scholarly journals Perspective-taking is spontaneous but not automatic

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (10) ◽  
pp. 1605-1628
Author(s):  
Cathleen O’Grady ◽  
Thom Scott-Phillips ◽  
Suilin Lavelle ◽  
Kenny Smith
Keyword(s):  
Visual System ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Social World ◽  
Computationally Efficient ◽  
Classic Result ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
The Social ◽  
External Objects ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
Do So

Data from a range of different experimental paradigms—in particular (but not only) the dot perspective task—have been interpreted as evidence that humans automatically track the perspective of other individuals. Results from other studies, however, have cast doubt on this interpretation, and some researchers have suggested that phenomena that seem like perspective-taking might instead be the products of simpler behavioural rules. The issue remains unsettled in significant part because different schools of thought, with different theoretical perspectives, implement the experimental tasks in subtly different ways, making direct comparisons difficult. Here, we explore the possibility that subtle differences in experimental method explain otherwise irreconcilable findings in the literature. Across five experiments we show that the classic result in the dot perspective task is not automatic (it is not purely stimulus-driven), but nor is it exclusively the product of simple behavioural rules that do not involve mentalising. Instead, participants do compute the perspectives of other individuals rapidly, unconsciously, and involuntarily, but only when attentional systems prompt them to do so (just as, for instance, the visual system puts external objects into focus only as and when required). This finding prompts us to clearly distinguish spontaneity from automaticity. Spontaneous perspective-taking may be a computationally efficient means of navigating the social world.

scholarly journals Perspective-taking is spontaneous but not automatic

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cathleen O'Grady ◽  
Thom Scott-Phillips ◽  
Suilin Lavelle ◽  
Kenny Smith
Keyword(s):  
Visual System ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Social World ◽  
Computationally Efficient ◽  
Classic Result ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
The Social ◽  
External Objects ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
Do So

Data from a range of different experimental paradigms -- in particular (but not only) the dot perspective task -- have been interpreted as evidence that humans automatically track the perspective of other individuals. Results from other studies, however, have cast doubt on this interpretation, and some researchers have suggested that phenomena that seem like perspective-taking might instead be the products of simpler behavioural rules. The issue remains unsettled in significant part because different schools of thought, with different theoretical perspectives, implement the experimental tasks in subtly different ways, making direct comparisons difficult. Here, we explore the possibility that subtle differences in experimental method explain otherwise irreconcilable findings in the literature. Across five experiments we show that the classic result in the dot perspective task is not automatic (it is not purely stimulus-driven), but nor is it exclusively the product of simple behavioural rules that do not involve mentalizing. Instead, participants do compute the perspectives of other individuals rapidly, unconsciously and involuntarily, but only when attentional systems prompt them to do so (just as, for instance, the visual system puts external objects into focus only as and when required). This finding prompts us to clearly distinguish spontaneity from automaticity. Spontaneous perspective-taking may be a computationally efficient means of navigating the social world.

Postmodernism and Sociology: From the Epistemological to the Empirical

2005 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rekha Mirchandani
Keyword(s):  
Social World ◽  
Risk Society ◽  
Postmodern Theory ◽  
Consumer Capitalism ◽  
Research Programs ◽  
Time Space ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Postmodern Ethics ◽  
Do So

This article investigates the place of postmodernism in sociology today by making a distinction between its epistemological and empirical forms. During the 1980s and early 1990s, sociologists exposited, appropriated, and normalized an epistemological postmodernism that thematizes the tentative, reflective, and possibly shifting nature of knowledge. More recently, however, sociologists have recognized the potential of a postmodern theory that turns its attention to empirical concerns. Empirical postmodernists challenge classical modern concepts to develop research programs based on new concepts like time-space reorganization, risk society, consumer capitalism, and postmodern ethics. But they do so with an appreciation for the uncertainty of the social world, ourselves, our concepts, and our commitment to our concepts that results from the encounter with postmodern epistemology. Ultimately, this article suggests that understanding postmodernism as a combination of these two moments can lead to a sociology whose epistemological modesty and empirical sensitivity encourage a deeper and broader approach to the contemporary social world.

Education as Relational Process

2020 ◽  
pp. 26-49
Author(s):  
Kenneth J. Gergen ◽  
Scherto R. Gill
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Social World ◽  
Assessment Practices ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Assessment Orientation ◽  
Ways Of Life ◽  
Do So ◽  
Relational Process

Replacing the assessment orientation requires an alternative to the idea of schools as sites of production. To do so, the authors challenge the conception of schools as composed of individual actors whose performance can be measured independently of their lodgment in the social world. They argue that our understandings of the world, along with our ways of life, come about within a process of relating. It is out of coordination among participants that beliefs, values, and meaningfulness of actions originate. Thus the process of co-creation is essential to knowledge, understanding, and learning. Significant distinctions are drawn among various forms of relational process, with contrasts between conventional conversations (valuable in sustaining tradition) degenerative interchange (leading to the destruction of meaning-making) and generative relating (that inspires innovation and enriches relationship). Measurement-based assessment practices in education foster alienation, suspicion, self-centeredness, and an instrumental orientation to relating. Vitally needed is the development of a relationally enriching orientation to evaluation.

