social constructivists perspectives

1. what is the race/ cultural identity model

1. a model describing hoe people with marginzalized identities move thorugh 5 stages of making sense of thier own cultural/ identity in relation to majority culture

5 stages of the R/CID model

• conformity stage

• dissonance stage

• resistance/ immersion stage

• introspection stage

• integrative awareness stage

• the person does not identify with their marginalized group at all. they think the majority culture is better, they copy majority values and norms, and actually hold negative views about thier own group and themselves. eg: brown kid who grows up ashamed of thier parents accent, refuses to bring cultural food to school, changes their name to sound more “western” and only wants white friends because they have been told and believe that whiteness is the standard.

• it is a specific event (called a boundary event) shakes the person’s belief that majority culture is better. they start feeling lik they dont fully belong and begin questioning everything they previously accepted. confusion and conflict start to set in. eg: the same brown kid gets called a racial slur by someone they considered a frined. dor the first time they think ive been trying so hard to fit in and they still see me as different, maybe ive been wrong about all of this.

• the person swings to opposite extremes, they fully reject majority culture and immerse themselves completely in their own groups’ culture and identity. strong anger toward injustice. everything majority culuture= bad, everything own culuture= good. eg: the same person now only listens to music from thier culture, wears traditional clothing, cuts off friends form the majority group, attends cultural events every weekend, and becomes very vocal about racism and discrimination. they’re proud but also a bit rigid about it.

• the intense anger from stage 3 starts to settle. the person turna thier attention and starts asking more personal qurstions, like who am i beyonf my group identity? do i have to reject everything about majority culture? what actually feels true to me as an individual? eg: the same person starts realizing they acc enjoy some mainstream music and movies ans that not everything bout majority culture is bad. they start separating thier personal preference form their group identity ad asking “what do i acc want my identity to lojk like”

• the final and healthiest stage. the person feel inner peace, security snd sense of balance. they confidently take what fits them from both their own culuture and majority culture without conflict or guilt. they are comfy with complexity. eg: the same person now celebrates their cultural hplidays, speaks thier native language, and enjoy mainstream music and has diverse frinedships. they feel settled in who they are- i get to define my own identity and im at peace with it.

what are the 3 assumptions of social constructionism?

1. there is no independent objective reality that can be known. each person constructs their own reality which is true for them. objective reality is unknowable and cannot be studied. eg: two ppl experience the same breakup completely differently, neither version is the true one, both are valid constructions of the reality.

2. psychological variables like love, anxiety are not real things, they are just words society agreed upon. there is no true score for any psychological variable, they only exist because ppl agree they do. eg: depression isnt a thing that exists independently in nature, it is a label society created to describe a pattern of experineces. diff cultures describe it completely differently.

3. researchers should question and critique thoeries themselves rather than just accepting them as truth. things like: who created this thoery, what biases did they bring, whose perspective is being centered, who benefits from this thoery being accepted as truth. eg: frued said women who disagreed with men had penis envy, basically implying women secretly wish they were men and thats why they push back against male authority. social constructionist would NOT ask if penis envy is real, they would ask who created this thoery? a man, in what era? victorian times when women had no rights, whose interests does it serve? men, becaue it dismisess womens complaints as jealously. so instead of studying whether the thoery is true or not, they analyze bias, agendas and historical context behind who created it and why

1. what are the peroblems with social constructionism

2. what are the useful contributions of social constructionism

1. the strong version of it is not practical, nobody actually lives as if nothing is real. it also completelty clashes with science because if truth is unknowable you literally cant study anything at all. eg: a social constructionist who says “depression isnt real” still goes to a doctor when they’re sick you cant acc live ur life denying that reality exists.

2. i

• research is influenced by social trends and who funds it- governments and corporations decide what gets funded, social constructivism exposes this, suggesting that dont just believe any research

• resesearch contains real biases- ppl publish studies to push political or social agendas, social constructivism calls this out

• it gives voice to marginalized groups whose experiences are often ignored by mainstream science, social constructivism highlights who gets ignored

• the “weak” version of social constructivism is actually useful - truth prolly exists but we should acknowledge that research has biases, funding influences results and marginalized voices get ignored this is moderate reasonable version.

eg: for decades psychology only studied white middle class men and clmaied the results applied to everyone, social constructionism calls that out, or how pharmaceutical companies fund drugs and somehow drugs always work, thats bias in researh

1. what is underdetermination of data

2. how does underdetermination relate to feminsit science

3. what is postmodernism

1. for any scinetific thoery, there will always be atleast one other rival thoery that fits the same evidence just as well. the data alone can never fully determine which thoery is correct. eg: 2 therapists look at the same depressed patiemnt, one says its childhood trauma, other says its brain chemistry, bpth thoeries fit the same evidence the data alone cannot tell u which one is right

2. since data never fully determines which thoery is correct, feminist researchers argue that feminist values should be used as a tiebraker when 2 thoeries explain the same thing equally well. eg: if both thoeries explain aggression equally well but one ingores gender and one accounts for it, feminist scinece would say pick one that accounts for gender.

