Social Psychological Research Research Articles

Why using “consciousness” in psychotherapy? Insight, metacognition and self-consciousness

Since its early development, clinical psychology has questioned the impact of “consciousness” on the determination of human responsibility across psychiatric disorders. In recent years, specific clinical approaches have focused on “consciousness” work that could play a key role in psychotherapy. We focused our research on clinical psychology's consciousness-related concepts of insight, self-consciousness, and metacognition. Insight and metacognition, for example, have prompted increased interest in schizophrenia (SZ), bipolar disorder (BD), and, more recently, borderline personality disorder (BPD) treatments as representative of the latest advances in the cognitive and behavioral therapy field. Here we review cognitive, social, and clinical psychology research measuring “consciousness” in BPD, SZ, and BD, exploring the implications of different conceptualizations of consciousness-like concepts for treatment adherence, symptom evolution, and related aspects of psychotherapy. Our results show the overall relevance of using measures of clinical and cognitive insight, emphasizing the more central role of cognitive insight and metacognition in psychotherapy, as it appears that consciousness can remain useful if understood as a cognitive skill. The inclusion of a conceptualization of self-consciousness is important in order to address the social component of psychotherapy, as it does in biopsychosocial approaches. We discuss the implications of such results for global efficacy, for the relevance of the “consciousness” concept to clinical psychology, and for the potential need to keep operationalizing different conceptualizations of it in psychotherapy. We open the debate on the definition of consciousness to motivational aspects of change and to general considerations of both legal and ethical aspects.

COVID‐19 and climate change: The social‐psychological roots of conflict and conflict interventions during global crises

AbstractThe current study reviews key social psychological mechanisms related to conflict and conflict resolution that manifest within both the coronavirus pandemic and climate change crises. The uncertainty, scale, and nature of both global crises generate various forms of individual‐ and group‐level conflicts that, mediated by psychological and cultural phenomena, impede beneficial action and sustainable adaptation. Specifically, we highlight five social psychological mechanisms (i.e., cognitive dissonance, responsibility diffusion, compassion fatigue, dehumanization, and competitive beliefs) known to interact with, produce, and amplify intrapersonal, interpersonal, and/or intergroup conflicts. We draw attention to how these mechanisms have been activated by the pandemic in ways that share important similarities with climate change and present evidence‐informed approaches to combating their contribution to conflict (i.e., motivating behavior change, implementing accountability mechanisms, creating collective action opportunities, fostering intergroup contact, and promoting perspective‐taking). By engaging social psychological research to better understand both the roots of conflict as well as outline potential individual, community, and societal responses that can help alleviate conflict during these global crises, we can increase our ability to successfully navigate and in some cases avoid future conflicts caused by climate change.This article is categorized under: Perceptions, Behavior, and Communication of Climate Change > Behavior Change and Responses

Manipulating free will beliefs using online video games

Research in social psychology and experimental philosophy has investigated lay people’s free will beliefs (FWB). Using different approaches (i.e. experimental manipulations and vignette studies), they investigated how FWB relate to other concepts, and whether changing FWB has an impact on downstream processes such as social behavior. However, both approaches have shortcomings. While experimental manipulations used in social psychology suffer from demand effects, vignettes used in experimental philosophy are often highly abstract. Across two pre-registered studies, we developed a new approach by merging them in an online video game setting. Using this novel, experience-based FWB manipulation, we found that decreasing FWB impacted variables such as perceived control and responsibility in both studies. While the experience-based manipulation influenced participants’ beliefs in free will within the context of the experience (“Within the context of the scenario, would the agent believe in free will?”) in the first study, this manipulation effect did not transfer to participants’ general FWB (“Do you believe in free will?”) in the second study. Overall, our findings suggest a way forward in studying laypeople’s beliefs in free will.

