Psychological Focus points

Christopher Macias Escalona Student ID. 52265

Module Course Three Faculty of Psychology & Educational studies

19-03-2015 Supervisor: Marian Jensen

ESSAYOPGAVE BACHELOR FAGMODULKURSUS 3 FORÅR 2015

Studerende: Christopher Macias

Studienummer: 52265

Escalona Vejleder: Marian Jensen

Klyngenummer: 3

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Christopher Macias Escalona Student ID. 52265

Module Course Three Faculty of Psychology & Educational studies

19-03-2015 Supervisor: Marian Jensen

Psychological Focus-points Introduction The purpose of this paper is to give a brief yet comprehensive understanding of the concept everyday life as exemplified in Niklas Chimirri’s text – Expanding the conduct of everyday life concept for psychological media research with children (2013). Consequently, it simultaneously tries to display the epistemological assumptions that Chimirri draws upon in the theoretical framework of everyday life. For the second part of the analysis, it shall engage in a discussion concerning the relevance, advantages and disadvantages such a concept has for psychological research, using a variety of texts that portray specific ontological and methodological approaches. Here I will draw upon knowledge from Dencik (2005), Dencik & Westerling (2005), Argyle (1992), Gammelgaard (2007), Hogg M.A. & G. M. Vaughan (1995), among others.

Conceptualization of ‘everyday life’ What is everyday life, and how can it be understood? By looking at Chimirri’s text, it becomes obvious that the concept of everyday life is theorized through a socio-developmental paradigm. The epistemological approach of this framework is derived from the standpoint that individuals need to be understood and scrutinized as “participants in social practice” (Dreier, 2008, 2009b, in Chimirri 2013:29). Following this line of thought, and transferring it to the conceptualization of everyday life, it highlights that the development and creation of an everyday life is therefore unmistakably related to the process of interaction between individuals. Everyday life is therefore a product of a collective social practice where subjects become each other’s co-creators of lived life (Chimirri 2013). This means that even a specific notion of everyday life, inherent to a single individual, needs to be understood and investigated through the multiplicity of social interaction and contextual frameworks he*she moves around and within. Inter-subjectivity is therefore an indisputable process, which is important to acknowledge as a constitutional factor of everyday life. As such, this understanding encompasses the dynamic, ever-changing and complex relation of how social practice, by being manifested in a multitude of contexts, shapes subjects, is reversely shaped by said subjects and gives rise to diverse lived experiences and behavioural patterns that to a certain extent are transversal (Chimirri 2013).

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Christopher Macias Escalona Student ID. 52265

Module Course Three Faculty of Psychology & Educational studies

19-03-2015 Supervisor: Marian Jensen

Said differently, this means that diverse social situations give rise to certain actions based upon interaction that can be expressed differently depending on the contextual setting, but still be derived from the same point of departure. This can be depicted in Peter’s, the subject of Chimirri’s text, usage of the character Sonic in different social settings. Not only is Sonic Peter’s point of departure for social interaction, but his usesage of Sonic differs in the given contextual setting (Chimirri 2013). Thus, Actions that portray a specific behaviour, within a given context, can be transferred into a different social context, but will thereby be manifested in a new way. Behaviour and everyday life is therefore inevitably shaped by the multifaceted shades of interaction that are enacted in specific contextual situations and constituted by agency (Chimirri 2013:359). Understanding everyday life within Chimirri’s text, entails acknowledging that everyday life is a dynamic and complex dialectical relationship between subjects as participants in social practice, how social practice is constituted thereof and finally how both are mediated through a variety of contexts. However, an important point needs to be presented, regarding the notion of contextual settings. Chimirri highlights that this does not only encompass institutionalized life, cultural/social processes and normative behavioural patterns, but also an aspect of technologies. This aspect further complicates the scientific study of everyday life, as it incorporates yet a new paradigm that upholds a dominant influence in modern life: technology (Chimirri 2013). Incorporating a technological paradigm therefore entails that the dynamism of everyday life grows even larger, because a diverse assortment of social practices can be performed simultaneously in one and the same contextual arrangement, thus exemplifying that we can be in many places at once. In other words: everyday life consists of living one’s life in a wealth of different and concurrent localized and materialized settings that implicitly give rise to certain social praxis’ that go beyond their own structural borders and henceforth positions the individual as a contributor to his own and others life-world view, imbedded in a matrix of social and material interaction, that is not always easily manageable (Chimirri 2013:359).

