Providing Freshmen with a Good “Starting-Block”

2019 ◽  
Vol 78 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 69-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikaël De Clercq ◽  
Charlotte Michel ◽  
Sophie Remy ◽  
Benoît Galand
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Student Adjustment ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Pivotal Phase ◽  
Study Program ◽  
Study Task ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Belonging ◽  
Intention To Persist

Abstract. Grounded in social-psychological literature, this experimental study assessed the effects of two so-called “wise” interventions implemented in a student study program. The interventions took place during the very first week at university, a presumed pivotal phase of transition. A group of 375 freshmen in psychology were randomly assigned to three conditions: control, social belonging, and self-affirmation. Following the intervention, students in the social-belonging condition expressed less social apprehension, a higher social integration, and a stronger intention to persist one month later than the other participants. They also relied more on peers as a source of support when confronted with a study task. Students in the self-affirmation condition felt more self-affirmed at the end of the intervention but didn’t benefit from other lasting effects. The results suggest that some well-timed and well-targeted “wise” interventions could provide lasting positive consequences for student adjustment. The respective merits of social-belonging and self-affirmation interventions are also discussed.

Participation and Causality

2014 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 294-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory W. Dawes
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Cognitive Dimension ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Modes Of Thought ◽  
Experimental Attitude

A recurring debate within discussions of religion, science, and magic has to do with the existence of distinct modes of thought or “orientations” to the world. The thinker who initiated this debate, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, distinguished two such orientations, one characterized as “participatory” and the other as “causal.” The present essay attempts to clarify what a participatory orientation might involve, making use of the social-psychological category of a “schema.” It argues that while the attitude to which Lévy-Bruhl refers is to be distinguished from an explicit body of doctrine, it does have a cognitive dimension and can embody causal claims. It follows that if such a distinction is to be made, it is not helpfully characterized as a contrast between participation and causality. A better distinction might be that between a mythical and an experimental attitude to the world.

Contagion

2020 ◽  
pp. 72-95
Author(s):  
Mark Davis ◽  
Davina Lohm
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Social Distance ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Research Participants ◽  
The Social

Contagion is an age-old method of signifying infectious diseases like influenza and is a rich metaphor with strong biopolitical connotations for understandings of social distance, that is, the self as distinct from the other in the sense of space and identity. Contagion is therefore an important metaphor for the social distancing approaches recommended by experts during a pandemic, as was the case in 2009. This chapter, therefore, examines how research participants enacted social distancing as a method for reducing risk. It reflects on how these narratives reflected the meanings of contagion linked with distance, in particular, the notion that threat emerges elsewhere and in the figure of the other.

Symbolic interactionism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur Brittan
Keyword(s):  
Symbolic Interactionism ◽  
Social World ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
The Self ◽  
Psychological Perspective ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Language Identity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Interactive View

Symbolic interactionism is in the main a US sociological and social psychological perspective that has focused on the reciprocal relationship between language, identity and society. Philosophically it has largely been associated with pragmatists such as James (1907), Mead (1934), Dewey (1922) and Pierce (1958), although in the European context it has affinities with hermeneutics and phenomenology. In addition, it has links with various ‘dramaturgical’ approaches to communication that emphasize the interactive processes underpinning the construction, negotiation, presentation and affirmation of the self. In brief, symbolic interactionism is premised on the supposition that human beings are ‘active’ and not ‘reactive’. Although it is not easy to spell out the central propositions of Symbolic Interactionism in a systematic way, nevertheless, most of its proponents are committed to an interactive view of self and society, that is, they take issue with those views that see the social world as a seamless unity that completely encapsulates and determines individual conduct.