Implicit Evaluation Mechanisms in Marketing Research: an Overview of Formation and Measurement of Implicit Attitude

For a long time, examining the subtle and unintended effects of people's social environments on their thoughts and behaviors has been a central goal of social psychology researchers. Advances in social psychology have proven the importance of studying not only the conscious mechanisms of humans but also the "implicit" and "automatic" ones. Researchers in social psychology distinguish explicit attitudes, evaluations resulting from an introspective effort, from implicit attitudes, automatic evaluations of which the individual may not be aware. Cognitive psychology researchers have already proven that implicit beliefs are much more important in decision-making than explicit beliefs even in what might be considered rational and/or scientific realms. Greenwald and Banaji (1995) introduced the term implicit social cognition to describe cognitive processes that occur outside of human consciousness. Implicit social cognitions were initially applied to psychology, but they are beginning to be introduced in other disciplines, notably in marketing. This article aims to provide a conceptual framework of the implicit attitude and its measurement tools through a multidisciplinary theoretical exploration. Therefore, the research method used in this paper is the analysis of the classic literature. This paper summarizes the arguments and counterarguments within the scientific discussion on the issue of implicit mechanisms in the marketing field. This review theoretically proves that the study of implicit social cognitions is a field of research with many challenges, particularly related to consumer behavior analysis because it allows marketers to understand influences unknown to the subject himself.

Attachment Anxiety and Covert Narcissistic Pangs as Reflected in Tennessee William’s The Glass Menagerie

This paper aims to provide an interdisciplinary space for fruitful debate concerning psychoanalytical representations of attachment anxiety and the fear of abandonment of a covert narcissist within the ambit of narcissism, and its implications in artistic, literary, and health discourses. Researchers in psychiatric, clinical, developmental, personality, and social psychology are interested in the issue of narcissism since its resurgence has hit the world on a pandemic scale in the last few years. Despite the extensive research on the construct of narcissism conducted so far, one of its under-represented clinical subtypes, "covert narcissism," which is intrinsically intertwined with the fear of abandonment and attachment anxiety (Cramer, 2019) remains largely unexplored as opposed to its counterpart, grandiose narcissism. Extending this hypothesis, the primary objective of the current scholarly investigation is to examine the correlations underlying the maladaptive attachment anxiety and fear of abandonment that Amanda Wingfield, the female protagonist of Tennessee Williams's most autobiographical play, The Glass Menagerie, wrestles with in her interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships. The study's secondary purpose is to further scrutinize and unearth a slew of unconscious yet toxic expressions of covert narcissism that Amanda embodies in her machinations to remain in her 'secure base'.

Questionner le sens dans l’accompagnement d’une transition vers la reconversion professionnelle : une recherche-intervention

This contribution is based on a research-intervention contracted by a team of researchers in social psychology with a local authority. It focuses on the support of public sector workers, declared medically inapt to occupy their current position, during the transition that is redeployment period. The contributions of two theoretical approaches allowing to understand this question are first crossed: existential psychology relative to the life-span career counseling on the one hand, and psychology of the socialization, underlied by the activities of personalization mobilized in the construction of meaning on the other hand. Secondly, these approaches are discussed in the light of the experience of support workshops developed and implemented in the field of this research. These workshops, organized in four sessions, aim to help participants to objectify the questions inherent in this professional transition and to give meaning to their life course and their experience of the situation. The exchanges made it possible for the participants to share views on issues such as the situation of inaptitude, their relationships to work or the redeployment package itself. These workshops give evidence of the possibility of supporting subjects, concerned by ruptures in their life, towards the development of a capacity to act and to transform their environment and highlight the psychosocial effects of a support designed as a social support for the change of professional activities.

