] reinterpretation of Asch’s [Asch, S.E., 1956. Studies of independence and conformity: I. A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs 70, (9) (Whole No. 416)] influential experiments on social influence and perception. These ecological, social, and values-realizing accounts suggest that conversations are about seeking good prospects, caring for others and self, and inviting responsible action. The possibility of language as a perceptual system [Gibson, J.J., 1966. The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. Houghton-Mifflin, Boston] for exploring dialogical arrays, and an action system [Reed, E.S., 1982. An outline of a theory of action systems. Journal of Motor Behavior 14, 97–134] for coordinating diverse space–time scales is considered.