Social Psychology of and for World-Making.

ACADEMIC ABSTRACT: Social psychology's disconnect from the vital and urgent questions of people's lived experiences reveals limitations in the current paradigm. We draw on a related perspective in social psychology1-the sociocultural approach-and argue how this perspective can be elaborated to consider not only social psychology as a historical science but also social psychology of and for world-making. This conceptualization can make sense of key theoretical and methodological challenges faced by contemporary social psychology. As such, we describe the ontology, epistemology, ethics, and methods of social psychology of and for world-making. We illustrate our framework with concrete examples from social psychology. We argue that reconceptualizing social psychology in terms of world-making can make it more humble yet also more relevant, reconnecting it with the pressing issues of our time. PUBLIC ABSTRACT: We propose that social psychology should focus on "world-making" in two senses. First, people are future-oriented and often are guided more by what could be than what is. Second, social psychology can contribute to this future orientation by supporting people's world-making and also critically reflecting on the role of social psychological research in world-making. We unpack the philosophical assumptions, methodological procedures, and ethical considerations that underpin a social psychology of and for world-making. Social psychological research, whether it is intended or not, contributes to the societies and cultures in which we live, and thus it cannot be a passive bystander of world-making. By embracing social psychology of and for world-making and facing up to the contemporary societal challenges upon which our collective future depends will make social psychology more humble but also more relevant.

Between War and Peace, Past and Future: Experiencing the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park is widely known as a universal symbol of peace, but there have not been studies of how people actually experience and interpret it. This article presents a detailed case study of a visit to the memorial by using an innovative methodology based on the use of subjective cameras (subcams). Results show that despite the monolithic idea of peace that the memorial officially represents, it is experienced and interpreted in terms of a constant tension which exposes conflicts in post-war Japan memory politics. The dichotomies of war/peace, death/life, past/future, and old /new emerge as part of the participant's encounter with different situations during his visit. This is particularly clear where he perceives border zones and points of intersection. The article concludes by interpreting these dichotomies through the notion of themata, as elementary dichotomies that underlie a social debate around a specific topic. Specifically, two themata are proposed: one revolving around the temporal problematisation of the past and the future in the memory politics of the A-Bomb, and the other revolving around the spatial dichotomy between the old and the new underlying Hiroshima's urban renewal.

Memorials as Healing Places: A Matrix for Bridging Material Design and Visitor Experience.

Memorials are increasingly used to encourage people to reflect on the past and work through both individual and collective wounds. While much has been written on the history, architectural forms and controversies surrounding memorials, surprisingly little has been done to explore how visitors experience and appropriate them. This paper aims to analyze how different material aspects of memorial design help to create engaging experiences for visitors. It outlines a matrix of ten interconnected dimensions for comparison: (1) use of the vertical and horizontal axis, (2) figurative and abstract representation, (3) spatial immersion and separation, (4) mobility, (5) multisensory qualities, (6) reflective surfaces, (7) names, (8) place of burial, (9) accommodating ritual, and (10) location and surroundings. With this outline, the paper hopes to provide social scientists and practitioners (e.g., architects, planners, curators, facilitators, guides) with a set of key points for reflection on existing and future memorials and possibilities for enhancing visitor engagement with them.

Making sense of unfamiliar COVID-19 vaccines: How national origin affects vaccination willingness.

Vaccination willingness is a critical factor in pandemics, including the COVID-19 crisis. Therefore, investigating underlying drivers of vaccination willingness/hesitancy is an essential social science contribution. The present study of German residents investigates the mental shortcuts people are using to make sense of unfamiliar vaccine options by examining vaccination willingness for different vaccines using an experimental design in a quantitative survey. German vaccines were preferred over equivalent foreign vaccines, and the favorability ratings of foreign countries where COVID-19 vaccines were developed correlated with the level of vaccination willingness for each vaccine. The patterns in vaccination willingness were more pronounced when the national origin was shown along with the vaccine manufacturer label. The study shows how non-scientific factors drive everyday decision-making about vaccination. Taking such social psychological and communication aspects into account in the design of vaccination campaigns would increase their effectiveness.

The Future of Cultural Psychology: An Interview With Jaan Valsiner.

Jaan Valsiner (JV) has been the foremost cultural psychologist in the world for the last 30 years. In 2021 professor Valsiner turned seventy, and he agreed to do an interview with colleagues and students on his understanding of cultural psychology, its potential for innovation and its connection to his many interesting experiences from around the world. The interview was conducted by the three directors of the Center for Cultural Psychology in Aalborg Denmark: Carolin Demuth (CD), Brady Wagoner (BW), and Bo Allesøe Christensen (BA). For an extensive discussion of the different sides of Valsiner work, readers can consult the recently published Festschrift (Wagoner, B., Christensen, B., & Demuth, C. [Eds.]. [2021]. Culture as process: A tribute to Jaan Valsiner. Springer.).

