scholarly journals “After the Discussion, I am Even More Confident in My Point of View”: An Overview of Studies of Group Polarization

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 6-11
Author(s):  
A. Nevryuev ◽  
M. Gagarina

The polarization of the population in Russia is reflected in the psychological state of society. The article deals with the phenomenon of “group polarization”. First, we define the phenomenon formulated in the framework of social psychology. Next, we presented the main theories that explain the mechanism of action of this phenomenon. Further, we considered in more detail psychological experiments aimed to study group polarization empirically. Separately, we considered studies that also established the features of group polarization, but were carried out in related social sciences. The examples of recent events that took place in Russia illustrate the process of group polarization in modern society in the period from 2014 to 2020. Based on the described studies, we formulated the need for a more detailed empirical analysis of this phenomenon in the current conditions of society in Russia. Finally, we outlined the main ways related to the study of the connection between group polarization and the psychological state of society and people’s behaviour.

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 172-193
Author(s):  
Galina G. Lisitsyna

The purpose of this article is to draw the attention of specialists in the field of social sciences to a unique collection of documents at Moscow’s Institute of social psychology (1917–1924) created by V.M. Khvostov — a legislative science expert, philosopher, sociologist, who set himself the task of separating sociology and making it a specialized scientific discipline. The only work to date devoted to the Institute was an article written by its employee L.A. Byzov in 1923 (published in 2011), where he speaks about the history of the Institute, its development, achievements and failures from the point of view of a person who knows the situation from the inside. This makes it invaluable in terms of studying the history of the Institute of social psychology, in this work in particular, which provides more detailed information about the activities of V.M. Khvostov, the Institute’s employees and specialists involved in its work. These people were actually performing a scientific feat, creating a new direction in the field of social sciences, working in the extremely difficult conditions of the post-revolutionary era. The content and completeness of those of the Institute’s protocols which found their way into our hands, them currently being stored in the archives of the European University in St. Petersburg, are worthy of a full-fledged scientific publication that could write another page in the history of Russian sociology.


2020 ◽  
pp. 5-17
Author(s):  
Maria Teresa Cuomo ◽  
Francesca Ceruti ◽  
Alice Mazzucchelli ◽  
Alex Giordano ◽  
Debora Tortora

The actual omnichannel customer uses indifferently both online and offline channels to express himself through consumption, which increasingly blends personal, cultural and social dimensions. In this perspective social media and social networks are able to assist e-retailers in their effort of creating a total e-customer experience, especially in the tourism industry, trying to satisfy their clients from the relational and commercial point of view. By means of an empirical analysis where managers were interviewed on the topic and its degree of application in the firms, the paper underlines how from the managerial point of view, that represents a new prospect on the topic, the expected shift from e-commerce to social commerce paradigm, facilitating the selling and buying of products and services by using various internet features, is nowadays not completely understood and realized.


1975 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-248
Author(s):  
A. R. Kemal

In the Winter 1974 issue of the Pakistan Development Review, Messrs: Azhar and Sharif have published an article entitled "The Effects of Tax Holiday on Invest¬ment Decisions: An Empirical Analysis." It was an interesting article in a very useful area of research. Apart from other subsidies, tax holidays are granted to encourage investment generally, but in certain areas particularly. Thus a study -on tax holiday is important from the policy point of view as it helps decide whether to reintroduce the tax holiday policy which was abolished in 1972. Unfortunately, there are some conceptual and methodological problems in the study so that the results presented by Azhar and Sharif are rather suspect. However, before taking up these problems, let it be pointed out that the conclusions drawn by Azhar and Sharif regarding ineffectiveness of the tax holiday policy in encouraging private investment is not quite correct. Their study showed that 20 percent of firms would not have invested if they had not been granted tax holidays. A policy which en¬courages investment by 20 percent cannot be called ineffective. Before drawing any such conclusions, one is advised to look at the relative effectivenesses of different investment-promoting policies.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-29
Author(s):  
Elżbieta Wesołowska

In social psychology the group polarization refers to the tendency for groups to make decisionsthat are more extreme than the initial inclinations of its members. This phenomenon constitutesa potential obstacle to positive outcomes attributed to deliberative debates. A deliberative debateis a particular kind of a group discussion tasked with fi nding group consensus on controversialissues. The idea of deliberation originates from the writings of John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas, AmyGutmann and Denis Thompson. Deliberative debate imposes numerous normative requirementson the communication, relationships among the disputants and their approach to the issue underdiscussion. These normative requirements make a big difference between deliberative debates andthe situations in which the phenomenon of polarization was observed. Thus, we presume that indeliberative debates conditions the phenomenon of group polarization may be limited.The paper investigates the following questions: would the normative conditions of deliberationlimit the occurrence of polarization in discussing groups? and What infl uence (if any) would thepolarization process have on the quality of group decision? In the light of the empirical data we concluded what follows: (1) In 50% of the analyzed casesof group discussion the phenomenon of group polarization was observed despite the normativeconditions of deliberation. (2) The occurrence of group polarization in some cases coincided withmaking the fi nal decisions which did not alter the initial preferences of the disputants (but did nottotally predestinated the fi nal outcome).


