Prologue

1
Prologue
2
Folk theory of personality

• Monday's child is fair of face.
• Tuesday's child is full of grace.
• Wednesday's child is full of woe.
• Thursday's child has far to go.
• Friday's child is loving and giving.
• Saturday's child works hard for a living.
• But the child that's born on the Sabbath day, Is
  bonny and lithe and good and gay.

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Ashanti folk theory

• On different days of the week
• Different types of kra (soul) enter the body
• Produce different dispositions (not destiny)
• Mondays boy-child
• Soul name of Kwadwo
• quiet, retiring, peaceful
• Wednesdays boy-child
• Soul name of Kwaku
• quick-tempered, aggressive, trouble maker

4
Ashanti folk theory

• Tested by Jahoda (1954)
• Sampling
• 446 delinquents (Juvenile Court records
  1948-1953)
• 1254 schoolboys (all boys in 10 schools)
• Used ?2 to test relations between
• Day of birth (kradin)
• Delinquency (schoolboy vs delinquent)
• Type of offence (against person vs other)

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Ashanti schoolboys
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Ashanti delinquents
p lt .05
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Offences by all delinquents
8
Offences by kwaku delinquents
p lt .01
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Jahodas conclusion

• The results here presented are consistent with
  the hypothesis that Ashanti beliefs about a
  connexion between personality characteristics and
  day of birth may be effective in selectively
  enhancing certain traits which otherwise may have
  remained latent. ... The correspondence appears
  too striking to be easily dismissed.
• (Jahoda, 1954, p. 195)

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Social construction of personality

• Enter the self-concept

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Overview of topic

• Essentialism vs constructionism
• Social construction of personality
• Discursive perspectives
• Social cognitive/symbolic interactionist
  perspectives

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Essentialism vs. constructionism

• Mainstream approaches to personality and
  intelligence tend to assume that these individual
  differences reflect objective or essential
  properties of the person.
• Behavioural genetics research suggests that much
  of the variance in measures of individual
  differences (IQ, Big 5) can indeed be accounted
  for by genetic factors.
• Effects of shared environment are much less
  evident, while effects of non-shared
  environment are entirely confounded with error
  variance in these studies.

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Essentialism vs. constructionism

• Little attention is paid in this research to how
  genetic factors contribute to the formation of
  intelligence and personality molecular genetics
  research is needed.
• Even less attention is paid to how environmental
  factors contribute to the construction of
  individual differences thus we need to develop
  our concept of environment.
• Further research into genetic predispositions
  will be largely the province of geneticist and
  neuropsychologist, but research into the
  individual-environment relation is clearly the
  province of the social psychologist.

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What does the environment include?

• Physical environment
• Social relationships and interactions
• Mass communication and media
• Widespread cultural beliefs

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What does the environment include?

• The individuals experience of
• Physical environment
• Social relationships and interactions
• Mass communication and media
• Widespread cultural beliefs,
• much of which is mediated by language and
  communication proceses ...

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Language and truth

• Psychological research and theorising is hugely
  dependent on language.
• Traditionally, this dependence on language is not
  problematised. We readily assume
• that language is used to describe reality.
• that words have fixed, unambiguous meanings.
• that inner states (beliefs, attitudes, traits,
  emotions, and so on) can be inferred from the
  language used by our respondents in interviews,
  questionnaires, etc.

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Language and truth

• Ludwig Wittgenstein (1921) questioned whether the
  meanings of words are really transparent
• Language disguises thought. So much so, that
  from the outward form of the clothing it is
  impossible to infer the form of the thought
  beneath it, because the outward form of the
  clothing is not designed to reveal the form of
  the body, but for entirely different purposes.
  Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 4.002
• Wittgenstein argued that the meaning of words is
  in their use not in dictionary definitions.

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Language and truth

• J. L. Austin (1962) argued that words can be
  actions not just descriptions
• I declare war on the Philippines.
• I sentence you to 30 years imprisonment.
• I now declare you husband and wife.
• Hello.
• These are performative utterances they are not
  describing reality, but constructing reality.

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Social constructionism

• Scientific and everyday concepts are not
  reflections of external reality gained through
  observation, but are only intelligible with
  respect to a vast array of other concepts.
• Our assumptions about reality arise from social
  interaction within historical, cultural and
  social contexts.
• The extent to which a form of understanding is
  accepted as true is not dependent on empirical
  validity, but on social processes involving
  negotiation, power, conflict.
• Which theories or versions of reality are
  accepted has far-reaching implications for social
  action.
• Gergen, 1985, see also Berger Luckmann, 1966

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Aims of social constructionism

• Social constructionist inquiry is principally
  concerned with explicating the processes by which
  people come to describe, explain, or otherwise
  account for the world (including themselves) in
  which they live.
• (Gergen, 1985, p. 266)

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A critical orientation

• Social constructionist theory often adopts a
  critical or de-constructionist perspective
• Questioning peoples accounts of themselves
• Are these accounts descriptive or performative?
• What sort of social assumptions are they based
  on?
• Questioning the reality of concepts and
  categories we take for granted (e.g., gender,
  nationality)
• Includes questioning the truth status of
  theoretical concepts (e.g. personality, self,
  intelligence)

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Discourse analysis

• Jonathan Potter and Margaret Wetherell (1987)
  applied critical arguments about language to
  social psychological concepts and methods
• Do not infer mental states from language.
• Focus on performative rather than descriptive
  functions.
• Language understood to construct, not reflect,
  meaning.
• Social psychological concepts (e.g., attitudes,
  emotions, personality, self) reinterpreted as
  resources existing in language for constructing
  shared meanings.

