On the Content of Social Psychology

1. Attitude to the Discussion: A discussion of social psychology was opened in the pages of Voprosy psikhologii. [Translated in this journal, 1963, 1 (3), 32-38. — Ed.] This event has both a good and bad side. The good side is that, finally, the central organ of Soviet psychology has begun to speak about social psychology. Soviet psychologists will at last state their positive word about social psychology. The discussion will permit a more profound definition of the content of social psychology and will attract the attention of the Soviet public to the phenomena of social psychology. The bad side is that while much is said about the content of social psychology, the most urgent problems for Soviet social psychology is not so much one of its content as of the development of concrete methods and concrete investigations. A. V. Baranov's article [5] presents an incorrect understanding of the history and contemporary state of social psychology in the USSR.     

常识性: 心理学另一种文化品格

今天心理学在科学化道路上已经越走越远,渐渐远离了人类日常生活,彰显着浓郁的自然科学品性：成为心理学家孤芳自赏的一种标签。事实上,心理学不仅仅是“心理学家”的心理学,也应该是人民大众的心理学,这便是心理学另一重要品质——常识性。常识性心理学可使人的心灵活动得到素朴、直观理解,是常识心理学而非心理科学使得人们日常心理生活成为可能。毛为科技理性和逻辑语言所支配下的科学心理学抹上浓郁的文化色彩,使其流露出文化品性,也为重新理解和诠释心理学学科性质提供视角。     

Psychological Manifestations of the Basic Properties of the Nervous System in Work

There can be no doubt that the individual psychological distinctions among human beings and, in particular, one area of these differences — the psychological manifestations of the intensity, lability, and equilibrium of nervous processes — are manifested in one form or another in work, that activity which most completely expresses the nature of man. Therefore, study of these peculiarities is a matter of pressing importance in labor psychology. "Investigation of the individual differences among men," writes B.M. Teplov, "is one of the most important tasks of psychology. The importance of this undertaking has become particularly obvious since psychology undertook to become a science of practical value (educational and child psychology, labor psychology, pathopsychology)." (19; p. 108)     

Vygotsky's Nonclassical Psychology

Nonclassical psychology has laws that differ from those in classical psychology. Nonclassical psychology uncovers the specifically human course of development and views people as self-regulated individuals. Vygotsky's writings reveal his lifelong engagement with the psychology of art, which for him was the essence of the new nonclassical psychology. The author looks at "play" and "positioning" as two key units in understanding nonclassical psychology.     

Crisis discussions in psychology--New historical and philosophical perspectives

In this introductory article, we provide a historical and philosophical framework for studying crisis discussions in psychology. We first trace the various meanings of crisis talk outside and inside of the sciences. We then turn to Kuhn’s concept of crisis, which is mainly an analyst’s category referring to severe clashes between theory and data. His view has also dominated many discussions on the status of psychology: Can it be considered a “mature” science, or are we dealing here with a pre- or multi-paradigmatic discipline? Against these Kuhnian perspectives, we point out that especially, but not only in psychology distinctive crisis declarations and debates have taken place since at least the late 19th century. In these, quite different usages of crisis talk have emerged, which can be determined by looking at (a) the content and (b) the dimensions of the declarations, as well as (c) the functions these declarations had for their authors. Thus, in psychology at least, ‘crisis’ has been a vigorous actor’s category, occasionally having actual effects on the future course of research. While such crisis declarations need not be taken at face value, they nevertheless help to break the spell of Kuhnian analyses of psychology’s history. They should inform ways in which the history and philosophy of psychology is studied further.     

The Conditions for Reliability of a Psychological Experiment

The problem of the reliability of a psychological experiment has assumed considerable significance in contemporary experimental psychology. This problem has been posed especially and studied in detail in bourgeois psychological techniques and testing. For this reason, theories on the criteria of the reliability of an investigation are usually connected with these areas of study. Furthermore, the approach to this problem, typical of bourgeois psychology, is also linked to these areas of psychology.     

Classification of Unconscious Phenomena and The Category of Activity

For many years, the subject of consciousness has been beyond the pale of American academic psychology. Every history of psychology tells us that Wundt's structuralism sought to study the "contents of consciousness" and that the failure of this effort resulted in Watsonian behaviorism (at least, within the American context). In recent years, however, there has been a reawakening of interest among cognitive psychologists in the phenomenon of conscious awareness.     

