A nice arrangement of heterodoxies: William Mcdougall and the professionalization of psychical research

Asprem, Egil

doi:10.1002/jhbs.20422

Cited by 15 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…The abstractness and generality of the attitude construct likely helped it gain wider use, especially in experimental studies of impersonal attitudes towards stereotypes, products, and political positions. Other reasons for the waning of “sentiment” likely included behaviorist opposition to the “hormic” teleology of sentiments; greater reliance on unpopular evolutionary (especially Lamarckian) reasoning by proponents; and associations with discredited, yet logically distinct, theories of parapsychology and eugenics (see, e.g., Asprem 2010).…”

Section: Sentiments and The Structure Of Folk Affect Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the deep structure of social affect: Attitudes, emotions, sentiments, and the case of “contempt”

Gervais

Fessler

2016

Behav Brain Sci

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Contempt is typically studied as a uniquely human moral emotion. However, this approach has yielded inconclusive results. We argue this is because the folk affect concept "contempt" has been inaccurately mapped onto basic affect systems. "Contempt" has features that are inconsistent with a basic emotion, especially its protracted duration and frequently cold phenomenology. Yet other features are inconsistent with a basic attitude. Nonetheless, the features of "contempt" functionally cohere. To account for this, we revive and reconfigure the sentiment construct using the notion of evolved functional specialization. We develop the Attitude-Scenario-Emotion (ASE) model of sentiments, in which enduring attitudes represent others' social-relational value and moderate discrete emotions across scenarios. Sentiments are functional networks of attitudes and emotions. Distinct sentiments, including love, respect, like, hate, and fear, track distinct relational affordances, and each is emotionally pluripotent, thereby serving both bookkeeping and commitment functions within relationships. The sentiment contempt is an absence of respect; from cues to others' low efficacy, it represents them as worthless and small, muting compassion, guilt, and shame and potentiating anger, disgust, and mirth. This sentiment is ancient yet implicated in the ratcheting evolution of human ultrasocialty. The manifolds of the contempt network, differentially engaged across individuals and populations, explain the features of "contempt," its translatability, and its variable experience as "hot" or "cold," occurrent or enduring, and anger-like or disgust-like. This rapprochement between psychological anthropology and evolutionary psychology contributes both methodological and empirical insights, with broad implications for understanding the functional and cultural organization of social affect.

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Section: Sentiments and The Structure Of Folk Affect Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the deep structure of social affect: Attitudes, emotions, sentiments, and the case of “contempt”

Gervais

Fessler

2016

Behav Brain Sci

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“…The antecedents of the affective turn take us back to the unexplored connections between psychic research, Lamarckism, neo-vitalism and eugenics central to McDougall's work (see Asprem, 2010), and which I shall argue persist in contemporary accounts of the affective capacities of bodies. Such histories illustrate habit's close relationship to discussions of telepathy, mimesis and instinct, and bring vitalism much closer to these traditions than has been acknowledged or explored.…”

mentioning

confidence: 96%

Habit and Affect: Revitalizing a Forgotten History

Blackman

2013

Body & Society

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Habit is an integral concept for body studies, a hybrid concept and one that has provided the bedrock across the humanities for considering the interrelationships between movement and stasis, being and becoming, and process and fixity. Habits are seen to provide relay points between what is taken to be inside and outside, disrupting any clear and distinct boundary between nature and culture, self and other, the psychological and social, and even mind and matter. Habit thus discloses a paradox. It takes up a unique position in affect modulation, which encompasses both regulation (in the form of discipline) and also extends the body's potential for engaging the new, change and creativity. In order to understand the basis of the ambivalent duality governing understandings of habit it is argued that a genealogical approach to this question is necessary. This will be located within the recent 'turn to affect' and histories of conation within the psychological sciences, particularly taking the writings of William McDougall as a focus.

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“…The abstractness and generality of the attitude construct likely helped it gain wider use, especially in experimental studies of impersonal attitudes towards stereotypes, products, and political positions. Other reasons for the waning of "sentiment" likely included behaviorist opposition to the "hormic" teleology of sentiments; greater reliance on unpopular evolutionary (especially Lamarckian) reasoning by proponents; and associations with discredited, yet logically distinct, theories of parapsychology and eugenics (see, e.g., Asprem 2010).…”

Section: Sentimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%