Boundaries Of Psychology Research Articles

Refugee livelihood perspectives: Post-traumatic growth in histories of Vietnamese, Bosnian, and Tamil Refugees in Australia

Abstract Refugee livelihood studies have mostly focused on policy and international aid programming and have yet to explore refugee people’s long-term development beyond the initial resettlement period. This article examines the experiences of Vietnamese, Bosnian, and Tamil refugees resettled in Australia during the height of the multicultural agenda in the 1980s and 1990s. Drawing on fifty oral histories, the article argues that refugees’ struggle and transformation of trauma in the past fuelled civic engagement in their new host communities. It explores the nexus of refugee lived experiences, livelihoods, and post-traumatic growth in the context of multicultural Australia to consider refugee livelihood as a long-term process. Crossing disciplinary boundaries of history and psychology, the article shows how some refugees re-interpret their trauma as motivation for positive change, a manifestation of post-traumatic growth, expressed as civic engagement, including becoming political actors in response to their histories of trauma, resistance, and growth beyond resettlement.

On the Phenomenological Investigations into the Psychology of Dreaming

In 1900 the publication of the book, Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud raised very seminal and fascinating questions in the disciplines of psychology and psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud’s intellectual contributions and the discovery of unconscious had given a big jolt to all the classical approaches, shook the disciplinary foundations of psychology and placed ‘psychoanalysis’ as an alternative model for understanding mental world. Psychologists across the world showed keen interest in uncovering the mysteries of dreams and dreaming. But the institutional dominance of Behaviorism and its standards of research didn’t allow them to cross the boundaries of conventional psychology. Behavioristic psychologists raised important questions on the methodology adopted by Sigmund Freud and leveled criticism against his unverifiable explanations. Behaviorism branded his theories as absolute subjectivist and unscientific. Hence, most of the psychologists were silent and systematically marginalized dream research and banished the discourses on dreams in the institutions of higher learning and research. The nineteenth century saw the emergence of the first dream studies, which were primarily concerned with dream phenomenology. Nevertheless, the pace of methodical dream research was held considerably by the emergence of distinct psychological movements at the start of the 20th century: behaviorism, classical psychoanalysis, and gestalt psychology, placed greater stress on the significance and meaning of dreams, as well as what they symbolized in the lives of individuals. Also a few of them questioned the reality of dreams and other similar mental experiences. Consequently, every movement undermined the greater sample sizes and more methodical research on dreams in its own unique manner. While presenting the views of Sigmund Freud, John Watson, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, and Fritz Perls this paper makes an attempt to show how classical schools of psychology slowed down the flow of systematic dream studies with large samples.

Impact of Social Class Background on General Cognitive Ability

Theorists and researchers have been discussing the relationship between social class background and differences observed in cognitive ability test points of children from lower social class families and their middle or upper SES peers. It has been discussed that for a more detailed understanding of these cognitive inequalities, it appears necessary to move beyond boundaries of psychology and consider sociological conditions or contexts as well. It has been asserted that social class background characteristics affect general cognitive ability over time. The present study introduces research exploring the impact of social class background on cognitive abilities of children. In Britain, the 1958 National Child Development Survey (NCDS), the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) and more recently, the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS 2000) conducted at the start of the 21st century are particularly relevant and nationally representative broad-based studies for exploring the impact of social class background on general cognitive abilities of children. It was observed that they provided scaled data and emphasized the impact of social class, particularly the role of parental education as an indicator of social class in surveys. Social class affected children’s cognitive abilities as early as primary school years and led to inequalities in their cognitive performance. Children from lower social class and lower socioeconomic status (SES) families suffered a clear disadvantage. Poor and disadvantaged conditions of the lower social class adversely impacted and impaired the cognitive ability of children. Given the fact that cognitive abilities play a role especially in later life, adverse impacts and impairment of cognitive abilities are regarded as alarming and undesirable situations in childhood.

