Social Psychological Concepts Research Articles

The social life of ‘eugh’: Disgust as assessment in family mealtimes

Disgust is a complex phenomenon that pervades a number of social situations. To date, disgust has primarily been understood as an individually experienced emotion or as a way of defining boundaries between people or objects; the detailed social practices through which disgust is choreographed, however, have yet to be fully explored. The social implications of disgust are particularly apparent when food and eating are involved, as it is in such settings that individuals, objects, and social boundaries coincide. In this paper, I argue that the enactment of disgust is an inherently social event, and that we can evidence it as such through the way in which it is produced and oriented to in everyday interaction. The setting for this paper is family mealtimes, as a situation in which children and parents explore the boundaries of what is, and what is not, disgusting. A large corpus of video and audio recordings of mealtimes in England and Scotland were analysed using a discursive psychological approach, with a focus on explicating the sequential and prosodic features of disgust markers (DMs), such as 'eugh' and 'yuck'. The analysis demonstrates that DMs are typically preceded by a 'noticing' by speakers and that 'eugh' is usually uttered alone and at the start of a turn in talk. It is argued that, regardless of their putative status as emotions or cultural concepts, DMs work as assessments of food and eating practices in everyday interaction. They orient others to a trouble source and attend to people's entitlements to 'know' disgust. The implications for our understanding of disgust as a social psychological concept are further explored.

Guilt by association: Heuristic risks for foreign brands during a product-harm crisis in China

Critical for international marketers in volatile markets is understanding of factors that influence consumer responses during a product-harm crisis. Applying social psychology concepts of heuristic judgments and attribution theory, the authors study mistrust of non-contaminated but heuristically-associated foreign brands during the 2008 Chinese milk contamination crisis. Shared brand identity and investment or management links between a locally made product brand and a foreign imported brand expose the foreign brand to guilt-by-association (GBA) effects. Judgments regarding stability of the underlying cause of the domestic crisis moderate the transference of blame to foreign brands.

Reference Groups, Mob Mentality, and Bystander Intervention: A Sociological Analysis of the Lara Logan Case1

Despite that it involves mobs, bystanders, and political theater—three classic concepts in social psychology—academics have neglected analyzing the Lara Logan sexual assault case through these lenses. I explore how the case has been discussed in the media and suggest that analysis of the mob and bystanders has been, oddly, lacking. I argue that the best reference group to use when discussing this case is not other journalists or even other women who have survived assaults, but is instead enemy women who have survived politically motivated wartime gang sexual assaults. Most observers have overlooked the relevant reference group due to focusing on the traits of the victim, rather than on the context of the event itself. I argue that the case conforms to important dimensions: (1) the sociological norm that gang violence involves premeditation, (2) an agreement of values among perpetrators, and (3) that the violence itself lacked cultural and social legitimacy. Logan was likely targeted because she was a “stranger”; she was saved, in part, for the same reason. The case illustrates known patterns of mob mentalities and bystander intervention, yet it is unlike most cases of both nonwartime gender violence and violence against journalists.

Oppositional behavior in urban schooling: toward a theory of resistance for new times

Early resistance theorists analyzed working class students’ oppositional behavior at a time of high availability of viable jobs in manufacturing. They argued that oppositional behavior constituted a rejection of middle class culture motivated by an implicit understanding of the myth of meritocracy. But times have changed. This paper seeks to examine the significance of oppositional behavior as a form of resistance in “new times” characterized by increased unemployment, zero tolerance school discipline, and racialized mass incarceration. Drawing on ethnographic data from the study of disciplinary practices, critical theories of resistance, and the social psychological concepts of Goffman, the author demonstrates that oppositional behavior today does not necessarily represent a rejection of schooling or middle class culture. Instead, students are aware of the need for credentials and desire to stay out of prison. Nevertheless, alienated students implicitly seek numerous social and psychological benefits through oppositional behavior in the context of a deep sense of educational and economic exclusion, despite the high price they pay.

