Herbert Blumer News Today

Article: Yankee Micro Social Psychology Part II: Reference Group Criticisms of Dialogical Psychology and Social Constructionism - In the 1960s some social psychologists took issue with the individualist bent of mainstream social psychology. But in doing so they treated scientific experiment itself as individualist. That meant social psychology could not be scientific. On the other hand social reference theory has shown that social psychology can be anti-individualist & scientific at the same tim...

Summary of Part I In Part I of my article, I described how initially the field of social psychology had deep roots in the socio-cultural traditions of Wundt, Royce, Baldwin, Cooley, Thomas and Mead. But by the beginning of World War I a shift towards individualism can be seen in the work first of the

Article: Yankee Micro Social Psychology Part I: Individualism and its Social Shadows - The subject of social psychology seems to be an oasis from the relentlessly individualist orientation of psychology. But in the US is the same old social contract theory foundation where the individual is thought to interact in a voluntary, accidental & incidental way with society. Yet there is opposition. While the work of social reference theory is not Marxist, it is deeply social in a way similar to the wor...

Article: Yankee Micro Social Psychology Part I: Individualism and its Social Shadows - The subject of social psychology seems to be an oasis from the relentlessly individualist orientation of psychology. But in the US is the same old social contract theory foundation where the individual is thought to interact in a voluntary, accidental & incidental way with society. Yet there is opposition. While the work of social reference theory is not Marxist, it is deeply social in a way similar to the wor...

Orientation Developing a Marxist social psychology is a very important aspect of explaining what is going on within the individual in relation to society as well as what is going on in small group interactions between themselves. What we find when we examine social psychology in Yankeedom is what you might suspect, and that is

Orientation Why study crowds, masses and movements? It is tempting to imagine that as socialists we must know a great deal about crowds, masses, and in medieval thought individual meant inseparable, that is indivisible. People were defined as individuals by reference to the groups of which they were members. Group membership defined their very identity

Article: Crowds, Masses and Movements: Right Wing and Left Wing Macro Social Psychology - What are the characteristics that make a crowd different from a group? Are crowds any more emotional than groups or individuals? Are crowds any more manipulatable than groups? Are crowds any more destructive than groups or individuals? How do we account for our suspicions about crowds? Why do people join movements? What might exist to keep people from joining movements even when it may serve their self-inte...

Article: Crowds, Masses and Movements: Right Wing and Left Wing Macro Social Psychology - What are the characteristics that make a crowd different from a group? Are crowds any more emotional than groups or individuals? Are crowds any more manipulatable than groups? Are crowds any more destructive than groups or individuals? How do we account for our suspicions about crowds? Why do people join movements? What might exist to keep people from joining movements even when it may serve their self-inte...

I remember taking this photo so clearly. That morning, I dragged my younger brother out of our Pinterest-esque hotel room overlooking the.

The country seems more polarized than ever. Here’s what that means for the next election