Social Psychology – Mental Health Matters

An Overview of System Justification

Published on 01/14/2025 by Andrew MarshallLeave a comment

Introduction

System justification theory is a theory within social psychology that system-justifying beliefs serve a psychologically palliative function. It proposes that people have several underlying needs, which vary from individual to individual, that can be satisfied by the defence and justification of the status quo, even when the system may be disadvantageous to certain people. People have epistemic, existential, and relational needs that are met by and manifest as ideological support for the prevailing structure of social, economic, and political norms. Need for order and stability, and thus resistance to change or alternatives, for example, can be a motivator for individuals to see the status quo as good, legitimate, and even desirable.

According to system justification theory, people desire not only to hold favourable attitudes about themselves (ego-justification) and the groups to which they belong (group-justification), but also to hold positive attitudes about the overarching social structure in which they are entwined and find themselves obligated to (system-justification). This system-justifying motive sometimes produces the phenomenon known as out-group favouritism, an acceptance of inferiority among low-status groups and a positive image of relatively higher status groups. Thus, the notion that individuals are simultaneously supporters and victims of the system-instilled norms is a central idea in system justification theory. Additionally, the passive ease of supporting the current structure, when compared to the potential price (material, social, psychological) of acting out against the status quo, leads to a shared environment in which the existing social, economic, and political arrangements tend to be preferred. Alternatives to the status quo tend to be disparaged, and inequality tends to perpetuate.

Origins

Previous social psychological theories that aimed to explain intergroup behaviour typically focused on the tendencies for people to have positive attitudes about themselves (ego-justification) and their self-relevant groups (group-justification). In other words, people are motivated to engage in behaviours that allow for them to maintain a high self-esteem and a positive image of their group. System Justification theory addressed the additional, prevalent phenomenon known as out-group favouritism, in which people defend the social systems (status quo) even when it does not benefit, and in the long-run may even cause more harm, to the individual or the group to which he or she belongs. Out-group favouritism can manifest as a dis-identification on the part of members of lower social status with their own categorical grouping (social, ethnic, economic, political) and instead further support for the existing structure. Prior social psychology theories lacked explanation for and attention given to popular instances of out-group favouritism; thus, system justification theory was developed to further explain and understand why some people tend to legitimise the prevailing social systems, despite their being against one’s interests, in a way that previous social psychological theories did not.

Theoretical Influences

While social identity theory, cognitive dissonance theory, the just-world fallacy, social dominance theory, and Marxist-feminist theories of ideologies have heavily influenced system justification theory, it has also expanded on these perspectives, infusing them with the system-justification motive and behaviours.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

One of the most popular and well-known social psychological theories, cognitive dissonance theory explains that people have a need to maintain cognitive consistency in order to retain a positive self-image. System justification theory builds off the cognitive dissonance framework, in that it posits people will justify a social system in order to retain a positive image of that social system, due to the fact that they inherently play a role (whether passive or active) in perpetuating it.

Social Identity Theory

Jost and colleagues interpret social identity theory as suggesting that when people are presented with intergroup conflict that threatens their social group identities people will justify behaviours like stereotyping and discrimination against outgroups in order to maintain their positive group image. People with out-group favouritism will hold more positive images of other, often higher-status, groups (outgroups) than the groups they belong to (ingroups). Thus, the argument is that system justification theory builds on the foundations of social identity theory in attempting to account for the out-group favouritism observed in many disadvantaged group members that social identity theory does not.

Social Dominance Theory

This theory has widely been compared to system justification theory since they are both system-justifying theories. Social dominance theory focuses on people’s motive to maintain a positive group image by generally supporting hierarchical inequality at the group level. Individuals with a high social dominance orientation (SDO) will hold myths that tend to be hierarchy-enhancing, which justify an in-group’s place and their relation to it. Thus, in both social dominance theory and system justification theory, there are common threads of group-based opposition to equality and justification for maintaining intergroup inequalities through systemic norms.

Belief in a Just World

According to the just world fallacy, people are inclined to believe the world is generally fair, and that the outcomes of people’s behaviour are subsequently deserved. Ideologies that relate to belief in a just world have to do with maintaining a sense of personal control and a desire to understand the world as non-random. Such ideologies include the Protestant work ethic and belief in meritocracy. Essentially, belief in a just world feeds an epistemic need for predictability, order, and stability in one’s environment. System justification theory, while keeping the perspective that people are inclined to believe the world is just, extracts the underlying epistemic needs of the just world ideology and uses them as support for why people are motivated to uphold the system. In other words, preference for stability, predictability, and the perception of personal control, over random chance, motivates one to see the status quo as fair and legitimate. This can be an issue, however, due to the fact that disadvantaged people can easily internalise their low position and blame themselves for ‘shortcomings’ or lack of ‘successes’.

False Consciousness

In order to account for the phenomenon of outgroup favouritism that is a main component of system justification, theorists have derived heavily from the Marxist-feminist theories on the prevailing ideologies as tools to preserve the system. In particular, the concept of false consciousness, in which the dominant group in society believes their dominance to be destined, can help to inform why certain members of disadvantage groups sometimes engage in outgroup favouritism. Further, system justification emphasizes that those that lack means of material production (lower status) are subject to the ideas, (cultural values, legislation, and social teachings) of the dominant, controlling group.

Aspects of the Theory

Rationalisation of the Status Quo

One of the main aspects of system justification theory explains that people are motivated to justify the status quo and view it as stable and desirable. To this extent, theorists have provided specific hypothesis in which the rationalisation of the status quo can manifest. One consequence of the system-justifying motivation, is the rationalisation of desirability of likely versus less-likely events.

Since people will be inclined to make sure their preferences are congruent with the status quo, in situations of inevitability, people are more likely to endorse the status quo as a coping mechanism for dealing with unpleasant realities. In essence, people will judge events that are more likely as more desirable than events that are less likely. Anticipatory rationalization studies completed during the 2000 American presidential election demonstrate how future candidate endorsement and desirability is dependent on the likelihood of that candidate winning. When subjects of both the Republican and Democratic parties were told, for example, that it was probable that one candidate would win over the other, people of both parties tended to rationalise support for the more likely winner. System justification for seemingly inevitable and unavoidable outcomes serves as a stress or dissonance reducer and provides psychological and emotional consolation, as well as allowing the individual to feel a sense of control over external events.