Human error on the flight deck

Despite terrorist bombs and structural failures, human error on the flight deck continues to account for the majority of aircraft accidents. The Royal Air Force (RAF) Institute of Aviation Medicine (IAM) has investigated the psychology of such error since the early 1970s, and to this end has used two principal techniques. The first has involved assisting in the official inquiries into both RAF and civil flying accidents, and the second has involved setting up a reporting system that permits any commercial pilot to report his own everyday errors, in complete confidence, to the RAF IAM. The latter system possesses the clear benefit of gathering error data untainted by considerations of culpability, and sometimes permits system rectification before the occurrence of accidents. This paper examines selected examples of errors associated with the design of equipment and with the social psychology of crews, and suggests that some consideration of the psychology of organizations may be necessary to ensure that the problems of human error are given the degree of consideration they require.     

Productive Perception

Many generations of psychologists have been concerned with the problem of how we see things as they are in reality. The science of vision has accumulated extensive material on this subject; and many more or less correct hypotheses have been proposed, formulated in the various conceptual terms of philosophy, art, psychology, physiology, biophysics, mathematics, and technology. Investigation into the working of the visual system has not developed equally in these fields. One instructive fact will not go unnoticed in the future history of the science of vision: in psychology, interest in image phenomena has fallen sharply, first because of behaviorism, then because of too broad an interpretation of the classic teachings on conditioned reflexes, and later because of cybernetic ideas. It has been maintained probably in a single area, psychiatry, in which investigative and medical material has not permitted image and hallucinatory phenomena to be ignored. In the early 1960s representatives of various psychological and physiological schools and disciplines returned anew to the long-for gotten topic of image phenomena. As Holt has aptly remarked (15), images are returning from exile. As generally happens in science, the rekindling of interest in a traditional topic occurred through the internal logic of studying the problems of perception in the light of the relatively new fields in science and technology. If we trace the development of only some of them — design theory, engineering psychology, and the theory of creative activity (as a separate subdivision of art, science, and the psychology of creativity) — it becomes clear that the return to image phenomena is due to the inability of behaviorism and associated physiological conditioning theories to explain complex forms of behavior and mental activity.     

Play and Its Role in the Mental Development of the Child

The problem of communication and its significance for cognition is a perpetual one in psychology. In making the problem of communication an object of study in psychology, investigators have always, to some extent, been aware of the role of dialogue as a cardinal factor in communication. Appreciation of the organizing and system-forming functions of dialogue (external or internal) in any process of communication and cognition has now grown steadily for a number of decades. In recent years, however, the role of dialogue in interconnected processes of communication and cognition has assumed a fundamentally new quality. A number of factors are responsible for this.     

Understanding the psychology of geriatric edentulous patients

doi: 10.1111/j.1741‐2358.2011.00496.x Understanding the psychology of geriatric edentulous patients Objective: This article focuses on understanding our older patients who require complete prosthodontic care. By breaking down the patient psychology to its component parts, it is easier to obtain a clear picture of this special cohort of patients. Considering the increase in number of geriatric edentulous patients, this knowledge will help the dentist serve the geriatric population better. Background: The role of psychology and personality in complete denture treatment is well documented. The geriatric patient who needs complete dentures has a psychological aspect that needs consideration. Although significant, these aspects may sometimes be ignored or considered irrelevant. Materials and methods: A review of relevant literature was carried out to obtain data on the psychology and personality of geriatric, complete denture patients and their behavioural changes. The obtained data was filtered and condensed to provide a short but comprehensive look at the geriatric edentulous patient’s psychology. Conclusion: When handling geriatric edentulous patients, the dentist must be confident of addressing and managing the psychology of these patients. A thorough understanding of the geriatric mental state thus becomes important and significant for the clinician.     

Some Manifestations of Categorization Processes in Perception

Study of the role of expectancy in cognitive activity has a long history in experimental psychology, extending back into the 19th century. Among German psychologists the idea of a "determining tendency" or "set" has long been influential. A variation of this same concept forms the foundation of the "Georgian" school of Soviet psychology founded by D. N. Uznadze (see Soviet Psychology, 1968-69, Vol. VII, No. 2 [Winter]).     

Vygotsky's Crisis: Argument, context, relevance

Vygotsky’s The Historical Significance of the Crisis in Psychology (1926–1927) is an important text in the history and philosophy of psychology that has only become available to scholars in 1982 in Russian, and in 1997 in English. The goal of this paper is to introduce Vygotsky’s conception of psychology to a wider audience.I argue that Vygotsky’s argument about the “crisis” in psychology and its resolution can be fully understood only in the context of his social and political thinking. Vygotsky shared the enthusiasm, widespread among Russian leftist intelligentsia in the 1920s, that Soviet society had launched an unprecedented social experiment: The socialist revolution opened the way for establishing social conditions that would let the individual flourish. For Vygotsky, this meant that “a new man” of the future would become “the first and only species in biology that would create itself.” He envisioned psychology as a science that would serve this humanist teleology.I propose that The Crisis is relevant today insofar as it helps us define a fundamental problem: How can we systematically account for the development of knowledge in psychology? I evaluate how Vygotsky addresses this problem as a historian of the crisis.     

