International Review of Theoretical Psychologies

Perhaps Psychology’s Replication Crisis is a Theoretical Crisis that is Only Masquerading as a Statistical One

Christopher D. Green — 2021-12-13

The “replication crisis” may well be the single most important challenge facing empirical psychological research today. It appears that highly trained scientists, often without understanding the potentially dire long-term implications, have been mishandling standard statistical procedures in the service of attaining statistical “significance.” Exacerbating the problem, most academic journals do not publish research that has not produced a “significant” result. This toxic combination has resulted in journals apparently publishing many Type I errors and declining to publish many true failures to reject H0. In response, there has been an urgent call from some psychologists that studies be registered in advance so that their rationales, hypotheses, variables, sample sizes, and statistical analyses are recorded in advance, leaving less room for post hoc manipulation. In this chapter, I argue that this “open science” approach, though laudable, will prove insufficient because the null hypothesis significance test (NHST) is a poor criterion for scientific truth, even when it is handled correctly. The root of the problem is that, whatever statistical problems psychology may have, the discipline never developed the theoretical maturity required. For decades it has been satisfied testing weak theories that predict, at best, only the direction of the effect, rather than the size of effect. Indeed, uncritical acceptance of NHST by the discipline may have served to stunt psychology’s theoretical growth by giving researchers a way of building a successful career without having to develop models that make precise predictions. Improving our statistical “hygiene” would be a good thing, to be sure, but it is unlikely to resolve psychology’s growing credibility problem until our theoretical practices mature considerably.

Psychologies of not Knowing

Nora Ruck — 2021-12-13

Social and liberation movements all over the world have acted on the premise that oppression is kept alive, among other ways, through psychological mechanisms. Feminist and critical race epistemologies such as “feminist standpoint theories” and “epistemological ignorance” suggest that there might be different forms of not knowing involved depending on the social location of the (not) knowing subject. In this paper we suggest that the concrete psychological mechanisms involved in not knowing or outright ignorance differ according to one’s position in the social fabric of oppression and privilege. Drawing on various critical psychological and psychoanalytic reflections, as well as interpreting selected passages from a group discussion among elderly retirement home residents in Vienna, we illustrate how social position is translated into lack of knowledge about systems of oppression and privilege

A Candidate Methodology for Analyzing Meaning Making

Alaric Kohler — 2021-12-13

This paper aims at presenting a candidate methodology for studying psychological processes involved in meaning making. The analysis of meaning making processes poses methodological challenges. Grize’s proposes a neo-Piagetian theory, Natural Logic, which can be used as a methodology approaching the making and the interpretation of meaning, approaching discourse as a complex process interrelating cognitive, social and cultural dimensions. The making of new meaning is nevertheless approached through language use, yet both as a creative process in choosing and assembling words together, and as an interpretative process of reasoning in listening to or reading discursive material. This paper presents some main features of a new methodology for studying meaning making and interpretation processes in psychology, and a quick introduction to its practice based on a short example of analysis. The objective is to contribute to detailed analysis of meaning making, as we find it in complex cognitive activities such as interviewing, presenting or listening to a political discourse, debating, or teaching.

Measured Lives – Theoretical Psychology in an Era of Acceleration

Ditte Winther-Lindqvist — 2021-12-13

Becomings or fixity?

Ann Phoenix — 2021-12-13

This paper examines the notion of acceleration as simultaneously dynamic and fast moving but underpinned by legacies from an earlier age that inform their development and the ways in which they inflect social life. It shows how sites of dynamic social acceleration can shift and change its focus over time, while (implicitly) maintaining the same logic of unequal power relations. In order to produce social justice and equality, it is, therefore, necessary to understand the logic and ideologies that underpin social relations and technological developments. The paper starts by illustrating the ways in which social acceleration is both longstanding and constitute ideologies of their time. It then considers the thinking of the UK psychologist Francis Galton, the cousin of Charles Darwin, and the legacy of his work. The third section presents the theoretical resources on which the paper draws. The paper then considers three examples of measurements that reproduce unequal power relations by fixing inequalities in their assumptions, even though they exemplify social acceleration. The three examples are parenting styles, unconscious bias and algorithms. The final main part of the paper considers possibilities for change by briefly historicising statistics and considering how they can be rethought. It also briefly discusses insider resistance to ideological fixity that reproduces and amplifies social inequalities of, for example, racialisation, gender and social class.

