RSS 1.0Psychology
Recent Submissions
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Saving ourselves: gender issues in making provision for one's own retirementObjectives: This study investigated gender differences in making provision for retirement and the factors associated with a lower likelihood of saving. Method: Non-retired adults aged between 40 and 62.5 years (N = 382) were selected from a larger postal survey of Pakeha/New Zealand European adults over the age of 40 in the greater Wellington region of New Zealand. Results: Overall, women were less likely to save for their own retirement than were men, however this gender difference was no longer significant when income was taken into account. Those less likely to be making provision for their own retirement included individuals with poor health and lower income, and women who had divorced or who provided care. Conclusions: The relative economic position and social roles of women may engender vulnerability to economic dependence in later life.
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Multiple discourse analyses of a workplace interactionThis article explores the contributions that five different approaches to discourse analysis can make to interpreting and understanding the same piece of data. Conversation analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, politeness theory, critical discourse analysis, and discursive psychology are the approaches chosen for comparison. The data is a nine-minute audio recording of a spontaneous workplace interaction. The analyses are compared, and the theoretical and methodological implications of the different approaches are discussed.
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Cultural stereotypes and social representations of elders from Chinese and European perspectivesHierarchical cluster analyses of a trait sorting task were used to investigate social representations (and cultural stereotypes) of elderly New Zealanders (NZers) of Chinese and European origin, held by young (mean age = 17) and middle-aged (mean age = 46) NZers from both ethnic groups. Consistent with cultural theories of aging in Chinese societies, organizational features for NZ Chinese were: evaluative simplicity, role-governed representations (e.g., division between socio-emotional and task-oriented elders), little differentiation as a consequence of the ethnicity of elders or age group of subject, and an overall structure dominated by good/bad. NZ Europeans' social representations were more evaluatively complex, had fewer subtypes and more differences as a consequence of target person ethnicity. The Curmudgeon and the Nurturant were the most consensual stereotypes across the 8 cluster analyses (2 subject ethnicity x 2 target ethnicity x 2 subject age group), with the most power to organize stereotypical perceptions of elders across cultural groups. Only the majority group, NZ Europeans, displayed out-group homogeneity effects by creating more categories of elderly Europeans than Chinese. Both ethnic groups held representations of elderly Europeans as higher status in society, and both had more contact with European than Chinese elders outside the family.
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A rhetorical approach to discussions about health and vegetarianismTypically, research on vegetarianism has sought to identify the psychological characteristics that distinguish vegetarians from meat-eaters. Health concerns have been identified as a motivation for meat abstention. In this article, rhetorical analysis of Internet discussions about health and vegetarianism highlights the argumentative orientation of explanations for meat consumption, with the various constructions of health serving a rhetorical function. We show the dilemmatic nature of arguments about the relationship between food and health: food can promote health and cause ill-health, and suggest that meat-eating as a dominant practice is supported by the rhetorical use of notions of 'balance', implying moderation, inclusion and rationality. This rhetorical approach represents a radical critique of past work that assumes opinions given in response to questions about vegetarian practices represent 'causes' of dietary practice.
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The attachment relationship between hostel-based homeless individuals and their keyworkersResearch on the relationship between individuals experiencing homelessness and their keyworkers from an attachment perspective is scarce. In Study 1, 84 young individuals experiencing homelessness and their keyworkers completed measures of attachment, post-traumatic stress, and work-related distress. Hierarchical regression indicated that secure attachment with the keyworker was independently predicted by failed protection and goal-corrected partnership. Preoccupied attachment with the keyworker was predicted by fear of parental loss and client post-traumatic stress while avoidant attachment to the keyworker was predicted by goal-corrected partnership. These findings suggested that the relationship between youth experiencing homelessness and hostel staff was linked with the formers’ attachment experiences with their caregivers. In Study 2, 46 homeless individuals undergoing psychological therapy completed measures of attachment and psychopathology before and after treatment. Moderated hierarchical regression suggested that individuals experiencing homelessness who tended to be avoidantly attached to their keyworkers had relatively limited improvement in post-traumatic stress after therapy. Present studies identified specific ways in which the attachment system is implicated in the homeless-keyworker relationship.
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Depression, perceived risk of COVID-19, loneliness, and perceived social support from friends among university students in Poland, UK, and IndiaThe study examines the prevalence of depression among university students in Poland, the UK and India in the face of the second pandemic wave of COVID-19. The paper also examines the protective role of perceived social support, the hypothesis being that social support from friends would reduce depression. The data from university students (N=732) in Poland (N=335), UK (N= 198), and India (N=199) were collected online during of the fall/winter 2021. Participants completed measures of depression (CES-D), COVID-19 risk perception index, loneliness (DJGLS), and perceived social support (MSPSS). Almost 52% of all participants (58.5% in Poland, 62.6% in the UK, and 29.1% in India) met the criteria for major depression. The higher levels of depression symptoms were associated with a higher perceived risk of COVID-19, greater loneliness, female gender, younger students' age, and the lower levels of perceived social support. The greater family support predicted lower levels of depression symptoms in the Polish and Indian samples. Structural equation analyses (SEM) revealed the indirect effect of perceived social support from friends on the association between social loneliness and depression and between age and depression. This result shows that the support from friends significantly reduced depression, regardless of age, the level of social loneliness, and the perceived risk of COVID-19. Our conclusions link to university specialists' enhancement of psychological help for students with depression. We also recommend information campaigns on depression and treatment options.