Bond formation with pet-robots: An integrative approach

The challenge of long-term interaction between humans and robots is still a bottleneck in service robot research. To gain an understanding of sustained relatedness with robots, this study proposes a conceptual framework for bond formation. More specifically, it addresses the dynamics of children bonding with robotic pets as the basis for certain services in healthcare and education. The framework presented herein offers an integrative approach and draws from theoretical models and empirical research in Human Robot Interaction and also from related disciplines that investigate lasting relationships, such as human-animal affiliation and attachment to everyday objects. The research question is how children’s relatedness to personified technologies occurs and evolves and what underpinning processes are involved. The subfield of research is child-robot interaction, within the boundaries of social psychology, where the robot is viewed as a social agent, and human-system interaction, where the robot is regarded as an artificial entity. The proposed framework envisions bonding with pet-robots as a socio-affective process towards lasting connectedness and emotional involvement that evolves through three stages: first encounter, short-term interaction and lasting relationship. The stages are characterized by children’s behaviors, cognitions and feelings that can be identified, measured and, maybe more importantly, managed. This model aims to integrate fragmentary and heterogeneous knowledge into a new perspective on the impact of robots in close and enduring proximity to children.

Insight orientation scale: A promising tool for organizational outcomes-A psychometric analysis using item response theory.

Insight is a construct carried out into different theoretical orientations with increasing application out of the boundaries of clinical psychology. Recent studies have investigated insight also as a promising variable for organizational outcomes. Given the relevance of Insight in promoting change, this paper aimed at describing the psychometric analysis of one of the shortest, most agile, and most versatile tool for measuring some of the characteristics of insight, the Insight Orientation Scale (IOS), using Item Response Theory. To achieve this goal, we applied a Mixed Rash Model to the IOS. Data from 1,445 individuals were analyzed by the means of WIN-MIRA and Multilog. Based on the likelihood statistics (CAIC) we assumed a three-class solution for the IOS. Results also indicated that the greater part of items had good discrimination and threshold parameters. These findings confirmed psychometric stability of the IOS highlighting its measurement precision, supporting its utility in both research and practice.

«Единица анализа» Л. С. Выготского и «модальность» Н. Гартмана

Problematization. In psychology, there is a situation of many working ontologies, expanding their boundaries to a general ontology. Accordingly, we have different explanations of the psyche and many methods of its development. In reality, the psyche is one. Research objectives. Substantiation of the method of studying the integrity of the psyche using the "One Psychology" analysis of the anthropological project of L. S. Vygotsky and the critical ontology of N. Hartman. Methodology. In the study of the psyche as a whole the post-non-classical mode of rationality makes it possible to rely on a fundamental ontology, Hence, we used in our study as a means of analysis of the whole: the substratum unit; and the unit of integrity analysis and modality. Results. As a starting material, we presented a brief analysis of the historical conditions that contributed to the emergence of similar ideological and conceptual views in L. S. Vygotsky, a psychologist, and N. Hartmann, a philosopher, also did not know each other. We examined the fundamental intersection points of: 1) L. S. Vygotsky who is called a Spinozist, and N. Hartmann who gravitated towards Platonism. With similarities of Spinoza and Plato substantial and modal aspects of being, and their identical attitude towards cognition and cognizability; 2) This was reflected in the projects of L. S. Vygotsky and N. Hartman, in particular, in acts of cognition, as “the unity of affect and intellect”, the unity of the cognizer and the cognized, and the definition of the “top” role of the individual; and 3) Both scientists singled out and applied a common method for studying integrity: L. S. Vygotsky - “a unit of analysis of the whole”, N. Hartman - modality. The last conclusion is promising for psychology and allows it to be developed on the basis of a universal ontology. The prospects are as follows: we have shown that the concepts of “units of integrity” and “units of analysis of the whole” are not interchangeable, but in all psychological approaches and concepts, except for the cultural-historical one, the boundaries of these concepts were not given importance and their normative base was blurred. We compared the characteristics of the “unit of analysis of the whole” (L. S. Vygotsky) with the characteristics of modality by N. Hartmann. We determined that these characteristics are similar and made an assumption about the possibility in cultural-historical psychology that “units of analysis of the whole” can be understood as a modality, and not a unit of the whole. This has several advantages: 1) a clearer definition of the boundaries of cultural-historical psychology and its qualitative separation from all other psychologies without the possibility of mixing and substitution; 2) the possibility of analyzing cultural-historical psychology on the basis of a universal ontology, the discovery of new "units of analysis of the whole" (modalities), building links between them; 3) the development of a new psychology - modal psychology, on the basis of cultural-historical psychology; 4) affirmation of the ontological completeness of cultural-historical psychology and embedding psychology on a par with other sciences, which allows building normatively transdisciplinary ties.

