Pub Date : 2025-03-12DOI: 10.1016/j.newideapsych.2025.101156
Sabrina Trapp , Karl Friston , Erich Schröger , Thomas Parr
There exists an underexplored correlation between intelligence and perceptual discrimination. Perceptual discrimination can be understood through the concept of precision in predictive processing. Precision governs the weighting of sensory inputs and prediction errors, shaping how effectively an individual can extract meaningful information from their environment. We here propose a link between intelligence and precision, arguing that the ability to dynamically regulate precision is a key determinant of intelligent behavior. This perspective bridges individual cognitive differences with broader theoretical models of human brain functioning, offering a more comprehensive understanding of how intelligence manifests in biological systems.
{"title":"Towards a theory of biological intelligence","authors":"Sabrina Trapp , Karl Friston , Erich Schröger , Thomas Parr","doi":"10.1016/j.newideapsych.2025.101156","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.newideapsych.2025.101156","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>There exists an underexplored correlation between intelligence and perceptual discrimination. Perceptual discrimination can be understood through the concept of precision in predictive processing. Precision governs the weighting of sensory inputs and prediction errors, shaping how effectively an individual can extract meaningful information from their environment. We here propose a link between intelligence and precision, arguing that the ability to dynamically regulate precision is a key determinant of intelligent behavior. This perspective bridges individual cognitive differences with broader theoretical models of human brain functioning, offering a more comprehensive understanding of how intelligence manifests in biological systems.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51556,"journal":{"name":"New Ideas in Psychology","volume":"78 ","pages":"Article 101156"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143601303","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-03-06DOI: 10.1016/j.newideapsych.2025.101148
Vojtech Pisl
Interpreting ordinary experiences as symptoms of psychopathology may bias epidemiological numbers and undermine public mental health. Several studies document linguistic shifts underlying psychiatrization in English, but data from other languages are lacking. The current study hypothesizes that psychiatric terminology is increasingly used in everyday, non-clinical contexts while everyday adjectives describing normative mental states and traits are acquiring clinical connotations.
In an exploratory study utilizing computational linguistics, fragments of texts containing diagnostic (e.g. “ADHD” or “anorexia”), everyday psychological (e.g. “shy” or “sad”), or control keywords (e.g. “large” or “loud”) were retrieved from a large (>4bn words) corpus of Czech journalistic texts published offline between 1990 and 2022. A linguistic marker of the cultural aspects of psychiatrization was developed: clinicalness, calculated as lexical proximity to the clinical discourse using the wordscores algorithm. The expected correlation between time and clinicalness was measured by Kendall's coefficient for each of 46 keywords.
The frequency of use of diagnostic terms has been increasing in the Czech press between 1990 and 2022 (for the median keyword: τ = 0.74). The clinicaliness was increasing for everyday adjectives describing human emotions and behaviors (median τ = 0.07) and less so control adjectives (median τ = 0.03), but not in diagnostic terms (median τ = 0.01).
Our exploratory linguistic data are consistent with the notion of increasing psychiatrization of ordinary experiences but not with normalization of mental disorders. Confirmatory research is needed to verify the observed increase in pathologization of everyday adjectives describing emotions and behaviors.