Another way people rationalise the status quo is through the use of stereotypes. When people perceive threats to the predominant system, they are more inclined to cling to and back the existing structure, and one way of doing so is by means of endorsing stereotypes that rationalise inequality. If one considers oneself a member of a higher social status group (economic standing, race, gender) he or she will hold favourable stereotypes about their group and less positive ones toward lower-status outgroups. As perceived legitimacy of the system or threat to it increases, members of both disadvantaged and advantaged groups will be more motivated to utilise stereotypes as explanatory rationalisations (no matter how weak) for unequal status differences. Those that belong to disadvantaged groups will tend to associate positive characteristics (favourable stereotypes) to high-status members and lead low-status group members to minimise negative feelings about their low status. Thus, stereotype endorsement as system justification is consensual and holds a palliative function. This is true for both the ingroup and outgroup. Stereotypes also deflect blame of unfair status differences from the system and instead, attribute inequality to group traits or characteristics. Such rationalisation for inequality via stereotyping is said to be what makes political conservatives happier than liberals. In a 2012 research study on the connection of system justification beliefs and ambivalent sexism, researchers found that benevolent sexism beliefs related to higher life satisfaction through system justification. That is, both men and women may be motivated to hold benevolent sexism beliefs because such beliefs may help to promote the notion that the status quo is fair, which in turn can maintain life satisfaction.

Outgroup Favouritism

In contrast to ingroup favouritism, which holds that people have a motivation to regard the social groups that they belong in more positively than other groups, outgroup favouritism is when people tend to regard groups to which they do not belong more positively than the groups to which they are members. System justification theorists argue that this is an example or manifestation of how some people have unconsciously absorbed, processed, and attempted to cope with existing inequalities—more specifically, one’s own disadvantaged position in the social hierarchy. Because people have a tendency to justify the status quo (which usually consists of inequality among groups) and believe that it is fair and legitimate, certain people from low-status groups will accept, internalise, and hence perpetuate that inequality.

Criticisms of outgroup favouritism have suggested observations of this in disadvantaged group members are simply manifestations of more general demand characteristics or social norms that encourage low-status groups to evaluate other groups more positively. In response to this, system justification theorists introduced both implicit and explicit measures of outgroup favouritism. It was found that low-status group members still exhibited outgroup favouritism (i.e. preference for other groups) on both implicit and explicit measures, and they displayed higher instances of outgroup favouritism on implicit measures than on explicit (self-reported) measures. In contrast, people from high-status groups were found to display ingroup favouritism more on implicit measures.

Thus, it is expected that when motivation to justify the system or status quo increases and it is perceived to be more legitimate, high-status group members will also display increased ingroup favouritism, while low status group members will display increased outgroup favouritism. Researchers have also linked political conservatism with system justification, in that conservatism is associated with upholding tradition and resistance to change, which is similar to justifying the status quo (or current state of social, political, and economic norms). Along this vein, system justification theorists hold that high-status group members will engage in increased ingroup favouritism the more politically conservative they are, while low-status group members will display increased outgroup favouritism the more politically conservative they are.

Depressed Entitlement

Research on wage disparities between men and women have found that women often believe they are paid less than men because they do not deserve equal pay. This depressed entitlement was first thought as the manifestation of women internalising the low status of their gender compared to men. Subsequent research has found depressed entitlement occur across contexts in which gender was not a variable. System justification theorists have suggested that depressed entitlement is another general example of how individuals of low-status groups absorb their inferiority in order to justify the status quo. As such, system justification holds that low-status group members regardless of context will be more likely to display instances of depressed entitlement than high-status group members. This will also be seen more among low-status group members for completed work as opposed to work not yet completed.

Ego, Group, and System Justification Motives

As previously stated, people are motivated by the desire for ego-justification and group-justification to view themselves and their group positively (which can manifest through feelings of self-esteem and value). The system-justification motive is people’s desire to view the system or status quo in a favourable light as legitimate and fair. Among high-status group members, all three of these motives are congruent with one another. The need to believe the system is just and fair is easy for high-status group members because they are the groups benefiting from the system and status quo. Therefore, as the advantaged groups, holding positive regard for the self and group corresponds readily with believing the status quo is legitimate.

In particular, as system justification motives increase for high-status group members, ingroup ambivalence will decrease, levels of self-esteem will increase, and depression and neuroticism levels will decrease. For low-status groups, the ego-justification and group-justification motives come into conflict with the system-justification motive. If low-status group members have a desire to believe the status quo and prevailing system is fair and legitimate, then this would conflict with the motivation of these individuals to maintain positive self and group images. Theorists posit that this conflict of justification motives creates conflicting or mixed attitudes in low-status groups as a result of being the disadvantaged group that does not necessarily benefit from the status quo.

As system justification motives increase for low-status group members, ingroup ambivalence will increase and occur at stronger levels compared to high-status groups, levels of self-esteem will decrease, and depression and neuroticism levels will increase. Moreover, researchers suggest that when ego and group justification motives are particularly decreased, system-justification motives will increase.

Enhanced System Justification among the Disadvantaged

Based on cognitive dissonance theory that holds people have a need to reduce dissonance and maintain cognitive consistency, system justification theory explains that people are motivated to rationalise and justify instances of inequality in order to preserve and defend the legitimacy of the system. Because people have this need to believe the current prevailing system is legitimate and the way it is for a reason, when presented with instances where this might threaten that, people sometimes respond with more justifications to maintain the legitimacy of the system or status quo.

Compensatory Stereotypes

Research has found that compensatory stereotypes might lead to increased justification of the status quo. That is, stereotypes that have components that would offset the negative aspects of the stereotypes would allow people to more easily explain or justify the inequality of the prevailing system. One of the more common examples is the compensatory stereotype of “poor but happy” or “rich but miserable.” Stereotypes like these that incorporate a positive aspect to counterbalance the negative aspect would lead people to increase their justification of the status quo. Other findings suggested that these compensatory stereotypes are preferred by those with more left-leaning political ideologies, while those with more right-leaning political ideologies preferred non-complementary stereotypes that simply rationalised inequality rather than compensated for it. But that overall, conservatives were more likely to have increased system justification tendencies than liberals.

Consequences of system Justification

Consequences of people’s motivation to legitimise the status quo are wide-ranging. In needing to believe that the current or prevailing systems are fair and just, results in people justifying the existing inequalities within it. Research on system justification theory has been applied to many different social and political contexts that have found the theory has implications for general social change, social policies, and specific communities. Research has found that people with increased system justification motives are more resistant to change, and thus an implication of this would be greater difficulty to move towards policies, governments, authority figures, and hierarchies that reflect equality.