Neuropsychology: A New Branch of Psychological Science

The achievements of modern psychology in analyzing the structure of human mental activity, as well as the achievements of modern neurophysiology, paved the way for the investigation of the cerebral mechanisms of various mental processes and led to the creation of a new branch of psychological science — neuropsychology [neyropsikhologiya]. This branch of psychology has begun to grow in the past few decades in diverse countries, but has had an especially flourishing development in the USSR.     

Building a Science of Animal Minds: Lloyd Morgan,Experimentation, and Morgan’s Canon

Conwy Lloyd Morgan (1852–1936) is widely regarded as the father of modern comparative psychology. Yet, Morgan initially had significant doubts about whether a genuine science of comparative psychology was even possible, only later becoming more optimistic about our ability to make reliable inferences about the mental capacities of non-human animals. There has been a fair amount of disagreement amongst scholars of Morgan’s work about the nature, timing, and causes of this shift in Morgan’s thinking. We argue that Morgan underwent two quite different shifts of attitude towards the proper practice of comparative psychology. The first was a qualified acceptance of the Romanesian approach to comparative psychology that he had initially criticized. The second was a shift away from Romanes’ reliance on systematizing anecdotal evidence of animal intelligence towards an experimental approach, focused on studying the development of behaviour. We emphasize the role of Morgan’s evolving epistemological views in bringing about the first shift – in particular, his philosophy of science. We emphasize the role of an intriguing but overlooked figure in the history of comparative psychology in explaining the second shift, T. Mann Jones, whose correspondence with Morgan provided an important catalyst for Morgan’s experimental turn, particularly the special focus on development. We also shed light on the intended function of Morgan’s Canon, the methodological principle for which Morgan is now mostly known. The Canon can only be properly understood by seeing it in the context of Morgan’s own unique experimental vision for comparative psychology.     

The Brain and the Mechanism of Psychosocial Phenomena

According to classic traditions, general psychology has always linked an intraindividual extrapsychic mechanism, the brain, with the intraindividual mental phenomena it examined. Social psychology, on the other hand, is handicapped by the fact that its world is that of interindividual mental phenomena, a disadvantage revealed by a compelling dilemma: this distinctive branch of psychology either fits into the classic tradition and presents the mechanism of interindividual phenomena in the brains of individuals (separately, if need be) or resigns itself to being unable to accommodate the mechanism level of its investigations to their phenomena level. All this is in spite of the fact that investigations focusing on the connection between the mind and the brain—whether they do so from the point of view of the specialized science or of philosophy—cannot begin to deal with the interindividual variety of spiritual phenomena.     

Adaptive and Genomic Explanations of Human Behaviour: Might Evolutionary Psychology Contribute to Behavioural Genomics?

Evolutionary psychology and behavioural genomics are both approaches to explain human behaviour from a genetic point of view. Nonetheless, thus far the development of these disciplines is anything but interdependent. This paper examines the question whether evolutionary psychology can contribute to behavioural genomics. Firstly, a possible inconsistency between the two approaches is reviewed, viz. that evolutionary psychology focuses on the universal human nature and disregards the genetic variation studied by behavioural genomics. Secondly, we will discuss the structure of biological explanations. Some philosophers rightly acknowledge that explanations do not involve laws which are exceptionless and universal. Instead, generalisations that are invariant suffice for successful explanation as long as two other stipulations are recognised: the domain within which the generalisation has no exceptions as well as the distribution of the mechanism described by the generalisation should both be specified. It is argued that evolutionary psychology can contribute to behavioural genomic explanations by accounting for these two specifications.     

Creativity and Psychology

For a long time psychology has had a monopoly on the study of creativity. In the past few years it has become clear, however, that the means of psychology alone are not sufficient to meet the demands of contemporary practice, particularly the need to control creativity (the growth in the creative potential of scientists, inventors, etc.). Studies over a broad front are necessary, based on the principle of interdisciplinarity; this is now recognized by most researchers actively concerned with the problems of creativity. This consensus is, to a considerable degree, attributable to realization of the complexity of the problem and the impossibility of making any effective progress in it without drawing on other sciences. Nonetheless, such a broad-front approach has its difficulties. Studies of this kind must be organized in a specific way and have their own strategy.     

The Dialectical Method in the Psychology of Memory

The modern science of psychology grew out of the empirical psychology of the 19th century, construing itself as the complete negation of the latter. As such it contains two quite distinct basic tendencies: one away from the idealism of empirical psychology, the other away from its metaphysical mode of thought. These two tendencies are now a part of virtually all of progressive European psychology (1), and also reflect two problems posed by modern Russian psychology.