...Comparing and Contrasting Essentialist Approaches to Social Psychology with Social Constructionist Approaches to Social Psychology. A widely recognised definition of social psychology is “an effort to understand and explain how the thought, feeling, and behaviour of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others” (Allport, 1985). However, how to measure this, the research methods to be used and what constitutes useful evidence has caused much debate in the history of social psychology. This essay will compare and contrast the two epistemologies of essentialist and social constructionist approaches to social psychology and the research methods of quantitative and qualitative used in each approach. Essentialists’ view of the world is that the properties possessed by a group are universal in that group and do not depend on context. However, a member of a group may possess other characteristics that are not required to include it as a group member but, it must not have characteristics that preclude it from being a member of the group (Burr, 1995). For example, essentialists believe that personality consists of a number of traits and personality of an individual is established by the level of each of these traits. Essentialists also believe that these traits remain more or less stable over time and it is our personality that influences behaviour (Maltby, 2010). As essentialists are able to classify groups as such, they use quantitative research...
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...College Social constructivist perspective for understanding schizophrenia, mental health and illness Mentor: Student: *name *name Spring, 2013 Contents: 1 INTRODUCTION 3 2 Social constructivist perspective of schizophrenia 4 3 CONCLUSION 7 REFERENCES 8 INTRODUCTION In this paper we analyze the concept according to which mental illness is as much a socially constructed disease as it is a physiological one and especially the example of schizophrenia, one of the oldest, most documented, and least understood of all the behaviors that fall under society’s category of mental illness. One of the most influential theoretical positions evident in the sociology of health and illness over the past 30 years has been social constructivism. A central assumption within this broad approach is that reality is not self-evident, stable and waiting to be discovered, but instead it is a product of human activity. In this broad sense all versions of social constructivism can be identified as a reaction against positivism and naive realism. There are multiple intellectual roots of a social constructionist approach to illness. Some of the basic building blocks are evident in the writings of early sociological thinkers (Durkheim, Mannheim, Thomas), but one of the most important intellectual foundations of the social construction of illness is social problems theory and research from...
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...The sociology of emotions has increasingly emerged in recent decades (Turner & Stets 2006, p. 25). Various sociological perspectives have provided the literature different ways of understanding emotions. This paper will explore several major contributions of sociological studies into emotions. The theoretical perspectives of Durkheim (1976), Kemper (1978; 1987), Barbalet (1992), and Hochschild (2003; 1979; 1975) will be discussed. Furthermore, this paper will critically evaluate Hochschild’s (2003) concept of emotional labour. Critics have positively appraised and defended her thesis, where they argue that the concept is applicable and relevant in the workplace. However, many scholars have negatively evaluated her thesis by highlighting many...
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...committed three or more killings in between emotional cooling-off periods (Miller, 2014) – can be traced back to the beginning of human history. Nevertheless, many scholars of today have argued that social and cultural circumstances have led to a specific modern conceptualization and representation of serial killers in the Western world. One of the primary influencers shaping the notion of the serial killer is the mass media. The modern stereotyped depiction of serial killers is that they range between the ages of 20 to 40 and are typically white, single, heterosexual males (Haggerty, 2009). These common depictions of serial killers are presented...
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...Article Analysis Moral Panics: Culture, Politics, and Social Construction Introduction: One might heard about threats, warnings and illegal actions that are influencing the society at their peak. No matter which culture an individual is belonged to, the thing that matters is the panic he has been influenced by, through various ways. Such panic is simply termed as moral panic and it has been the cause of cultural conflicts, social disturbances and political issues. Moral panic has been a hot topic of discussion that considered through several different perspectives; emphasizing on this aspect, various scholars and researchers have illustrated the society with the instances of social, culture and political problems and more specifically the moral panics. Cohen (1972) defined moral panic as societal threat whereas Furedi (1994) described moral panics as a threat to happiness and health. Continuing the research in same domain, Goode and Ben-Yehuda also contributed in defining the concept of moral panics in relation to the cultural, social and political problems. Focusing on the broader spectrum presented by Goode and Ben-Yehuda, the given paper has been written. The main aim of the current discussion is to highlight the study or research conducted by Goode and Ben-Yehuda about a specific issue and major public concern that is none other than moral panics. The given paper has been categorized into the following sections in order to develop an understanding what the researchers...
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...Hmong Culture vs Western Medicine: A Social Constructionist Analysis Throughout Lia Lee’s medical journey, both her doctors and her family struggled to understand one another’s behavior resulting in misunderstandings, alienation, and distrust between the two parties. The social constructionist perspective and related theories on human behavior, such as symbolic interactionism, can be used to analyze the complicated and confusing relationship between the Lee family and the Merced County Medical Center doctors. The social constructionist perspective, as defined in the book Human Behavior and the Social Environment, states that “people construct meaning, sense of self, and a social world through their interactions with each other,” Hustchison, 2019, p 52....