Research suggests that system justification motives reduce emotional distress in people that would otherwise result in demands for amendments to perceived injustices or inequalities. Specifically, moral outrage, guilt, and frustration are reduced when system justification motives increase. This has shown to result in less support for social policies that redistribute resources in the aim for equality.

In developing countries, in which group inequalities are most evident, researchers were interested in testing the claim of system justification theory that when inequalities are more visible, this will result in greater justification of the status quo. Researchers visited the most impoverished areas of Bolivia, and found that children (aged 10–15) who were members of low-status groups legitimised the Bolivian government as sufficiently meeting the needs of the people more so than children from high-status groups. Observing system-justification motives in low-status groups located in one of the most impoverished countries implies there will be less support for social change in a country that arguably needs it the most.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, there were different reactions to the devastation it brought to communities as well as the government’s relief efforts. Researchers who have studied these reactions, found that the slow and inefficient response of relief efforts were perceived by some to expose “governmental shortcomings, call into question the legitimacy of agency leadership, and highlight racial inequality in America.” These perceptions indirectly brought a threat to the legitimacy of the US government (i.e. the system). As a result of this system threat, researchers found that people tended to restore legitimacy to the system through utilising stereotypes and victim blaming. In particular, since the majority of the communities affected by Hurricane Katrina were generally low-income and composed mostly of minorities, some people used stereotypes to blame the victims for their misfortune and restore legitimacy to the government. Researchers explained how this could have consequences for the victims and the restoration of their homes and communities. Increased system justification, and increased victim blaming could be detrimental in providing the victims the resources needed to work towards repairing the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina.

Critiques

Social Identity Theory Debate

This debate arose from social identity theorists who countered a critique of social identity theory by system justification theorists. System justification theorists argued that the theoretical conception of system justification theory derived, in part, from limitations of social identity theory. In particular, system justification theorists have argued that social identity theory does not fully account for outgroup favouritism, and that it is more able to explain ingroup favouritism. Advocates for social identity theory have argued that this critique is more a result of lack of research on outgroup favouritism rather than a limitation of social identity theory’s theoretical framework.

More recently, social identity theorists have put forward a social identity model of system attitudes (SIMSA), which offers several explanations for system justification that refer to social identity motives rather than a separate system justification motive. In 2019, a series of position and reply articles were published by proponents of both system justification theory and SIMSA in the debate section of the British Journal of Social Psychology. In 2023, this debate continued in the European Review of Social Psychology, with (a) a target article by Rubin et al. that expanded on SIMSA, (b) a rejoinder by Jost et al. that criticised this target article, and (c) a second article by Rubin et al. that responded to Jost et al.’s criticisms.

Relation to Status Quo Bias

Another critique is that system justification theory is too similar and indistinguishable to status quo bias. Given that both deal directly with upholding and legitimising the status quo, this critique is not unfounded. But system justification theory differs from the status quo bias in that it is predominately motivational rather than cognitive. Generally, the status quo bias refers to a tendency to prefer the default or established option when making choices. In contrast, system justification posits that people need and want to see prevailing social systems as fair and just. The motivational component of system justification means that its effects are exacerbated when people are under psychological threat or when they feel their outcomes are especially dependent on the system that is being justified.

Current Research

Congruent with a broader trend toward neuroscience, current research on system justification has tested to see how this manifests in the brain. Findings by researchers have shown that people with more conservative ideologies differed in certain brain structures, which was associated with sensitivity to threat and response conflict. Specifically, those who were more conservative were “associated with greater neural sensitivity to threat and larger amygdala volume, as well as less sensitivity to response conflict and smaller anterior cingulate volume,” compared to those who were more liberal. This research is currently exploratory and has not yet determined the direction of the relations to ideology and brain structures.

Recent findings by researchers have shown that system justification motives to legitimise the status quo was found in young children. Through utilising the developmental psychological theory and data, children as early as age 5 were found to have basic understandings of their ingroup and the status of their ingroup. System justification motives were also observed in that children from low-status groups were found to display implicit outgroup favouritism. Research on system justification in young children remains a current trend.

Utopian thinking has been proposed as an effective way to overcome system justification. Thinking about an ideal society can decrease system justification and increase collective action intentions by increasing hope and abstraction.

A recent large-scale cross-cultural assessment of competing system justification hypotheses was conducted amongst 42 countries, where the researchers set out to assess the accuracy of system justification theory when compared to social identity theory and social dominance theory across cultures. They found that on average the self- and group-interest arguments of social identity and social dominance theories were more accurate across cultures.

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_justification >; it is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the CC-BY-SA.

What is a Motivated Tactician?

Published on 12/27/2024 by Andrew Marshall1 Comment

Introduction

In social psychology, a motivated tactician is someone who shifts between quick-and-dirty cognitively economical tactics and more thoughtful, thorough strategies when processing information, depending on the type and degree of motivation. Such behaviour is a type of motivated reasoning. The idea has been used to explain why people use stereotyping, biases and categorisation in some situations, and more analytical thinking in others.

Brief History

After much research on categorisation, and other cognitive shortcuts, psychologists began to describe human beings as cognitive misers; which explains that a need to conserve mental resources causes people to use shortcuts to thinking about stimuli, instead of motivations and urges influencing the way humans think about their world. Stereotypes and heuristics were used as evidence of the economic nature of human thinking. In recent years, the work of Fiske & Neuberg (1990), Higgins & Molden (2003), Molden & Higgins (2005) and others has led to the recognition of the importance of motivational thinking. This is due to contemporary research studying the importance of motivation in cognitive processes, instead of concentrating on cognition versus motivation. Current research does not deny that people will be cognitively miserly in certain situations, but it takes into account that thorough analytic thought does occur in other situations.

Using this perspective, researchers have begun to describe human beings as “motivated tacticians” who are tactical about how much cognitive resources will be used depending on the individual’s intent and level of motivation. Based on the complex nature of the world and the occasional need for quick thinking, it would be detrimental for a person to be methodical about everything, while other situations require more focus and attention. Considering human beings as motivated tacticians has become popular because it takes both situations into account. This concept also takes into account, and continues to study, what motivates people to use more or less mental resources when processing information about the world. Research has found that intended outcome, relevancy to the individual, culture, and affect can all influence the way a person processes information.

Goal-Oriented Motivational Thinking

The most prominent explanation of motivational thinking is that the person’s desired outcome motivates him to use more or less cognitive resources while processing a situation or thing. Researchers have divided preferred outcomes into two broad categories:

Directional outcomes; and
Non-directional outcomes.

