Psychology Commons^™

Indoctrination Into Hate: The Development Of Racial Neuroses Resulting From Racist Socialization Under White Supremacy, Aliya Kathryn Benabderrazak

Haslam Scholars Projects

Racial-ethnic socialization is critical to our unique and individual conceptualization of reality. This socialization occurs explicitly and implicitly across the lifespan and has significant implications for one’s behavior, social relationships, and ideological beliefs. Two of the most notable and impactful spheres in which racial-ethnic socialization occurs are within the family unit and schooling contexts. The treatment and teachings within these two spaces shape our social and psychological development. The first part of my project considers the neurosis of Whiteness as a psychological consequence of racist socialization within school settings and primarily White communities—as a macro example of the family unit—to …

The Dark Triad: Pathological Personality Traits, Brett S. Burton

Student Publications

People tend to view personality as a light-hearted, positive facet of psychology. However, the fact is that there are many unpleasant and dark aspects to personality. Psychologists have identified a grouping of three dark personality traits in subclinical individuals, which is termed the “Dark Triad”. The Dark Triad includes narcissism, psychopathy, and machiavellianism, which have their own unique twists but all have the basis of callous behavior and manipulation of others. This term was coined by researchers Paulhus and Williams (2002) when they measured these constructs and concluded that they were overlapping, but distinct concepts. The origin of these traits …

The Alchemical Vessel, River Soma

MFA Statements

My work comes from a place of deep feeling on a bodily level. Amidst the decorative play, there is a sense of the primitive and primordial, and also a certain humanity and clumsiness through struggle. Through the hermetic tradition I relate the alchemical vessel and its symbolic process of interior development to my artistic practice. Focusing in mixed media sculpture, I discovered a concentrated accumulation of symbolism specific to my practice, but also the full recognition of my practice as a ritualized psychological undertaking.

Imperfectly Known Or Socially Constructed? What Is Truth Again?, Scott C. Campanario, Paul R. Yost

SPU Works

Contemporary psychology is once again at an inflection point with regard to its philosophical foundation. In this paper, we evaluate two prominent philosophies of science within the field of psychology—post-positivism and social constructionism—that are logically incompatible but often treated as equally valid by theorists, researchers, and practitioners. We discuss what each philosophy of science offers in terms of ontology, epistemology, and pragmatic justifications using the structure of a proposed argument, counterargument, and rebuttal. From this evaluation, we contend that post-positivism is a logically preferable philosophy of science for both the progress of collective knowledge and the sustainability of psychology as …

Machines And Agency: Understanding The Ai Ethics Problem, Addison T. Rahn

Senior Honors Theses

Mankind has long been interested in the unique, the strange, and the new; perhaps nothing more fully encompasses this interest than recent work on developing Artificial Intelligence (AI). With this research, however, comes a great many questions. Are AIs alive? Are AIs moral agents? Can machines be held legally culpable for their actions? These questions, and more, continue to be a topic of much debate in the academic community, and will no doubt remain of interest for years to come. It is the purpose of this research project, however, to investigate the far-reaching effects of this academic debate. While the …

Going With Your Gut: How William James' Theory Of Emotions Brings Insights To Risk Perception And Decision Making Research, Katherine Lacasse

Faculty Publications

The basic premise of William James’ theory of emotions - that bodily changes lead to emotional feelings - ignited debate about the relative importance of bodily processes and cognitive appraisals in determining emotions. Similarly, theories of risk perception have been expanding to include emotional and physiological processes along with cognitive processes. Taking a closer look at Principles of Psychology, this article examines how James’ propositions support and extend current research risk perceptions and decision making. Specifically, James (1) described emotional feelings and their related cognitions in ways similar to current dual processing models; (2) defended the proposition that emotions and …

New Insights Into William James's Personal Crisis In The Early 1870s: Part Ii. John Bunyan And The Resolution & Consequences Of The Crisis, David E. Leary

