Social Constructionism | Great Ideas in Psychology: Part 20

[@chrisschuck8812]

No more Great Ideas in the world, I guess; what a shame. Thank you for sticking it out all the way and keeping the quality so high This one probably require an extra 2 hours to do justice because it's such a thorny topic in psychology especially. You focused mostly on ontology but in psychology you hear a lot about constructed knowledge. I wish you had explained the difference between constructionism and constructivism, as that sometimes confuses me. E.g., personal construct theory. Constructionism is tricky because there's a weak trivial version and then a strong version, and you never know exactly what the disagreement is about and what's at stake! For me it's useful more as a mental exercise to shake the cobwebs out of our ossified realities every now and then (What is a "father," really?).

[@DavoodGozli]

Your first remark was just great and made me laugh! And the rest, the serious part, of your comment points out some of the very important concepts and problems left out of my presentation. I debated with myself including Kenneth Gergen and Fionna Hibberd, and even Piaget (Constructivism) but I decided to keep only the bare minimum of an introduction. Hopefully in the future we will address some of the limitations of this otherwise _conclusive_ and _exhaustive_ list of Great Ideas. ;-)

[@chrisschuck8812]

It could be a neat exercise to eventually make one last follow-up video suggesting your own additions to that list of Great Ideas (my vote is phenomenology), or any interesting final reflections you have on the book as a whole and how Moghaddam's choices relate to one another as a whole. For instance, it occurred to me after the video that social constructionism is the perfect choice for the last chapter, because you could argue that what elevates all these examples to the status of Great Ideas - the common thread - is how much they are socially constructed. Most obviously, in terms of the immense influence and additional cultural meanings they have acquired, to the point of being woven into the social fabric and (the critical psychologists would say) even helping to maintain that fabric. But even prior to this, what enables some of those ideas to even be coherent for us in the first place. E.g., "personality" or "self" or "intelligence" depended on social construction to even be viable as ideas, let along Great Ideas.

[@DavoodGozli]

@@chrisschuck8812 That is an excellent idea, Chris! Thank you. I might do a livestream based on your suggestion.

[@peyman3276]

A social construct came to me as a big surprise. I would always think of ick factor toward insects an innate feature of human nature, and would consider those people from other cultures who consume those little critters as strange! Confounded, I was; after realization that our ancestors used to eat insects with great gusto as a staple food. I wondered what else? What else factors we deem innate albeit there are not? What implications does it have on studying human behavior? We are almost blind to our habituations and constructs and it barely budges. Recommended books for review: Don't Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want in LIfe by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz (2022) Plays Well with Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships Is (Mostly) Wrong by Eric Barker (2022) I enjoyed these two a lot. A book for you ;) : How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan (2018)