The preferred outcome provides the motivation for the level of processing involved.

Individuals motivated by directional outcomes have the intention of accomplishing a specific goal. These goals can range from appearing smart, courageous or likeable to affirming positive thoughts and feelings about something or someone to whom they are close or find likable. If someone is motivated by non-directional outcomes, he or she may wish to make the most logical and clear decision. Whether a person is motivated by directional or non-directional outcomes depends on the situation and the person’s goals. Confirmation bias is an example of thought-processing motivated by directional outcomes. The goal is to affirm previously held beliefs, so one will use less thorough thinking in order to reach that goal. A person motivated to get the best education, who researches information on colleges and visit schools is motivated by a non-directional outcome. Evidence for outcome-influenced motivation is illustrated by research on self-serving bias. According to Miller (1976), p.901-906:

“Independent of expectancies from prior success or failure, the more personally important a success is in any given situation, the stronger is the tendency to claim responsibility for this success but to deny responsibility for failure.”

Motivation Based on Strategy

Though outcome-based motivation is the most prominent approach to motivated thinking, there is evidence that a person can be motivated by their preferred strategy of processing information. However, rather than being an alternative, this idea is actually a compliment to the outcome-based approach. Proponents of this approach feel that a person prefers a specific method of information-processing because it usually yields the results they wish to receive. This relates back to the intended outcome being the primary motivation. “Strategy of information processing” means whether a person makes a decision using bias, categories, or analytical thinking. Regardless of whether the method is best suited for the situation or more thorough is less important to the person than its likelihood of yielding the intended result. People feel that their preferred strategy just “feels right”. What makes the heuristic or method feel “right” is that the strategy accomplishes the desired goal (i.e. affirming positive beliefs of self-efficacy).

Other Motivations and Approaches

There has been limited research on motivated tactical thinking outside of Western countries. One theory experts have mentioned is that a person’s culture could play a large role in a person’s motivations. Nations like the United States are considered to be individualistic, while many Asian nations are considered to be collectivistic. An individualist emphasizes importance on the self and is motivated by individual reward and affirmation, while a collectivist sees the world as being more group- or culture-based. The difference in the two ways of thinking could affect motivation in information processing. For example, instead of being motivated by self-affirmation, a collectivist would be motivated by more group-affirming goals.

Another theory is that emotions can affect the way a person processes information. Forgas (2000) has stated that current mood can determine the information processing as well as thoroughness of thought. He also mentioned that achieving a desired emotion can influence the level to which information is processed.

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_tactician >; it is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the CC-BY-SA.

A Brief Outline of Self-Verification Theory

Published on 02/02/2023 by Andrew MarshallLeave a comment

Introduction

Self-verification is a social psychological theory that asserts people want to be known and understood by others according to their firmly held beliefs and feelings about themselves, that is self-views (including self-concepts and self-esteem). It is one of the motives that drive self-evaluation, along with self-enhancement and self-assessment.

Because chronic self-concepts and self-esteem play an important role in understanding the world, providing a sense of coherence, and guiding action, people become motivated to maintain them through self-verification. Such strivings provide stability to people’s lives, making their experiences more coherent, orderly, and comprehensible than they would be otherwise. Self-verification processes are also adaptive for groups, groups of diverse backgrounds, and the larger society, in that they make people predictable to one another thus serve to facilitate social interaction. To this end, people engage in a variety of activities that are designed to obtain self-verifying information.

Developed by William Swann (1981), the theory grew out of earlier writings which held that people form self-views so that they can understand and predict the responses of others and know how to act toward them.

William Swann

William B. Swann (born 1952) is a professor of social and personality psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. He is primarily known for his work on identity, self and self-esteem, but has also done research on relationships, social cognition, group processes, accuracy in person perception and interpersonal expectancy effects. He received his Ph.D. in 1978 from the University of Minnesota and undergraduate degree from Gettysburg College.

Difference between Positive and Negative Self-Views

There are individual differences in people’s views of themselves. Among people with positive self-views, the desire for self-verification works together with another important motive, the desire for positive evaluations or “self enhancement”. For example, those who view themselves as “insightful” will find that their motives for both self-verification and self-enhancement encourage them to seek evidence that other people recognise their insightfulness.

In contrast, people with negative self-views will find that the desire for self-verification and self-enhancement are competing. Consider people who see themselves as disorganized. Whereas their desire for self-enhancement will compel them to seek evidence that others perceive them as organised, their desire for self-verification will compel such individuals to seek evidence that others perceive them as disorganised. Self-verification strivings tend to prevail over self-enhancement strivings when people are certain of the self-concept and when they have extremely depressive self-views.

Self-verification strivings may have undesirable consequences for people with negative self-views (depressed people and those who suffer from low self-esteem). For example, self-verification strivings may cause people with negative self-views to gravitate toward partners who mistreat them, undermine their feelings of self-worth, or even abuse them. And if people with negative self-views seek therapy, returning home to a self-verifying partner may undo the progress that was made there. Finally, in the workplace, the feelings of worthlessness that plague people with low self-esteem may foster feelings of ambivalence about receiving fair treatment, feelings that may undercut their propensity to insist that they get what they deserve from their employers (see: workplace bullying).

These findings and related ones point to the importance of efforts to improve the self-views of those who suffer from low self-esteem and depression.

Effects on Behaviour

In one series of studies, researchers asked participants with positive and negative self-views whether they would prefer to interact with evaluators who had favourable or unfavourable impressions of them. The results showed that those with positive self-views preferred favourable partners and those with negative self-views preferred unfavourable partners. The latter finding revealed that self-verification strivings may sometimes trump positivity strivings.

Self-verification motives operate for different dimensions of the self-concept and in many different situations. Men and women are equally inclined to display this tendency, and it does not matter whether the self-views refer to characteristics that are relatively immutable (e.g. intelligence) or changeable (e.g. diligence), or whether the self-views happen to be highly specific (e.g. athletic) or global (e.g. low self-esteem, worthlessness). Furthermore, when people chose negative partners over positive ones, it is not merely in an effort to avoid interacting with positive evaluators (that is, out of a concern that they might disappoint such positive evaluators). Rather, people chose self-verifying, negative partners even when the alternative is participating in a different experiment. Finally, recent work has shown that people work to verify self-views associated with group memberships. For example, women seek evaluations that confirm their belief that they possess qualities associated with being a woman.