Media Use and Well-being: Understanding the Interplay in the Context of Tibetan Youth in India Amid COVID-19 Crisis

The advent of the positive psychology has shifted the focus of a wellbeing from a clinical perspective to a social perspective which further complemented the post-modern construction of wellbeing in the form of happiness and positive thinking. The contribution of media in this construction is significant, since media has pervaded each and every aspect of our socio-cultural as well as individual existence at an unprecedented rate during the past few decades. This study delineates the potential benefits of media exposure on wellbeing within the disciplinary boundaries of media psychology, while looking at the Indian and Tibetan understanding of the wellbeing construct. It explores the intrinsic effects of media usage on social and cultural wellbeing of young Tibetan people living in various settlements in India. The study delves into the ways in which the young Tibetans interact to ensure the wellbeing of their family, relatives and community in a connected, yet physically distant world endeavouring to explore the evolving implications of the media exposure, especially of ‘new media’, on wellbeing.

Signifying Islamic Psychology as a Paradigm: A Decolonial Move

Abstract. Recognizing the fluidity around the definitions and boundaries of Islamic psychology (IP), I propose that the assumption of decolonial thought may help IP reimagine its vision, orientation, and directions. Distinguished by three fundamentals – epistemic freedom, liberation, and humanization – paradigmatic IP may harvest psycho-spiritual, cognitive, and affective resources as well as methodological, ethical, and metaphysical substance through the creation of an archive of Islamic humanism to speak back to all areas of psychology and cognate disciplines focused on human behavior. The espousal of decolonial thought locates IP within larger bodies of solidarity and decolonizing scholarship committed to pluriversal and transformatory enactments of knowledge.

Poverty among Women in Nigeria–Psychological and Economic Perspective: A Study Based On South West, Nigeria

The aim of this study is to provide an evidenced-based psychological and economic perspective on the rising level of poverty among women in Nigeria. The rationale for the study is anchored on the latest reports by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund that Nigeria is now home to the largest number of poorest people in the world. Women constitute over 60% of the poorest people in Nigeria and going by the IMF statistics that Nigeria has over 87 million people in extreme poverty translates to approximately 52 million women on the clutches of extreme poverty. Although there have been efforts by successive governments in Nigeria to improve the livelihood of women in Nigeria and lift them out from poverty, the facts on the ground are not encouraging as a large number of women continues to wallow in extreme poverty. With the benefits of inter-disciplinary research that intersects at the boundaries of finance and psychology, this study investigated possible psychological factors such as job involvement, self-efficacy and goal orientation that could be implicated in this scenario. The study used survey design in two states in South Western Nigeria namely: Lagos and Ogun. 600 women (400 in Lagos and 200 in Ogun) were sampled. The sampling was cross-sectional and respondents were selected through a multi-stage purposive sampling technique. The instrument for data collection was scaled and a step-wise multiple regression was used for testing the hypothesis. Results of the analysis showed that all the explanatory variables namely: self-efficacy, goal orientation and job involvement were significant predictors of women pre-disposition to engaging in productive activities. The result showed that women who are cognitively goal oriented strives to develop skills and are more disposed to take up productive investments (job oriented). Based on these findings, the study recommended, amongst others, that efforts should be made to re-tool the approach to women development in Nigeria through skill acquisition and value reorientation.