Protest symbols.

Recent research on social movements have shown the significant role protest symbols play in mobilizing action and constructing a shared identity for a group pressing for social change. The present article gives an overview of crowd and social movement theories that focus on how symbols form and maintain groups. Borrowing from cultural psychology and social representations theory it explores how symbols are created and the meaning making processes around them within larger groups. The article unpacks two key functions of symbols within protest: first as a motivating trigger for protest action, and second as a unifying symbol for group identity and solidarity. It concludes with a discussion of how focusing on protest symbols could inform future social psychological research.

There is more to memory than inaccuracy and distortion.

Exaggerated claims about inaccuracy and downplaying veracity can also be found in research on memory. This commentary on Jussim's 2012 book analyzes these developments in connection with schema and the misinformation effect's purported role in memory distortion. It concludes by looking back to the locus classicus of memory distortion (viz. Bartlett 1932), which in fact provides a more nuanced account of inaccuracy.

Sociocultural mediators of remembering: an extension of Bartlett's method of repeated reproduction.

The reported research uses an extension of Bartlett's method of repeated reproduction to provide data on the sociocultural processes underlying reconstructive remembering. Twenty participants worked in pairs to remember the War of the Ghosts story 15 min and 1 week after presentation. The observed transformations were comparable to previous research with individuals. Going beyond previous research, we analyse participants' discourse to provide a window on the processes underlying these transformations. Textual excerpts demonstrate how imagery, narrative coherence, deduction, repetition, gesture, questioning and deferring contribute to the transformation and conventionalization of the material. These diverse sociocultural mediators are integrated into a partially coherent recollection by participants self-reflecting, or as Bartlett termed it, turning around upon their schemas. We demonstrate that this self-reflection is both a social and a psychological process, occurring because participants are responding to their own utterances in the same way that they respond to the utterances of other people. These empirical findings are used to make a case for using discursive data to look not only at discursive processes but also at socially situated and scaffolded psychological processes.

Representations from the past: social relations and the devolution of social representations.

Psychological life is subject to the influence of a constructed and potentially reconstituted past, as well as to future anticipated outcomes and expectations. Human behaviour occurs along a temporal trajectory that marks the projects individuals adopt in their quests of human action. Explanations of social behaviour are limited insofar as they exclude a historical concern with human purpose. In this paper, we draw on Bartlett's notion of collective remembering to argue that manifest social relations are rooted in past events that give present behaviours meaning and justification. We further propose an epidemiological time-series framework for social representations, that are conceptualised as evolving over time and that are subject to a 'ratchet effect' that perpetuates meaning in a collective. We argue that understanding forms of social behaviour that draw on lay explanations of social relations requires a deconstructive effort that maps the evolutionary trajectory of a representational project in terms of its adaptation over time. We go on to illustrate our proposal visiting data that emerged in an inquiry investigating Maltese immigrants' perspectives towards their countries of settlement and origin. This data reveals an assimilationist acculturation preference amongst the Maltese in Britain that seems incongruous with the current climate of European integration and Maltese communities in other countries around the world. We demonstrate that a historical concern with regard to this apparent behaviour helps explain how Maltese immigrants to Britain opt for certain forms of intercultural relations than others that are normally preferable. We demonstrate that these preferences rely on an evolved justification of the Maltese getting by with foreign rulers that other scholars have traced back to the medieval practice of chivalry.

Narrative form and content in remembering.

Narrative is the primary medium through which experience is represented, remembered and shared with others. It has the tendency to unify experience in an abstract linear form. The degree to which this is done is designated narrative form. Mori uses a multidimensional single case analysis to explore how the form of a narrative differs between an experience of real contact with the environment and an experience communicated by another or a 'real' experience repeated several times in conversation. I commend Mori's experimental setup as modeling everyday life activities and for arriving at a theory that applies to all cases. However, I argue (using data from my own experiment on narrative and remembering) that the idiographic approach can be fruitfully supplemented with (1) an analysis of the sample as a whole and (2) narrative content in addition to form.

Overcoming psychology's methodology: finding synthesis beyond the American and German-Austrian division.

Reworking psychology's methodology is of utmost importance if the discipline is to progress. This paper explores methodological strategies which could help overcome the methodological crisis outlined by Toomela (Culture of Science: Strange History of the Methodological Thinking in Psychology. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 2007, doi:10.1007/s12124-007-9004-0). First, I describe a classic research program (i.e., Bartlett's experiments on remembering) that exemplifies the virtues of a "German-Austrian" approach to psychology. Second, I elaborate upon these insights to investigate other aspects of remembering. Finally, I conclude by outlining a methodological programmatic for future research in psychology that overcomes existing forms of experimentation in a new synthesis. The new methodology borrows from both traditions advancing via rich description of single cases and their qualitative transformation to complex theory capable of explaining all individual cases.