Children endorse deterrence motivations for third-party punishment but derive higher enjoyment from compensating victims

Children’s punishment behavior may be driven by both retribution and deterrence, but the potential primacy of either motive is unknown. Moreover, children’s punishment enjoyment and compensation enjoyment have never been directly contrasted. Here, British, Colombian, and Italian 7- to 11-year-old children (N = 123) operated a Justice System in which they viewed different moral transgressions in Minecraft, a globally popular video game, either face-to-face with an experimenter or over the internet. Children could respond to transgressions by punishing transgressors and compensating victims. The purpose of the system was framed in terms of retribution, deterrence, or compensation between participants. Children’s performance, endorsement, and enjoyment of punishment and compensation were measured, along with their endorsement of retribution versus deterrence as punishment justifications, during and/or after justice administration. Children overwhelmingly endorsed deterrence over retribution as their punishment justification irrespective of age. When asked to reproduce the presented frame in their own words, children more reliably reproduced the deterrence frame rather than the retribution frame. Punishment enjoyment decreased while compensation enjoyment increased over time. Despite enjoying compensation more, children preferentially endorsed punishment over compensation, especially with increasing age and transgression severity. Reported deterrent justifications, superior reproduction of deterrence framing, lower enjoyment of punishment than of compensation, and higher endorsement of punishment over compensation together suggest that children felt that they ought to mete out punishment as a means to deter future transgressions. Face-to-face and internet-mediated responses were not distinguishable, supporting a route to social psychology research with primary school-aged children unable to physically visit labs.

Group Membership and Deviance Punishment

Deviance Punishment is an important issue for social-psychological research. Group members tend to punish deviance through rejection, ostracism and – more commonly – negative judgments. Subjective Group Dynamics proposes to account for social judgement patterns of deviant and conformist individuals. Relying on a group identity management perspective, one of the model’s core predictions is that the judgment of a deviant target depends on group membership. More specifically, the model predicts that deviant ingroup members should be judged more negatively than outgroup ones. Although this effect has been repeatedly observed over the past decades, there is a current lack of sufficiently powered studies in the literature. For the first time, we conducted tests of Subjective Group Dynamics in France and the US to investigate whether ingroup deviants were judged more harshly than outgroup ones. Across six experiments and an internal mini meta-analysis, we observed no substantial difference in judgment between ingroup and outgroup deviant targets, d = -0.01, 95% CI[-0.07, 0.06]. The findings’ implications for deviance management research are discussed.

'Guilty as charged': Intersectionality and accountability in lay talk on discrimination and violence.

Although intersectionality is gaining ground in social psychological research, most approaches fail to capture the historically and interactionally contingent nature of intersecting identities and the implications of their mobilization. This study, aiming at addressing this lacuna, focuses on the intersection of identities as lay actors' resource, used to account for the murder of Zak Kostopoulos, a young LGBTQI+ activist in Greece. Data are derived from 4 focus group discussions in which 25 young people, aged between 19 and 25 years old, participated. Using concepts provided by discursive/rhetorical psychology, analysis indicated that the rhetorical occasioning of intersecting identities is oriented to social accountability concerns and accomplishes important positioning work for the speakers. Specifically, by underscoring the intersecting (sexual/class) identities of the victim, speakers accentuated the moral charge against the perpetrators, distancing themselves from the (constructed as prototypically Greek) image of the un-enlightened and servile bigot. However, although participants explained ZK's murder through recourse to his intersecting identities, they grounded claims for justice on a common human identity (independent of class and sexuality). Findings are discussed in relation to the need to advance a critical agenda for social psychology research on intersectionality and to processes of ideological reproduction in the context of LGBTQΙ+ politics.

Lien entre sources proximales de soutien social et désengagement scolaire : le sentiment de privation relative comme signal d’alerte

IntroductionYouth school disengagement is a matter for concern. The contribution of the present argumentation is to articulate research from educational psychology on the links between sources of social support and school engagement with some models from social psychology on social stigmatization in order to propose an integrative view of school disengagement. A section will be devoted to the link between each of the student's proximal sources of social support (teachers, peers, parents and family group memberships) and school engagement. It will then be argued that this link could be mediated by feelings of relative deprivation, i.e., feelings of being unfairly treated compared to more advantaged classmates. DiscussionThe articulation of research in educational psychology and social psychology allows to argue that if a student feels less well treated than his or her classmates by parents, peers, teachers or because of group membership, he or she is likely to withdraw mentally from school (or disengage psychologically) and to disengage academically by engaging in disruptive behaviors. ConclusionThe feelings of relative deprivation experienced by the student who feels deprived in the perceived social support related to his or her school life could serve as a warning signal of school disengagement risk.