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Christopher Macias Escalona Student ID. 52265

Module Course Three Faculty of Psychology & Educational studies

19-03-2015 Supervisor: Marian Jensen

Relevance of ‘Everyday life’ as a psychological concept As mentioned in the introduction, this part of the analysis will investigate the relevance and inherent advantage as well as possible disadvantages that constitute the concept of everyday life, within psychological research. As already portrayed in the first two pages, everyday life consists of a wide array of dynamic and ever-changing interactional practices. Following Chimirri’s conceptualization, it becomes even clearer in the words of Dencik & Westerling: “hverdagslivet opstår i den balance, som i et betemt øjeblik i historien hersker mellem samfundet og den enkelte. En balance som på grund af uafbrudte videnskabelige gennembrud, teknologiske innovationer, økonomiske allokeringer, politiske positioneringer, demografiske omkstruktueringer etc. Idag er i stadig og rivende forandring” (Dencik & Westerling 2005:5). This complexity makes it difficult, if not nearly impossible, to make generalizations about everyday life in a conventional socio-psychological scientific approach because this type of research consists of studying and explaining human behaviour in a quantifiable and observable manner, preferably within an experimental setting. Moreover, this is executed with the belief that it can help us understand behaviour as a definitive entity of human conduct (Hogg M.A. & G. M. Vaughan 1995). It therefore becomes extremely difficult to fit the notion of ‘everyday life’, as a dynamic process of development that it is, into a conservative paradigm of scientific inquiry, simply because they operate from distinct ontological assumptions. It would thus not be wrong to argue that the concept of everyday life, influenced by a social-constructionist paradigm, by attributing importance to interaction, can be seen as an antithesis against the more conservative, slightly positivistic ontology of conventional psychological study. To exemplify this opposition further, it is advisable to look upon the conventions that constituted the naturalistic approach within personality psychology. It becomes evident that the changeability of subjectivity due to the interactional nature of everyday life stands in stark contrast against the onedimensional understanding that human development is understood as a “measurable , universal attribute” (Danziger 2007:129), where “‘personality’ was constituted as the sum of these universally present, measurable intra-individual essences”(Ibid). Said differently, where one approach places importance on the dynamic processes of interaction in a wide array of contexts, as a constitutional factor of subjectivity and the creation of everyday life (Dencik & Westerling 2005), (Dencik et. al. 2008) & (Chimirri 2013), the other operates with the assumption that human conduct, being a universal entity, can be dissected through, among others, standardized tests and hypothesis testing in an 4

Christopher Macias Escalona Student ID. 52265

Module Course Three Faculty of Psychology & Educational studies

19-03-2015 Supervisor: Marian Jensen

experimental setting (Argyle 1992), (Danziger 2007). To further strengthen the overall distinction we can draw from notions put forth by Freud, constituting that psychological processes are not linear developments and that they are inevitably shaped by outer experiences (Danziger 2007:130), (Gammelgaard 2007). It becomes clear that there exist two dichotomous scientific methodological approaches to understanding human behaviour; one where subjectivity and behaviour is created by participation and contribution, and one where subjectivity and behaviour are pre-existing factors that can be measured through testing. Henceforth, by understanding this distinction it then becomes easier to grasp the advantages as well as possible disadvantages there are when using a conceptualization of everyday life within psychological research. The approach argued for, by Chimirri, Dencik et. al. and Dencik & Westerling, critically and advantageously questions the taciturnity of conventional psychological research because it encompasses the diverse and dynamic perspectives that constitute and are constituted by the social world’s multifariousness of which give rise to various subjective meanings and shared experiences (Chimirri 2013). Furthermore, the element of conventional psychological research that is most challenged by this approach “is the usual hypostatizing of the participant as the object of research for the purpose of constructing casualities, thus neglecting the (co)- humanness and subjectivity of the participant and excluding her_him by definition from the frame of social self-understanding” (Holzkamp 1995 in Chimirri 2013:360). This should unquestionably be seen as an advance within psychological research; hence subjectivity and behaviour cannot be explained nor examined as single standing entities. The emergence of the importance of interaction gives light to a variety of encapsulations and helps us understand that our everyday lived lives consist of interacting, producing and re-producing complex contextual settings that are inevitably influenced by other individuals and institutionalized, social, cultural and technological processes. It therefore rightfully questions the relevance and established factuality of behaviour in a hypostatizing methodological groundwork. Reversely it can be argued that a possible disadvantage can be concluded for the exact same reasons as the advantage that such a conceptualization entails. Namely that by acknowledging the multiplicity of everyday life, it simultaneously renders the incompatibility everyday life has with general conventional scientific knowledge, visible. It therefore becomes extremely difficult to create any kind of generalizability concerning socio-psychological behaviour – because it cannot be measured in a