Self-verification theory suggests that people may begin to shape others’ evaluations of them before they even begin interacting with them. They may, for example, display identity cues (see: impression management). The most effective identity cues enable people to signal who they are to potential interaction partners.

Physical appearance, such as clothes, body posture, demeanour. For example, the low self-esteem person who evokes reactions that confirm her negative self-views by slumping her shoulders and keeping her eyes fixed on the ground.
Other cues, such as the car someone buys, the house they live in, the way they decorate their living environment. For example, an SUV evokes reactions that confirm a person’s positive self-view.

Self-verification strivings may also influence the social contexts that people enter into and remain in. People reject those who provide social feedback that does not confirm their self-views, such as married people with negative self-views who reject spouses who see them positively and vice versa. College roommates behave in a similar manner. People are more inclined to divorce partners who perceived them too favourably. In each of these instances, people gravitated toward relationships that provided them with evaluations that confirmed their self-views and fled from those that did not.

When people fail to gain self-verifying reactions through the display of identity cue or through choosing self-verifying social environments, they may still acquire such evaluations by systematically evoking confirming reactions. For example, depressed people behave in negative ways toward their roommates, thus causing these roommates to reject them.

Self-verification theory predicts that when people interact with others, there is a general tendency for them to bring others to see them as they see themselves. This tendency is especially pronounced when they start out believing that the other person has misconstrued them, apparently because people compensate by working especially hard to bring others to confirm their self-views. People will even stop working on tasks to which they have been assigned if they sense that their performance is eliciting non-verifying feedback.

Role of Confirmation Bias

Self-verification theory predicts that people’s self-views will cause them to see the world as more supportive of these self-views than it really is. That is, individuals process information in a biased manner. These biases may be conscious and deliberate, but are probably more commonly done effortlessly and non-consciously. Through the creative use of these processes, people may dramatically increase their chances of attaining self-verification. There are at least three relevant aspects of information processing in self-verification:

Attention: People will attend to evaluations that are self-confirming while ignoring non-confirming evaluations.
Memory retrieval: self-views bias memory recall to favour self-confirming material over non-confirming elements.
Interpretation of information: people tend to interpret information in ways that reinforce their self-views.

These distinct forms of self-verification may often be implemented sequentially. For example, in one scenario, people may first strive to locate partners who verify one or more self-views. If this fails, they may redouble their efforts to elicit verification for the self-view in question or strive to elicit verification for a different self-view. Failing this, they may strive to “see” more self-verification than actually exists. And, if this strategy is also ineffective, they may withdraw from the relationship, either psychologically or in actuality.

Related Processes

Preference for Novelty

People seem to prefer modest levels of novelty; they want to experience phenomena that are unfamiliar enough to be interesting, but not so unfamiliar as to be frightening or too familiar as to be boring.

The implications of people’s preference for novelty for human relationships are not straightforward and obvious. Evidence that people desire novelty comes primarily from studies of people’s reactions to art objects and the like. This is different when it concerns human beings and social relationships because people can shift attention away from already familiar novel objects, while doing so in human relationships is difficult or not possible. But novel art objects are very different from people. If a piece of art becomes overly stimulating, we can simply shift our attention elsewhere. This is not a viable option should our spouse suddenly begin treating us as if we were someone else, for such treatment would pose serious questions about the integrity of people’s belief systems. Consequently, people probably balance competing desires for predictability and novelty by indulging the desire for novelty within contexts in which surprises are not threatening (e.g. leisure activities), while seeking coherence and predictability in contexts in which surprises could be costly – such as in the context of enduring relationships.

Tension with Self-Enhancement

People’s self-verification strivings are apt to be most influential when the relevant identities and behaviours matter to them. Thus, for example, the self-view should be firmly held, the relationship should be enduring, and the behaviour itself should be consequential. When these conditions are not met, people will be relatively unconcerned with preserving their self-views and they will instead indulge their desire for self-enhancement. In addition, self-reported emotional reactions favour self-enhancement while more thoughtful processes favour self-verification.

But if people with firmly held negative self-views seek self-verification, this does not mean that they are masochistic or have no desire to be loved. In fact, even people with very low self-esteem want to be loved. What sets people with negative self-views apart is their ambivalence about the evaluations they receive. Just as positive evaluations foster joy and warmth initially, these feelings are later chilled by incredulity. And although negative evaluations may foster sadness that the “truth” could not be kinder, it will at least reassure them that they know themselves. Happily, people with negative self-views are the exception rather than the rule. That is, on the balance, most people tend to view themselves positively. Although this imbalance is adaptive for society at large, it poses a challenge to researchers interested in studying self-verification. That is, for theorists interested in determining if behaviour is driven by self-verification or positivity strivings, participants with positive self-views will reveal nothing because both motives compel them to seek positive evaluations. If researchers want to learn if people prefer verification or positivity in a giving setting, they must study people with negative self-views.

Self-Concept Change

Although self-verification strivings tend to stabilise people’s self-views, changes in self-views may still occur. Probably the most common source of change is set in motion when the social environment recognises a significant change in a person’s age (e.g. when adolescents become adults), status (e.g. when students become teachers), or social role (e.g. when someone is convicted of a crime). Suddenly, the community may change the way that it treats the person. Eventually the target of such treatment will bring his or her self-view into accord with the new treatment.

Alternatively, people may themselves conclude that a given self-view is dysfunctional or obsolete and take steps to change it. Consider, for example, a woman who decides that her negative self-views have led her to tolerate abusive relationship partners. When she realises that such partners are making her miserable, she may seek therapy. In the hands of a skilled therapist, she may develop more favourable self-views which, in turn, steer her toward more positive relationship partners with whom she may cultivate healthier relationships. Alternatively, when a woman who is uncertain about her negative self-concept enters a relationship with a partner who is certain that she deserves to view herself more positively, that woman will tend to improve the self-concept.

Criticism

Critics have argued that self-verification processes are relatively rare, manifesting themselves only among people with terribly negative self views. In support of this viewpoint, critics cite hundreds of studies indicating that people prefer, seek and value positive evaluations more than negative ones. Such sceptical assessments overlook three important points. First, because most people have relatively positive self-views, evidence of a preference for positive evaluations in unselected samples may in reality reflect a preference for evaluations that are self-verifying, because for such individuals self-verification and positivity strivings are indistinguishable. No number of studies of participants with positive self-views can determine whether self-verification or self-enhancement strivings are more common. Second, self-verification strivings are not limited to people with globally negative self-views; even people with high self-esteem seek negative evaluations about their flaws. Finally, even people with positive self-views appear to be uncomfortable with overly positive evaluations. For example, people with moderately positive self-views withdraw from spouses who evaluate them in an exceptionally positive manner.

