Sammut Gordon, Tsirogianni Stavroula, Wagoner Brady
University of Malta, Tal-Qroqq, Malta.
Integr Psychol Behav Sci. 2012 Dec;46(4):493-511. doi: 10.1007/s12124-012-9212-0.
Psychological life is subject to the influence of a constructed and potentially reconstituted past, as well as to future anticipated outcomes and expectations. Human behaviour occurs along a temporal trajectory that marks the projects individuals adopt in their quests of human action. Explanations of social behaviour are limited insofar as they exclude a historical concern with human purpose. In this paper, we draw on Bartlett's notion of collective remembering to argue that manifest social relations are rooted in past events that give present behaviours meaning and justification. We further propose an epidemiological time-series framework for social representations, that are conceptualised as evolving over time and that are subject to a 'ratchet effect' that perpetuates meaning in a collective. We argue that understanding forms of social behaviour that draw on lay explanations of social relations requires a deconstructive effort that maps the evolutionary trajectory of a representational project in terms of its adaptation over time. We go on to illustrate our proposal visiting data that emerged in an inquiry investigating Maltese immigrants' perspectives towards their countries of settlement and origin. This data reveals an assimilationist acculturation preference amongst the Maltese in Britain that seems incongruous with the current climate of European integration and Maltese communities in other countries around the world. We demonstrate that a historical concern with regard to this apparent behaviour helps explain how Maltese immigrants to Britain opt for certain forms of intercultural relations than others that are normally preferable. We demonstrate that these preferences rely on an evolved justification of the Maltese getting by with foreign rulers that other scholars have traced back to the medieval practice of chivalry.
心理生活受到建构的、可能被重构的过去的影响，也受到未来预期结果和期望的影响。人类行为沿着一条时间轨迹发生，这条轨迹标志着个体在追求人类行动时所采纳的计划。对社会行为的解释是有限的，因为它们排除了对人类目的的历史关注。在本文中，我们借鉴巴特利特的集体记忆概念，认为明显的社会关系植根于过去的事件，这些事件赋予当前行为意义和正当性。我们进一步提出了一个社会表征的流行病学时间序列框架，社会表征被概念化为随时间演变，并受到一种“棘轮效应”的影响，这种效应使集体中的意义得以延续。我们认为，理解基于对社会关系的通俗解释的社会行为形式需要一种解构性的努力，即根据其随时间的适应性来描绘一个表征项目的进化轨迹。我们接着通过一项调查马耳他移民对其定居国和原籍国看法的数据来说明我们的提议。这些数据揭示了在英国的马耳他人中存在同化主义的文化适应偏好，这似乎与当前欧洲一体化的氛围以及世界其他国家的马耳他社区不一致。我们表明，对这种明显行为的历史关注有助于解释为什么移民到英国的马耳他人选择某些形式的跨文化关系而不是其他通常更可取的关系。我们表明，这些偏好依赖于马耳他人与外国统治者相处的一种进化而来的正当理由，其他学者已将其追溯到中世纪的骑士精神实践。
