Wundt contested: The first crisis declaration in psychology

When reflecting on the history and the present situation of their field, psychologists have often seen their discipline as being in a critical state. The first author to warn of a crisis was, in 1897, the now scarcely known philosopher Rudolf Willy. He saw a crisis in psychology resulting, firstly, from a profuse branching out of psychology. Adopting a radical empiriocriticist point of view, he, secondly, made the metaphysical stance of scholars like Wilhelm Wundt responsible for the crisis. Meanwhile, the priest Constantin Gutberlet responded to the claim of crisis arguing, on the contrary, that the crisis resulted from research that was empirical only. Throughout the discipline psychologists felt troubled by a widespread sense of fragmentation in the field. I will argue that this is due to psychology's early social success and popularization in modern society. Moreover the paper shows that the first declaration of crisis emerged at a time when a discussion of fundamentals was already underway between Wundt and the empiriocriticist Richard Avenarius. The present historical research reveals the depth of the confrontation between Wundt and Willy, entailing a clash of two worldviews that embrace psychological, epistemological, and political aspects.     

Thinking Temporally or Modernizing Anthropology

Recent changes within social and cultural anthropology have made history a key issue, but in this essay I argue that the field has yet to develop the resources that are required to deal with temporality. This point is made through an extended examination of Jean and John Comaroffs work on Christianity and colonialism in southern Africa. Arguably, the Comaroffs read history backward and then present its unfolding as a kind of inexorable logic. In doing so, they homogenize missionary and Tswana "cultures" and attribute agency to abstractions rather than to people acting in particular material contexts. In contrast, I argue for a narrative approach to historical anthropological explanation. The emergent qualities of events—and the variable ways in which capitalism, hegemony, Protestantism, and vernacular modernisms relate—require narrative for explanation, narrative that encompasses within itself the narratives of social actors themselves, [historical anthropology, narrative, the modern, South Africa]     

L��h��ritage de l����cole de Boston

The Boston School was a school of thought that gave birth, in the 1890s in the USA, to psychology as an academic discipline and as a practising profession. Some of the ideas and therapeutic attitudes of the school??s members will be examined from a historical perspective. The approach will be compared briefly with that of current psychological practice in France. The aim of this comparison is to get an overview of the development of psychology from its initial progress in the USA to current practice in France and from earlier European influences to the present American contribution. Thus, we can explore the legacy of the Boston School and some more recent potential influences. In comparison with modern psychologists how did the members of the Boston School regard psychology, mental life and psychotherapies?     

On The History of Soviet Military Psychology

Military psychology is a branch of psychology, which is in addition included among the military sciences. In it the psychological features of different kinds of military and, above all, of combat activity are studied in relation to social and historical conditions, military technology, personal qualities of the fighting men, and methods of military and political preparation. The general purpose of Soviet military psychology is to discover principles of human mental activity under the conditions of combat and of training for combat, and to use these principles for raising the fighting capacity of the Soviet armed forces.     

Some Problems of Research in Social Psychology

The field of social psychology is the center of an extremely complex and ideology-laden controversy among Soviet psychologists. The complexity arises chiefly from the fact that in the era approximately bounded by 1930 and 1960 there was no research carried out in the USSR labeled "social psychology." All such research had ceased in the very early 1930s, replaced by the Marxist-Leninist theory of historical materialism that was said to make social psychology superfluous, if not harmful.     

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.     

The Gellnerian modality revisited: towards a ‘genealogy’ of cultural homogenization and nation-state congruency

This paper re-evaluates Ernest Gellner's theory of nations and nationalism and particularly his conceptions of cultural homogenization and congruency. The paper shows how Gellner's historical and epistemological stance naturalizes homogenization processes and rationalizes modern history as an inevitable trajectory of congruency making of states and nations. The paper proposes, nonetheless, to deploy a critical framework and read Gellner's notions of congruency and cultural homogenization as a ‘social imaginary’/‘fantasy’. That is, understanding congruency as a sociopolitical project that idealizes a certain imaginary as positive, necessary and inevitable – a ‘fantasy’ that sets to secure and stabilize discursively the contingency of social relations. It is suggested, moreover, to deploy a Foucauldian genealogical technique in an attempt to de-naturalize congruency and homogenization practices and expose the conditions of their emergence in modern history.     