Developing Work Practices and Sustainable Talent Management of Autonomous Agile Teams

The purpose of this research is to examine the practice behind sustainable agile work practices. In the wake of Covid-19, organizations need to understand the importance of agile development processes to be able to continue doing business. This study looks at a process made popular by software engineering development in the context of post covid organization. This study takes consideration into existing social-psychology research from a human resource perspective. Namely, this study will examine group socialization and how much new members of the organization contribute to the group, particularly in sustaining organization goals.

Social Psychology of and for World-Making.

Social psychology's disconnect from the vital and urgent questions of people's lived experiences reveals limitations in the current paradigm. We draw on a related perspective in social psychology1-the sociocultural approach-and argue how this perspective can be elaborated to consider not only social psychology as a historical science but also social psychology of and for world-making. This conceptualization can make sense of key theoretical and methodological challenges faced by contemporary social psychology. As such, we describe the ontology, epistemology, ethics, and methods of social psychology of and for world-making. We illustrate our framework with concrete examples from social psychology. We argue that reconceptualizing social psychology in terms of world-making can make it more humble yet also more relevant, reconnecting it with the pressing issues of our time. We propose that social psychology should focus on "world-making" in two senses. First, people are future-oriented and often are guided more by what could be than what is. Second, social psychology can contribute to this future orientation by supporting people's world-making and also critically reflecting on the role of social psychological research in world-making. We unpack the philosophical assumptions, methodological procedures, and ethical considerations that underpin a social psychology of and for world-making. Social psychological research, whether it is intended or not, contributes to the societies and cultures in which we live, and thus it cannot be a passive bystander of world-making. By embracing social psychology of and for world-making and facing up to the contemporary societal challenges upon which our collective future depends will make social psychology more humble but also more relevant.

Перспективные направления социально-психологических исследований (к 75-летию со дня рождения А.Л. Журавлева)

Background. Te internal logic of the development of social psychology as a science, as well as the rapid changes in society afecting its subject feld, require discussion on the current scientifc problems and prospects for further social psychological research, many of which are related to the development of scientifc directions initiated by A.L. Zhuravlev and his colleagues. Te aim of the study was to describe the contribution of A.L. Zhuravlev to the development of a number of branches of Russian social psychology and, on the basis of the concepts developed by him, to identify some of the most promising areas for further research. Results. Te study singled out the following branches and directions of social psychology, the formation of which in Russia is closely connected with the works of A.L. Zhuravlev: psychology of management, joint activity and collective subject; psychology of morality; economical psychology; social psychology of the city; studies of the psychological state of the Russian society; studies of attitudes to new technologies and the infuence of technologies on socio-psychological phenomena; psychology of nuclear deterrence and strategic security, psychology of global risks. In each of these areas, the prospects for further research are outlined, taking into account the social, economic and technological changes in Russia. Conclusion. Presented analysis allows to consider collective subjectivity as an integral phenomenon that connects promising areas of research in social psychology, and the works of A.L. Zhuravlev can serve as a basis for their further development.

A novel cross-institutional college internship program to train future diverse leaders in clinical research with data-driven approaches to assess impact.

