The Conception of Laziness and the Characterisation of Others as Lazy

Abstract

This paper is a theoretical investigation of the common conception of laziness. It starts from constructing a tentative definition of laziness, defining laziness as a negative term referring to people who do not show an effort corresponding to their abilities and/or prerequisites, and/or the difficulty of the task in question. Jerome Bruner's folk psychology is applied to emphasise how the conception of laziness serves as a narrative re-establishing meaning when people do not act as they are expected. Furthermore, two perspectives concerning the characterisation of others as lazy are presented. First, Tversky's and Kahneman's Heuristics and Biases Approach, and second Moscovici's Social Representations Theory. Common for the ways in which the concept of laziness is understood and applied is that the actual motivation, abilities and qualifications of the person being evaluated are hardly never assessed. Thus, the concept of laziness can easily function as a reductionist explanation why others are not acting as expected, with the purpose of making the act of not acting as expected more comprehensible.Keywords Laziness . Cultural psychology . Folk psychology . Information-processing . Social representations theory . Unemployment . School psychology Laziness seems to be a pervasive concept in everyday human social life, used for explaining the behaviour of encountered individuals, or one's own behaviour in a given task or activity. Additionally, laziness is often found in the media and the public debate, attributed to numerous groups and individuals, including unemployed people, students and many more. The concept seems to imply that an individual not acting or performing as expected is not doing so because of causes controllable to herself, often referring to individual effort.In an educational context, Reyna and Weiner (2001) argue that teachers generally have more sympathy for students failing because of uncontrollable factors (low aptitude or external factors), while the opposite goes for students failing because of factors within their own control Human Arenas (2018) 1:288-304 https://doi

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