Other critics have suggested that when people with negative self-views seek unfavourable evaluations, they do so as a means of avoiding truly negative evaluations or for purposes of self-improvement, with the idea being that this will enable them to obtain positive evaluations down the road. Tests of this idea have failed to support it. For example, just as people with negative self-views choose self-verifying, negative evaluators even when the alternative is being in another experiment, they choose to be in another experiment rather than interact with someone who evaluates them positively. Also, people with negative self-views are most intimate with spouses who evaluate them negatively, despite the fact that these spouses are relatively unlikely to enable them to improve themselves. Finally, in a study of people’s thought processes as they chose interaction partners, people with negative self-views indicated that they chose negative evaluators because such partners seemed likely to confirm their self-views (an epistemic consideration) and interact smoothly with them (a pragmatic consideration); self-improvement was rarely mentioned.

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On This Day … 05 November

Published on 11/05/202110/30/2021 by Andrew MarshallLeave a comment

People (Births)

1950 – James Kennedy, American psychologist and author.

James Kennedy

James Kennedy (born 05 November 1950) is an American social psychologist, best known as an originator and researcher of particle swarm optimisation. The first papers on the topic, by Kennedy and Russell C. Eberhart, were presented in 1995; since then tens of thousands of papers have been published on particle swarms. The Academic Press / Morgan Kaufmann book, Swarm Intelligence, by Kennedy and Eberhart with Yuhui Shi, was published in 2001.

The particle swarm paradigm draws on social-psychological simulation research in which Kennedy had participated at the University of North Carolina, integrated with evolutionary computation methods that Eberhart had been working with in the 1990s. The result was a problem-solving or optimisation algorithm based on the principles of human social interaction. Individuals begin the programme with random guesses at the problem solution. As the program runs, the “particles” share their successes with their topological neighbours; each particle is both teacher and learner. Over time, the population converges reliably on optimal vectors.

While there has been a trend in the research literature toward a “Gbest” or centralised particle network, Blackwell and Kennedy (2018) demonstrated the importance of a distributed population topology in solving more complex problems.

A recent paper discusses the possible contribution of human female orgasm to the species’ prosociality.

Kennedy has been an active combatant in the controversy over sex education in Montgomery County, Maryland, supporting the public schools’ efforts to develop a comprehensive and inclusive programme. He also worked to support a gender identity non-discrimination law in Montgomery County that came under attack from conservatives, and has maintained an online progressive presence.

He also worked as a professional musician for fifty years and currently plays in a rockabilly band called The Colliders, which released albums in 2011 and 2015. In 2018 Kennedy released a DIY album, The Life of Mischief, and is currently organizing live performance of that material.

Kennedy worked in survey methods for the US government, and has conducted basic and applied research into social effects on cognition and attitude. He served as Director of the Office of Analysis and Research Services at the US International Trade Commission until his retirement in 2017. He has worked with particle swarms since 1994, with research publications in fields related and unrelated to swarms and surveys.

On This Day … 15 August

Published on 08/15/202108/12/2021 by Andrew MarshallLeave a comment

People (Births)

1933 – Stanley Milgram, American social psychologist (d. 1984).
1958 – Simon Baron-Cohen, English-Canadian psychiatrist and author.

Stanley Milgram

Stanley Milgram (15 August 1933 20 December 1984) was an American social psychologist, best known for his controversial experiments on obedience conducted in the 1960s during his professorship at Yale.

Milgram was influenced by the events of the Holocaust, especially the trial of Adolf Eichmann, in developing the experiment. After earning a PhD in social psychology from Harvard University, he taught at Yale, Harvard, and then for most of his career as a professor at the City University of New York Graduate Centre, until his death in 1984.

His small-world experiment, while at Harvard, led researchers to analyse the degree of connectedness, including the six degrees of separation concept. Later in his career, Milgram developed a technique for creating interactive hybrid social agents (called cyranoids), which has since been used to explore aspects of social- and self-perception.

He is widely regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of social psychology. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Milgram as the 46th-most-cited psychologist of the 20th century.

Simon Baron-Cohen

Sir Simon Philip Baron-Cohen FBA FBPsS FMedSci (born 15 August 1958) is a British clinical psychologist and professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge. He is the director of the university’s Autism Research Centre and a Fellow of Trinity College. In 1985, Baron-Cohen formulated the mind-blindness theory of autism, the evidence for which he collated and published in 1995. In 1997, he formulated the foetal sex steroid theory of autism, the key test of which was published in 2015.

He has also made major contributions to the fields of typical cognitive sex differences, autism prevalence and screening, autism genetics, autism neuroimaging, autism and technical ability, and synaesthesia. Baron-Cohen was knighted in the 2021 New Year Honours for services to autistic people.

On This Day … 22 June

Published on 06/22/202106/16/2021 by Andrew MarshallLeave a comment

People (Births)

1871 – William McDougall, English psychologist and polymath (d. 1938).
1891 – Franz Alexander, Hungarian psychoanalyst and physician (d. 1964).
1919 – Henri Tajfel, Polish social psychologist (d. 1982).
1940 – Joan Busfield, English sociologist, psychologist, and academic.
1946 – Sheila Hollins, Baroness Hollins, English psychiatrist and academic.

People (Deaths)

2008 – Natalia Bekhtereva, Russian neuroscientist and psychologist (b. 1924).

William McDougall

William McDougall FRS (22 June 1871 to 28 November 1938) was an early 20th century psychologist who spent the first part of his career in the United Kingdom and the latter part in the United States. He wrote a number of influential textbooks, and was important in the development of the theory of instinct and of social psychology in the English-speaking world.

McDougall was an opponent of behaviourism and stands somewhat outside the mainstream of the development of Anglo-American psychological thought in the first half of the 20th century; but his work was known and respected among lay people.

Psychical Research

McDougall was a strong advocate of the scientific method and academic professionalisation in psychical research. He was instrumental in establishing parapsychology as a university discipline in the US in the early 1930s. The traditional historiography of psychical research, dominated by the ‘winners’ of the race for ‘the science of the soul’, reveals fascinating epistemological incommensurabilities and a complex set of interplays between scientific and metaphysical presuppositions in the making and keeping alive of the scientific status of psychology. Thus, revised histories of psychical research and its relationship to psychology with a critical thrust not limited to that which has been viewed with suspicion anyway, offer both a challenge and a promise to historians, the discussion of which the present article hopes to stimulate (Sommer, 2012). In 1920, McDougall served as president of the Society for Psychical Research, and in the subsequent year of its US counterpart, the American Society for Psychical Research.

