The Idiographic Approach in Psychological Research. The Challenge of Overcoming Old Distinctions Without Risking to Homogenize

Picione, Raffaele De Luca

doi:10.1007/s12124-015-9307-5

Cited by 40 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…In the human being, the cultural and historical characteristics transform the organism-environment relationship in subject-world relationship, with more degrees of freedom but also a greater complexity (De Luca Picione, 2015;Esposito & Freda, 2015.This freedom realizes the possibility that the forms of interaction with the contexts are innumerable and potentially endless. In this sense, the challenge (on a par with a developmental task) for the human being is to find -in a continuous development -one's own subjective configuration between identity/otherness, body/mind, affectivity/rationality, so that the cultural ground constitutes a fertile ground for the development and not a strict canalization of habitus, ideologies and behaviors.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Possible use in psychology of threshold concept in order to study sensemaking processes

Picione

Freda

2016

Culture & Psychology

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Manifold forms of sensemaking processes and their simultaneity pose many questions about their integration and also on their development. Human beings mean their own experience and activity in the world by forms of symbolic meaning but also by several forms of embodied meaning, in an endo-semiotic and exo-semiotic key, such as the construction of artifacts, instruments, monuments, stories, myths. The culture in this perspective is not considered a repository of information and become an intersubject- ive process that develops over time and is rooted deeply in various embodied forms. Authors discuss the notion of threshold through two possible paths. The first one allows us to demarcate the boundaries of the domain of semiotic research and at the same time to reflect on the specificity of the different processes of sensemaking, from biological processes (vegetative and animal) to typically psychological processes, char- acteristic of human beings and of cultural dynamics. The second one deals with dynam- ics of transformation of the processes of sensemaking, claiming that the relationship between an organism and its environment has a gestaltic quality, whose form is con- stantly changing. The notion of threshold is developed in reference to the changes and transformations that mark discontinuous passages and developments within phases of stability

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Possible use in psychology of threshold concept in order to study sensemaking processes

Picione

Freda

2016

Culture & Psychology

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“…We intend to take into account the semiotic plasticity of narrative processes, since psychological phenomena are transient and inherently ambivalent. We consider the processes of organization and transformation of sense ( De Luca Picione, 2015a ; Neuman, 2003 ; Salvatore, 2016 ) as dynamic processes that occur along liminal areas created by the organization of borders.…”

Section: Signs and Borders As Dynamic Devices Of Plastic Sensemaking mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Pertinence is the local definition within a wider context of what in a certain moment is relevant and what is not, what is being treated, disputed or negotiated with others. In short, pertinence provides a local form of the object in question and enables a discursive process ( De Luca Picione, 2015a , 2015b ; De Luca Picione & Freda, 2012 , 2014 , 2016b ; Freda & De Luca Picione, 2013 , 2014 ; Salvatore, 2016 ).…”

Section: The Narration Within the Subjective Dynamics Of Tension Of Bmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychological functions of semiotic borders in sense-making: Liminality of narrative processes

Picione

Valsiner

2017

Eur. J. Psychol.

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In this paper we discuss the semiotic functions of the psychological borders that structure the flow of narrative processes. Each narration is always a contextual, situated and contingent process of sensemaking, made possible by the creation of borders, such as dynamic semiotic devices that are capable of connecting the past and the future, the inside and the outside, and the me with the non-me. Borders enable us to narratively construct one’s own experiences using three inherent processes: contextualization, intersubjective positioning and setting of pertinence. The narrative process – as a subjective articulation of signs in a contingent social context – involves several functions of semiotic borders: separation, differentiation, distinction-making, connection, articulation and relation-enabling. The relevant psychological aspect highlighted here is that a border is a semiotic device which is required for both maintaining stability and inducing transformation at the same time. The peculiar dynamics and the semiotic structure of borders generate a liminal space, which is characterized by instability, by a blurred space-time distinction and by ambiguities in the semantic and syntactic processes of sensemaking. The psychological processes that occur in liminal space are strongly affectively loaded, yet it is exactly the setting and activation of liminality processes that lead to novelty and creativity and enable the creation of new narrative forms.

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“…The “ergodic” theorem is the basis for the nomothetic approach to sampling, with interindividual variability being the focus of psychological research (Molenaar, 2004); thus, it regards a specimen as homogeneous and population centered (De Luca Picione, 2015). Yet, psychological phenomena are non-ergodic and have their own idiosyncrasies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Different from inductive generalization in the nomothetic approach, the idiographic process is conducted through abductive logic, which is aimed at promoting the creation of new knowledge through the generalization of the model of functioning of the single case (De Luca Picione, 2015). In the abductive logic, theory and evidence are circularly bonded within an open-ended cycle.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Are High-Achieving Students Susceptible to Inhibition? An Idiographic Analysis of Student Self-Identity in China

Jing

et al. 2019

Front. Psychol.

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High-achieving students face greater expectations in competitive societies such as China, which can impede their performance. Based on previous observations regarding what we call the “inhibition phenomenon of high-achieving students,” wherein otherwise successful students show unexpectedly poor performances in collective activities of relatively unfamiliar forms, the present research analyzes the self-identity of such students and explores the underlying mechanisms that result in this inhibition phenomenon. An idiographic approach is employed to examine typical cases and their semiotic mediation in the self-identity regulative process. Two high-achieving students who exhibit the characteristics of the inhibition phenomenon are compared with another high-achieving student who appears not to be inhibited, using a multilevel and comprehensive analysis that integrates a number of aspects, such as the students’ emotional experience of the activities in relation to which the inhibition phenomenon occurs, their meaning-making regarding the activities, and their reflections on their daily school lives. The findings show that, for the inhibited students, a cued identity as being a “good student” is activated through the activities with the connotations of “being successful compared to the others” and “pursuing recognition” leading to a worsened performance; alternatively, the student not susceptible to inhibition displays an identity of being a “learner,” who focuses on the content of the activity and concrete suggestions from important others. These specific semiotic mediation processes indicate that, when self-identity is narrow and result oriented, it is easy for excessive future-oriented self-demands to be imposed, thereby bringing pressure to the individual at that moment. By contrast, a flexible and process-oriented identity facilitates an individual’s involvement in unfamiliar activities, enabling a richer, more open self-construction process.

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The Idiographic Approach in Psychological Research. The Challenge of Overcoming Old Distinctions Without Risking to Homogenize

Cited by 40 publications

References 22 publications

Possible use in psychology of threshold concept in order to study sensemaking processes

Possible use in psychology of threshold concept in order to study sensemaking processes

Psychological functions of semiotic borders in sense-making: Liminality of narrative processes

Why Are High-Achieving Students Susceptible to Inhibition? An Idiographic Analysis of Student Self-Identity in China

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