2020 ◽  
pp. 83-89
Author(s):  
D. V. Bobrov ◽  
A. A. Shulus ◽  
F. F. Farisov

The authors analyze different approaches to the study of the political system of society (PSO) in various social sciences. The prospects of an interdisciplinary study of PSO based on the llocation of several subsystems with various functions are substantiated. The characteristic of various functional subsystems of the PSO is given, among them: institutional, regulatory, ideological, technological, communication subsystems


2020 ◽  
pp. 65-75
Author(s):  
S. N. Smirnov

The author considers the problems of typification of society. Some concepts of typification of social stratification models in different countries formulated and justified in historical and legal, historical, sociological, and economic scientific literature are reviewed. The circumstances that make it difficult to formulate universal concepts designed for application in the complex of social Sciences are identified. These circumstances include insufficient consideration of legal factors, including the position of the legislator, the specifics of the corporate legal status, and the characteristics of the mechanism for changing individual legal status. The author offers a variant of classification of society types from the point of view of legal registration of their structure. The possibility of distinguishing types such as consolidated companies and segmented companies is justified.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Ravindra Ranaware

The present paper aims at exploration of Shauna Singh Baldwin’s specific technique implemented to present women predicament in selected stories from feministic point of view. The feministic point of view has developed out of a movement for equal rights and chances for women society. The present search is based on analytical and interpretative methods. Shauna Singh Baldwin is a writer of short fiction, poetry, novels and essays. Her ‘English Lessons and Other Stories’ explores the predicament of earlier neglected women of Sikh community by putting them in the context of globalization, immigration to West and consumerism at Indian modern society. “Montreal 1962” presents a Sikh wife’s attachment, love, determination, struggles and readiness to do anything for survival in Canada where her husband is threatened to remove his turban and cut his hair short to get the job. “Simran” presents the story of sacrifice of individual desire by a young Sikh girl because of her mother’s fundamentalist attitude. The title of story “English Lessons” presents injustice to an Indian woman who has married to an American, who compels her to become a prostitute and a source of his earnings in the States. The fourth selected story “Jassie” tells us about the timely need of religious tolerance in the file of an Indian immigrant old woman. Being a feminist writer, though Baldwin has never claimed directly to be, she has very skillfully presented the issues of feminism through her own technique of presentation. She has used technique of presenting absence or opposite to highlight it indirectly. Thus, true to her technique, though not explicitly declared, Baldwin is one of the feminist writers who skillfully deals with feminine concerns.


Dreyfus argues that there is a basic methodological difference between the natural sciences and the social sciences, a difference that derives from the different goals and practices of each. He goes on to argue that being a realist about natural entities is compatible with pluralism or, as he calls it, “plural realism.” If intelligibility is always grounded in our practices, Dreyfus points out, then there is no point of view from which one can ask about or provide an answer to the one true nature of ultimate reality. But that is consistent with believing that the natural sciences can still reveal the way the world is independent of our theories and practices.


Author(s):  
Detlef Pollack ◽  
Gergely Rosta

Although the countries of Western Europe are very similar to the US in terms of their social, political, and economic conditions, they differ greatly when it comes to religion. Chapter 10 discusses how these differences can be explained. The empirical analysis shows that, besides the considerable differences in the level of religiosity between the US and Western Europe, there are also surprising similarities in the weakening church ties and religious practices. The findings demonstrate that it is in many respects not Europe but America that is the exception. This relates among other things to the level of social inequality, which is unusually high for a modern society, the strong tendencies towards functional dedifferentiation, such as between religion and politics, and the traditionalism of the culturally accepted system of values.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Daniel Abril-López ◽  
Hortensia Morón-Monge ◽  
María del Carmen Morón-Monge ◽  
María Dolores López Carrillo

This study was developed with Early Childhood Preservice Teachers within the framework of the Teaching and Learning of Social Sciences over three academic years (2017–2018, 2018–2019, and 2019–2020) at the University of Alcalá. The main objective was to improve the learning to learn competence during teacher training from an outdoor experience at the Museum of Guadalajara (Spain), using e/m-learning tools (Blackboard Learn, Google Forms, QR codes, and websites) and the inquiry-based learning approach. To ascertain the level of acquisition of this competence in those teachers who were being trained, their self-perception—before and after—of the outdoor experience was assessed through a system of categories adapted from the European Commission. The results show a certain improvement in this competence in Early Childhood Preservice Teachers. Additionally, this outdoor experience shows the insufficient educational adaptation of the museum to the early childhood education stage from a social sciences point of view. Finally, we highlight the importance of carrying out outdoor experiences from an inquiry-based education approach. These outdoor experiences should be carried out in places like museums to encourage contextualized and experiential learning of the youngest in formal education.


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