{"title":"Psychiatrization in Czech lexical data: Everyday adjectives are acquiring clinical connotations","authors":"Vojtech Pisl","doi":"10.1016/j.newideapsych.2025.101148","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.newideapsych.2025.101148","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Interpreting ordinary experiences as symptoms of psychopathology may bias epidemiological numbers and undermine public mental health. Several studies document linguistic shifts underlying psychiatrization in English, but data from other languages are lacking. The current study hypothesizes that psychiatric terminology is increasingly used in everyday, non-clinical contexts while everyday adjectives describing normative mental states and traits are acquiring clinical connotations.</div><div>In an exploratory study utilizing computational linguistics, fragments of texts containing diagnostic (e.g. “ADHD” or “anorexia”), everyday psychological (e.g. “shy” or “sad”), or control keywords (e.g. “large” or “loud”) were retrieved from a large (>4bn words) corpus of Czech journalistic texts published offline between 1990 and 2022. A linguistic marker of the cultural aspects of psychiatrization was developed: <em>clinicalness,</em> calculated as lexical proximity to the clinical discourse using the <em>wordscores</em> algorithm. The expected correlation between time and clinicalness was measured by Kendall's coefficient for each of 46 keywords.</div><div>The frequency of use of diagnostic terms has been increasing in the Czech press between 1990 and 2022 (for the median keyword: τ = 0.74). The clinicaliness was increasing for everyday adjectives describing human emotions and behaviors (median τ = 0.07) and less so control adjectives (median τ = 0.03), but not in diagnostic terms (median τ = 0.01).</div><div>Our exploratory linguistic data are consistent with the notion of increasing psychiatrization of ordinary experiences but not with normalization of mental disorders. Confirmatory research is needed to verify the observed increase in pathologization of everyday adjectives describing emotions and behaviors.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51556,"journal":{"name":"New Ideas in Psychology","volume":"78 ","pages":"Article 101148"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143561990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-02-09DOI: 10.1016/j.newideapsych.2025.101147
Yolanda Alonso , Gonzalo-Andrés Jiménez
Despite the considerable controversy surrounding family constellations, this psychotherapeutic method has experienced significant growth over the past thirty years. Traditionally, family constellations are conducted in a group format in sessions called “constellations”, wherein certain individuals act as representatives for the family members of other participants. During these sessions, a phenomenon known in some literature as “surrogate perceptions” normally occurs, in which the representatives experience internal states that align with significant attitudes or life situations of the individuals they represent. Although there is substantial anecdotal evidence for this phenomenon, it has not been empirically studied, lacks a logical explanation, and appears to contravene the principle of locality in physics. This paper draws comparisons between surrogate perceptions and other exceptional phenomena documented in scientific literature, such as extended states of consciousness, telepathy, and synchronicity. It also critically reviews various attempts to explain the phenomenon, including theories involving mirror neurons, quantum physics, embodied memory, the collective unconscious, and formative causation. The paper provides a description of surrogate perceptions as changes triggered in an interpersonal process in which the explicit request to put oneself in the place of another specific person plays an essential role. Finally, potential avenues for future research are outlined.
{"title":"What happens to representatives during family constellations? Attempts at explanation and comparison with other difficult-to-explain phenomena","authors":"Yolanda Alonso , Gonzalo-Andrés Jiménez","doi":"10.1016/j.newideapsych.2025.101147","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.newideapsych.2025.101147","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Despite the considerable controversy surrounding family constellations, this psychotherapeutic method has experienced significant growth over the past thirty years. Traditionally, family constellations are conducted in a group format in sessions called “constellations”, wherein certain individuals act as representatives for the family members of other participants. During these sessions, a phenomenon known in some literature as “surrogate perceptions” normally occurs, in which the representatives experience internal states that align with significant attitudes or life situations of the individuals they represent. Although there is substantial anecdotal evidence for this phenomenon, it has not been empirically studied, lacks a logical explanation, and appears to contravene the principle of locality in physics. This paper draws comparisons between surrogate perceptions and other exceptional phenomena documented in scientific literature, such as extended states of consciousness, telepathy, and synchronicity. It also critically reviews various attempts to explain the phenomenon, including theories involving mirror neurons, quantum physics, embodied memory, the collective unconscious, and formative causation. The paper provides a description of surrogate perceptions as changes triggered in an interpersonal process in which the explicit request to put oneself in the place of another specific person plays an essential role. Finally, potential avenues for future research are outlined.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51556,"journal":{"name":"New Ideas in Psychology","volume":"77 ","pages":"Article 101147"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-02-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143372395","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-01-31DOI: 10.1016/j.newideapsych.2025.101145
Da Dong , Tongwei Liu , Wei Chen
Recent statistical data seem to indicate that mirror neurons have not maintained their early illustrious image in the scientific community. We start our discussion by looking back at the conceptual history of “mirror neuron,” paying special attention to the shifting meanings of highly related words in the current scientific landscape. These semantic changes demonstrate that, even if not entirely sufficient on their own, the study of mirror neurons remains central to the scientific revolution unfolding within cognitive sciences, as revealed through the analysis in this paper. Thus, in the later part of this paper, we find that the meanings of three fundamental words related to mirror neurons, “mirror,” “action,” and “understanding,” have begun to shift.