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...itself, and the receiver was the part of the phone where one could hear the other person. Shannon and Weaver also recognized that often there is static that interferes with one listening to a telephone conversation, which they deemed noise. The noise could also mean the absence of signal.[1] In a simple model, often referred to as the transmission model or standard view of communication, information or content (e.g. a message innatural language) is sent in some form (as spoken language) from an emisor/ sender/ encoder to a destination/ receiver/ decoder. This common conception of communication views communication as a means of sending and receiving information. The strengths of this model are simplicity, generality, and quantifiability. Social scientists Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver structured this model based on the following elements: 1. An information source, which produces a message. 2. A transmitter, which encodes the message into signals 3. A channel, to which signals are adapted for transmission 4. A receiver, which 'decodes' (reconstructs) the message from the signal. 5. A destination, where the message...
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...Generally, these concerns then bring to light the recurring issue around the concept of reproducibility within the scientific community. According to those who participated in the Open Science Collaboration (2012) research paper, reproducibility is the process of “obtaining a meaningful estimate of reproducibility requires conducting replications of a sizable number of studies” (p. 658). The Econmist’s (2013) article acknowledges reproducibility as a core principle of science, which expresses that: “The idea that the same experiments always get the same results, no matter who performs them, is one of the cornerstones of science’s claim to objective truth. If a systematic campaign of replication does not lead to the same results, then either...
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...MEMORY-WORK: AN INTRODUCTION Jennie Small University of Technology, Sydney Research methodology, from the perspective of Critical social science, is considered as: inherently political, as inescapably tied to issues of power and legitimacy. It is assumed that methods are permeated with assumptions about what the social world is, who the social scientist is, and what the nature of the relation between them is (Lather, 1991, p.12). Critical social science moves away from description of behaviour as enduring social fact to attempting to understand how behaviour is produced, thus recasting behaviour as “the effects of contingent and contested processes of change” (Churchman, 2000, p.100 citing Scott). Feminists and those working within a social constructionist paradigm have debated whether there are research methods specific to such approaches. In other words, is there a social constructionist or feminist method? Schwandt (1994), in discussing constructivist, interpretivist approaches to human enquiry, commented that “what is unusual about the approaches cannot be explained through an examination of their methods. They are principally concerned with matters of knowing and being, not method per se” (p.118). Feminists have also considered that it is the methodology and outcomes rather than the methods which define the research as being feminist. Nonetheless, while feminists have adopted a variety of methods, they have tended to prefer qualitative...
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...Environmental Sociology: Capitalism, Sustainability and Social Justice Paper to Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, ‘History of Postwar Social Science’ Lecture Series Peter Dickens[1] Society and Nature: a Developing Sociological Agenda There is a paradox to environmental sociology. On the one hand it is a discipline that has often used the natural and physical sciences as its model. Auguste Comte, usually recognised as the founder of sociology, referred to the discipline as ‘social physics.’ ‘Physics envy’ continued to be a feature of sociology and other social sciences such as economics; such admiration being in part an attempt to give credibility to the new and still-emergent social sciences. Durkheim’s and Spencer’s analyses of social development from relatively simple towards more complex forms were, in part at least, modelled on a Darwinian idea of evolution in the natural world - from more ‘simple’ organisms such as amoeba to more ‘complex’ organisms such as ‘man.’ The positivist agenda for testing and developing theories were also in part also based on ideas regarding the testing of theories in the natural and physical sciences. Yet, as Dunlap and Catton (1994) have pointed out, making these new social science disciplines resulted in the disconnection of the social and its natural its ecological conditions. This disconnection may seem surprising but it is perhaps understandable if seen as these disciplines trying to form themselves...
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...they see politics as embodied in the modern kitchen, helping to bolster traditional women’s roles at time of challenge by feminism and other historical forces. Rebutting any presumed unilinear account of the transatlantic diffusion of this particular set of innovations, they define the modern kitchen as a culturally and ideologically laden technological artefact in its own right – one moreover that needs to be set within an array of large technological systems: electrical grids, gas networks, water systems and the integrated food and transport chain. They insist that a ‘host of social actors’ shape all these technological components: ‘kitchens are as deeply social as they are political’ (p. 3). They invite us to view the kitchen as a ‘mediation junction’ between producers and consumers, extending Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s influential call to attend to the ‘consumption junction’ in any analysis of the social relations of a given artefact.(2) In the work as a whole there are frequent citations of the notion of the...