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'I understand'-initiated formulations of the other: a semi-fixed claim to the intersubjectiveSome language patterns appear fixed at a certain time, enabling their description as grammatical structures. Semi-fixed patterns that routinely accomplish specific social actions constitute more of an analytical challenge. This chapter targets the phrase ma saan aru 'I understand' in Estonian together with the ensuing other-attentive formulation '2nd person expression + a cognitive concept' and argues that it is a semi-fixed expression, a "claim to the intersubjective", that manages a misalignment between participants. While claiming to have successfully accessed the other's motives or feelings, the speaker regularly advances her own agenda through the formulation of the other. This suggests a systematic relationship between cognitive lexicon, grammatical structure, and interactional function, and calls for a language theory that incorporates semi-fixedness.
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Constituting and responding to domestic and sexual violence: guest editor’s introductionGuest editor’s introduction
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Displaying emotional control by how crying and talking are managedIn this study I investigated crying, as a display of emotional upset. The aim was to provide a detailed description of how turns of talk were organised around crying. Using conversation analysis, I examined a sample of 26 calls to a helpline for victims. Talking and crying regularly occurred together, with evidence of effort to keep talking and suppress crying. A loss of emotional control was displayed when talking was suspended by crying. However, even when flooded out by crying, the resumption of talk was routinely linked back to where it had been disrupted which suggests a normative orientation to not crying and to progressing talk. I use the findings to elaborate on the concept of being flooded out by emotion so being out of play for interaction (Goffman, 1961, 1974), in microanalytic terms. A conclusion considers the relationships between the sequential organisation of talking and crying and social-cultural norms about emotions.
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Feminist conversation analysis: examining violence against womenFeminist conversation analysis is a powerful methodology for research on language, gender, and sexuality. Although this research approach has been controversial, feminist conversation analysis is a productive approach to examine how issues of gender, power, and identity are consequential in everyday social interactions. The chapter reviews feminist conversation analytic research that has examined oppression in everyday life, the organisation of the gendered social-moral order, and interventions for social change. We illustrate the methodological approach with a discussion of our research project on violence against women. Analysis of calls to a victim support service demonstrates how women disclose violence and negotiate the meanings of victimhood while seeking help. Our findings show that callers described themselves and their problems in ways that invoked common-sense cultural knowledge about gendered violence. Analysing the turn-by-turn unfolding of social interaction provides insight on longstanding feminist questions, such as the difficulties of disclosing violence, women’s experiences with criminal justice institutions, and the practicalities of seeking support. Focusing on what people do and say as they seek help can be used to improve the delivery of service, thus making a practice difference for people in need. Grounded analysis of everyday interactions thus offer remarkable potential for feminist aims.
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How emotions are made in talkHow Emotions Are Made in Talk brings together an exciting collection of cutting-edge interactional research examining emotions and affectivity as social actions. The international selection of scholars draw on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis applied to a range of settings including sports, workplaces, telephone calls, classrooms, friends and healthcare. The aim of the book is to provide new insights into how emotions are produced as social actions in relation to, for example, encouragement, responsibility, crying, objects, empathy, joy, surprise, touch, and pain. This volume should be of interest to interactional scholars and researchers interested in social approaches to emotion, and addresses a range of scholarship across the disciplines of sociology, communication, psychology, linguistics, and anthropology.
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How emotions are made to do things : an introduction* 1. Emotions in social interaction * 1.1 Terminology and emotion research * 2. Perspectives on emotion * 2.1 Emotions and the interaction (and moral) order * 2.2 Interactional approaches to emotion * 2.3 Methodological issues * 3. How emotions are made in talk * 4. Emotion and action * 4.1Categorising emotions * 4.2 Nonlexical/nonverbal emotion displays * 4.3 Stance and affiliation in the accomplishment of actions * 5. Preview of the content * References
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Interactional adjustment: three approaches in language and social psychologyInteractional adjustment refers to people’s tendency to adjust, or adapt, their communication behavior in social interactions. In recent years, three distinctive approaches to this topic that have featured prominently in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology are communication accommodation theory (CAT), language style matching (LSM), and discursive psychology using conversation analysis (DPCA). In this article, we provide a review of these three approaches, highlighting what defines and distinguishes them, as well as what insights into interactional adjustment each offers. We draw out the connections and points of tensions between these approaches; in so doing, we identify future directions for research on interactional adjustment as a fundamental aspect of human communication, and in the study of language and social psychology.
