scholarly journals Loneliness in Older People and COVID-19: Applying the Social Identity Approach to Digital Intervention Design

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avelie Stuart ◽  
Dmitri Katz ◽  
Clifford Stevenson ◽  
Daniel Gooch ◽  
Lydia Harkin ◽  
...  

The COVID-19 pandemic is increasing older people's existing challenges in engaging with their physical and social worlds, and is thereby likely to worsen their loneliness. Digital technology has been offered as a potential aid for social connectedness during social distancing/isolation. However, many popular digital communication tools have not been designed to specifically address the needs of older adults impacted by social isolation. We propose that the social identity approach to health and the Social Identity Model of Identity Change (SIMIC) could be a foundation for digital interventions to address loneliness. While SIMIC applies to maintaining wellbeing during life transitions, it has not previously been rigorously applied to digital interventions. There are known challenges to integrating psychological theory to the design of digital technology, such as efficacy, user-autonomy, and engagement. The interdisciplinary field of Human Computer Interaction has a history of drawing on models originating from psychology to improve the design of digital technology and to design technologies in an appropriate manner. Drawing on key lessons from this literature, we consolidate design guidelines that could assist in applying SIMIC to digital interventions for loneliness in older people affected by the pandemic.

2021 ◽  
Vol 81 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-64
Author(s):  
Maximilian Schell

Abstract Against the background of the virulent question of destructive conflict dynamics between groups, the present contribution introduces the social-psychological theory complex of the »Social Identity Approach« (SIA) and discusses it from a theological-anthropological and theological-ethical point of view. While the SIA assumes that social identity, which is important for the concept of self, leads to depersonalization and the devaluation of foreign groups, a Christian understanding of identity could on the one hand protect against overidentification with collective identities and on the other hand, following Bonhoeffer's reflections, remind us that collectives, too, must be understood as actors with an ethical orientation and, as collective persons, must be held responsible in a specific way for processes of social transformation. The church, as an actor in civil society, could play the prototypical role of a reconciling collective.


Author(s):  
S. Alexander Haslam ◽  
Inmaculada Adarves-Yorno ◽  
Niklas K. Steffens ◽  
Tom Postmes

The processes of creative production and creativity recognition are both understood to be central to the dynamics of creativity. Nevertheless, they are generally seen by creativity researchers as theoretically unrelated. In contrast, social identity theorizing suggests a model of creativity in which groups play a role both in inspiring creative acts and in determining the reception they receive. More specifically, this approach argues that shared social identity (or lack of it) motivates individuals to rise to particular creative challenges and provides a basis for certain forms of creativity to be recognized (or disregarded). This chapter explicates the logic underlying the social identity approach and summarizes some of the key evidence that supports it.


2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (7) ◽  
pp. 789-802 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jolanda Jetten ◽  
S. Alexander Haslam ◽  
Tegan Cruwys ◽  
Katharine H. Greenaway ◽  
Catherine Haslam ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
pp. 0142064X2110647
Author(s):  
Katja Kujanpää

When Paul and the author of 1 Clement write letters to Corinth to address crises of leadership, both discuss Moses’ παρρησία (frankness and openness), yet they evaluate it rather differently. In this article, I view both authors as entrepreneurs of identity and explore the ways in which they try to shape their audience’s social identity and influence their behaviour in the crisis by selectively retelling scriptural narratives related to Moses. The article shows that social psychological theories under the umbrella term of the social identity approach help to illuminate the active role of leaders in identity construction as well as the processes of retelling the past in order to mobilize one’s audience.


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