Seeking common ground: an alternative diversity training paradigm

PurposeDuring a typical diversity program, participants are encouraged to recognize, evaluate, and appreciate differences. The purpose of this paper is to explore the rationale for “Conversity®”: an alternative approach to diversity training that is based on connections.Design/methodology approachThe paper is based on a review of the literature on “traditional” diversity training paradigms, the impact of diversity on the brain, and basic social psychology concepts such as categorization and social affiliation. The authors relate literature review findings to their experiences conducting “connections‐based” (“Conversity”) diversity training.FindingsThe human brain is already wired to perceive differences. Further, human beings tend to prefer others who share their group affiliations. Possible consequences of “typical” diversity training programs may include a “backlash” against diversity, an increase in participants' fears, and a reinforcement of inter‐group divisions.Practical implicationsThis paper offers practitioners an alternative paradigm for diversity training design including alternative categorization (i.e. emphasis on non‐traditional diversity categories such as personality or team color) and an intentional search for connections between participants.Originality/valueHistorically, diversity training programs have focused on the value of differences rather than on the power of common ground.

The possible selves of young fathers in prison

Drawing on the social psychological concept of possible selves, this study explores the future self concept of young fathers in prison. In considering life after release from prison, qualitative data relating to hoped-for, feared and expected possible selves was generated by 34 young fathers aged between 18 and 21 years. The most common categories of hoped-for and expected selves related to employment and parenting, whereas feared selves related predominantly to offending or a return to prison. The prevalence of possible selves relating to parenting suggests that parenthood is a key component of the representations of present and future identity of young fathers in prison. Findings are discussed in relation to the positive aspect of parenthood for young men in prison, parenting identities in the transition from custody to community, future research directions and the development of interventions targeting young fathers in prison.

Jury Decision Making: Implications For and From Psychology

Jury trials play a centrally important role in the law, and they are also of interest to psychologists. The manner in which individual jurors perceive, interpret, and remember evidence, as well as the group processes involved in jury deliberation, can be described in terms of fundamental cognitive and social psychological concepts. Juries provide a real-world laboratory for examining theoretical issues related to reasoning, memory, judgment and decision making, attribution, stereotyping, persuasion, and group behavior. Conversely, psychological research can inform trial procedures, enabling juries to benefit from fairer procedures and reach better outcomes. Thus, jury decision making has implications for psychological theory, and psychological research has implications for legal policy.

O preconceito sexual internalizado por homossexuais masculinos

Apesar do surgimento, nas últimas décadas, de uma vasta gama de estudos relacionados à homossexualidade, pouco foi produzido sobre o tema do preconceito internalizado. Tendo como base uma articulação entre conceitos oriundos da psicologia social e da psicanálise, procede-se neste trabalho, a partir da literatura existente, a uma investigação sobre o preconceito sexual internalizado, definido como a aceitação pelos indivíduos homossexuais das atitudes negativas veiculadas pela sociedade em relação à homossexualidade. Tal aceitação resulta em sentimentos negativos sobre si mesmo – principalmente culpa e vergonha de ser ou de experienciar desejo homossexual. Busca-se relacionar o preconceito sexual internalizado com suas principais manifestações clínicas, assim como com alguns dos mecanismos de defesa utilizados pelos homossexuais masculinos, a saber: a negação, a formação reativa, a racionalização e o encobrimento. Ao cabo do trabalho, levantam-se algumas questões relacionadas à redução do preconceito internalizado. Palavras-chave: preconceito internalizado; homossexualidade masculina; manifestações clínicas.

The Social Side of School: Why Teachers Need Social Psychology

Teaching and learning are fundamentally social enterprises. In attempting to understand, explain, and predict social behavior, social psychologists have amassed scores of empirically grounded, fundamental principles. Yet, many such principles have yet to be applied to classrooms despite the social nature of these settings. This article illustrates how infusing novel concepts from social psychology into teachers’ repertoires holds untapped potential to improve their pedagogy, ability to motivate students, and capacity to enrich students’ understanding of subject matter. This article first examines three domains of social psychology—social cognition, influence/persuasion, and interpersonal relations—and illustrates how applications of principles from each domain could benefit classrooms. Next, two exemplars are presented to demonstrate the efficacy of past interventions that are rooted in social psychological principles. Finally, pathways through which teacher educators can introduce new social psychological concepts and applications to teachers are explored.

The evolutionary patterns of political economy: Examples from Latin American history

This article draws upon social networking, primatology, and psychological concepts to explain the formation of leadership. Leaders draw upon deeply embedded evolutionary and cultural routines and knowledge to gain power and explain failure. Thus seemingly irrational decision-making makes perfect sense. Examples can be found in Latin American leadership styles. The implications are broad and suggest a reframing of our approach to economic policy decision-making.