The field of Clinical Research, like many other scientific disciplines, has struggled to recruit and retain talented researchers from diverse communities. While there is a strong history of documenting the problem, having a diverse and inclusive workforce is hindered by the lack of data-driven approaches, cross-institutional partnerships, access to mentors, and positive immersive experiences for people from underrepresented groups. Here, we describe a novel initiative for North Carolina Central University Clinical Research Sciences Program (NCCU-CRSP) student interns to partner with Duke University to have immersive clinical and pre-clinical research training in a 15-week internship as the culminating experience towards their degree for a Bachelor of Science in Clinical Research. The goals of the internship are: 1) to give hands-on training to enhance the impact of classroom-based learning, 2) broaden their understanding of the wide swath of positions available to them, 3) promote their sense of self-efficacy, confidence, science identity, research identity, and connections to the pre-clinical and clinical community, and 4) prepare them to be workforce ready upon graduating. The students dedicate 75% of their time to clinical research with Duke University at Pickett Road and 25% to pre-clinical research in the Collective for Psychiatric Neuroengineering in the Duke Psychiatry Department of the School of Medicine. They will also receive eight 1-h professional development training sessions from the Duke-NCCU Clinical and Translational Science Initiative's Workforce Development Team and five 1-h sessions based on the Entering Research Curriculum developed by the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER). Finally, they will be brought in as a cohort and coached on peer mentoring and mutual support frameworks to enhance their sense of community. These student-interns will perform pre- and post-internship self-assessment surveys to quantify their self-efficacy, feelings of belonging, access to research opportunities and mentors, and to give details of their future education and career goals. We will evaluate the impact of the internship using validated tools and apply these findings for future optimization of program design and tactical advice for other programs with shared missions. Furthermore, we will email them on an annual basis with follow-up surveys to assess the longitudinal impact of this internship program, their educational experiences at NCCU, what job titles they hold, how prepared they feel for their roles, and what they hope their future career trajectory will be. Collectively, these approaches will apply theoretical frameworks developed by social and cognitive psychology, vocational theory, and educational research to clinical research training with the goals of recruiting and training talented and diverse leaders within clinical research. We hope that by evaluating our successes, failures, strengths, and liabilities through empirically derived evidence we will also inspire future studies that use data-driven approaches to elevate our approaches as we work together to train and recruit talented researchers from diverse communities into our scientific enterprise and to launch them with more in-depth experiential learning that will empower them to succeed.

Towards a Theory of Micro-Institutional Processes: Forgotten Roots, Links to Social-Psychological Research, and New Ideas

Towards a Theory of Micro-Institutional Processes: Forgotten Roots, Links to Social-Psychological Research, and New Ideas

Public Perception and Communication Patterns Pertaining to Nuclear Power in Korea: Focusing on the Transition Period from Pro-nuclear to De-nuclear Policy

Background: An effective communication strategy for reducing conflicts in South Korea has been designed through the analysis of public perception and communication variables on nuclear power under the conditions of rapidly changing nuclear power policies.Materials and Methods: This study conducted both qualitative research through group discussions based on social psychology and quantitative research through surveys.Results and Discussion: Nuclear power plant (NPP) area residents in favor of nuclear power indicated higher levels of communication, safety perception, and contribution than those against it. NPP area residents trusted the civilian expert groups (18.3%) and local government (17.3%) the most, while metropolitan city residents trusted the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission and the Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety (20.7%) the most. In determining nuclear power policy, both the NPP area residents (18.1%) and metropolitan city residents (17.1%) prioritized safety, health, and the environment. While metropolitan city residents thought that energy security and economic growth (16.4%) were important, NPP area residents thought the current issue of spent fuel rods (14.1%) to be important.Conclusion: It is necessary for the nuclear power industry to have and actively implement communication and conflict resolution strategies based on the patterns obtained in the study results.

On the precariousness of address: What narratives of being called White can tell us about researching and re/producing social categories in research.

