The Road to Psychopathology: Neoliberalism and the Human Mind

Self Cite

Research in political psychology has uncovered "elective affinities" between psychological traits and political ideology. Strong correlations have been found linking psychological variables to political-economic beliefs in Western countries. These results suggest that people's psychological traits influence the development of their ideology, making some ideas, explanations, prescriptions, and ways of understanding the world seem more convincing or satisfying than others. Most such investigations have focused on differences along the liberal-conservative ideological spectrum in the United States, or the left-right divide in Europe and (the rest of) the Americas. Relatively little research has examined psychological elective affinities with neoliberal ideology in particular, and none to our knowledge has been done outside of the West (including Turkey), except for Israel. We report the results of a preliminary investigation into the psychological correlates of neoliberal ideology in Hong Kong, India, and the United States. Our U.S. results replicate earlier research introducing the Neoliberal Beliefs Index, whereas our Hong Kong and Indian results reveal similarities and differences in the psychological traits associated with neoliberal beliefs.From inauspicious beginnings, neoliberalism has become a globally dominant political-economic ideology (Harvey, 2005). Although past research has revealed the structural and ideational factors behind neoliberalism's rise (e.g., Blyth, 2002;Mudge, 2018), until recently little attention has been given to possible psychological contributors. For neoliberal ideology to spread so successfully, it would seemingly need not only a favorable political-economic environment and

Section: Conclusion and Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who is the Neoliberal? Exploring Neoliberal Beliefs across East and West

Beattie

Bettache

Chong

2019

Self Cite

“…Neoliberalism is a multifaceted construct consisting of a constellation of axioms. As a zeitgeist or political‐economic common sense, its political economy axiom privileges preservation of individual freedom through the establishment of effective competitive markets with minimal government intervention (Beattie, ). Paradoxically, neoliberalism's ideological commitment to free market also confers authority and power to the state to have institutions and policies that ensure efficient operations of the market.…”

Section: Social Psychological Study Of Neoliberalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The psychological axiom in neoliberalism asserts that freedom from interference by others is a universal human desire. It also asserts that economic inequality benefits individuals because it inspires personal agency and fosters the development of the entrepreneurial self, which privileges productivity, innovation, and wealth creation (Beattie, ). Citing evidence for the adverse psychological effects of inequality and poverty, Beattie () questioned the beneficial psychological effects of inequality.…”

Section: Social Psychological Study Of Neoliberalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Invisible Hand is an Ideology: Toward a Social Psychology of Neoliberalism

Bettache

Chiu

2019

On the one hand, neoliberalism, originally an economic theory, has evolved into a sociopolitical ideology and extended its hegemonic influence to all areas of life, including the production of psychological knowledge in academia and the practice of psychology in various domains. On the other hand, neoliberalism has been criticized as the root of all problems in contemporary societies. Widespread discontent with neoliberalism is seen as the catalyst for the rising popularity of populism, the election of Donald Trump in the United States, and the Brexit referendum. The discontent with neoliberalism has also inspired imaginations of what a postneoliberal society may be like, as evidenced by the rise of neosocialists such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the United States or Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom. In this issue, we have gathered multidisciplinary insights to answer questions that would constitute a preliminary agenda of a social psychology of neoliberalism. These questions include: how neoliberalism can be studied social psychologically? What are the neoliberalist constraints on knowledge creation and social practices? How can social psychology shed light on the psychological responses to the hegemonic impact of neoliberalism and contribute to the imagination of a postneoliberal world? In short, is social psychology of neoliberalism a feasible and useful intellectual project for producing actionable social knowledge?What is social about social psychology? This question invites social psychologists to reflect on their discipline's defining attributes. This question has also challenged social psychologists to make their research socially relevant.

“…But its meaning has expanded (wrongly, I thought) over the decades to cover goods and services of all sorts, including labor, education, and health care—a kind of “concept creep” that Haslam () described about our ordinary use of psychological concepts. Beattie's () critical dissection has corrected my misunderstanding. Even from the start, the loose cluster of ideas that is now called neoliberalism was a political‐economic ideology.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Nonetheless, it seems correct to say that neoliberalism has at least two component idea clusters: the rational and self‐interested homo economicus as a model of the person and the idealized market with perfect information transmission and infinite computational capacity (or what Beattie, , called the supercomputer metaphor) as a model of the society. Put differently, neoliberalism is a model of the person and the society—a kind of utopian vision—which was meant to describe and prescribe the way human sociality carries on.…”

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confidence: 99%

Neoliberalism and Its Discontents: Commentary on Social Psychology of Neoliberalism

Kashima

2019

Neoliberalism is an odd word that crept into our everyday discourse. According to my quick Ngram search of Google Books, 1 it began to appear in the 1980s around the time of the Thatcher-Reagan trans-Atlantic alliance, and its popularity outpaced even that of "Trump" in its combined corpus of American and British books-though I doubt if that's still the case now especially after 2016. I used to think neoliberalism meant a class of economic theories about a market as a mechanism for balancing the production and consumption of everyday goods and services like bread and butter, rice and soy sauce, or pita and hummus, whose core assumption is "homo economicus," a fictional being that a Nobel laureate of economics Eleanor Ostrom (2000) once called a rational egoist. But its meaning has expanded (wrongly, I thought) over the decades to cover goods and services of all sorts, including labor, education, and health care-a kind of "concept creep" that Haslam (2016) described about our ordinary use of psychological concepts. Beattie's (2019) critical dissection has corrected my misunderstanding. Even from the start, the loose cluster of ideas that is now called neoliberalism was a politicaleconomic ideology. It was meant to provide a foundational design principle for constructing institutions of governance.Nonetheless, it seems correct to say that neoliberalism has at least two component idea clusters: the rational and self-interested homo economicus as a model of the person and the idealized market with perfect information transmission and infinite computational capacity (or what Beattie, 2019, called the supercomputer metaphor) as a model of the society. Put differently, neoliberalism is a model of the person and the society-a kind of utopian vision-which was meant to describe