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Managing verbal and embodied conduct in telephone-mediated service encountersIn telephone-mediated service encounters, there are limits on how parties interact with one another. Speakers are restricted to only verbal (what they say) and aural (what they hear) means of communication. Therefore, a practical problem at the heart of such interactions is how speakers manage embodied conduct, given that they can only hear -rather than see the other person. We investigated how verbal and embodied conduct were managed in a corpus of 63 calls to a New Zealand helpline service where callers (complainants) interact with conciliators (institutional representatives) to complain about, and attempt to resolve disputes with their electricity and gas providers. Using conversation analysis, we document two ways that callers could manage verbal and embodied conduct in a particular type of sequence in these calls.
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Multi-unit turns that begin with a resaying of a prior speaker's turnThis study examines the interactional workings of multi-unit turns that have an initial turn-constructional unit that re-says the immediately prior single-unit turn produced by another speaker. Based on cases in English, Portuguese, and French, our analysis shows that resayings do confirming and also 1) index the speaker's rights over the propositional component of the words, and 2) support the extension of the turn. In addition to confirming, resayings thus claim rights to what has been said and demonstrate an entitlement to say more. The resayings thereby have both a retrospective and prospective function, the latter being closely related to turn-taking management. Our findings contribute to the existing literature on other-repeats by considering what these do in a multi-unit turn environment.
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Sounding others’ sensations in interactionThis study investigates the practice of “sounding for others,” wherein one person vocalizes to enact someone else’s putatively ongoing bodily sensation. We argue that it constitutes a collaborative way of performing sensorial experiences. Examples include producing cries with others’ strain or pain and parents sounding an mmm of gustatory pleasure on their infant’s behalf. Vocal sounds, their loudness, and duration are specifically deployed for instructing bodily experiences during novices’ real-time performance of various activities, such as tasting food for the first time or straining during a Pilates exercise. Vocalizations that are indexically tied to the body provide immediate displays of understanding and empathy that may be explicated further through lexicon. The existence of this practice challenges the conceptualization of communication as a transfer of information from an individual agent–even regarding assumedly individual body sensations–instead providing evidence of the joint nature of action and supporting dialogic theories of communication, including when language-marginal vocalizations are used.
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Speakers formulating their talk as interruptiveInterruption has predominantly been conceptualised as a violation of normative turn-taking practices and speakership rights. The present study further develops a broader perspective by showing that speakers can orient to matters of sequential organisation, other than turn-taking, when they claim their own talk is interruptive. Drawing from a larger collection of 72 cases where explicit claims to interruption were made, this paper uses conversation analysis to examine a subset of 20 instances where speakers specifically described what they were doing was interruption. Our target phenomenon was expressions such as “I want to interrupt” and “apologise for interrupting”. Speakers can prospectively mark some upcoming talk as interruptive and they can also retrospectively cast what they have just said as an interruption. Either way, the observably relevant disruption was not to turn-taking but to other sequences of action, namely the proper order of activities, the organisation of topics and adjacency pairs. Furthermore, by focusing on cases from institutional settings we propose that by explicitly claiming one's own talk as interruptive participants make relevant membership categories and their associated deontic responsibilities for the progression of activities within institutional settings.
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The multimodality and temporality of pain displaysThe present paper takes an interactional approach to the problem of communicating pain. We ask how a shared understanding of this subjective and internal experience is accomplished. The focus is on the multimodal features of pain displays and the way they emerge and progress at the micro level of turn construction and sequence organisation within health care interactions. The setting of the study is family doctor-patient primary care consultations. Using multimodal conversation analysis, we show the emergent, temporal unfolding nature of pain displays. Initially there is an embodied reflex-like action where an immediately prior cause can be attributed retrospectively. An interjection or non-lexical vocalization may follow. An expression of stance on the pain is routinely made as talk is resumed. The other party's understanding can be shown early in the pain display shaping its unfolding with empathetic vocalizations and/or comforting touch which results in a jointly produced change in the trajectory of action. The implications of the findings for theoretical understandings of sound objects, language and communication, and for clinical practice, are discussed.
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“Oh my god that would hurt”: pain cries in feminist self-defence classesThis study examines response cries produced by student spectators reacting to imagined pain in the setting of feminist self-defence classes. It investigates the vocal, verbal and embodied resources that constitute reactive displays to demonstrations and descriptions of physical techniques that can thwart attacks. It asks what the pain cries accomplish, considering their form and sequential organisation. Video-recordings of the classes were data. Drawing on discursive psychology and using multi-modal conversation analysis, the results detail how the conventionalised composition and positions of the cries make them mutually intelligible as reacting to a painful experience. They functioned to support the progression of the instructional activity that created a make-believe space where girls and women can resist violence. The findings confirm and extend what is known about the interactional environments and activities in which pain figures, further advancing the distinctive insights that an interactional approach brings. Data are in New Zealand English.