Psychology Faculty Publications

This article, the second in a two-part sequence, will cast new light on the strong possibility that John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress played a previously unrecognized role in inspiring James’s means of defense against the frightening hallucination and panic fear that characterized his well-known personal crisis in the early 1870s. It will also present an argument about the influence of his defensive measures upon his subsequent views on the nature and importance of attention and will in human life. Along the way, it will identify James’s specific, newly discovered copy of Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress and the specific, newly discovered …

New Insights Into William James’S Personal Crisis In The Early 1870s: Part 1. Arthur Schopenhauer And The Origin & Nature Of The Crisis, David E. Leary

Psychology Faculty Publications

This article, the first in a two-part sequence, will cast new light on the well-known “crisis of William James” by presenting evidence regarding the previously unrecognized role of Arthur Schopenhauer’s thought in shaping and intensifying the way in which James experienced this crisis. It will also relate Schopenhauer’s influence to prior issues that had concerned James, and in an appendix it will provide an overview of other areas in which Schopenhauer seems to have influenced James, both during and after his personal crisis. The second article in this sequence will present evidence in support of the strong possibility that John …

Course Syllabus (Sp14) Coli 211 Literature & Psychology: "The Sublime, The Uncanny, And The Imagination", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty Scholarship

Course Description:

In a world in which what counts as knowledge is predominantly restricted to the measurable and the calculable, those elements of human experience which elude and exceed these parameters are often ignored and discounted. In this course, we will examine questions of the sublime, the uncanny, and the speculative as treated in literature, psychoanalysis, and philosophy in order to think and write critically about them. Here, we will consider the possible extent to which an openness to such experiences can enrich our lives.

Psychological Continuity: A Discussion Of Marc Slors' Account, Traumatic Experience, And The Significance Of Our Relations To Others, Pieranna Garavaso

Philosophy Publications

This paper addresses a question concerning psychological continuity, i.e., which features preserve the same psychological subject over time; this is not the same question as the one concerning the necessary and sufficient conditions for personal identity. Marc Slors (1998, 2001, 2001a) defends an account of psychological continuity that adds two features to Derek Parfit’s Relation R, namely narrativity and embodiment. Slors’ account is a significant improvement on Parfit’s, but still lacks an explicit acknowledgment of a third feature that I call relationality. Because they are usually regarded as cases of radical discontinuity, I start my discussion from the experiences of …

Bodily Influences On Emotional Feelings: Accumulating Evidence And Extensions Of William James’ Theory Of Emotion, Katherine Lacasse, James D. Laird

Faculty Publications

William James’ theory of emotion has been controversial since its inception, and a basic analysis of Cannon’s (1927) critique is provided. Research on the impact of facial expressions, expressive behaviors, and visceral responses on emotional feelings are each reviewed. A good deal of evidence supports James’ theory that these types of bodily feedback, along with perceptions of situational cues, are each important parts of emotional feelings. Extensions to James’ theory are also reviewed, including evidence of individual differences in the effect of bodily responses on emotional experience.

A Moralist In An Age Of Scientific Analysis And Skepticism: Habit In The Life And Work Of William James, David E. Leary

Psychology Faculty Publications

In this chapter I will review how James got from his earlier position, which so readily fit the scientific and skeptical tenor of his age, to his later position, and I will indicate how the views he began to articulate by the mid-1870s became central to the doctrines he presented in his magisterial Principles of Psychology (1890) and in his subsequent work in psychology and philosophy. Along the way I will make it clear that even before 1872, when he was attending lectures and doing physiological research in Harvard's Medical School, James was a deeply engaged advocate of philosophy, which …

Visions And Values: Ethical Reflections In A Jamesian Key, David E. Leary

Psychology Faculty Publications

The purpose of this article is to provide a quick survey of William James's views on the plurality of visions that humans have regarding reality, as a background for more extensive discussions of his views on the plurality of values that orient human thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, as well as his views on the enactment of those values through active resistance to the ways things are and the risk-taking involved in striving to improve the human condition. Consonant with pluralism itself, I intend this discussion to open up rather than close off further considerations of James's views on ethics.