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Christopher Macias Escalona Student ID. 52265

Module Course Three Faculty of Psychology & Educational studies

19-03-2015 Supervisor: Marian Jensen

controlled environment that eliminates construing variables (Hogg M.A. & G. M. Vaughan 1995). Moreover, because the process of self-understanding entails acknowledging individuals as participants and contributors of social practice, it simultaneously emphasizes that it is heavily dependent on the individual’s ability to critically reflect upon one’s actions and verbalize them accordingly. A dilemma therefore arises, for this process is so heavily dependent on verbalization that it might not reflect the ‘actual’ process of what causes individuals to act in a certain way (Chimirri 2013:360); hence, not being able to yield ‘real scientific knowledge’. Put more abruptly, one could ask ‘what is this conceptualization good for, if it cannot tell us a coherent and to a certain extent factual knowledge, about ourselves and our lives’? Nevertheless, this critique still reflects a problematic shortcoming in understanding the constitutional complexity of human development and individuals’ everyday lives. It cannot be stressed enough, that to grasp human behaviour and individuals’ everyday lives, we inexorably need to understand the multiplicity of their contributions and interrelations with people, interaction with contextual settings and societal structures, that through a dialectical relationship shape one another and give rise to our lived lives (Chimirri 2013), (Dencik. et al. 2005) & (Dencik & Westerling 2005).

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Christopher Macias Escalona Student ID. 52265

Module Course Three Faculty of Psychology & Educational studies

19-03-2015 Supervisor: Marian Jensen

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Chimirri, N. (2013). Expanding the conduct of everyday life concept for psychological research with children, in: doing psychology under new conditions, concord, ON: Captus Press. – P.355364. Gammelgaard, J. (2007). “Psykoanalysen”, in Karpatschof & Katzenelson (red.): Klassisk og modern psykologisk teori, Hans Reitzels Forlag Danziger, K. (1997). Naming the Mind. Sage Publications, London. Heri: “The category of Personality: Historical” – P.124-133. Argyle, M. (1992). The social psychology of everyday life. London: Routhledge. [chap. 3, Social Relationships]. – P.38-72. Dencik, L., Jørgensen P.S & Sommer, D. (2008). Familie in en opbrudstid. København: Hans Reitzels Forlag. Kap 1. Indledning: Familien – kontinuitet og forandring. – P.13-47. Hogg M.A. & G. M. Vaughan. (1995). Introduction, in Social Psychology an introduction. Prentice Hall London. – P.1-38. Dencik, L. (2005). Hverdagslivets socialpsykologi, in Jens Bjerg & Allan Westerling (red.): Psykologi på Roskilde Univercitetscenter. Hverdagsliv. Barndom & Familie. Undervisning. Arbejde. Roskilde Univercitetscenter. – P.3-5. Dencik, L & Westerling, A. (2005). Hverdagslivets socialpsykologi, in Jens Bjerg & Allan Westerling (red.): Psykologi på Roskilde Univercitetscenter. Hverdagsliv. Barndom & Familie. Undervisning. Arbejde. Roskilde Univercitetscenter. – P.6-11.

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