The character of sport and the sport of character

The idea of sport's character-forming qualities is a globally spread notion, which has begun to be questioned in recent years. In problematizing this notion, the relation of sport to its practitioners has been the primary study. The way the problems reflect the relation of sport to society has been less in focus. This essay sets such a focus with the help of character concepts in social psychology (Riesman, Fromm and Sennett), developing a reconstruction of such concepts of sport in a Swedish context. From being a sphere by the side of society, sport in Sweden from the twentieth century onwards has been increasingly linked in complex ways to the various spheres and actors of society. This understanding of how characters are fostered into and within sport sheds light on the conditions for character formation at different stages of history until the present time. The problems receive further relevance when considering how New Economy culture and its conditions for character formation may affect Swedish sport in the near future.

Socialization: Insights from Social Cognition

Socialization is the process by which individuals are assisted to become members of their social groups. Findings from social cognition and cross-cultural psychology offer two major insights into the socialization process. First, basic social cognitive principles imply that the immediate environment functions as a socialization agent by activating and inhibiting knowledge structures and thereby shaping cognition and behavior. Second, because the immediate environment factors into cognition and behavior, socialization efforts should involve the modification of the environment for optimal effect. We discuss various examples of socialization through the configuration of the immediate environment, such as rituals and use of physical artifacts. Our review links basic social cognitive mechanisms to socialization processes, which are customarily treated at higher levels of analysis. How do children come to act like other members of their groups? How do immigrants become part of a new culture, and how do people adapt to their occupational roles? All these questions are about the process of socialization, most broadly defined as ‘the way in which individuals are assisted in becoming members of one or more social groups’ (Grusec & Hastings, 2007, p.1). Even though socialization is not a prominent concept in social psychology, ideas emanating from social cognition research are ripe with implications for understanding the socialization process. In this article, we will spell out the implications of social cognitive principles on socialization. Research in social cognition has revealed a great deal about how people process mental representations of social knowledge (e.g., Smith, 1998; Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2000). Social and cross-cultural psychologists built on these ideas and have shown how cultural knowledge and identity can fruitfully be conceptualized as mental representations like any other social information (e.g., Hong & Chiu, 2001; Lehman, Chiu, & Schaller, 2004). In this article, we adopt these cognitive conceptualizations of culture and identity as complex and loose knowledge structures, and define socialization as the process by which individuals are helped to acquire, maintain, and apply these knowledge structures. This social cognitive perspective offers two major insights to our understanding of socialization:

Rethinking Dependent Personality Disorder

We argue that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders dependent personality disorder is a culturally related concept reflecting deeply rooted values, beliefs, and assumptions of American individualistic convictions about self and interpersonal relationship. This article integrates social psychology concepts into the exploration of psychopathology. Beginning with the construct of individualism and collectivism, we demonstrate the limitations of this commonly used framework. The indigenous Chinese concept of Confucianism and Chinese Relationalism is introduced to highlight that a well-differentiated self is not a universal premise of human beings, healthy existence. In East Asian Confucianism the manifestation of dependence and submission may be considered individuals' proper behavior and required for their social obligation, rather than a direct display of individuals' personality. Thus, the complexity of dependent personality disorder is beyond the neo-Kraepelinian approach assumed by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders system.

“This is a Public Service Announcement”: Evaluating and Redesigning Campaigns to Teach Attitudes and Persuasion

We present an assignment that requires students to apply their knowledge of the social psychology of attitudes and persuasion to critique and redesign a public service announcement. Students in a 200-level social psychology course evaluated the assignment by indicating their overall attitudes toward the assignment. Students rated the assignment positively, reporting that it would help them to evaluate advertisements in the future, that it helped them to gain a better understanding of the course material, that it helped them to learn to apply social psychological concepts and theories, and that it was enjoyable.

Justice by Any Means Necessary: Vigilantism among Indian Women

Through an analysis of news reports and documentary footage on the Gulabi Gang and ethnographic reports on the Mahila Aghadi, both of India, we illustrate how women who engage in violent forms of justice-seeking require us to expand social psychological concepts of retributive and restorative models of justice, women's agency, and community organizing. Our grassroots feminist analysis in an Indian context integrates: (1) feminist definitions of punishment and ethical violence; (2) research on perceptions of justice and moral convictions; and, (3) the feminist and liberatory roles that women's and poor people's movements play in the reorganization and recovery of individual and community values.