Sustaining Dialogue in Polarised Political Contexts

Anthony English — 2021-12-13

The rise of populism is a prevalent issue on the political landscape both in Europe and the wider world. Such ideologies create defamatory political narratives and exacerbate already partisan social media spaces. This trend challenges psychologists interested in politics to consider what factors could influence dialogue sustainment in these polarised contexts. The current focus of social psychology research is towards identity-based theories to mediate such interactions. The purpose of this paper is to challenge the idea that identity-models are the only effective means of depolarising real-world, discursive political conflicts. This article critiques identity on the following: (1) Ontological assumptions of binary group oppositionality are limiting and unrepresentative of real-world interactions, and (2) Current identity-based models for mediating are ineffective in highly polarised, real-world contexts. We consider the issue of polarising political discourse from a dialogical perspective and propose the Dialogue Sustainment Theoretical Model as an alternative. The model considers: (1) Citizens as political actors with worldviews, (2) The role of the dynamic & relational positionality, and (3) The influence of chronotopic boundaries on political debate. Whilst we acknowledge identity can transcend polarisation in certain contexts, it does not possess such a capacity in politically polarised, real-world contexts. Instead, we argue for an alternative model which is dialogically-focused and offers a distinctive insight into sustaining dialogue.

“We were at this crossroads”

Oliver Clifford Pedersen — 2021-12-13

People and societies are guided by what they imagine to lie beyond the present, by what can and should be the case in the future. Yet people do not always agree about the form, content or path to realisation of a given imagined future. As a result, conflicts can arise over something that does not exist yet. In this paper, I propose to integrate theories of social and alternative representations with a sociocultural psychological interpretation of imagination, in order to explore the addressivity of futures and to call for more studies that explicitly take into account the future’s role in the present. I draw on a dialogical case study that was carried out on the Faroe Islands, more precisely on the island of Suðuroy. Whereas the Faroe Islands are experiencing a rapid acceleration in growth, Suðuroy has failed to keep pace and has witnessed decades of emigration and a worsening of its population’s relative socio-economic situation. Islanders liken the current situation to standing at a crossroads, while being unable to agree on which path must be taken in order to reinvigorate a shrinking future. By analysing how one of the two major social representations constructs the other – its alternative representation – I suggest that the absence of transformative dialogue results from incompatible futures. Furthermore, in line with a sociocultural psychological perspective, I also attempt to move beyond the homogenising force inherent in social representation theory by introducing Ingolf and Karin, whose stories illustrate how social and alternative representations are not uniformly shared and enacted, but take different forms in light of unique life experiences.

Doing Gender Through Patterns

Martina Cabra — 2021-12-13

in play. I build on feminist questionings of the notion of gender identity within the field of gender studies, to outline a sociocultural, psychological proposition. I propose to bridge the problem of sameness and fluidity in gender through the notion of psychological patterns, as semiotic and relational modes through which people express and develop their actions (Cabra, in press; Zittoun, 2020). The paper proceeds in three moves. First, I present the central tenets of a sociocultural psychology and develop an understanding of gender within this perspective. Second, I present and develop the idea of psychological patterns. Third, to substantiate my proposition, I present two examples of children doing gender and the patterns I argue they have so far developed.