Instead Of Erklären And Verstehen: William James On Human Understanding, David E. Leary

Psychology Faculty Publications

Perhaps more than any other American psychologist and philosopher, William James (1842-1910) was intimately familiar with contemporary European thought and debate, including the discussion of Erklären and Verstehen advanced by Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) and others around the turn of the twentieth century. Even before this discussion was initiated, James had been dealing with related issues, pondering alternative solutions, and formulating his own original views on human understanding. These views coalesced in a distinctive approach to cognition. Fundamental to this approach was a belief in possibility and probability as innate features of the physical as well as mental manifestations of the …

The Missing Person In The Conversation: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., And The Dialogical Self, David E. Leary

Psychology Faculty Publications

Wiley (2006) has argued for a relationship between pragmatism and the dialogical self, noting that both are rooted in the thought of William James and Charles S. Peirce. This commentary delves into the possible connection between James’s and Peirce’s ideas as well as the probable influence of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., on the development of dialogical conceptions of the self.

William James On The Self And Personality: Clearing The Ground For Subsequent Theorists, Researchers, And Practitioners, David E. Leary

Psychology Faculty Publications

The fundamental basis of William James's psychology - the rock-bottom foundation on which it is constructed - is "the stream of thought" or "the stream of consciousness. " ¹* The first and preeminent characteristic of our flowingly continuous experience of "thought" or "consciousness," James (1890/1983d) said, is that it is personal (pp. 220-224). Every thought, every psychological experience, is mine, or hers, or his, or yours. For this reason, he suggested, "the personal self rather than the thought [or consciousness] might be treated as the immediate datum in psychology" (p. 221).² Indeed, James was strongly convinced that "no …

Metaphor, Theory, And Practice In The History Of Psychology, David E. Leary

Psychology Faculty Publications

In these chapters we have seen that neuropsychological discourse has been advanced by the use of metaphors from telecommunications, control systems engineering, computer science, holography, and other developments in parallel distributed processing (Pribram, Chapter 2); that theoretical discussions of the emotions have revolved around metaphors of inner feelings, physiological responses, vestiges of animal nature, diseases of the mind, driving forces, and social roles (Averill, Chapter 3); that treatments of motivation have portrayed the human person as a pawn, an agent, a natural entity, an organism, or a machine (McReynolds, Chapter 4); that a vast array of cognitive metaphors have been …

The Cult Of Empiricism In Psychology, And Beyond, Stephen Toulmin, David E. Leary

Psychology Faculty Publications

At some stage in it's development, any field of intellectual discussion or scientific speculation may reach a point at which it begins to generate large numbers of "empirical" questions, that is, questions whose answers must refer to carefully documented observations, or even to controlled experiments. In physics, this happened most strikingly in the course of the seventeenth century; in biology, the comparable stage was not reached until around 1770, rising to its peak in the course of the nineteenth century (Toulmin, 1972; Toulmin & Goodfield, 1962); whereas in psychology, it has become customary-though a trifle arbitrary-to argue that this happened …

German Idealism And The Development Of Psychology In The Nineteenth Century, David E. Leary

Psychology Faculty Publications

THE BIRTH OF MODERN SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGY is generally placed in Germany around 1850. This birth is credited by the standard historiography to the dual parentage of the empirical school of philosophy and the experimental study of sensory physiology. There is also a tradition of giving a nod toward Kant and Herbart as predecessors, for varying reasons, of the rise of scientific psychology.¹ Almost completely overlooked in the literature is the influence of post-Kantian German idealism upon the development of the concepts, subject matter, and methods of psychology. This is somewhat surprising since idealism was the dominant philosophical movement in …

A Technique For Inter-Translating Psychological Theories, Joseph C. Trainor

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of Education and Professional Studies

The present situ.at ion in psychology is a strange mixture of para.dox, dilemma and confusion, with many self-confident schools of thought in the field, each somewhat antagonistic to the others. The history of other sciences reveals that these are the growing pains out of which there will emerge the matured science. Meanwhile, the squabbles and the confusion are here and we must do something about them.