McDougall worked to enlist a number of scientific, religious, ethical, political and philosophical issues and causes into a wide “actor-network” which finally pushed through the institutionalization and professionalisation of parapsychology. He was also a member of the Scientific American committee that investigated the medium Mina Crandon. He attended séances with the medium and was sceptical about her “ectoplasmic hand”. He suspected that it was part of an animal, artificially manipulated to resemble a hand. McDougall’s suspicion was confirmed by independent experts who had examined photographs of the hand.

McDougall was critical of spiritualism, he believed that some of its proponents such as Arthur Conan Doyle misunderstood psychical research and “devote themselves to propaganda”. In 1926, McDougall concluded “I have taken part in a considerable number of investigations of alleged supernormal phenomena; but hitherto have failed to find convincing evidence in any case, but have found rather much evidence of fraud and trickery.”

McDougall, however, continued to encourage scientific research on psychic phenomena and in 1937 was a founding co-editor (with Joseph Banks Rhine) of the peer-reviewed Journal of Parapsychology, which continues to be published. Because he was the first to formulate a theory of human instinctual behaviour, he influenced the development of the new field of social psychology.

Franz Alexander

Franz Gabriel Alexander (22 January 1891 to 0 8 March 1964) was a Hungarian-American psychoanalyst and physician, who is considered one of the founders of psychosomatic medicine and psychoanalytic criminology.

Life

Franz Gabriel Alexander, in Hungarian Alexander Ferenc Gábor, was born into a Jewish family in Budapest in 1891, his father was Bernhard Alexander, a philosopher and literary critic, his nephew was Alfréd Rényi, a Hungarian mathematician who made contributions in combinatorics, graph theory, number theory but mostly in probability theory. Alexander studied in Berlin; there he was part of an influential group of German analysts mentored by Karl Abraham, including Karen Horney and Helene Deutsch, and gathered around the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. ‘In the early 1920s, Oliver Freud was in analysis with Franz Alexander’ there — Sigmund Freud’s son — while ‘Charles Odier, one of the first among French psychoanalysts, was analysed in Berlin by Franz Alexander’ as well.

In 1930 he was invited by Robert Hutchins, then President of the University of Chicago, to become its Visiting Professor of Psychoanalysis. Alexander worked there at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, where Paul Rosenfels was one of his students. End 1950s he was among the first members of the Society for General Systems Research.

Franz Alexander died in Palm Springs, California in 1964.

Early Writings (1923-1943)

Alexander was a prolific writer. Between ‘The Castration Complex in the Formation of Character [1923] … [&] Fundamental Concepts of Psychosomatic Research [1943]’ he published nearly twenty other articles, contributing on a wide variety of subjects to the work of the “second psychoanalytic generation”.

‘Alexander in his “vector analysis”… measured the relative participation of the three basic directions in which an organism’s tendencies towards the external world may be effective: reception, elimination, and retention’. In this he may have been a forerunner to Erik H. Erikson’s later exploration of ‘Zones, Modes, and Modalities’.

He also explored the ‘morality demanded by the archaic superego … an automatized pseudo morality, characterized by Alexander as the corruptibility of the superego’.

Notable too was his exploration of acting out in real life, ‘in which the patient’s entire life consists of actions not adapted to reality but rather aimed at relieving unconscious tensions. It was this type of neurosis that was first described by Alexander under the name of neurotic character’.

Psychosomatic Work and Short-Term Psychotherapy

Franz Alexander led the movement looking for the dynamic interrelation between mind and body. Sigmund Freud pursued a deep interest in psychosomatic illnesses following his correspondence with Georg Groddeck who was, at the time, researching the possibility of treating physical disorders through psychological processes.

Together with Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, Alexander developed the concept of autoplastic adaptation. They proposed that when an individual was presented with a stressful situation, he could react in one of two ways:

Autoplastic adaptation: The subject tries to change himself, i.e. the internal environment.
Alloplastic adaptation: The subject tries to change the situation, i.e. the external environment.

From the 1930s through the 1950s, numerous analysts were engaged with the question of how to shorten the course of therapy but still achieve therapeutic effectiveness. These included Alexander, Ferenczi, and Wilhelm Reich. Alexander found that the patients who tended to benefit the most greatly from therapy were those who could rapidly engage, could describe a specific therapeutic focus, and could quickly move to an experience of their previously warded-off feelings. These also happened to represent those patients who were the healthiest to begin with and therefore had the least need for the therapy being offered. Clinical research revealed that these patients were able to benefit because they were the least resistant. They were the least resistant because they were the least traumatised and therefore had the smallest burden of repressed emotion. However, among the patients coming to the clinic for various problems, the rapid responders represented only a small minority. What could be offered to those who represented the vast bulk of patients coming for treatment? See further Intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy.

Henri Tajfel

Henri Tajfel (born Hersz Mordche; 22 June 1919 to 03 May 1982) was a Polish social psychologist, best known for his pioneering work on the cognitive aspects of prejudice and social identity theory, as well as being one of the founders of the European Association of Experimental Social Psychology.

Early Research

Tajfel’s early research at University of Durham and University of Oxford involved examining the processes of social judgement. He believed that the cognitive processes of categorisation contributed strongly to the psychological dimensions of prejudice, which went against the prevailing views of the time. Many psychologists assumed that extreme prejudice was the result of personality factors, such as authoritarianism. According to this perspective, only those with personalities that predisposed them to prejudice were likely to become bigots. Tajfel believed this was mistaken. He had seen how large numbers of Germans – not just those with particular personalities – had given their support to Nazism and had held extreme views about Jews. Nazism would not have been successful without the support of “ordinary” Germans. Tajfel sought to discover whether the roots of prejudice might be found in “ordinary” processes of thinking, rather than in “extraordinary” personality types.

He conducted a series of experiments, investigating the role of categorization. One of his most notable experiments looked at the way that people judged the length of lines. He found that the imposition of a category directly affected judgements. If the lines, which were presented individually, were shown without any category label, then errors of judgement tended to be random. If the longest lines were each labelled A, and the shortest were labelled B, then the errors followed a pattern. Perceivers would tend to judge the lines of each category (whether A or B) as being more similar to each other than they were; and perceivers would judge the differences between categories as greater than they were (i.e., the differences between the longest B line and the shortest ‘A’ line). These findings have continued to influence subsequent work on categorisation and have been replicated subsequently.