Din Eğitiminde İhmal Edilen Boyut: İnsanın Anlam Arayışı

According to the studies in the field, modern people are inclined to move away from traditional religion tenets in the process of sense-making. For this reason, if educators aim to help modern people in the course of their meaning search, a religious education approach encompassing cognitive and experimental aspects of sense-making needs to be developed and philosophical and Sufi attitudes play paramount roles in the process of establishing this approach. The current study, which is based on a body of related literature, relies on four main theories and conceptual frames within the boundaries of psychology and pedagogy. Hence, the article firstly deals with the necessity of cognitive consistency and experimental tranquillity in the course of building sense-making as it is considered to be a special issue in logotherapy. Then, the meaningful learning concept in cognitive phase of sense-making and peak experience concept in experimental phase are examined. Within the boundary of this study, some concepts of Islamic Sufism and Kelam (Islamic Theology) such as tahqiq (faith by verify), taqlid (faith through imitation), hikmah (wisdom) and ma’rifat (knowledge), inabe (turn to God with sincere repentance), sakeenah (tranquillity) and khushu (sincerity) are explored from the perspectives of their potential contributions to Sufism and philosophical attitudes in religious education

Philosophical Discourse in Psychology of C. Jung

The article considers the role of philosophical concepts and philosophical ideas in the psychological works of C. Jung, owing to which he achieved the results. He was able to deeply and thoroughly comprehend the studied psychological phenomenon: the unconscious and its components. This led him to conclusions far beyond the boundaries of psychology, in the sphere of philosophy and cultural studies. Using the principle of determinism, Jung discovered and analyzed psychological causal relationships. He showed that the interaction of culture and nature in man provides him with a movement towards gaining his integrity. At the same time, Jung identified and considered options for the interaction of nature and culture in man. Through the dialectics of subject and object, Jung defined his position in understanding of unconscious and attitude to the concept of Freud. Jung explained the process of interaction between consciousness and the unconscious using energetic approach which was popular in philosophy in the beginning of 20 century. This particular approach allows the scientist to conclude that every psychic phenomenon is a manifestation of human vitality and energy. Energy itself is neither destructive nor creative. Quality gives it value, giving direction to human life, as energy takes its course. Jung formulated the theme of human life and destiny, and examined it through the prism of the influence of the unconscious. Possession of the dialectical style of thinking allowed him to form his research methodology. He shows that, along with socialization, individualization is important for the individual, ensuring individuality and integrity.

The Birth of Foucault’s Method: Epistemology/ Phenomenology, Psychology/Psychiatry

This paper analyzes Foucault’s early thinking (from 1954 to 1957) as it bears on psychology, anthropology and psychiatry. The author maintains that Foucault’s texts from that period can be mined for the origins of the Foucault methodology, early indications of its scope, and its first applications. Although Foucault opposed a phenomenology of epistemology and allied himself with the latter, a close reading of his early work reveals a paradoxical synthesis of phenomenological and epistemological views. The influences of Georges Canguilhem, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Ludwig Binswanger were decisive here.Foucault adopted the “practice-to-theory” vector from Canguilhem and grounded the history of psychology and psychiatry on the study of essential oppositions: normal - pathological, personality - environment, evolution - history. Merleau-Ponty’s theory allowed him to demonstrate that the ontological perspective of psychology and psychiatry does not match the subject of their research, which is the person and their experience. Foucault’s application of Binswanger and the idea of existence is to problematize the boundaries between psychology and psychiatry and their identity as sciences while formulating the problem of pathology and normality as crucial to their identification. He also considers mental illness as one of the forms of experience. Foucault thus goes beyond the boundaries of psychology and psychiatry to develop his archaeological method. In the Order of things and the Archaeology of Knowledge he makes two philosophical maneuvers: in the first, he rejects the subject; in the second he abandons the continuity of history. Foucault’s early psychological and psychiatric discourse is then the first harbinger of his trespassing the boundaries of disciplines and schools, combining perspectives, and scrutinizing the foundations of scientific practice. A critical dialogue with his own earlier thought is the source of Foucault’s birth as a philosopher.