The Production of Subjectivities in a Division of Applied Psychology

Arthur Arruda Leal Ferreira — 2021-12-13

This paper aims at discussing the different ways in which subjectivities are produced by psychological practices, with a focus on clinical practice. This research is conceptually based on Isabelle Stengers’ and Vinciane Despret’s Political Epistemology and Bruno Latour’s and John Law’s Actor-Network Theory. For these authors, scientific knowledge is produced not as a representation of reality through well-formed sentences, but as modes of articulation between researchers and investigated entities. To investigate these modes of articulation produced by clinical practices, we observed the modes of articulation present in specific psychological techniques with regard to their users, especially in a therapeutic environment. These techniques follow a wide range of therapeutic approaches (psychoanalysis, cognitive behavioral therapy, Gestalt therapy and institutional analysis) are currently being observed at the DPA (Division of Applied Psychology) at UFRJ (Federal University from Rio de Janeiro) through interviews and an ethnographic approach. Furthermore, we will discuss processes related to interns and patients. With regard to the interns, we observed a very complex and almost impossible mode of negotiation with respect to the practices, concepts and duration of therapy among the therapy groups at DPA. Their education in these different therapeutic approaches can be likened to a process of purification: beyond the discussion of some basic concepts, much of the interns’ education consists in the constant criticism of other approaches. It is also very rare to observe students who practice more than one approach: beyond the pragmatic problem in articulating very different practices, there is a constant process of critique between both groups to which the intern belongs. With regard to patients it was possible to perceive two response patterns: 1) Canonical answers about what therapy is and what its goals are, demonstrating docility regarding the psychologist’s authority. 2) Answers with a more inquisitive position about psychology, with an underlying understanding that it is a way of seeing the world, a philosophy of life, thus presenting a more recalcitrant position. In this case patients link therapy to very diverse practices, and they do so in a very active way, in a process that resembles what Foucault calls the techniques of the self (a group of practices and exercises used actively by someone aiming to transform themselves into an ethical being). We can find such techniques among patients in various practices, e.g. writing in diaries, the singular appropriations of the discourse of the therapists, and even exercises of self-questioning and problematization of the instances of collective life, such as prejudice, stereotypes and subliminal messages. Thus, we can define patients in various ways, but not as passive and patient creatures.

Reflections on “Psychotechnics”

Luciana Dadico — 2021-12-13

In this article, I discuss the genesis of psychotechnics in Brazil, from 1920 to 1950, starting from narratives about the history of psychology and analyzing, in a comparative way, three psychotechnics courses held in the city of São Paulo. Although these courses respond to local projects aimed at industry and education, our analysis reveals that they also express the materialization of a global project, built on statistical tools, standardized equipment and international circulation of texts and intellectuals. Measuring human activities was in the core of the public recognition of Psychology as a field of knowledge. The critical review of this history is important in order to understand how Psychology took part in building our current way of life. Moreover, understanding this movement within the field can help psychologists today in their work to reduce suffering, but also to change this rationalized state of things, responsible for the suffering production. Such changes imply refusing consolidated models for thinking and research in Psychology, in favor of more interdisciplinary and critical approaches.

The potentials of a dialogical reframing of personality testing in hiring

Kathrine Møller Solgaard — 2021-12-13

Personality testing is highly disputed, yet, widely used as a personnel selection tool. In most research, it is taken for granted that personality tests are used with the purpose of achieving a more objective assessment of job candidates. However, in Danish organizations the personality test is often framed as a ‘dialogue tool’. This paper explores the potentials of a dialogical reframing of the use of personality testing in personnel selection by analyzing empirical material from an ethnographic study of the hiring processes in a Danish trade union that declaredly uses personality tests as a dialogue tool. Through an affirmative critique we identify five framings that interact during the test-based dialogue: The ‘meritocratic’, ‘disciplinary’, ‘dialogical’, ‘pastoral’, and ‘con-test’ framing. Our study suggests that being committed to a dialogical reframing nurtures the possibility of focusing on what we call the ‘con-test’: Either as exploring the meta-competences of the candidate or as co-creating embryos through joint reflections on organizational issues. We argue that the long-lasting debates in the field of selection-related personality testing should be much more interested in the question of how personality tests in hiring are used, rather than whether or not they should be used.

The Subject Lagging Behind the Acceleration of Neoliberal Capitalist Discourse

David Pavón-Cuéllar — 2021-12-13

The capitalist discourse, as formulated by Lacan, imposes a ceaseless movement, a continuous displacement without friction or obstacles, which is going faster and faster as we get into deep neoliberalism. Its acceleration is correlated with its freedom—the freedom of neoliberal capitalism, the free market and the free circulation of goods, including subjective commodities. People must follow the rhythm of production and consumption, a rhythm that, as Marx showed, consumes people as much as it consumes their environment, their planet and their conditions of existence, which are also those of capitalism itself. The capitalist discourse, according to Lacan, undermines itself by consuming its own foundation. The capital even consumes itself by its effectiveness. The efficiency of capital, which implies an unsustainable progressive acceleration, is what this paper will examine at the subjective level. It will show how the subject is radically excluded— forclosed—when there is no time for them to live, stop and exist, be unoccupied, look back, resignify their history and understand until the moment of conclusion. Without conclusion of anything, there is no interval to unfold the subject’s existence. There is no point at which life can be anything other than labour and consumption, i.e., production and realization of capital.