3. a perspective that challenges the idea that anything can be truly objective or neutral. it argues that all ideas, languages and thoeries contain hidden power and bias so instead of asking is this true, you should ask who does this benefit and whose perspective does this represent. eg: word crazy, who gets called crazy? historically women who disagreed with men, gay ppl, ppl who challenged authority, who decided what crazy ,eams? mostly white male psychiatrists, who benefits from labelling crazy ? ppl in power because if ur crazy, then nobody has to take ur opinion seriously.

What is the postmodern self and what does a postmodern/ deconstructionist analysis of stories focus on

2. what does the postmodern condition mean for identity

1. post modern self = you have no single fixed “true” self, you are. constantly being reconstrcuted by your experineces, culture and relationships. the you at 16 felt real same with 25, same with 50, neither is more true than the other. you are always being remade.

• postmodern analysis of stories = instead of asking what does this story tell us about who this person is, a post modernist looks for inconsistencies in the story. eg: i had a happy childhood, but then described feeling lonely and invisible: a post modernist would say that contradictions is more revealing than the happy childhood claim.

2. ppl exist in a state of continuous constructin and reconstruction, ur sense of self is never fixed or final. everything about who you are is up for negotiation and reinterpratation. eg: think of how differently you would tell ur life story at age 16,25, 50, postmodernism says no one version is more true than others, ur always being remade.

1. why is qualitative research good for studying marginalized groups

1. because these groups have been understudied, researchers dont know enough to form specific hypothesis yet, so they start with open research questions instead. qualitative research lets you explore and discover rather than test, eg: instead of asking does X cause Y in lgbtq youth, you’d ask what are the experiences of lgbtq youth becuase u dont know enough yet to be that specific

what are abigails stewart’s 7 feminist strategies

1. keep an eye open for what has been left out - whose voices and experiences are missing from this research? who got ignored?

2. analyze ur own position as a researcher- ur gender, race,class all affect how u interpret data, be honest bout that

3. identify a women’s agency within social constraints, even when women are oppressed they still make choices and resist, dont just see them as victims

4. use gender as an analytic tool, dont assume gender means the same thing for everyone, ask ppt. what gender means to them personally

5. be sensitive to how gender shapes power- who has power over who? how does being a women affect someone’s position in relationships, work, society?

6. consider other social positions, a women’s experinece is alsoo shaped by her race, disability, class, sexuality etc. dont just look at gender alone

7. avoid looking for a neat unified self, ppl are complex and contradictory, dont try to wrap someone up into one clean indentity.

Eg: A feminist researcher studying women in abusive relationships wouldn't just document the abuse, they'd look at how women resist (3), check their own assumptions (2), consider race and class (6), and acknowledge that the woman's identity is complex not just "victim

1. what is intersectionality

2. westburg study and its 2 research questions

3. what did westberg find about how often intersectionality naturally shows up in narratives (q1)

4. what did westburg find out intersectionality and meaing making (q2)

1. the way multiple forms of discrimination (like racism, sexisam and classism) combine and overlap to create unique experiences for marginalized people. it is not just one thing at a time, they stack and interact. eg: black women doesnt just face racism or sexism seperately, she faces both at the same time in a way that is uniwue to her specific identity.

2. studied diverse young adults who each wrote 5 narratives about thier self, gender, race, social class and intersections , R1: how often does intersectionality naturally show up in narratives? R2: how does intersectionality affect meaning making ?

3. barely ever, less thna 20 % of narratives spontaneously included intersectionality. most ppl needed to be specifically prompted to connect multiple identity domains together. eg: people dont naturally think im a black working class women all at once, they tend to think bout one identity at a time unless they are pushed to think across them!

4. more intersectionality = more meaning making, the more identity domains someone connected togehter in their story the higher thier meaning making socre is. eg: a black women who weaves being black and female and working class into one story = much deeper understanding bout meaning making thna someone who only talks about one identity at a time.

1. what is positionality statement and why does it matter

its when researchers openly state who they are (their race, gender, background) and how that might have influenced thier research, its a core poart of social constructivist and post-positive research, you almost never see it in typical psych papaers, eg: in westberg et al. the researchers shared thier own racial identities becuase being similar to ppt may have built trust, but also could have biased how they interpret responses.