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Two forms of discourse analysis

• Micro approach
• grounded in conversation analysis
• focuses on the performative functions of language
• avoids cognitive-level explanations of actions
• avoids going beyond the text
• Macro approach
• grounded in social constructionist theory
• focuses on implications of societal discourses
• effects of discursive resources on action
• (Abell Stokoe, British Journal of Social
  Psychology 2001)

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Example 1 Margaret Thatcher

• Excerpt from speech at Conservative Party annual
  conference 1984. Context miners strike.
• The nation faces what is probably the most
  testing crisis of our time--the battle between
  the extremists and the rest. We are fighting, as
  we have always fought, for the weak as well as
  for the strong. We are fighting for great and
  good causes. We are fighting to defend them
  against the power and might of those who rise up
  to challenge them. This Government will not
  weaken. This nation will meet that challenge.
  Democracy will prevail.
• (Reicher Hopkins, European Journal of Social
  Psychology 1996)

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Example 2 Princess Diana

• Excerpt from BBC Panorama interview with Martin
  Bashir, 1995. Context Diana the ambassador.
• Bashir On what grounds do you feel that you
  have the right to think of yourself as an
  ambassador?
• Diana Ive been in a (.) privileged position
  for fifteen years (.) and Ive got (.) tremendous
  knowledge (.) about people and how to communicate
  (.) Ive learnt that (.) Ive got it (.) and I
  want to use it (1) and when I look at people in
  (.) public life (1) .hhh Im not a political
  animal (.) but (.) I think the biggest disease
  this world (.) suffers from (.) in this day and
  age (.) is the disease of people feeling unloved
  (.) and I know that (.) I can give (.) love for a
  minute (.) for half an hour for a day for a month
  but I can give (.) Im very happy to do that (.)
  and I want to do that
• (Abell Stokoe, British Journal of Social
  Psychology 2001)

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Discourse and cognition

• Shows manipulation of self-identity categories to
  achieve interactional goals (e.g. persuasion)
• Makes no claims about cognition
• What about speakers intentions?
• What about effects on audience?
• Why look at discourse if not prepared to consider
  relationship with cognition?

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Hampsons model of personality
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The actor

• Characteristics residing in the individual
• Domain of personality psychology
• Single trait theories
• Multiple trait theories
• Hereditary and environmental influences

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The observer

• How person is perceived/judged by others
• Domain of social psychology
• Person perception
• Attribution theories
• Impression formation

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The self-observer

• Persons beliefs about own characteristics
• Domain of social and clinical psychology
• Self-concept or identity
• Self-concept
• Self-evaluation
• Self-awareness

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Behavioural confirmation

• Effects of observers expectations on actor
• Self-fulfilling prophecy effects
• Snyder, Tanke Berscheid (1977)
• M/F dyads in phone conversation
• Manipulated attractiveness of F with photo

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Behavioural confirmation

• Measured M expectations of F target
• attractive target
• sociable, poised, humorous, socially adept
• unattractive target
• unsociable, awkward, serious, socially inept
• attractiveness stereotype false expectations

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Behavioural confirmation

• Actual behaviour of F target
• naïve judges hearing F recording only
• attractive target gt unattractive target on
  stereotypically attractive traits
• e.g. sociable, poised, sexually warm, outgoing
• (false) expectations of observer confirmed

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Behavioural confirmation

• What about behaviour of M?
• naïve judges hearing M recording only
• M interacting with attractive F
• more sociable, sexually warm, interesting,
  independent, sexually permissive, bold, outgoing,
  humorous, obvious and socially adept
• presumed mediator of F responses

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Behavioural confirmation

• Replicated with other dimensions
• Hostility (Snyder Swann, 1978)
• Extraversion (Fazio et al., 1981)
• Gender roles (Skrypnek Snyder, 1982)
• Could behavioural confirmation effects explain
  perpetuation of gender roles? (cf. Smith Lloyd,
  1978)
• Effects generalise to subsequent interactions
• but only when target alters self-concept

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Other construction processes

• Always about relationships between actor,
  observer and self-observer
• Self-presentation
• Self-verification
• Self-stereotyping
• ... ?
• Observer is also an actor!

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Conclusions

• Social constructionist ideas examined using
  discursive and mainstream methods
• Focus on meaning systems and the individuals
  experience of the environment
• Meaning systems shaped by social interaction and
  by widespread beliefs
• Language and communication construct and do not
  just reflect individual differences