{"title":"Re-enchanting mirror neurons through lexical changes","authors":"Da Dong , Tongwei Liu , Wei Chen","doi":"10.1016/j.newideapsych.2025.101145","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.newideapsych.2025.101145","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Recent statistical data seem to indicate that mirror neurons have not maintained their early illustrious image in the scientific community. We start our discussion by looking back at the conceptual history of “mirror neuron,” paying special attention to the shifting meanings of highly related words in the current scientific landscape. These semantic changes demonstrate that, even if not entirely sufficient on their own, the study of mirror neurons remains central to the scientific revolution unfolding within cognitive sciences, as revealed through the analysis in this paper. Thus, in the later part of this paper, we find that the meanings of three fundamental words related to mirror neurons, “mirror,” “action,” and “understanding,” have begun to shift.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51556,"journal":{"name":"New Ideas in Psychology","volume":"77 ","pages":"Article 101145"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143175726","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-01-28DOI: 10.1016/j.newideapsych.2025.101146
Jiaxin Ma , Xiaoyong Hu
Altruism is the intentional and voluntary act of benefiting others. However, altruists often overlook the effects and impacts of their actions, leading to suboptimal or even detrimental outcomes. This phenomenon, termed ineffective altruism, has been attributed to psychological deficits, such as motivational and cognitive impairments. In this article, we adopt a moral cognitive approach and develop an integrated model of action/outcome value decision-making from an adaptive perspective to elucidate the mechanism of ineffective altruism. our model suggests that warm-glow and reputation enhance the action value of altruism, while cognitive biases reduce the effective outcome value that benefits others. The article concludes with a discussion of how action values and outcome values relate and balance each other and analyzes how different strategies of trading off these values affect individuals and society.
{"title":"Actions Speak Louder than outcomes leading to ineffective altruism","authors":"Jiaxin Ma , Xiaoyong Hu","doi":"10.1016/j.newideapsych.2025.101146","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.newideapsych.2025.101146","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Altruism is the intentional and voluntary act of benefiting others. However, altruists often overlook the effects and impacts of their actions, leading to suboptimal or even detrimental outcomes. This phenomenon, termed ineffective altruism, has been attributed to psychological deficits, such as motivational and cognitive impairments. In this article, we adopt a moral cognitive approach and develop an integrated model of action/outcome value decision-making from an adaptive perspective to elucidate the mechanism of ineffective altruism. our model suggests that warm-glow and reputation enhance the action value of altruism, while cognitive biases reduce the effective outcome value that benefits others. The article concludes with a discussion of how action values and outcome values relate and balance each other and analyzes how different strategies of trading off these values affect individuals and society.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51556,"journal":{"name":"New Ideas in Psychology","volume":"77 ","pages":"Article 101146"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143175725","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-01-03DOI: 10.1016/j.newideapsych.2024.101143
Samuel Viana Meyler , Scott M. Rennie
This paper examines some of the psychological and perceptual foundations that underpin the use of theatre masks, proposing that part of their power stems from two intertwined evolutionary adaptations: face processing architecture in the brain and our natural tendency toward social synchrony.
We focus on two specific types of theatre masks used by theatre pedagogue Jacques Lecoq (1921–1999): larval masks and half-masks. Using these as examples, we argue that theatre masks leverage our finely-tuned sensitivity to faces by seamlessly engaging the neural networks responsible for rapid face detection and emotional inference. Furthermore, the masks interfere with our ability for social synchronisation, which encourage performers to broaden their range of embodied expression. This has the potential to significantly boost the ‘performative toolkit’ of actors-in-training. For the audience, the masks disrupt synchrony by obscuring facial details and creating cognitive ambiguities, complicating the audience's interpretative process and thereby enhancing engagement and the aesthetic experience.
