Societal Psychology:
Social Psychology’s contribution to
understanding and changing society
Saadi Lahlou
Institute of Social Psychology
London School of Economics and Political Science
The problem: “real World” issues
Changing a society, an endeavour that goes
beyond psychology.
Needs understanding (rerum causas cognoscere):
- the determinants of individual behaviour
- aggregation issues (groups, masses)
- organizational issues
- culture
To practice : innovation, conflict, structuration,
decision-making, agency, negotiation.
outline
1. Societal Psychology: principles and history
(Prof. Gaskell)
2. Homo Socius : « group member by design »
3. WIT: culture as a distributed guidance
system.
outline
1. Societal Psychology: principles and history
(Prof. Gaskell)
2. Homo Socius : « group member by design »
3. WIT: culture as a distributed guidance
system.
Some (biased) landmarks of Societal
Psychology
1943: Lewin (changing food habits)
1947: Simon (administrative behaviour)
1961: Moscovici (diffusion of Psychoanalysis)
1964 : ISP founded at LSE
(…)
1975 : Societal Psychology (Himmelweit et al.)
…
2011-12: another promotion of ISP trained to
change to World
Societal psychology 15 props (Himmelweit & Gaskell, 1975)
•
Human beings need to be studied in a sociocultural context. The individual
and the collective cannot be separated ontologically. Societal psychology
requires a systems approach. And multilevel (micro/macro)
•
The ecology of the environment, its objective characteristics, needs to be
studied alongside its mediated reality
Maintain a historical perspective. People create social organizations—but it
is the social organizations that recast people
Innovation is as much an imperative of the social system as is conformity
•
•
•
•
Theoretical and methodological pluralism. Cross-fertilization between StP
social sciences is indispensable. Including streams of Psychology.
And between basic and applied research. Adopt a wider range of research
tools.
Developing conceptual frameworks rather than search for invariant laws
•
There is no such thing as value-free social research
•
outline
1. Societal Psychology: principles and history
(Prof. Gaskell)
2. Homo Socius : « group member by design »
3. WIT: culture as a distributed guidance
system.
Biological bricks: Homo Socius and Homo Sapiens
Humans are
Cooperative, Competitive, Communicative, Educable, Instrumented
Homo Socius
•
•
•
•
•
Small teams (3 men in a boat)
Groups (football)
Families (gathering)
Hords (demonstration)
Nations (obama election)
Henri Tajfel’s minimal group experiment (1970, 1971)
"Us"
deal A
5
deal B
6
"Them"
4
8
10
Solomon Asch’s « conformity » experiment (1951)
Control : 1 participant out of 35 gave an incorrect answer
Experiment : 75% of participants gave at least one incorrect answer
Asch, S. E. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: A minority of one against a unanimous majority.
Psychological Monographs, 70 (Whole no. 416).
intra-group differenciation and coordination
Stanley Milgram’s « obedience » experiment (1961)
13
The Stanford Prison Experiment (Zimbardo et al., 1972)
http://www.prisonexp.org/
real world applications
Nazi extermination
camps
Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem,
Dec. 11, 1961
15
real world applications
Humans are socialized
Humans are a mix of competition and cooperation
> groups, hierarchy
Humans communicate, learn, are instrumented >
organisations, culture
Individuals have membership (role/status) in
specific groups/organisations/cultures.
They feel and act as group members.
Take-away part 1:
humans are by design prone to assemble and create social superorganisms
individuals tend to:
- act as group organs,
- behave according to given role
- use the environment as storage/ external scaffolding
positive :
- individual well-being in groups
- emulation, motivation
- leverage of agency with labour division
- cumulativity of creation
negative :
- superorganisms have their own conatus and dynamics
- care little about individuals
- inertia
From Nature to Culture
from Nature to Culture
outline
1. Societal Psychology: principles and history
(Prof. Gaskell)
2. Homo Socius : « group member by design »
3. WIT: culture as a distributed guidance
system.
human colonies are now complex built environments with many artefacts
Installation
Installations
Installations
Societal control: the world as « installation »
1. Physical layer (objects) provide affordances
2. Humans interpret objects and situations
3. Institutions control
Installation Theory
Social space:
institutions
Physical space:
objects
Mental space:
representations
Installation Theory
Physical space:
objects
Affordances at physical level
« Roughly, the affordances of things are what
they furnish, for good or ill, that is what they
afford the observer. (…) they are ecological, in
the sense that they are properties of the
environment relative to an animal. (…)
Affordances do not cause behavior but
constrain or control it. Needs control the
perception of affordances (selective attention)
and also initiate acts.
An observer is not ‘bombarded ’ by stimuli. He
extracts invariants from a flux of stimulation. »
[Gibson, 1967, passim]
James J. Gibson (1904-1981)
Davies, CA, 1978.
NB: Jacob Von Uexküll’s notion of connotation
of activity (1952) is more philosophically solid
because not tied into realism, but may be less
usable for didactic/operational purposes.
affordances
30
Interpretation into action
should I push or pull this door?
Installation Theory
Physical space:
objects
Mental space:
representations
Installation Theory
Social space:
institutions
Physical space:
objects
Mental space:
representations
Attatürk 1925 : « no fez »
37
Institutions in social space : rules and laws about hats
Installation Theory
Social space:
institutions
Physical space:
objects
Mental space:
representations
Installation Theory
Social space:
institutions
Physical space:
objects
Mental space:
representations
3. installation theory
(Lahlou, 2008)
Social space:
institutions
x
Physical space:
objects
Mental space:
representations
Take-away part 2
Behaviour is simultaneously determined at 3 levels:
material, psychological, social
Understanding and changing the system needs to
address the 3 levels
Societal psychology’s domain is the psychological
level, but the overlaps with the 2 other levels
Societal psychology 15 props (Himmelweit & Gaskell, 1975)
•
Human beings need to be studied in a sociocultural context. The individual
and the collective cannot be separated ontologically. Societal psychology
requires a systems approach. And multilevel (micro/macro)
•
The ecology of the environment, its objective characteristics, needs to be
studied alongside its mediated reality
Maintain a historical perspective. People create social organizations—but it
is the social organizations that recast people
Innovation is as much an imperative of the social system as is conformity
•
•
•
•
Theoretical and methodological pluralism. Cross-fertilization between StP
social sciences is indispensable. Including streams of Psychology.
And between basic and applied research. Adopt a wider range of research
tools.
Developing conceptual frameworks rather than search for invariant laws
•
There is no such thing as value-free social research
•
Some principles
There is nothing so practical as a good theory
(Kurt Lewin)
The best way to understand a complex system is
to try to change it (Kurt Lewin)
If your photographs aren’t good enough, you’re not
close enough (Robert Capa)
Need not hope to endeavour, need not succeed to
persevere (William of Orange)
thank you.
discussion?
s.lahlou@lse.ac.uk
the reproductive cycle of representations/objects
INSTITUTIONAL CONTROL
education,
daily practice guidance
Embodied
form of Rep.
Reified
form
creation, improvement,
conservation of artifacts
(technology)
« I love this Company ! »
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc4MzqBFxZE