Some Problems in People's Cognitive Awareness of one Another under Conditions of Modern Production

Psychology studies people's cognitive awareness of one another as a multilevel reflexive process of social psychological interaction among people. The essential features of this interaction are determined by the ensemble of people's relations in their work and in their social and political activity. Study of people's direct and indirect reflection in each other's minds in a production setting is one of the most important scientific and specifically psychological preconditions for improving the management and organization of modern production. As the subject matter of social psychology, the laws of people's cognitive awareness of one another and of themselves are an organic part of processes of group formation; they mediate all forms of practical and emotional communication in a production brigade, and they are regularly manifested in both the group-related and individually oriented mental states of workers and the dynamic patterns displayed by their moods. Cognitive awareness of others, of course, also exerts an influence on the effectiveness of work.     

Why is joint attention a pivotal skill in autism?

Joint attention abilities play a crucial role in the development of autism. Impairments in joint attention are among the earliest signs of the disorder and joint attention skills relate to outcome, both in the 'natural course' of autism and through being targeted in early intervention programmes. In the current study, concurrent and longitudinal associations between joint attention and other social communication abilities measured in a sample of infants with autism and related pervasive developmental disorders at age 20 months, and language and symptom severity at age 42 months, were examined. Extending the findings from previous studies, joint attention ability was positively associated with language gains and (lower) social and communication symptoms, and imitation ability was also positively associated with later language. Some specificity in the association between different aspects of joint attention behaviours and outcome was found: declarative, triadic gaze switching predicted language and symptom severity but imperative, dyadic eye contact behaviours did not. Further, although joint attention was associated with later social and language symptoms it was unrelated to repetitive and stereotyped symptoms, suggesting the latter may have a separate developmental trajectory. Possible deficits in psychological and neurological processes that might underlie the impaired development of joint attention in autism are discussed.     

The psychological reality of social constructions

This article argues that social constructions have a psychological reality that exists apart from structural conditions. Our thesis is developed in four sections. First, psychological evidence is reviewed that illustrates how people classify and evaluate others on the basis of salient visual or auditory information, such as race, ethnicity or gender. Although this discussion should generalize to the construction of ethnic and gender differences, we concentrate on the Black‐White race relationship in the United States. Secondly, we briefly survey the debate between constructionists and essentialists within psychology, and address how social psychological findings may contribute to constructionist theory and sociological research. Thirdly, a psychological defence of the racial construct is given. It is argued that although race is crucial to the full understanding of majority‐minority relations, its usefulness is best seen in conjunction with structural formulations. Finally, an interactive model of race and social structure is submitted. Taking economic class as an example, research is reviewed that suggests how race and social structure jointly influence people's stereotypes within differing historical and cultural contexts. The black middle class is used as a case where analysis requires attention to both race and structure.     

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.     

社会认知神经科学的取向与研究进展

社会认知神经科学是社会心理学和认知神经科学相结合的新兴多学科研究领域,其强调在社会、认知与脑神经等三个层面的交互作用上去理解心理现象。前几年主要是对刻板印象、态度与态度改变、他人知觉、自我认知以及情绪与认知交互作用等方面进行了深入研究,其主要范式是应用认知神经科学的方法来验证社会心理学在这些范围内上的各种不同的理论观点,当前的研究主要集中在知觉和再认的社会标记、社会判断和归因、评价调节知觉和经验以及社会交互作用等传统的社会心理学方面,并取得了突破性进展。展望未来的研究,其将在系统准则研究发展的基础上,把当今的社会认知研究与认知神经科学在理论和方法论上整合起来,为揭示人类高级社会心理现象的神经基础,开辟一条崭新的研究道路。     

The need to incorporate human variation and evolutionary theory in forensic anthropology: A call for reform

In 1992, Norm Sauer called for a language shift in which practitioners would move away from the socially loaded term “race” and replace it with the less provocative term “ancestry.” While many heeded the call and moved towards ancestry in their research and reports, the actual approach to research and analysis did not change. In response to this change, there was a large growth in ancestry estimation method development in the early decade of the 2000s. However, the practice of ancestry estimation did not adequately incorporate evolutionary theory in interpretation or trait selection and continued with little critical reflection. In the past decade, there has been an increase in ancestry validation methods with little critique of the “race” concept or discussion of modern human variation or reference samples. To advance, forensic anthropologists need to reckon with the practice of ancestry estimation as it is currently practiced. We are calling for another reform in the axiom focusing on evolutionary theory, population history, trait selection, and population-level reference samples. The practice needs to abandon the terms ancestry and race completely and recalibrate to an analysis of population affinity. Population affinity is a statistical approach based on the underlying population structure that would allow the understanding of how microevolutionary forces act in concert with historical events (e.g., colonization, the Transatlantic Slave Trade, etc.) to shape modern human variation. This is not to be confused with geographic ancestry that all too often can be perceived as interchangeable with social race and as an affirmation of the biological concept of race. It is time to critically evaluate the social and scientific implications of the current practice of ancestry estimation, and re-frame our approach to studying and analyzing modern human variation through a population structure approach.     