Facing Strangers in Need

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-30
Author(s):  
Nenad Miscevic ◽  
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
The Other ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Psychological Approach ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
The Social ◽  
Decent Life ◽  
The One

What is the role of toleration in the present-day crisis, marked by the inflow of refugees and increase in populism? The seriousness of the crises demands efforts of active toleration, acceptance, and integration of refugees and the like. Active toleration brings with itself a series of very demanding duties, divided into immediate ones involving immediate Samaritan aid to people at our doors and the long-term ones involving their acculturation and possibilities of decent life for them. A cosmopolitan attitude can contribute a lot. In the context of a refugee crisis, cosmopolitanism is not disappearing but showing its non-traditional, more Samaritan face turned not to distant strangers, as the classical one, but towards strangers at our doors.We have conjectured that this work of active toleration can diminish the need for the passive one: the well-integrated immigrant is no longer seen as a strange, exotic person with an incomprehensible and unacceptable attitude, but as one of us so that her attitudes become less irritating and provocative. The social-psychological approach that sees integration as involving both the preservation of central aspects of the original identity and the copy-pasting of the new one over it offers an interesting rationale for the conjecture: once integrated, the former newcomer is perceived as one of ‘us’ and her views stop being exotic, incomprehensible and a priori unacceptable. Given the amount of need for toleration, and difficulties and paradoxes connected with its passive variety, the conjecture, if true, might be a piece of good news.Finally, we have briefly touched the question of deeper causes of the crisis. Once one turns to this question, the traditional cosmopolitan issues come back to the forefront: the deep poverty and unjust distribution on the one hand, and conflicts and wars on the other. Cosmopolitans have a duty to face these issues, and this is where active global toleration leads in our times.

scholarly journals HOW DEEPLY DO WE INCLUDE ROBOTIC AGENTS IN THE SELF?

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (01) ◽  
pp. 1350015 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNA STENZEL ◽  
ERIS CHINELLATO ◽  
ANGEL P. DEL POBIL ◽  
MARKUS LAPPE ◽  
ROMAN LIEPELT
Keyword(s):  
Simon Task ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cognitive Representations ◽  
Indirect Measure ◽  
Human Interactions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Report Data ◽  
High Degree

In human–human interactions, a consciously perceived high degree of self–other overlap is associated with a higher degree of integration of the other person's actions into one's own cognitive representations. Here, we report data suggesting that this pattern does not hold for human–robot interactions. Participants performed a social Simon task with a robot, and afterwards indicated the degree of self–other overlap using the Inclusion of the Other in the Self (IOS) scale. We found no overall correlation between the social Simon effect (as an indirect measure of self–other overlap) and the IOS score (as a direct measure of self–other overlap). For female participants we even observed a negative correlation. Our findings suggest that conscious and unconscious evaluations of a robot may come to different results, and hence point to the importance of carefully choosing a measure for quantifying the quality of human–robot interactions.

scholarly journals Psychoanalysis and Deconstruction, A Love Story

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-44
Author(s):  
Kelly Oliver
Keyword(s):  
Social Contract ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Love Story ◽  
The Social ◽  
Origin Story ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Voice

In The Right to Narcissism: A Case for Im-Possible Self-Love, Pleshette DeArmitt opens the space for an alternative to origin story so popular with political philosophers, namely, the social contract, which assumes a rational and self-identical subject.  She does this obliquely by deconstructing narcissism as love of the self-same, or, love of what Kristeva might call “the clean and proper self.”  Like Echo interrupting Narcissus’s soliloquy of deadly self-absorbed pleasure and his solitary auto-affection upon seeing his own reflection, Pleshette interrupts the seeming proximity of self-same, the closeness of near, and the propinquity of proper by deflecting the image of Narcissus onto the voice of Echo, who comes into her own by repeating his words.  How, asks Pleshette, can Echo’s reiteration of the words of another be anything more than mere repetition or reduplication?  Echoing Derrida, she answers that it is through a declaration of love.  Echo’s repetition of the words of Narcissus take on new meaning, and allow her to express herself, and her love, through the words of the other.  After all words are words of the other.  Language comes to us from the other.  Echo becomes a self, a “little narcissist,” through an address from and to the other, through the appropriation and ex-appropriation of the other’s words. 