{"title":"Face perception and synchrony disruption in theatre masks","authors":"Samuel Viana Meyler , Scott M. Rennie","doi":"10.1016/j.newideapsych.2024.101143","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.newideapsych.2024.101143","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper examines some of the psychological and perceptual foundations that underpin the use of theatre masks, proposing that part of their power stems from two intertwined evolutionary adaptations: face processing architecture in the brain and our natural tendency toward social synchrony.</div><div>We focus on two specific types of theatre masks used by theatre pedagogue Jacques Lecoq (1921–1999): larval masks and half-masks. Using these as examples, we argue that theatre masks leverage our finely-tuned sensitivity to faces by seamlessly engaging the neural networks responsible for rapid face detection and emotional inference. Furthermore, the masks interfere with our ability for social synchronisation, which encourage performers to broaden their range of embodied expression. This has the potential to significantly boost the ‘performative toolkit’ of actors-in-training. For the audience, the masks disrupt synchrony by obscuring facial details and creating cognitive ambiguities, complicating the audience's interpretative process and thereby enhancing engagement and the aesthetic experience.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51556,"journal":{"name":"New Ideas in Psychology","volume":"77 ","pages":"Article 101143"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143175724","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-12-30DOI: 10.1016/j.newideapsych.2024.101144
Joseph Glicksohn
The focus of the present paper is the relationship between metaphor and altered state of consciousness (ASC) characterized by trance. I reconsider two somewhat old ideas that might well have been premature for their time. One is that the mode of thinking in an ASC characterized by trance is metaphoric-symbolic. I argue that this is itself reflective of a heightened physiognomic perception. Furthermore, in such an ASC, an alternative world “becomes physiognomically alive”, and it is this alternative world which is expressed in poetic metaphor. In line with three major ideas expressed in Gestalt psychology, this is so because that is the way we think and perceive in a trancelike ASC, and because that is the alternative world that we now encounter in the trancelike ASC.
{"title":"The trip from metaphor to reality and back","authors":"Joseph Glicksohn","doi":"10.1016/j.newideapsych.2024.101144","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.newideapsych.2024.101144","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The focus of the present paper is the relationship between metaphor and altered state of consciousness (ASC) characterized by trance. I reconsider two somewhat old ideas that might well have been premature for their time. One is that the mode of thinking in an ASC characterized by trance is metaphoric-symbolic. I argue that this is itself reflective of a heightened physiognomic perception. Furthermore, in such an ASC, an alternative world “becomes physiognomically alive”, and it is this alternative world which is expressed in poetic metaphor. In line with three major ideas expressed in Gestalt psychology, this is so because that is the way we think and perceive in a trancelike ASC, and because that is the alternative world that we now encounter in the trancelike ASC.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51556,"journal":{"name":"New Ideas in Psychology","volume":"77 ","pages":"Article 101144"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143176219","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-12-30DOI: 10.1016/j.newideapsych.2024.101129
Letty Y.-Y Kwan, Yu Sheng Hung
Collaboration across different disciplines (interdisciplinary collaboration) is necessary for frame-breaking innovations. However, successfully implementing such often requires individuals to sample ideas outside their disciplinary knowledge. In the past, studies tend to show that individuals inevitably show bias in using their disciplinary knowledge due to disciplinary socialization. The current research proposes that disciplinary centrism is not inevitable and can be attenuated when participants do not perceive disciplinary values across disciplines to have incommensurable differences. In an eye-tracking experiment, I show that participants who held a high (versus low) perception of value differences across disciplinary knowledge would focus on their disciplinary information more (versus less) during the information sampling stage in a creativity task. The study provides implications on how to improve interdisciplinary collaboration and highlights how information is being selected and used in the informational processing stage during a creative task.
{"title":"Unveiling the influence of disciplinary biases on information sampling during an interdisciplinary collaboration creative task through eye-tracking analysis","authors":"Letty Y.-Y Kwan, Yu Sheng Hung","doi":"10.1016/j.newideapsych.2024.101129","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.newideapsych.2024.101129","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Collaboration across different disciplines (interdisciplinary collaboration) is necessary for frame-breaking innovations. However, successfully implementing such often requires individuals to sample ideas outside their disciplinary knowledge. In the past, studies tend to show that individuals inevitably show bias in using their disciplinary knowledge due to disciplinary socialization. The current research proposes that disciplinary centrism is not inevitable and can be attenuated when participants do not perceive disciplinary values across disciplines to have incommensurable differences. In an eye-tracking experiment, I show that participants who held a high (versus low) perception of value differences across disciplinary knowledge would focus on their disciplinary information more (versus less) during the information sampling stage in a creativity task. The study provides implications on how to improve interdisciplinary collaboration and highlights how information is being selected and used in the informational processing stage during a creative task.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51556,"journal":{"name":"New Ideas in Psychology","volume":"77 ","pages":"Article 101129"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143176218","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-12-19DOI: 10.1016/j.newideapsych.2024.101142
Tom Grimes , Jon Lasser
Sixty years of media violence research illustrates what can go wrong when the null hypothesis is ignored. Without the null’s restraining effect, researchers assumed that media violence could trigger behavioral aggression among all consumers. Thus researchers probed for types of aggression media violence motivated, not whether it motivated aggression in the first place. A null hypothesis, taken seriously, would have led to a nuanced, finer grained treatment of media violence's effects. Third variables such as background psychopathologies can interact with media violence to incite behavioral aggression among vulnerable consumers. Psychologically well individuals, on the other hand, appear to suffer no psychopathological effects. There is now pressure on social media scholars to ignore the null and assume that all users are pathologically vulnerable to social media. We show how seven methodological mistakes made it easy to quash the null and skip directly to presumed effects.