Tajfel viewed these investigations into social judgement as being directly related to the issue of prejudice. Imposing category distinctions on lines (A and B) was like dividing the social world into different groups of people (e.g., French, Germans, British). The results of his experiments showed how cognitively deep-seated it was for perceivers to assume that all members of a certain nationality-based category (for instance, all the French or all the British) were more similar to each other than they actually were, and to assume that the members of different categories differed more than they did (for instance, to exaggerate the differences between the French and the British). In this respect, the judging of lines was similar to making stereotyped judgements about social groups. Tajfel also argued that if the categories were of value to the perceiver, then these processes of exaggeration were likely to be enhanced.

The implications of this position were profound. It meant that some of the basic psychological roots of prejudice lay not in particular personality types, but in general, “ordinary” processes of thinking, especially processes of categorising. Tajfel outlined these ideas in his article, “Cognitive Aspects of Prejudice”, which was first published in 1969 and has been republished subsequently. For this article, Tajfel was awarded the first annual Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.

Intergroup Relations

Having moved to Bristol University, Tajfel began his work on intergroup relations and conducted the renowned minimal groups experiments. In these studies, test subjects were divided arbitrarily into two groups, based on a trivial and almost completely irrelevant basis. Participants did not know other members of the group, did not even know who they were, and had no reason to expect that they would interact with them in the future. Still, members of both groups allocated resources in such a way that showed favouritism for members of their own group in a way that maximized their own group’s outcomes in comparison to the alternate group, even at the expense of maximum gains for their own group. Even “on the basis of a coin toss…simple categorization into groups seems to be sufficient reason for people to dispense valued rewards in ways that favor in-group members over those who are ‘different'”.

Social Identity Theory

Subsequently, Tajfel and his student John Turner developed the theory of social identity. They proposed that people have an inbuilt tendency to categorise themselves into one or more “ingroups”, building a part of their identity on the basis of membership of that group and enforcing boundaries with other groups.

Social identity theory suggests that people identify with groups in such a way as to maximise positive distinctiveness. Groups offer both identity (they tell us who we are) and self-esteem (they make us feel good about ourselves). The theory of social identity has had a very substantial impact on many areas of social psychology, including group dynamics, intergroup relations, prejudice and stereotyping, and organizational psychology.

Tajfel’s Influence

Henri Tajfel’s influence on social psychology, especially in Britain and Europe, continues to be significant. His influence has reached beyond his particular views on social identity and social judgement, as he had a wide vision of creating a social psychology that was genuinely social and was engaged with broader issues. Too much social psychology was, in his view, trivial and based on what he called “experiments in a vacuum”. Tajfel thought that social psychologists should seek to address serious social problems by examining how psychological dimensions interact with historical, ideological, and cultural factors.

The influence of his general vision can be seen in the book Social Groups and Identities. This book was a posthumous tribute to Tajfel, containing chapters written by many of his former students. Some of his students went on to develop his theories of social identity and some continued his early work on social judgement. There were also chapters from former students who developed very different sorts of social psychology. However, both those who continued Tajfel’s work directly and those who moved in other directions were united in paying tribute to the force of Tajfel’s vision for a broad-based, politically important social psychology.

Joan Busfield

Joan Busfield (born 22 June 1940), is a British sociologist and psychologist, Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex and former President of the British Sociological Association (2003-2005). Her research focuses on psychiatry and mental disorder.

She originally trained as a clinical psychologist at the Tavistock Clinic, and holds an MA from St Andrews, and an MA and a PhD from Essex.

Sheila Hollins

Sheila Clare Hollins, Baroness Hollins, (born 22 June 1946) is a professor of the psychiatry of learning disability at St George’s, University of London, and was created a crossbench life peer in the House of Lords on 15 November 2010 taking the title Baroness Hollins, of Wimbledon in the London Borough of Merton and of Grenoside in the County of South Yorkshire.

She was President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists from 2005 to 2008, succeeded by Dinesh Bhugra. From 2012 to 2013 she was president of the British Medical Association (BMA) and was formerly chair of the BMA Board of Science. In 2014 Pope Francis appointed her a member of the newly created Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. The Baroness is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Centre for Child Protection and is President of the Royal Medical Benevolent Fund.

Natalia Bekhtereva

Natalia Petrovna Bekhtereva (07 July 1924 to 22 June 2008) was a Soviet and Russian neuroscientist and psychologist who developed neurophysiological approaches to psychology, such as measuring the impulse activity of human neurons. She was a participant in the documentary films The Call of the Abyss (Russian: Зов бездны) and Storm of Consciousness (Russian: Штурм сознания), which aroused wide public interest. Candidate of Biological Sciences, Doctor of Medicine, Full Professor.

She is Vladimir Bekhterev’s granddaughter. She was brought up with her brother in an orphanage. She graduated from the First Pavlov State Medical University of St. Petersburg (1941-1947) and graduate school of the Pavlov Institute of Physiology. In the summer of 1941, more than 700 students entered the University; by the end of the training, only 4 graduates survived. The rest perished from war and hunger. She survived the Siege of Leningrad.

She worked as a junior research fellow at the Institute of Experimental Medicine, USSR Academy of Medical Sciences (1950-1954). After working her way up from a senior research fellow to the head of the laboratory and Deputy Director, she worked at the Research Neurosurgical Institute named after Professor Andrey L. Polenov of the USSR Ministry of Health (1954-1962). In 1959 she became a Doctor of Medicine. Since 1962 – at the Institute of Institute of Experimental Medicine, USSR Academy of Medical Sciences (the head of the Department of human neurophysiology; the Deputy Director for Research; from 1970 to 1990 – the Director).

In 1975, she became an academician of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences (subsequently Russian Academy of Medical Sciences). In 1981, she became an academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. Starting in 1990, she was the scientific director of the Centre “Brain” of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. In 1992 she became the head of the scientific group of the neurophysiology of thinking, creativity and consciousness of the Institute for Human Brain of the RAS.

She was Vice President of the International Union of Physiological Sciences (1974-1980) and Vice President of the International Organization for Psychophysiology (1982-1994).

She worked as editor-in-chief of the academic journals Human Physiology (1975-1987) and International Journal of Psychophysiology (1984-1994).

Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union of the 8th convocation (1970-1974) and People’s Deputy of the Soviet Union (1989-1991).