Music in the Work of Social Reproduction

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Drott
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Practice Turn ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Shed Light

This article interrogates music’s role in the work of social reproduction by bringing into dialogue two seemingly antithetical approaches to thinking music’s relation to the social. One is historical materialism; the other is work informed by the “practice turn” in music sociology, exemplified by Tia DeNora’s studies of music as a “technology of the self.” By taking seriously the proposition that under certain conditions music may itself function as a technology, and by reframing this proposition along materialist lines, this article aims to shed light on the changing functions music has come to assume in late neoliberalism. In particular, new modalities of digital distribution like streaming, by simultaneously driving down the cost of music and normalizing its therapeutic, prosthetic, and self-regulatory uses, increasingly cast it as a cheap resource that can be harnessed to replenish the cognitive, affective, and/or communicative energies strained by the current crisis of social reproduction.

Conversation and Design

2008 ◽  
pp. 59-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ranulph Glanville
Keyword(s):  
Design Education ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Educational Setting ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Paper And Pencil ◽  
Conversation Theory ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter explores the relationship between the activity of design and conversation—particularly as developed in Gordon Pask’s Conversation Theory. Design and conversation are seen as analogous, so that design can be understood as a conversation held, generally, with the self (via paper and pencil). I argue that design has been a conversational activity since long before we started exploring conversation, and that design education is, itself, also conversational. This being so, conversational approaches are already the norm in design education. The benefit of considering design and conversation together in an educational setting is not so much to improve one or the other, but to understand each better through the mirror the other provides. Other aspects of design (such as the social working in the studio) are also related to this conversational understanding. It is argued that design is a powerful, alternative and fundamental way of working and being in the world, not poor science, and that Pask’s conversation theory helps us better understand both its power and its validity.

The Life-World of Persons with Borderline Personality Disorder

2018 ◽  
pp. 664-681 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Stanghellini ◽  
Milena Mancini
Keyword(s):  
Borderline Personality Disorder ◽  
Personality Disorder ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Borderline Personality ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Emotional Intensity ◽  
Life World ◽  
The Social ◽  
Shame And Guilt

Persons with borderline personality disorder are often described as affected by extreme emotional fluctuations. This article analyses their fundamental emotions: dysphoria and anger, despair, boredom, shame, and guilt. Our focus will be mainly on the two distinct life-world configurations that originate from dysphoria and anger: the dysphoric life-world and the life-world of anger. The first is characterized by a quasi-ineffable constellation of feelings in which Self and Others are irritatingly indefinite. In the second, the vague sense of Self and Others disappear: the Self is the victim, the Other the Offender. This emotional intensity does not allow borderline persons to distance themselves from what they feel here-and-now, thus feelings and values overlap. We call this “frustrated normativity.” Borderline persons are guided by the value of authenticity thus entering into collision with the social norms/conventions which they consider inauthentic and therefore an unwarranted challenge to their truly natural being: spontaneity.

scholarly journals ‘I like to go out to be energised by different people’: an exploratory analysis of mobility and wellbeing in later life

2011 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 758-781 ◽  
Author(s):  
FRIEDERIKE ZIEGLER ◽  
TIM SCHWANEN
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Older People ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Later Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World

ABSTRACTThis paper adds to the growing number of studies about mobility and wellbeing in later life. It proposes a broader understanding of mobility than movement through physical space. Drawing on the ‘mobility turn’ in the social sciences, we conceptualise mobility as the overcoming of any type of distance between a here and a there, which can be situated in physical, electronic, social, psychological or other kinds of space. Using qualitative data from 128 older people in County Durham, England, we suggest that mobility and wellbeing influence each other in many different ways. Our analysis extends previous research in various ways. First, it shows that mobility of the self – a mental disposition of openness and willingness to connect with the world – is a crucial driver of the relation between mobility and wellbeing. Second, while loss of mobility as physical movement can and often does affect older people's sense of wellbeing adversely, this is not necessarily so; other mobilities can at least to some extent compensate for the loss of mobility in physical space. Finally, wellbeing is also enhanced through mobility as movement in physical space because the latter enables independence or subjectively experienced autonomy, as well as inter-dependence in the sense of relatively equal and reciprocal social relations with other people.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document