An evolutionary analysis of psychological pain following rape:: I. The effects of victim's age and marital status

The typical approach used to identify and characterize adaptations is discussed briefly, and then it is applied to psychological changes associated with the psychological pain experienced by rape victims. It has been hypothesized that mental pain may reflect psychological adaptation that is designed to detect and cope with the occurence of social problems that reduce an individual's inclusive fitness in human evolutionary history. According to the hypothesis, mental pain is brought about by social tragedies in the lives of individuals and focuses the attention of individuals on the events surrounding the pain, promoting correction of the pain-causing events and their avoidance in the future. The hypothesis applied to rape victims proposes that in human evolutionary history raped females had increased fitness as a result of mental pain, because the pain forced them to focus attention on the fitness-reducing circumstances surrounding rape, which are discussed. Some of the hypothesis' predictions about the psychological pain of rape victims are examined using a data set of 790 rape victims in Philadelphia (USA) who were interviewed about their psychological traumatization within five days after the assault. The analyses indicate that, as predicted, a victim's age and marital status are proximate causes of the magnitude of psychological pain following rape. Reproductive-aged women appear to be more severely traumatized by rape than older women or girls and married women more than unmarried women. The results presented suggest that the psychology that regulates mental pain processes information about age and mateship status in the event of a women's rape.     

Physically strong men are more militant: A test across four countries

There is substantial evidence from archaeology, anthropology, primatology, and psychology indicating that humans have a long evolutionary history of war. Natural selection, therefore, should have designed mental adaptations for making decisions about war. These adaptations evolved in past environments, and so they may respond to variables that were ancestrally relevant but not relevant in modern war. For example, ancestrally in small-scale combat, a skilled fighter would be more likely to survive a war and bring his side to victory. This ancestral regularity would have left its mark on modern men's intergroup psychology: more formidable men should still be more supportive of war. We test this hypothesis in four countries: Argentina, Denmark, Israel, and Romania. In three, physically strong men (but not strong women) were significantly more supportive of military action. These findings support the hypothesis that modern warfare is influenced by a psychology designed for ancestral war.     

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.     

Social sharing and risk reduction: Exploring a computational algorithm for the psychology of windfall gains

Sharing important resources widely beyond direct kin group members is one of the core features characterizing human societies. Moreover, generalized exchange involving many community members (e.g., meat sharing in bands) seems to be a uniquely human practice. This paper explores a computational algorithm for the psychology of social sharing that may underlie such practices, based on the risk-reduction hypothesis in food sharing of Kaplan and Hill [Curr. Anthropol. 26 (1985) 223]. We predicted that, independent of the amount of effort actually invested, uncertainty involved in resource acquisition is a key factor that triggers the psychology of social sharing for both acquirers and nonacquirers of a resource. It was also predicted that the “windfall effect” is independent of individual preferences as to modern distributive ideologies. Four multisample/multimethod studies, using Japanese and American participants, and laboratory as well as vignette experiments, supported these predictions: although the identical fungible resource (money) was under consideration, different psychological processes were triggered, depending on the degree of uncertainty involved in the money acquisition. Implications of the windfall effect for egalitarianism in resource sharing, observed not only in hunter–gatherer bands but also in highly industrialized societies, are discussed.     

The 12 Item Social and Economic Conservatism Scale (SECS)

Recent years have seen a surge in psychological research on the relationship between political ideology (particularly conservatism) and cognition, affect, behaviour, and even biology. Despite this flurry of investigation, however, there is as yet no accepted, validated, and widely used multi-item scale of conservatism that is concise, that is modern in its conceptualisation, and that includes both social and economic conservatism subscales. In this paper the 12-Item Social and Economic Conservatism Scale (SECS) is proposed and validated to help fill this gap. The SECS is suggested to be an important and useful tool for researchers working in political psychology.     

The Anthropology in American Historical Archaeology

Since its infancy, American historical archaeology has maintained a relationship, albeit often a tenuous one, with its anthropological parentage. Given both the history of the field and its practitioners' often-tortured efforts to define their intentions, goals, and perspectives, it is not surprising, perhaps, that many anthropologists may not recognize the important contributions historical archaeology can make to the anthropological project. A multifaceted and wide-ranging examination of the post-Columbian world gives historical archaeology a special ability to investigate modern history and to provide insights into the historical circumstances of today's world, [historical archaeology, post-Columbian archaeology, history of American archaeology]