Journal
INTEGRATIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE
Volume 45, Issue 1, Pages 132-153Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s12124-010-9125-8
Keywords
Ecological psychology; Social psychology; Edwin Bissell Holt; James J. Gibson; New realism; Direct perception; Embodied cognition
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
What is the greatest contribution that ecological psychologists can offer social psychology? Ideally, ecological psychologists could explain how people directly perceive the unique properties of their social partners. But social partners are distinguished from mundane objects because they possess mental traits, and tradition tells us that minds cannot be seen. When considering the ideal possibility, we reject that doctrine and posit minds as perceivable. For ecological psychology, this entails asserting that minds are the types of things able to structure ambient energy. Contemporary research and theory suggests distinctly ecological ways of attacking this problem, but the problem is not new. Almost 100 years ago, Holt argued for the visibility of minds. Thus when considering these ideas, ecological psychologists face a choice that is at once about their future and their past. Extending ecological psychology's first principles into the social realm, we come to the point where we must either accept or reject Holt's arguments, and the wider context they bring. In doing so, we accept or reject our ability to study the uniquely social.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available