It's all about recognition! Qualitative study of the value of interpersonal continuity in general practice.

BackgroundContinuity of care has traditionally been regarded as a core quality of general practice, but the long-term doctor-patient relationship has been put under pressure. In many places practices are expanding, with larger teams and more registered patients, thereby threatening the possibility of patients staying with their own general practitioner (GP). GPs often take it for granted that interpersonal continuity is valuable. However, little is known about how patient satisfaction is related to interpersonal continuity. The purpose of this study is to explore the creation of patient satisfaction or dissatisfaction in the interpersonal relation with the GP, and in a comprehensive way to investigate how this is related to continuity of care.MethodsQualitative study based on 22 interviews with patients from two practices in Denmark. A total of 12 patients saw a regular doctor and 10 saw an unfamiliar doctor. The patients were selected after an observed consultation and sampled purposefully according to reason for encounter, age and sex. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was used to study how patients perceive meeting either a regular or an unfamiliar GP. The analysis explored the patients' perception of their interpersonal relationship with their GP, and interpreted the accounts by using social psychological theories.ResultsA long-term continuous relationship with the GP could be satisfactory, but it could also be the reverse. The same pattern was shown in case of an unfamiliar GP. Therefore, patient satisfaction and interpersonal continuity were not causally related. On the contrary, there was a general pattern of how the satisfactory and trustful doctor-patient relationship from the patients' point of view could be created, maintained or destroyed. A pattern where the process of recognition, by respecting and remembering, on the one hand created and maintained satisfaction while humiliation on the other hand destroyed satisfaction in the relationship.ConclusionIt was not valuable to have a continuous relationship unless the GP recognized the patient. The social psychological concept of recognition had two different meanings and the GP had to do both, respect and remember the patient, in order to create and sustain the trustful relationship. The added value of interpersonal continuity had to be combined with recognition.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: ‘Because they tip for shit!’: The Social Psychology of Everyday Racism in Restaurants

Teaching & Learning Guide for: ‘Because they tip for shit!’: The Social Psychology of Everyday Racism in Restaurants

Reflective Self Study: A Tool for Understanding Leisure Behavior

The examination of self within a theoretical framework can provide insight into values, beliefs, and biases that underlie personal behavior and inform individual professional practise and decision making. Students in a Recreation Management program take a required course in second year entitled Leisure Behavior. In order to better understand the social psychological concepts and theories in practical terms, they are assigned the task of completing a reflective self-study journal which facilitates a guided experience of identifying and providing analysis of leisure behavior as they have experienced it throughout their lives. Reflecting upon the factors that have influenced their personal leisure development using social psychological theory not only enhances their understanding of the concepts, but also serves as a context for fostering a better appreciation of the leisure behavior of others.

Families of Origin, Foster Care Experience, and the Transition to Adulthood

ABSTRACTThe rising number of young adults transitioning to adulthood from the foster care system has been a focus of prior research. The current study explored foster care youths transitions to adulthood to identify factors that contribute to or inhibit prosocial adult outcomes. Structured data derived from interviews with foster care‐experienced adults and child welfare professionals as well as focus groups with foster care‐experienced adults and foster parents were analyzed using content analysis to examine the transition to adulthood from foster care. Positive or negative life outcomes resulted from two key mechanisms: a) issues related to family of origin (inadequate parenting, abuse); and b) foster care experiences (including a pattern of “drift”). We explore disidentification, a new social psychological concept. Throughout, key players provide policy recommendations for the child welfare system.

Building a sense of community through sport programming and special events: the role of sport marketing in contributing to social capital

The role of sport marketing in contributing to social capital is derived from the historical relationship of marketing methods and the social sciences. Examples can be found in psychology (attitudes, consumer behaviour, motivation, participation levels, perceived value, perceptions, satisfaction levels), sociology (ethics and morals, ethnicity, gender equity, globalisation, performance enhancement, politics, race, social class and setting, violence and deviance), economics (accounting, asset markets, consumption levels, investments in sport products, labour equilibrium, pricing) and anthropology (cultural identity, ethnography, history of sport, human development and movement, rituals). In addition, market research validates most of these activities and the advertising of sport is related to many of the creative arts. The goal of this paper is to take a look at how marketing seems, in most cases, to have moved away from the social sciences into the business realm by bringing awareness to the historical relationship by articulating the role sport marketing plays in contributing to the social psychological concepts of 'social capital' and 'sense of community'.