Affectivity and Relational Awareness in Pedagogy and Education

Anne Maj Nielsen — 2021-12-13

In this article, we put forward the concept ‘relational awareness’ to describe a conscious awareness of the experience of relational responsivity and dynamics of change in stressful intersubjective encounters in pedagogy and education. This concept is inspired by phenomenology and cultural-historical theory. We introduce the theories of extended affectivity, embodied resonance and intersubjectivity and relate these to cultural-historical psychology in order to explore how people appraise and understand situations related to societal goals, motives, practices and mediating means. Relational awareness, which involves being consciously aware of embodied, pre-reflective relational responsivity, is specific to the cultural context, to the mediating means, and the lived experiences of the person. Relational awareness and responsivity can be objects of reflection and education when educational practices include deliberate work on embodied experience and mediational means to reflect on and change experienced intercorporeity. Relational awareness differs from interpersonal perception in that it involves embodied activity mediated by embodied knowledge and social means of language and discourse.
Our conceptualisation of relational awareness is empirically driven by two qualitative studies of preschool teachers’ and teachers’ embodied practices to become presently aware during intersubjective encounters with children in stressful everyday conditions. The embodied practices in the study were inspired by exercises in mindfulness and compassion, which were adjusted according to how the participants experienced their significance. The flexibly adjusted exercises and discourses appeared to provide participants with the mediational embodied and discoursive means to become relationally aware in difficult encounters. Biesta’s conceptualisation of ‘moments of hesitation’ contributes to the discussion of ‘relational awareness’ in education and care.

Where is Tyche?

Alfred Bordado Sköld — 2021-12-13

In this paper, I seek to revitalize the concept of happiness by conceptualizing it as a relational and instantaneous phenomenon with both existential, ethical and political dimensions. Happiness hap-ens – in and through encounters, and it does so when we least expect it. Drawing on Bachelard’s writings on ‘the instant’, as well as Gumbrecht’s and Rosa’s much related concepts of ‘presence’ and ‘resonance’, I attempt to formulate a more relational and nonvolitional counter-concept of happiness that blurs the border between eudemonic happiness and subjective well-being on the one hand and positive affect on the other. Safe-guarding opportunities for these moments to happen is to be seen as vital in a contemporary society governed by individualization, rationalization and hedonistic principles. Even though one cannot choose to be happy, one can indeed lead a good life; colored by an openness towards the other and what might come.

Being in the Era of Acceleration

Tomoaki D. Imamichi — 2021-12-13

This paper explores “being” from an experiential and a physical/material perspective in the context of the era of acceleration. A focal point is the human relationship to technology and the environment, more specifically, this paper expands Ander’s concepts of Herstellungskraft (productive powers) and Vorstellungskraft (imaginative powers) of nuclear weapons and then applies this framework to our current crisis of environmental destruction. The paper also explores defining technologies as they relate to the dilemmas above, analogies of traveller and tourist, and the Danish concept of hygge (as both a tradition and as a response to acceleration).

A Sustainable Consciousness Promoting Dialogue With Alien Others

Atsushi Tajima — 2021-12-13

Today, people live in a culturally diverse world and often face criticisms of their ideas by outsiders who have alien perspectives. Russian literary researcher M. M. Bakhtin valued such criticisms, which may bring forth unprecedented perspectives that bridge gaps between different viewpoints. In this paper, I investigate Bakhtin’s notions concerning ‘laughter’, which describe the mental functions involved in productive dialogue. Greek tragic dramatist Euripides is the main figure of my analysis as an influence on Bakhtin’s notions of the value of laughter and dialogue, although Bakhtin did not employ systemic citations of Euripides’ works. I focus on speaker consciousness, which is described as occurring when negotiating with others who have alien viewpoints in Greek tragedies. I then propose sustainable models of consciousness that may promote communication in current contexts of ideological diversity.

