How to Rethink Human Behavior: A Practical Guide to Social Contextual Analysis

275 Pages·2016·2.38 MB·English

by  Bernard Guerin

HOW TO RETHINK HUMAN
BEHAVIOR
Developed from the author’s long teaching career, How to Rethink Human Behavior
aims to cultivate practical skills in human observation and analysis, rather than offer
a catalogue of immutable ‘facts’. It synthesizes key psychological concepts with
insights from other disciplines, including sociology, social anthropology, economics
and history.
The skills detailed in the book will help readers to observe people in their contexts
and to analyse what they observe, in order to make better sense of why people do
what they do, say what they say and think what they think. These methods can
also be applied to our own thoughts, talk and actions – not as something we control
from ‘within’ but as events constantly being shaped by the idiosyncratic social,
cultural, economic and other contexts in which our lives are immersed.
Whether teaching, studying or reading for pleasure, this book will help readers
learn:
• How to think about people with ecological or contextual thinking
• How your own thinking is a conversation with other people
• How to analyse talk and conversation as social strategies
• How capitalist economies change the way you act, talk and think
• How living in modern society is linked to generalized anxiety and depression
How to Rethink Human Behavior is important interdisciplinary reading for students
and researchers in all fields of social science, and will especially appeal to those
interested in mental health. It has also been written for the general reading public
who enjoy exploring new ideas and skills in understanding themselves and other
people.
Bernard Guerin is Professor of Psychology at the University of South Australia.
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HOW TO RETHINK
HUMAN BEHAVIOR
A practical guide to social
contextual analysis
Bernard Guerin
First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Bernard Guerin
The right of Bernard Guerin to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification
and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Guerin, Bernard, author.Title: How to rethink human behavior :
a practical guide to social contextual analysis / Bernard Guerin.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2016. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015045352| ISBN 9781138123373 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781138123380 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Human behavior. | Social psychology. | Social interaction. |
Observation (Psychology)
Classification: LCC HM1033 .G84 2016 | DDC 302––dc23LC
record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015045352
ISBN: 978-1-138-12337-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-12338-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-64890-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo and Stone Sans
by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK
CONTENTS
List of Tables vii
List of Figures viii
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xii
1 Rationale and basic social analytic skills 1
2 The basics of practical social analysis 29
3 Analysing and observing social relationship contexts 61
4 Analysing and observing economic contexts 80
5 Analysing and observing the contexts for
environmental opportunities 104
6 Analysing and observing historical contexts 117
7 Analysing and observing cultural contexts 130
8 The contexts for language use: conversation and
other discourses 143
9 Analysing the contexts for thinking 191
10 Analysing social strategy 228
Index 257
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LIST OF TABLES
1.1 List of skills learned in book 3
1.2 How different disciplines impinge on and facilitate the topics
of this book 26
3.1 Social properties of kin-based relationship contexts 67
3.2 Social properties of friend and close family relationship contexts 71
3.3 Social properties of stranger relationship contexts 74
6.1 Examples of BPD symptoms according to the DSM with extracts
from interviews 125
7.1 A guide to some common cultural patterns 132
8.1 Possible goals of trying to portray the world, establish facts
or warrant accounts on listeners 154
8.2 Micro-strategies to portray, represent or establish facts about
the world 170
8.3 Micro-strategies to build, facilitate or repair social relationships 181
9.1 Freud’s unconscious strategies and equivalents from discourse
analysis 217
9.2 ‘Distorted thinking’ patterns according to cognitive behaviour
therapy and the equivalent discourse analysis strategies 220
10.1 Examples of strategy analyses discussed in this chapter 230
LIST OF FIGURES
1.1 Four main strategic contexts for analysis 4
2.1 Four generalized exchanges to help with analysis 43
8.1 Scheme to facilitate analyses of language use in context 148
10.1 Life path strategies based on a broad contextual analysis 235
PREFACE
This book arose from many years of teaching students how to observe all the weird
and wonderful things people do, say and think, and teaching them how to analyse
those events in terms of everything we now know and can observe about people.
The longer I taught this, the more I have taught practical skills instead of ‘facts’,
and the more I have synthesized ideas from outside psychology.
So, first, this book is a practical one for you to learn skills to understand why
people do the strange things they do. The opening lines are:
This book is about teaching you some useful people skills. These skills will
help you to observe people in their contexts and to analyse what you observe
to make more sense of why people do what they do, say what they say and
think what they think. You will be able to understand people better and
work and live with them better.
Second, the book is a-disciplinary, meaning that all the social sciences are integral
and are not just added on as afterthoughts. All the social sciences help us to
understand what people do, and I even include a table of their different expertise
in Chapter 1. As one example, I always knew that psychology used very little
economics when trying to understand people, even though for most people this
is a huge factor determining their lives. So I have a chapter on how our economic
systems affect what we do in everyday life. For the first time, there is even a list
of twenty-five ways that capitalist economies directly change what people do, say
and think. Most of the twenty-five analyse how our social relationships have been
massively changed by capitalist economies, so also I draw out how ‘mental health’
is affected by living in modernity under capitalism.
So the flavour of the book is to show how what we do, say and think –
everything we do and who we are – comes from the contexts in which we live,