Geopolíticas del Conocimiento Psicológico y Riesgos Psicosociales: Reproduciendo la Subordinación por Medio de las Tesis de Grado y Postgrado

This article presents the results of a study on the geopolitical relationships of psychology. One hundred and eight undergraduate and graduate theses on the topic of psychosocial risks were examined. They were produced by students of 7 of the main universities of Bogotá, Colombia, between 1991 and 2014. The following aspects were analyzed: the years when the theses were submitted, the academic institution where they were produced, the specific program to which they belonged, the title assigned to each research project, and the design used. In addition, the present study also identified the references consulted, the language in which they had been published, and their type of authorship: national, international, independent researchers, and labor regulation agencies. Results reveal the channels through which psychological knowledge about psychosocial risks circulates, the fading of disciplinary boundaries of psychology, and the emulation that takes place in the local construction of psychology, as well as its consequent subordination to international knowledge networks

Across culture, mind and history

This editorial highlights the contributions of Gustav Jahoda to cross-cultural and cultural psychology. Gustav’s broad and deep scholarship, focusing on culture, mind and history, crossed disciplinary boundaries of psychology, anthropology and sociology in his attempts to understand human psyche and concrete activities in various situations and locations. Gustav’s legacy is inspirational for human and social scientists who search for ‘the establishment of general psychology of a new kind’.

Restoration and the City: The Role of Public Urban Squares.

Over recent decades, the study of psychological restoration has attracted a considerable amount of interest within and without the boundaries of environmental psychology, with most of the work focused on analyzing restoration in natural contexts. However, little attention has been paid to the (possible) restorative potential of urban settings, as they have usually been expected not to be restorative and to present some elements that might imply negative health outcomes in the short and long term. In this field study, our aim was to evaluate restoration in urban squares. To this end, we measured participants' attentional and affective states both before and after spending half an hour in an urban square. A sample of 46 subjects contemplated and walked through one of the two selected squares that differed in restorative potential (PRS). Analyses revealed a statistically significant increase in cognitive performance and a decrease in negative affect in both squares. They also showed that participants reported greater stress recovery rates in one of the settings. These results support the idea that cities can be potentially restorative and justify the relevance of a research area focused on the urban designs, which may offer psychological benefits to urban citizens.

Habit Beyond Psychology

In the following text I reexamine the connotations of the term habit from the perspective of Peirce’s pragmatism. I start by tracing back the roots of the term in the Metaphysical Club’s discussions of Alexander Bain’s theory of belief. By stressing the relative overlap between belief and habit I am also proposing that the latter term transcends the boundaries of empirical psychology. Peirce’s well-known antipathy to psychologism in logic raised the status of habit to a universal concept that participates in the unlimited process of interpretation. Habit, therefore, falls into a new lineage of meaning that can be traced back to antiquity and turns into a generative notion with extensive connotations. As a result it becomes an inseparable part of Peirce architectonic philosophy, capable to shed new light on his evolutionary cosmology and metaphysics. Conceiving of habit as an operative element in the evolution of all phenomena in the universe is the main objective of this article.

