2007). However, while social psychological research has begun to examine the processes underlying perpetrator groups' (un)willingness to acknowledge harmdoing committed by ingroup members (e.g.
In many cases of mass violence and genocide there is ambiguity and uncertainty as to whether and how external bystanders (i.e., third parties) should respond. How does the way we construe genocide influence our evaluations of particular cases of mass violence and our willingness to intervene? In five studies, using content analyses and experiments, prototype theory is applied to this important social issue. Studies 1 and 2 examine the prototype structure of genocide; finding among a student and a community sample that some features are perceived as more central to genocide than others. Studies 3 and 4 show the effects of this prototype on the cognitive processing of the category. Study 5 investigates how this prototype structure affects evaluations of mass violence and support for political and military intervention. Taken together, these studies suggest that socially shared prototypes of genocide matter: The more a case of mass violence is represented in accordance with this prototype, the more people remember and respond to it, for example, by supporting policies aimed at preventing and halting mass violence. These findings have important policy implications for how cases of mass violence are framed and discussed in the public and political sphere.
Psychology Comes to Halt as Weary Researchers Say the Mind cannot possibly Study Itself.This headline appeared on the pages of the satirical newspaper, The Onion. What makes this headline humorous are the multiple layers of analysis it contains, and the clarity and succinctness with which it presents that which is supposedly unintelligible. In order to see the humor in this headline, the reader has to know about the apparent conflict between objective science and human subjectivity, but crucially, they also have to grasp both at the same time and to be able to flip back and forth between them. Debates within psychology regarding the field's scientific status often more closely resemble the content of The Onion article (with the categorical impossibility of a Bscience of the mind^), than the broader awareness required of The Onion's readers (containing both an appreciation of, and healthy distance to, those challenges). Academic discussions of psychology's scientific status are often artificial and divorced from the more complex picture that practitioners, researchers, and laypersons alike have of the field. Similar to how overuse in academia has lead to the notion of a Bmoot point^shifting from meaning Bthat which is deserving of debate^to Bthat which is not worth debating,^many of the ostensive clashing dichotomies within the science of psychology have become more of an intellectual sparring ground than actual battlefield.In the pages that follow it will be argued that these debates are helpful for better understanding human psychology, but that, like the readers of headline mentioned above, we should rise above them. These debates are important, but only in as far as they shed light on the true object of our concern, human psychological functioning. To this end, we should be cautious so as to not overvalue the methodological and Integr Psych Behav (2016) 50:555-567
The author reviews Daniel Bar-Tal's summary of the social-psychological research on mass violence, particularly intractable conflicts, and critically examines his synthesis of this large and growing body of literature. What actually defines a conflict as intractable is discussed, and an overview of past research is presented. The author explores Bar-Tal's thinking on the escalation of conflict, how societies are shaped by conflict, how conflicts come to be sustained over time so as to become intractable, and finally, how such conflicts might be brought to an end. While sustained, large-scale conflicts are truly awful, in that they cause horror but also astonishment, they arise from the normal, mundane processes underlying intergroup dynamics. In this sense, their ''normality'' offers invaluable insights into how to assuage the suffering caused by what are otherwise mundane and even valuable social-psychological processes.
This article examines two conceptualizations of time— kairic and prophetic—to illustrate the semiotic multistability of time: the Gestalt-like switch between conceptualizations. We will use two well-known novellas about time and salvation (by Charles Dickens and C. S. Lewis) to explore how the features of these two schemata cluster together thereby creating these two different understandings of time, while simultaneously blocking the view to each other. Finally, we will explore how the tensions between these two schemata are of interest for the logic of psychological science. It will be argued that many of the classic tensions within psychology speak to the multistability of our conceptual schemata regarding time and causation, something that is particularly exemplified by the challenges posed by Peirce’s notion of abduction. As we opt for one vision of time, we occlude others, even as we remain aware of their presence just beyond our conceptual reach.
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