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...emotions about their clothes, who they hang out with, and many more things in life. Emotions are defined as an instinctual, reflexive, or automatic reasoning (Cooley, 2012). When an adolescent experiences an emotion it involves a cognitive appraisal of a situation and subsequently appraisal influenced by their emotional experience. Emotions provide important social cue information, recalling experience and how to respond in social interactions. Emotions have three domains: Experience, Arousal, and Expression (Lanteigne, 2012). This is when adolescents learn to be more adaptive at managing their emotions to achieve social goals and masking emotional expression. For western popular culture adolescents emotions based on gender differences are widely held. Learning to express emotions is the key feature of healthy social emotional development (Chaplin, 2012). This paper is going to talk about the adolescents and their emotions and what roles that partake in everyday life for them. Explaining what affects the different roles in each gender as well. Emotions are a source of information and basis for judgment and action relevant to social context (Cooley, 2012). For adolescents to understand the basic emotions they had to learn them at an earl stage in life. As children they learn that there are different emotions to express to communicate with adults. For example, when a child falls down and hurts themselves they will most likely show an emotion of sadness and start to cry. As Cooley...
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...Working Papers 2006 Faculty of Business The Critique of Accounting Theory M. Gaffikin University of Wollongong, gaffikin@uow.edu.au Publication Details This working paper was originally published as Gaffikin, M, The Critique of Accounting Theory, Accounting & Finance Working Paper 06/25, School of Accounting & Finance, University of Wollongong, 2006. Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: research-pubs@uow.edu.au 06/25 University of Wollongong School of Accounting & Finance The Critique of Accounting Theory Working Papers Series Michael Gaffikin School of Accounting & Finance University of Wollongong Wollongong NSW 2522 Australia Tel +61 (2) 4221 3718 Fax +61 (2) 4221 4297 eMail george@uow.edu.au www.uow.edu.au/commerce/accy/ The Critique of Accounting Theory Michael Gaffikin* School of Accounting and Finance, University of Wollongong, NSW 2522 In previous papers (Gaffikin 2005a, 2005b, 2005c, 2006) the discussion has examined accounting as a science, with attempts to employ a scientific methodology; as a purely technical expression of economic theory, heavily dominated by research in finance; and as part of “law”, albeit law (regulation) heavily influenced by dominant economic and political ideology. That discussion revealed that all these perspectives have suffered from severe shortcomings. Fortunately, there are other perspectives on accounting...
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...Stuart Hall’s seminal paper Encoding/Decoding (1980) arose primarily from Hall’s reservations regarding the theories of communication underpinning mass communications research. It worked on the assumption that the ‘media offered an unproblematic, benign reflection of society’ (Proctor, 58). Mass communications research became prevalent after the Second World War and was funded by commercial bodies with a desire to know how audiences could be influenced more effectively through advertising. According to the mass communications model, the sender (mass media) generates a message with fixed meaning, which is then communicated directly and transparently to the recipient (audience). Hall’s paper challenged all three components of the mass communications model ; arguing that – (i) the message is never transparent to the audience (ii) meaning is not simply fixed or determined by the sender; and (iii) the audience is not a passive recipient of the meaning. Hall’s encoding/decoding theory focuses on the different ways audiences generate (rather than discover) meaning. Hall’s theory re-addressed the themes of the Uses and Gratifications theory : examining audience power over the media, rather then the media’s effects on the audience (Katz: 1959). Such theoretical study later concluded that audiences use the media to fulfil their own needs and gratifications (Katz, E., Blumler, J. G., & Gurevitch, M.: 1974). Hall's model focuses on groups rather then the individual, which is more...
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...self-actualization with learning systems Winslow Burlesonà MIT Media Lab, 20 Ames St. Cambridge, MA 02139, USA Available online 10 May 2005 Abstract Developing learning experiences that facilitate self-actualization and creativity is among the most important goals of our society in preparation for the future. To facilitate deep understanding of a new concept, to facilitate learning, learners must have the opportunity to develop multiple and flexible perspectives. The process of becoming an expert involves failure, as well as the ability to understand failure and the motivation to move onward. Meta-cognitive awareness and personal strategies can play a role in developing an individual’s ability to persevere through failure, and combat other diluting influences. Awareness and reflective technologies can be instrumental in developing a meta-cognitive ability to make conscious and unconscious decisions about engagement that will ultimately enhance learning, expertise, creativity, and self-actualization. This paper will review diverse perspectives from psychology, engineering, education, and computer science to present opportunities to enhance creativity, motivation, and self-actualization in learning systems. r 2005 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Creativity; Learning systems; Psychology; Failure; Motivation Education has the dual power to cultivate and to stifle creativity. Recognition of its complex tasks in this domain is one of the most fruitful intellectual achievements...
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