Social categories hold a steadfast place within social psychological research and theory. Reflecting on the use of social categories in everyday life as well as social psychological research and theory, this article critically interrogates the privileging of hegemonic Western ways of categorizing, addressing and locating people over how they are read and categorized in other socio-cultural contexts. This article draws on four excerpts of women narrating experiences of being called White, Oborɔnyi or mzungu (engl. foreigner, wanderer, White person) during their travels to the African continent. The article first excavates, phenomenologically, the precariousness of being addressed as White, Oborɔnyi or mzungu. Next, a reflexive account is presented to contemplate how racialization happens in and through the research process. By bringing together phenomenological interpretation and reflexivity, the article explores the limits of researcher and researched positionality in making sense of White as a precarious address, and argues for a view that the meaning of White is established in a four-way conversation between interviewee, African Other, interviewer and our own culture-specific inner eyes. The article thus advocates for scholars to give more attention to how our inner eyes limit how we name, describe and theorize our research.

Better policy interventions through intersectionality

AbstractDeployment of intersectionality frameworks in policy design and implementation is a way to ensure that the means and goals of interventions are congruent with target populations’ understanding of their circumstances, their desired outcomes, and their empowerment. In this paper, we examine the ways concepts from psychology have been used to inform interventions and policies, and we use an intersectional lens to suggest improvements to these interventions to be more inclusive in their impact. We review three social policy interventions that were developed based on social psychological research: (1) sexual assault prevention programs based on bystander interventions; (2) so‐called “wise schooling” programs, intended to ameliorate gaps in academic achievement stemming from stereotype threat; and (3) programs aiming to foster pro‐environmental behavior, specifically, recyling. Following Cole's (2009) recommendations for using intersectionality in research in psychology together with the guiding principles that define Intersectionality‐Based Policy Analysis (Hankivsky et al., 2014), we interrogate how the psychological research that provides the foundation for these policies informs them at different points in the policy cycle and suggest alternatives designed to more equitably address these problems. Our analysis shows that these problems demand a multi‐level analysis that recognizes intersecting identities.

A social identity perspective on interoperability in the emergency services: Emergency responders' experiences of multiagency working during the COVID‐19 response in the UK

AbstractRecent research has shown that multiagency emergency response is beset by a range of challenges, calling for a greater understanding of the way in which these teams work together to improve future multiagency working. Social psychological research shows that a shared identity within a group can improve the way in which that group works together and can facilitate effective outcomes. In the present study, 52 semistructured interviews were conducted with 17 strategic and/or tactical responders during the COVID‐19 pandemic to understand the possible role of shared identity in the multiagency response to COVID‐19 and whether this was linked to factors that facilitated or challenged interoperability. Findings show evidence of a shared identity at a horizontal intergroup level among responders locally. However, there was limited evidence for a shared identity at the vertical intergroup level between local and national responders. Three key factors linked to shared identity appeared to contribute to effective multiagency working. First, pre‐existing relationships with other responders facilitated the ease with which responders were able to work together initially. Second, a sense of ‘common fate’ helped bring responders together, and finally, group leaders were able to strategically reinforce a sense of shared identity within the group.

Framing States: Unitary Actor Language and Public Support for Coercive Foreign Policy

Abstract A defining feature of public (and, often, scholarly) discussion of international affairs is the treatment of states as unitary actors, that is, akin to individual persons. Drawing upon social–psychological research, we theorize that such unitary actor (UA) framing increases the degree to which adversarial states are perceived as entitative—that is, as relatively united—and, thus, the perceived complicity of a country's people in their government's actions. We therefore hypothesize that UA framing increases citizens’ support for indiscriminate, coercive policies against target states. In a content analysis of US elite statements spanning three decades, we first establish that UA framing is exceedingly common, occurring in nearly two-thirds of all references to adversarial states. We then conduct a series of survey experiments on US adults, finding that, compared to frames in which a state is described as more factious and disunited, UA framing is associated with significantly greater willingness to impose harmful, indiscriminate economic sanctions and military strikes against target states. Our results highlight the utility and applicability of entitativity to political science research, and have important implications for the role of elite discourse in bolstering public support for hawkish foreign policymaking.