Fictional things, the dead mother in the loft, and the dog that didn’t growl: Social Psychology for the 21 st century

1. Fictional things, the dead mother in the loft, and the dog that didn’t growl: Social Psychology for the 21st century Professor Chris McVittie 20 February 2013 QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

2. life in the 21st century • across the globe, many instances of conflict / between different groups (e.g. Palestinian/Israeli conflict, uprising in Syria, Arab Spring and its aftermath etc.) • nearer to home, collective events and their meanings (London riots, 2012 Diamond Jubilee, 2012 Summer Olympics & Paralympic Games / Team GB) • issues of identity within the UK and relationships with other nations, such as members of European Union QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

3. life in 21st century • multiplicity of forms of communication that • inform us of events • enable communication and interaction with others • provide endless(?) possibilities for us to identify ourselves in diverse ways QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

4. aim of social psychology • ‘social psychology aims to explain how people are influenced in what they say and do by actual or potential interaction with other people’ (McKinlay & McVittie, 2008, p. 255) QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

5. potential contribution of social psychology • often undervalued or neglected due to • external factors – other disciplines, funders, policy-makers, REF 2014 • internal factors – social psychology itself QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

6. external factors • other disciplines (such as behavioural economics, neuroscience) provide explanations for human social behaviour • these competing explanations can be more definite, cleaner, sexier (?) than what social psychology has to say • often such explanations are preferred by funders, policy-makers, etc. • reflected in make-up of 2014 REF U of A 4 - ‘Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience’ • wider preference for definite explanations QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

7. internal factors • much social psychology has given up studying people – • Billig, M. (2011). Writing social psychology: Fictional things and unpopulated texts. • ‘Most outsiders would expect social psychologists to write about people; and so they would expect social psychology to be populated with accounts of people and their actions’ (p. 4) QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

8. fictional things • ‘Social psychologists have invented a technical terminology that in the main seems to denote an array of things. What kind of ‘things’ are these things? . . . by turning processes rhetorically into things, scientists routinely are creating ‘fictional things’ – namely entities, which cannot actually exist as things, but which are treated as if they were things . . . there are problems when we confuse the imagined world of our fictional things with the world that we are using these fictions to understand. The problems are likely to be acute if we take our fictional things to be more real than the things that ordinary people recognize in the social world’. (Billig, 2011, pp. 14-15) QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

9. Solomon Asch (1951; 1956) – studies of independence and conformity QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

10. line judgment task • participants are shown two cards with lines and required to state aloud which of the three comparison lines is similar in length to the reference line QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

11. line judgment task • under ordinary conditions this is an easy task, individuals make mistakes in matching the lines <1% of the time • in Asch’s studies • a naïve participant was placed in room with four to six confederates of Asch • Asch had instructed the confederates to give unanimous incorrect answers on 12 out of 18 trials • the naïve participant was seated next to last and heard the incorrect answers of the others • how would the naïve participant respond? QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

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13. This naïve participant (the one in the middle) has just heard the previous five participants give the same wrong answer. He has to decide whether he will give the right answer or give the wrong answer, and conform to the majority’s opinion QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

14. evidence of conformity • under group pressure, participant agreed with (incorrect) majority view in 36.8% of selections • over the 12 trials, 75% of naïve participants conformed at least once QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

15. concern • “That we have found the tendency to conformity in our society so strong . . . is a matter of concern. It raises questions about our ways of education and about the values that guide our conduct.” (Asch, 1956, p.34) QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

16. the move towards fictional things • ‘Studies of independence and conformity: A minority of one against a unanimous majority’ (Asch,1956) • ‘A study of normative and informational social influences upon individual judgment’ (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955) • ‘Surface-level diversity and decision-making in groups: When does deep-level similarity help?’ (Phillips et al., 2006) • ‘Mental construal and the emergence of assimilation and contrast effects: The inclusion/exclusion model’ (Bless & Schwartz, 2010) • ‘Group heterogeneity and social validation of everyday knowledge: The mediating role of perceived group participation’ (Vala et al., 2011) QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

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18. a new beginning • Potter, J. & Wetherell, M. (1987). Discourse and social psychology: Beyond attitudes and behaviour. • argument for treating discourse as topic not as resource for studying extra-discursive (fictional) entities QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