Neoliberal governance and ‘responsibilization’ of agents: reassessing the mechanisms of responsibility-shift in neoliberal discursive environments

ABSTRACTThe ‘governmentality’ approach has been influential in analyzing how neoliberal governance transfers responsibility to individual agents through an ‘appeal of freedom’ mechanism. This productive conceptualization of power has generated a solid body of research on the workings of (neo)liberal governance and contemporary Western capitalism. However, such research has largely ignored a complementary mechanism characteristic of situations where ‘appeal of freedom’ lets actors down, that is, dynamics of ‘threat to personal control’. Studies focusing and elaborating on this aspect, and ‘control constructs’ more generally, have remained mostly within the disciplinary boundaries of (social) psychology. In this paper we aim to bring the social psychological research on control constructs into a dialogue with governmentality theorizing and to show how neoliberal ‘responsibilization’ can work through threats to personal control, insecurity and governance by fear. We propose one way of utilizing, and advancing, these approaches in tandem with empirical research, by focusing on the analysis of control attributions of the subjects of (neoliberal) governance. With a brief empirical illustration from the context of Australian neoliberal agricultural policies we then show how neoliberal ‘responsibilization’ can be viewed as relying on farmers’ striving to maintain personal control under uncertainty, in addition to the workings of the ‘appeal of freedom’ mechanism.

Учение о гениальности Артура Шопенгауэра

В статье впервые проводится целостный содержательно-аналитический обзор учения Артура Шопенгауэра о гениальности, где основные идеи заключаются в следующем. Во-первых, гениальность состоит в совершенно непомерном, реальном избытке интеллекта, которого не требует для себя и своих услуг слепая воля, управляющая миром, и при этом гениальный человек охватывает своим сознанием общие начала бытия и становится, таким образом, способным к познанию сущности вещей, на что не способны ни обыкновенные люди, ни выдающиеся таланты. Во-вторых, сущность гениальности состоит в созерцательном и, следовательно, более объективном и целостном познании мира, что позволяет гению видеть такие миры, которые недоступны для восприятия и понимания других людей. В-третьих, предметом познания гения являются только те проблемы, в которых отражается «суть вещей вообще, только общее в них, целое», и, напротив, все остальные люди легко проходят мимо тех проблем, которые гений просто не может пропустить. В-четвёртых, гениальные люди, в силу своей способности к созерцательному познанию мира, отличному от познания, осуществляемого в виде понятий, дающих лишь малосодержательные абстракции, оказываются способными к познанию реальности «Платоновых идей». При этом гениальные люди менее всего заботятся о собственной пользе, напротив, их усилия направлены не на получение личной выгоды, а на создание общезначимых, общечеловеческих ценностей – ценностей, формирующих в конечном итоге духовную культуру человеческого рода. В статье также рассматриваются представления Шопенгауэра о гениальности и о безумии и показывается неправомерность отнесения Шопенгауэра к числу сторонников психопатологической теории гениальности. В настоящем исследовании показано, что Шопенгауэр выводит истоки гениальности из рефлексии о самом человеке и, таким образом, он не ограничивает анализ гениальности лишь предметными границами психологии, а впервые поднимаетэту проблему уже на уровень философско-антропологического анализа и тем самым придаёт проблеме гениальности онтологический, универсальный, фундаментальный характер.

Using pouched rats to help people: Notes from the field.

For several years, my students and I have assisted colleagues at Anti-Persoonsmijnen Ontmijnende Product Ontwikkeling, a Belgian Nongovernmental Organization headquartered in Tanzania, in conducting research designed to evaluate and improve the performance of scent-detecting pouched rats used for humanitarian purposes. Findings indicate that the rats are accurate landmine-detection animals and more sensitive than microscopy, the standard diagnostic in resource-poor areas, in detecting tuberculosis. When used for second-line screening of sputum samples initially evaluated by microscopy, the rats increase new-case detections of tuberculosis by about 40%. Studies have shown that several variables affect their performance, and knowledge of those variables has been used to improve the rats' performance when they are used operationally. Research has also demonstrated that the rats can detect Salmonella, cigarettes, and people trapped under rubble, but they are not presently used operationally for those purposes. This work illustrates that people who understand behavior and the variables that affect it can act to improve the world in ways outside the boundaries of conventional psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record

Expanding boundaries of psychology: Transdisciplinarity and innovative career paths

Expanding boundaries of psychology: Transdisciplinarity and innovative career paths