Real Hallucinations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Ratcliffe
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Relations ◽  
Social World ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Philosophical Study ◽  
Intentional State ◽  
Thought Insertion ◽  
Auditory Verbal Hallucinations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Simple Question ◽  
Do So

Real Hallucinations is a philosophical study of the structure of human experience, its vulnerability to disruption, and how its integrity depends on interpersonal relations. It focuses on the beguilingly simple question of how we manage to routinely distinguish between our experiences of perceiving, remembering, imagining, and thinking. This question is addressed via a detailed philosophical study of auditory verbal hallucinations (usually defined as hearing a voice in the absence of a speaker) and thought insertion (somehow experiencing one’s own thoughts as someone else’s). The book shows how thought insertion, and also a substantial proportion of auditory verbal hallucinations, consist of disturbances in the structure of experience and –more specifically - in our sense of the various types of intentional state, such as believing, perceiving, remembering, and imagining, as distinct from one another. It is further argued that episodic and seemingly localized experiential disturbances such as these usually occur against a backdrop of less pronounced but much wider-ranging alterations in the structure of intentionality. To do so, the book addresses types of experience associated with trauma, schizophrenia, and profound grief. The outcome of this is a more generally applicable account of how the integrity of human experience, including the most basic sense of self, is inseparable from how we relate to other people and to the social world as a whole.

scholarly journals A Model of How Shifting Intelligence Drives Social Movements

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 62
Author(s):  
Noah F. G. Evers ◽  
Patricia M. Greenfield
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Human Development ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Social Intelligence ◽  
Social World ◽  
Practical Intelligence ◽  
The Social ◽  
Do So

Based on the theory of social change, cultural evolution, and human development, we propose a mechanism whereby increased danger in society causes predictable shifts in valued forms of intelligence: 1. Practical intelligence rises in value relative to abstract intelligence; and 2. social intelligence shifts from measuring how well individuals can negotiate the social world to achieve their personal aims to measuring how well they can do so to achieve group aims. We document these shifts during the COVID-19 pandemic and argue that they led to an increase in the size and strength of social movements.

scholarly journals Interdisciplinary Critical Geographies of Water: Capturing the Mutual Shaping of Society and Hydrological Flows

Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 1973 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Rusca ◽  
Giuliano Di Baldassarre
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Critical Geography ◽  
Research Experience ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

In light of recent calls for an increased commitment to interdisciplinary endeavors, this paper reflects on the implications of a critical geography of water that crosses social and natural sciences. Questions on how to best research the relationship between water and society have been raised both in the field of critical geographies of water and sociohydrology. Yet, there has been little crossover between these disciplinary perspectives. This, we argue, may be partly explained by the fact that interdisciplinary research is both advocated and antagonized. On the one hand, interdisciplinarity is argued to deliver more in terms of effectively informing policy processes and developing theoretical perspectives that can reform and regenerate knowledge. On the other hand, natural and social sciences are often presented as ontologically, epistemologically, and methodologically incompatible. Drawing on our own research experience and expertise, this paper focuses on the multiple ways in which critical geographies of water and sociohydrology are convergent, compatible, and complementary. We reflect on the existing theoretical instruments to engage in interdisciplinary research and question some of the assumptions on the methodological and epistemological incompatibility between natural and social sciences. We then propose that an interdisciplinary resource geography can further understandings of how power and the non-human co-constitute the social world and hydrological flows and advance conceptualizations of water as socionatures.

scholarly journals Theoretical Perspectives of Crisis Management and Recovery for Events (Vassilios Ziakas, Vladimir Antchak and Donald Getz)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vassilios Ziakas ◽  
Vladimir Antchak ◽  
Donald Getz
Keyword(s):  
Crisis Management ◽  
Social World ◽  
Economic Losses ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The World ◽  
Management Approaches ◽  
Creativity And Innovation

The world is always subject to crises and many times significant developments or changes occur in the aftermath of a crisis. In this regard, any crisis can be viewed as a turning point or critical juncture, though typically characterized by ambiguity, volatility and grave worries about the future. A crisis can cause continuing existential and socio-economic impacts; however, it also provides opportunities for creativity and innovation by re-imagining and reconfiguring the strategic purpose of organizations. Crises are apposite circumstances for reflection on management approaches, decision-making and the overall stability and sustainability of any system within which individual organizations operate. Arguably, any crisis prompts change to systems and organizations analogous to its scale and extent of multifaceted impacts. The recent COVID-19 pandemic is a case in point of a multifaceted crisis as it is not only a health emergency. It entirely disrupted the social world and its commerce bringing about serious repercussions to the everyday life of people. The event sector, being a mirror of society, has been affected dramatically. Compulsory closures and regulations regarding social distancing led to innumerable postponements or cancellations of planned events, from the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo to the smallest of community celebrations. Professional and amateur sports alike postponed or cancelled their seasons. Businesses of all scales all along the supply chain, including the venues, entertainers, and suppliers of goods and services, suffered enormous economic losses.

scholarly journals Scientific Inquiry in Educational Administration

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 100
Author(s):  
Zulfakar Zulfakar
Keyword(s):  
Educational Administration ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Social World ◽  
Leadership Management ◽  
Key Points ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
Epistemological Break ◽  
Theory Research

I build my argument on two key points, first, the centrality of administration in our understanding of the social world, and second, the intellectual gaze of the embedded actor, to argue for a re-thinking of scientific inquiry in educational administration. As with Bourdieu, I seek to cast doubt on orthodoxy, or, to make the familiar strange. This is a necessary, and important, task when working in the social world that the researcher is involved. Importantly, such a move requires explicit attention to the epistemological break of the embodied agent, and the construction of the research object, rather than just the confirmation, or disconfirmation, of the researcher’s model of reality. To engage with these issues, I do not offer a fully articulated theory, research programme or even ‘how to’ description, that is the intent of the book at large. Rather I sketch an argument centered on the need to interrogate the construction of the research object as a means to extend current deBates on leadership, management and administration of educational institutions in new and more fruitful directions.

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