EXPLICIT OR IMPLIED ‘EASTERNISATION’: THE CASE OF SITUATIONAL FORCES IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25159/1812-6371/3417Keywords:
convergency, easternisation, situational forces, social psychologyAbstract
Conventional West/East convergency theory tends to either emphasise the
East’s westernising process, or confines discussion to the West’s adoption of Eastern cuisine, medicine and health practices. This article expands the discussion on the West’s easternisation. It elaborates on the increasing importance assigned to the situation in the West particularly in social psychology – a traditionally Western discipline adopting a seemingly eastern-oriented notion as its central focus. I demonstrate how the notion of situational forces has gained increasing acceptance in social psychology, how its popularity has spread to other disciplines such as philosophy and into general public discourse. I examine the origin of this evolvement (particularly whether it manifests any conscious appropriation of Eastern thought) by tracking the influences on its key figures. The findings suggest that this case of ‘easternisation’ does not result from a conscious uptake of Eastern philosophy, but rather seems to be a separate, independent development within the West. I propose that this may be a natural result of Western dualism and the tendency to swing between perceived opposites, as well as of the Western insistence on observation and empiricism as the primary sources of knowledge.
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Random House.
Annas, J. (2003). Virtue Ethics and Social Psychology. A Priori. Retrieved from: http://www.
stolaf.edu/people/huff/classes/GoodnEvil/391%20old%20Readings/julia_annas1.pdf.
Arendt, H. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil. New York: Penguin Books.
Arjoon, S. (2008). Reconciling situation social psychology with virtue ethics. International
Journal of Management Reviews, 10(3), 221–243.
Balbernie, R. (2010). Circuits and circumstances: The neurobiological consequences of early relationship experiences and how they shape later behavior. Journal of Child Psychotherapy, 27(3), 237–255.
Bond, M. H., & Hwang, W. K. (1986). The social psychology of Chinese people. In M. H. Bond
(Ed.), The Psychology of the Chinese People (pp. 213–266). HK: Oxford University Press.
Browning, C. (1998). Ordinary men: The role of Police Battalion 101 in the final solution in Poland. NY: Harper Perennial.
Campbell, C. (2007). The easternisation of the West: A thematic account of cultural change in the modern era. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
Campbell, C. (2010). The easternisation of the West: Or, how the West was lost. Asian Journal of Social Sciences, 38, 738–757.
De Vos, J. (2010). From Milgram to Zimbardo: the Double Birth of Postwar Psychology/
Psychologisation. History of the Human Sciences, 23(5), 156–175.
Dicks, H. V. (1972). Licensed mass murder: A socio-psychological study of some SS killers. New
York: Basic Books.
Einolf, C. J. (2009). Explaining Abu Ghraib: A review essay. Journal of Human Rights, 8(1),
110–120.
Endler, N. S., & Parker, J. D. A. (1992). Interactionism revisited: Reflections on the continuing crisis in the personality area. European Journal of Personality, 6, 177–198.
Funder, D. C. (2006).Towards a resolution of the personality triad: Persons, situations, and behaviors. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 21–34.
Guillén, M. F. (2001). Is globalisation civilizing, destructive or feeble? A critique of five key debates in the social science literature. Annual Review of Sociology, 27, 235–260.
Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s consequences. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Hutton, E. L. (2006). Character, situationism and early confucian thought. Philosophical Studies, 127, 37–58.
Kamtekar, R. (2004). Situationism and virtue ethics on the content of our character. Ethics, 114, 458–491.
Kenrick, D. T., & Funder, D. C. (1988). Profiting from controversy: Lesson from the personsituation debate. American Psychologist, 43, 23–34.
Kim, J., Lim, T. S., Dindia, K., & Burrell, N. (2010). Reframing the cultural differences between the East and the West. Communication Studies, 61(5), 543–566.
Kristjánsson, K. (2008). An Aristotelian critique of situationism. Philosophy, 83, 55–76.