{"title":"The importance of the null hypothesis in the formulation of theory in media psychology","authors":"Tom Grimes , Jon Lasser","doi":"10.1016/j.newideapsych.2024.101142","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.newideapsych.2024.101142","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Sixty years of media violence research illustrates what can go wrong when the null hypothesis is ignored. Without the null’s restraining effect, researchers assumed that media violence could trigger behavioral aggression among all consumers. Thus researchers probed for types of aggression media violence motivated, not whether it motivated aggression in the first place. A null hypothesis, taken seriously, would have led to a nuanced, finer grained treatment of media violence's effects. Third variables such as background psychopathologies can interact with media violence to incite behavioral aggression among vulnerable consumers. Psychologically well individuals, on the other hand, appear to suffer no psychopathological effects. There is now pressure on social media scholars to ignore the null and assume that all users are pathologically vulnerable to social media. We show how seven methodological mistakes made it easy to quash the null and skip directly to presumed effects.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51556,"journal":{"name":"New Ideas in Psychology","volume":"77 ","pages":"Article 101142"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143176220","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-12-10DOI: 10.1016/j.newideapsych.2024.101141
Brahim Hiba
This paper critically redefines problematization as both a research method and a transformative approach to critical thinking, positioning it as a pivotal modus operandi that transcends the limitations of conventional research practices. Diverging from traditional established research methods focused on gap-spotting and incremental contributions, this paper underscores problematization's unique capacity to interrogate and disrupt the foundational assumptions underpinning existing knowledge structures. By doing so, it drives researchers to reimagine and expand the horizons of scholarly inquiry. Grounded in the intellectual contributions of Nietzsche, Foucault, Marx, Heidegger, Deleuze, and Lacan, this paper addresses the theoretical limitations of the discourse about problematization, often clouded by complex philosophical jargon, while dismantling misconceptions about its nature and application. Beyond theoretical exploration, this paper introduces a practical framework that integrates innovative metaphors, discursive clarity, and actionable strategies. This framework is tailored to empower doctoral students and early-career researchers, equipping them with a taxonomy of epistemological and critical questions for effectively problematizing research problems. The research questions guiding this paper investigate how problematization can be reinterpreted and operationalized to challenge the ideological and power dynamics within dominant research paradigms. Furthermore, this paper explores how a multi-modal approach—combining rhizomatic, genealogical, visual, metaphorical, and ecological thinking—can deepen the practice of problematization.
{"title":"If you don't problematize it, you won't see it, and you won't understand it","authors":"Brahim Hiba","doi":"10.1016/j.newideapsych.2024.101141","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.newideapsych.2024.101141","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper critically redefines problematization as both a research method and a transformative approach to critical thinking, positioning it as a pivotal modus operandi that transcends the limitations of conventional research practices. Diverging from traditional established research methods focused on gap-spotting and incremental contributions, this paper underscores problematization's unique capacity to interrogate and disrupt the foundational assumptions underpinning existing knowledge structures. By doing so, it drives researchers to reimagine and expand the horizons of scholarly inquiry. Grounded in the intellectual contributions of Nietzsche, Foucault, Marx, Heidegger, Deleuze, and Lacan, this paper addresses the theoretical limitations of the discourse about problematization, often clouded by complex philosophical jargon, while dismantling misconceptions about its nature and application. Beyond theoretical exploration, this paper introduces a practical framework that integrates innovative metaphors, discursive clarity, and actionable strategies. This framework is tailored to empower doctoral students and early-career researchers, equipping them with a taxonomy of epistemological and critical questions for effectively problematizing research problems. The research questions guiding this paper investigate how problematization can be reinterpreted and operationalized to challenge the ideological and power dynamics within dominant research paradigms. Furthermore, this paper explores how a multi-modal approach—combining rhizomatic, genealogical, visual, metaphorical, and ecological thinking—can deepen the practice of problematization.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51556,"journal":{"name":"New Ideas in Psychology","volume":"77 ","pages":"Article 101141"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143175723","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}