Bert H. Hodges

A Nonconformist Account of the Asch Experiments: Values, Pragmatics, and Moral Dilemmas

This article offers a new approach to Aschs (1956) influential studies relating physical and social perception. Drawing on research on values, conversational pragmatics, cross-cultural comparisons, and negotiation, the authors challenge the normative assumptions that have led psychologists to interpret the studies in terms of conformity. A values-pragmatics account is offered that suggests that participants attempt to realize multiple values (e.g., truth, social solidarity) in an inherently frustrating situation by tacitly varying patterns of dissent and agreement to communicate larger scale truths and cooperative intentions. Alternative theories (e.g., embarrassment, attribution) are compared and empirical implications of the values-pragmatics account are evaluated. The possibility of multiple strategies promoting group survival and the proper role of moral evaluation in social psychological research are considered.

Values Define Fields: The Intentional Dynamics of Driving, Carrying, Leading, Negotiating, and Conversing

What is the relation between ecological, social, and cognitive psychology? The thesis described and illustrated in this article is that a psychology of values (e.g., Hodges & Baron, 1992) provides the basis for prospecting an ecological psychology that is more sensitive to the social and moral dimensions of action, and for developing a social psychology that is more ecological and embodied. This social-ecological, values-realizing psychology may provide new insights into issues that are viewed as cognitive (e.g., language) as well. First, ecological studies of driving (e.g., Gibson & Crooks, 1938) and carrying (Hodges & Lindhiem, 2006) are reviewed to illustrate a values-realizing approach to psychology and to evaluate whether social and moral constraints are intrusions or intrinsic constraints. Second, in the social domain Aschs (1956) studies of social influence and perception are reframed in terms of leading and following, requiring the coordination of multiple values and multiple relationships. Third, more ecological and social approaches to language studies are considered, with a focus on embodied activity and the inadequacy of rule-based accounts. It is proposed that central functions of language are seeking good prospects, caring, and wayfinding. More generally, caring emerges as a central theme and a crucial context for activities as diverse as driving, carrying, conversing, and negotiating disagreements.

Contextual effects on number–time interaction

Time perception has long been known to be affected by numerical representations. Recent studies further demonstrate that when participants estimate the duration of Arabic numbers, number magnitude, though task-irrelevant, biases duration judgment to produce underestimation for smaller numbers and overestimation for larger numbers. Such effects were found in the present study to be significantly reduced when a weight unit gram was suffixed to the numbers rendering the mental magnitude differences between different numbers less distinctive. The effects were enhanced when a different unit kilogram was suffixed to the numbers enlarging the perceived magnitude differences between different numbers. The results indicate that effects of number magnitude on duration estimation should not be attributed to the mathematical differences between numbers but to how the numbers are perceived to differ from each other in magnitude in specific contexts when they denote concrete items. The results also provide new evidence for the theoretical proposal of a common generalized magnitude system and indicate that the system must be extended to include other action-oriented magnitudes, such as weight.

Carrying Babies and Groceries: The Effect of Moral and Social Weight on Caring

Two carrying tasks were used to assess the effects of physical, social, and moral weight on the care with which actions are taken. In Experiment 1, observers rated point-light walkers traversing uneven terrain carrying 3 unseen objects: a child, a bag of equally weighted groceries, and a bag of equally weighted trash. Kinematics of walkers carrying children were rated as more careful. In Experiment 2, perceived and actual maximum stepping height (MSH) were determined while carrying a child, a bag of groceries, and an empty bag. Perceived MSH was reduced by greater physical and moral weight, but actual MSH was equal with groceries and child, suggesting a difference between individual judgment and joint action. Implications for caring, carrying, values, social perception, and the relation of judgment and action are considered.

On Making Social Psychology More Ecological and Ecological Psychology More Social

This special issue grew out of a symposium offered at the Thirteenth International Conference on Perception and Action held in Monterey, CA, in July 2005. Although none of the articles in this issue cite these quotes, much if not all of what is offered could be construed as trying to develop our understanding of social ECOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY, 19(2), 79–84 Copyright

New Affordances for Language: Distributed, Dynamical, and Dialogical Resources

In introducing the articles of this special issue on language, which grew out of the conference “Grounding Language in Perception and (Inter) Action,” we take the opportunity to reflect on fundamental aspects of speaking and listening to others that are often overlooked. The act of conversing is marked by context sensitivity, interdependency, impredicativity, irreversibility, and responsibility, among other things. Language entails real work: it involves real movements in physical, social, and moral orders that are distributed across a wide array of spatial-temporal scales (e.g., evolutionary, historical); yet there is a dimension of play “at work” as well. These workings of language are embedded and embodied in distributed ways that reveal the fundamentally social, public nature of the activity. It is a form of coaction that is dialogical and dynamic in ways that may point to deeper understandings of what it means for perception to be direct and for action to be specific. Language locates us.