Kristjánsson, K. (2011). Situationism and the concept of a situation. European Journal of
Philosophy, 20(S1), E52–72.
Krueger, J. I. (2009). A componential model of situation effects, person effects, and situation by-person interaction effects on social behavior. Journal of Research in Personality, 43, 127–136.
Levant, R. F. (2007). Making psychology a household word. The Psychologist, 20(6), 366–367.
Lifton, R. J. (1986). The Nazi doctors: Medical killing and the psychology of genocide. New
York: Basic Books.
Lim, T., & Giles, H. (2007). Differences in American and Korean college students’ evaluation
of one-year age differences. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 28,
349–364.
Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion and motivation. Psychological Review, 98(2), 224–225.
Mischel, W. (1968). Personality and assessment. New York: John Wiley.
Mischel, W. (2009). From Personality and Assessment (1968) to Personality Science, 2009.
Journal of Research in Personality, 43, 282–290.
Mischel, W., & Shoda, Y. (1995). A cognitive-affective system theory of personality: conceptualizing situations, dispositions, dynamics, and invariance in personality structure. Psychological Review, 102, 246–268.
Nisbett, R. E. (2005). The geography of thought: How Asians and Westerners think differently…
and why. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
Nisbett, R. E., Peng, K., Choi, I., & Norensayan, A. (2001). Culture and systems of thought: Holistic versus analytic cognition. Psychological Review, 108(2), 291–310.
Oyserman, D., Coon, H. M., & Kemmelmeier, M. (2002). Rethinking individualism and collectivism: Evaluation of theoretical assumptions and meta-analyses. Psychological Bulletin, 128(1), 3–72.
Prinz, J. (2009). The normativity challenge: Cultural psychology provides the real threat to virtue ethics. The Journal of Ethics, 13(2/3), 117–144.
Redding, G., & Yong, G. Y. Y. (1986). The psychology of Chinese organisational behaviour.
In M. H. Bond (Ed.), The psychology of the Chinese people (pp. 267–295). HK: Oxford
University Press.
Reis, H. T. (2008). Reinvigorating the concept of situation in social psychology. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 21, 311–329.
Ross, L., & Nisbett, R. E. (1991). The person and the situation: Perspectives of social psychology.
New York: McGraw-Hill.
Sabini, J., & Silver, M. (2005). Lack of character? Situationism critiqued. Ethics, 115, 535–562.
Slavich, G. M. (2009). On 50 years of giving psychology away: An interview with Philip Zimbardo. Teaching of Psychology, 36, 278–284.
Slingerland, E. (2011). The situationist critique and early confucian virtue ethics. Ethics, 121(2), 390–419.
Suleimenov, O. (2006). Are there cultural borders between East and West? Diogenes, 53, 3–10. Triandis, H. C. (1994). Culture and social behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Weber, M. (1958). The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. New York: Scribner.
Weiss, H. M., & Adler, S. (1984). Personality and organisational behavior. In B. M. Staw & L. L. Cummings (Eds.), Research in organisational behavior (pp. 1–50). Greenwich, CT: JAI.
Zimbardo, P. G. (2004). A situationist perspective on the psychology of evil: Understanding how good people are transformed into perpetrators. In A. G. Miller (Ed.), The social psychology of good and evil (pp. 21–50). New York: Guilford Press.
Zimbardo, P. G. (2006). The power of norms and groups on individuals: Parallels between the Stanford prison experiment and Milgram’s obedience research. Retrieved from: http://www.lucifereffect.com/links_add_norms.htm
Zimbardo, P. G. (2007). The Lucifer effect: Understanding how good people turn evil. New York:
Random House.
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Published
2017-11-15
How to Cite
Yu, Ke. 2017. “EXPLICIT OR IMPLIED ‘EASTERNISATION’: THE CASE OF SITUATIONAL FORCES IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY”. New Voices in Psychology 10 (1):69-83. https://doi.org/10.25159/1812-6371/3417.
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