Changing self in the digital age

Randal G. Tonks — 2021-12-13

This article integrates William James’ (1890) theoretical model of Self with contemporary theoretical discourse and recent research on the impact of digital technology upon the Self. An overview of James’ self-theory is presented and followed by a detailed review of contemporary publications on self in our increasingly digital world; organized around the Spiritual, Social and Material realms of James’ “Me”. This is followed by this author’s extension of James’ concept of “I” into contemporary discourse on the person in terms of authenticity, agency and power. It is shown that the “Spiritual Self” is reflected in technology as fragmented, decentred and dislocated while the “Social Self” has expanded into virtual communities; continuing to seek recognition from others, but in a magnified and accelerated fashion. A cultural shift has been identified towards one of simulation and surveillance. Transformations of the
“Material Self” in terms of physical bodies, interaction with the material world, and with material others, are presently observed. This author’s conceptual and theoretical exploration has also shown a corresponding loss of control and fracturing of the status of the person through the rise of surveillance and loss of personal rights that challenges the theoretical construct and everyday experience of persons.

Unmeasuring ourselves'

Maria Nichterlein — 2021-12-13

This paper aims to introduce key Deleuzian concepts as they engage with the discipline of psychology. This will be done through an exploration of his work, in particular the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia co-written with Felix Guattari. As with Deleuze’s project itself, the paper has a critical element and a constructive one. Critically, it identifies the concerns that Deleuze alerts us in relation to the three main traditions within psychology (behaviourism, psychoanalysis and phenomenology) and provocatively introduces the notion of stupidity to signal the ways in which psychology has lost its intellectual horizon, by putting itself at the service of State and religious norms through a number of assumptions that are taken for granted, assumptions that constitute the silent and insidious common and good sense that holds the so called ‘rational project’ glued
together in modern science.
The second, more constructive, part aims to introduce key elements in Deleuze’s project as a way
to engage with the possibilities that Deleuze brings to the discipline. The elements considered
include a shift from an emphasis on epistemology to metaphysics, the centrality of difference (and
variation) instead of identity (and stability), a shift to a relational type of knowledge rather than one
that is representational and the articulation of the tensions between history and processes of
emergence (becomings). Ultimately, the Deleuzian provocation to the discipline is to engage with a
psychology to come through the articulation of a renewed and radical empiricism.

“Every human action is anthropophagic”

Renato Silva Guimaraes — 2021-12-13

The Freudian theory and the era of acceleration announced by the Futurist Manifesto arrived in Brazil in 1899 and 1909, respectively. Afterwards the concrete reception of these two significant events became more than the symptomatic revelation of the shocks provoked by industrial modernity and its powerful undercurrent of anxieties. The poet, „clown“, writer and major figure of the Brazilian modernist avant-garde, Oswald de Andrade (1890-1954) absorbed Freud and the Futurist Manifesto at once, re-pragmatized and re-semantized them. Oswald's concept of Cultural Anthropophagy (1928) as a central interpretative strategy, to be exact, an hermeneutic approach is defined by Haroldo de Campos aptly: “Oswald's ‘Anthropophagy’ [...] is the thought of critical devoration of the universal cultural heritage” (Campos,1986). The introduction of the anthropophagic trope inspired by Native Americans’ metaphysics leads the poet to a subversion of the Gestalt/Behavior psychological theories: “The anthropophagic function of the psychological behavior is reduced to two parts: 1) totemiser the external taboos; 2) create a new taboo in exogamic function” (Andrade,1929). From 1928 to 1950 the Anthropophagy approach on the interaction between the individual and the environment gained philosophical consistency. Oswald's thesis is a conceptual alternative that attempted to bring answers through the amplification of our ethical becoming. As an epistemological perspective attentive to the different modes of existence, the proposition of Oswald is a field of transformative practices having the power to overcome the techno-industrial paradigms. I will examine the contribution of Oswald de Andrade to theoretical psychology and to the issues that arise in an “Era of Acceleration” where the symbolic field is replaced by a cybernetic field.