19. Discourse and social psychology • ‘This book is about language and its importance for social psychology. It looks at the subtle ways in which language orders our perceptions and makes things happen and thus shows how language can be used to construct and create social interaction and diverse social worlds . . . ‘(p. 1) • ‘One of the advantages of discourse analysis is that the data are everywhere . . . If we have indicated the interest and value of the systematic analysis of accounts of all kinds this book will have succeeded in its aim.’ (p. 187) QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

20. Discourse and social psychology • as of 19 / 02/2013 has been cited 5219 times (Google Scholar) • annual citation rate > 500 per annum (Potter, 2012) QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

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22. ‘It all fits into place’: Psychiatrists’ linguistic strategies in challenging media representations of their profession Chris McVittie Andy McKinlay (in press) QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

23. the study • to examine how professional psychiatrists talk about cinematic representations of psychiatry QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

24. data • from set of interviews conducted by a professional journalist with 13 internationally renowned practising psychiatrists • interviews were to provide background research and material for use in radio programmes that were subsequently broadcast on a UK national radio station • the participants were asked about different sorts of cinematic representations of psychiatry QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

25. background • psychiatrists are often presented in negative ways in the cinema (e.g. Silence of the Lambs) • however, they regard positive descriptions of their profession as also being inaccurate – ‘In a brief golden age of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in the cinema between 1957 and 1963, idealized portrayals of dramatic healing misrepresented psychotherapy as badly as the negative portrayals’ (Gabbard, 2002, p. 7) QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

26. background • psychiatrists are well-positioned to comment on what they regard as inaccurate representations of psychiatry • as members of that profession, they are entitled to comment on what it is or is not • as psychiatrists, they are treated as entitled to comment on what is real-life and what is not real-life, and to provide explanations for why people do what they do QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

27. Extract 1 • Moore (pseudonym) is responding to a question about whether 20th century views of the power of science are reflected in films QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

28. Extract 1 QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

29. Extract 1 QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

30. critique – cinematic version QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

31. critique - irony QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

32. alignment with audience QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

33. total rejection of cinematic version QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

34. Extract 2 • Extract 2 follows a question that asks Hunt (pseudonym) whether cinematic portrayals of psychiatry are inaccurate in suggesting that people with psychiatric problems often get better by falling in love or through their own efforts (rather than due to psychiatric intervention) QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

35. Extract 2 QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

36. critique – not real life QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

37. critique – one way of speaking QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

38. why? – psychiatric explanation QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

39. Extract 2 • according to Hunt • cinema is not real-life • what we see ‘in Woody Allen movies and other movies’ is one (incorrect) way of presenting psychiatry • why this happens can be explained in psychiatric terms QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

40. psychiatric explanation • more tentative – ‘I think’, ‘might’ • conditional – repeated use of ‘if’ • less obvious – ‘a subtler issue’ • doing psychiatry involves explanations that are ‘messier’ than seen in Extract 1 QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

41. The dog that didn’t growl: Confabulation as an interactional accomplishment Chris McVittie Andy McKinlay Sergio Della Sala Sarah MacPherson (under review) QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

42. clinical neuroscience • clinical neuroscience uses range of methods to study its patients • results of fMRI scans • results of diagnostic tests • verbal reports elicited from patients QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

43. verbal reports from patients • verbal reports are usually treated as providing evidence that confirms what is found elsewhere • the descriptions that patients provide • can be evaluated against normative expectations or external realities • provide evidence of individual cognitive capacities or impairments QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

44. confabulations • confabulations are usually defined as false narratives or statements about world and/or self due to some pathological mechanisms or factors, but with no intention of lying • ‘statements or actions that involve unintentional but obvious distortions of memory’ (Moscovitch and Melo, 1997: 1018) QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

45. the present study • data • set of verbal reports given by two confabulating patients in interviews conducted by a clinical researcher • aim • to see what these reports can tell us about the confabulations that patients produce QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

46. Patient OV • a 59 year old male at the time of testing (2003) • had nine years of formal education and had been employed as a lorry driver • in July 2003, he had a severe head injury • led to lesion that was centred on frontal and limbic-diencephalic brain regions, manifesting in anosognosia (deficit in self-awareness) QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

47. Patient OV • had a predicted IQ of 95 • in his clinical evaluation, he did not have any naming, perceptual or attentionaldeficits but • his memory performance was poor on all tests • showed clear signs of a dysexecutivesyndrome • he was formally assessed six months post onset and presented with florid confabulations QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

48. Patient OV QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

49. Extract 3 QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013

50. Extract 3 and impairment QMU Professorial Lecture 20 February 2013