Rethinking conformity and imitation: divergence, convergence, and social understanding

Social and developmental psychologists have stressed the pervasiveness and strength of humans’ tendencies to conform and to imitate, and social anthropologists have argued that these tendencies are crucial to the formation of cultures. Research from four domains is reviewed and elaborated to show that divergence is also pervasive and potent, and it is interwoven with convergence in a complex set of dynamics that is often unnoticed or minimized. First, classic research in social conformity is reinterpreted in terms of truth, trust, and social solidarity, revealing that dissent is its most salient feature. Second, recent studies of children’s use of testimony to guide action reveal a surprisingly sophisticated balance of trust and prudence, and a concern for truth and charity. Third, new experiments indicate that people diverge from others even under conditions where conformity seems assured. Fourth, current studies of imitation provide strong evidence that children are both selective and faithful in who, what, and why they follow others. All of the evidence reviewed points toward children and adults as being engaged, embodied partners with others, motivated to learn and understand the world, others, and themselves in ways that go beyond goals and rules, prediction and control. Even young children act as if they are in a dialogical relationship with others and the world, rather than acting as if they are solo explorers or blind followers. Overall, the evidence supports the hypothesis that social understanding cannot be reduced to convergence or divergence, but includes ongoing activities that seek greater comprehensiveness and complexity in the ability to act and interact effectively, appropriately, and with integrity.

Dynamics and Languaging: Toward an Ecology of Language

We introduce the second of 2 special issues of Ecological Psychology that present papers from a conference, “Grounding Language in Perception and (Inter)action,” held at Gordon College in June 2009. The articles in this issue situate the study of language use in two kinds of context that are central to an understanding of “languaging” activities in the social settings in which they occur. The first is the context of dynamical systems theory. Wallot and Van Orden show how a dynamical systems approach can illuminate language use as the intentional and creative activity that it is. Cowley and Thibault illustrate the distributed language approach. Cowley follows Gibson (1979/1986) in comparing language understanding to picture perception. Thibault illustrates the wholly embedded nature of language use in an evocative example of 2 boys offering a description of aliens they have learned about in a story. All of the contributors emphasize language as embodied social action deeply embedded in the social contexts of talking. The articles in this issue and its predecessor, Ecological Psychology 22(4), offer valuable insights for development of an ecological theory of language use.

Speaking from ignorance: not agreeing with others we believe are correct.

Values-pragmatics theory (Hodges & Geyer, 2006) predicts that people will sometimes disagree with others they believe are correct, for reasons similar to those explaining agreement with incorrect answers in an Asch (1956) situation. In 3 experiments, we found evidence that people in a position of ignorance sometimes do not agree with the correct answers of others in positions of knowledge. Experiments 1a and 1b found this speaking-from-ignorance (SFI) effect occurred 27% of the time. Experiment 2 introduced experimental controls and self-report data indicating that the SFI effect (30%) was generated by realizing values (e.g., truth, social solidarity) and pragmatic constraints to act cooperatively, rather than by a wide array of alternatives (e.g., normative pressure, reactance). Experiment 3 experimentally manipulated concern for truthfulness, yielding 49% nonagreeing answers, even though there were monetary incentives to give correct, agreeing answers. The overall pattern suggests that people are not so much conformists or independents as they are cooperative truth tellers under social and moral constraints. Results, while surprising for social influence theories, illustrate the dynamics of divergence and convergence that appear across studies in cultural anthropology and developmental psychology, as well as in social psychology.

Fields, Waves, and Particles: Finding Common Ground in Understanding Language as a Public Activity

One of the most common activities in which humans engage is talking with each other, yet scientists reflecting on that activity have found it difficult to engage. Some have denied the possibility of scientific accounts of public language, but a broad array of theoretical, empirical, and methodological developments in the past 2 decades have challenged that pessimism. Interdisciplinary efforts are beginning to provide new possibilities for studying ordinary conversations as dynamic, embodied, dialogical activities that function in crucial ways in collaborative tasks. This special issue, which grew out of a conference, “Finding Common Ground: Social, Ecological, and Cognitive Perspectives on Language Use,” explores a small sample of these efforts. These articles, and others that are forthcoming, indicate something of the range and complexity of issues facing researchers, and they also illustrate the diversity and coherence required to address them successfully. Some of the themes that emerge are those of synergy, complementarity, conventions, affordances, idioms, specificity, and complexity matching. In each case, the arguments and evidence generate new questions and pose new possibilities.