Hans Westmeyer

Guidelines for the Assessment Process (GAP): A Proposal for Discussion

Summary: Current existing or proposed standards and guidelines in the field of psychological assessment are confined to psychological tests and psychological testing. But tests constitute only one category of psychological assessment procedures, and testing is only one of many available strategies or classes of actions in the course of the assessment process. Tests and testing are closely linked to a certain approach to psychological assessment, i. e., the psychometric one. This is one reason why it is relatively easy to formulate and establish standards or guidelines in the case of psychological tests and testing. The much more comprehensive assessment process is an indispensable part of any approach to psychological assessment, even of those that do not use psychometric tests. This makes the formulation of guidelines for the assessment process an ambitious and very difficult enterprise. But it can be done, at least at the level of recommendations that could help the assessor to cope with the complexitie...

Psychological Theories from a Structuralist Point of View

The structuralist program in the philosophy of science offers a promising framework for theoretical investigations in psychology. It recommends as a scientific language the informal theory of sets, and provides powerful tools to handle many problems of interest in the analysis of psychological theories. This chapter gives a short introduction into the structuralist view of theories, and assesses the current state of attempts to reconstruct or construct psychological theories from a structuralist perspective.

Reappraisal inventiveness: The ability to create different reappraisals of critical situations

In this article, we propose a new ability approach to reappraisal that focuses on individual differences in the ability to spontaneously generate different reappraisals for critical situations. Adopting concepts from the realms of creativity and divergent thinking, we developed the Reappraisal Inventiveness Test (RIT) to measure a persons fluency and flexibility in inventing as many categorically different reappraisals for an anger-eliciting situation as possible within a limited period of time. The results of two studies in which we examined the psychometric characteristics of the RIT provided evidence that the RIT produces reliable test scores. The construct validity of the RIT was confirmed by positive associations of reappraisal inventiveness with openness to experience and tests that measure divergent thinking. Moreover, RIT performance proved to be unrelated to the self-reported habitual use of reappraisal, indicating differences between ability tests and self-report measures. RIT performance was not significantly related to Neuroticism or to trait anger. In our view, this points to the notion that effective emotion regulation is a function of both the ability and the motivation to act upon ones ability to generate reappraisals for critical situations.

The Social Construction and Psychological Assessment of Creativity

The paper underlines the conceptual disunity present in the field of creativity research and introduces a relational concept of creativity of products that stresses the socially defined character of this aspect of creativity. The proposed definition implies that creativity cannot be conceived as an ability of persons, as a characteristic of thinking processes, or as a neuronal function. Referring to the well‐known investment theory of creativity and to the so‐called creativity tests, the paper explicates additional consequences of a socially construed creativity concept and considers the status of empirical research on creativity within a social constructionist framework.

A theory of behavior interaction in dyads: A structuralist account

A theory from the behavioral and social sciences is presented from the structuralist point of view. A more comprehensive theory-net is outlined, some basic terms and core assumptions are formulated, and an expansion of the theory towards two intended applications is given. Finally, some results of a first empirical test of the theory are reported. The aim of the paper is to show that the structuralist account of scientific theories is not confined to mathematical theories from the natural sciences, but can also be applied to relatively informal constructions of the behavioral and social sciences.

The Theory of Behavior Interaction

A structuralist construction of a theory of behavior interaction is described. The theory, which deals with behavior changes in intra-situational dynamic interactions between two or more persons, is constructed as a theory-net comprising a basic and several more specific theory-elements, which are linked to elements and structures of a more general nature common to many other psychological theories. Intended applications of the theory which have already been investigated include behavior interactions in mother-child dyads, in father-mother-child triads, in client-therapist dyads, and in dyads of young adults getting into contact with one another.

A Concept of Explanation for Social Interaction Models

In this paper, I will recommend one particular concept of causal explanation, the concept of aleatoric explanation of Humphreys (1989), and discuss this concept in detail in the context of one particular theory of social interaction, the theory of behavior interaction in small groups [Westmeyer, 1989], which is an element of a particular class of social interaction theories the basic element of which is formulated by David Magnusson (1980) in his general interactionistic behavior concept

The Role of Observational Methods in the Assessment and Analysis of Behavior Interaction in Small Groups

This article describes an observational methodology for the assessment and analysis of behavior interactions in small groups and its links to a theory of behavior interaction between two or more persons. The observational method requires the development of a category system and the selection of an interactional setting to which it is applied, recording and coding procedures, and the identification of sequential dependencies of behavior categories. The method is illustrated by describing its application to the investigation of family triads. The substantive assumptions of the theory of behavior interaction in triads are outlined, and some results of their empirical test are reported. Finally, the issue of dependence of the degree of corroboration of the theory on the observational methods used to test the theory is discussed.

Communicamus ergo sum oder Am Anfang stehen die Beziehungen

Kenneth Jay Gergen wurde 1935 in North Carolina geboren und wuchs in Durham auf, wo sein Vater, John Jay Gergen, als Professor dem Mathematik-Department der renommierten Duke University vorstand. Nach Studien an der Yale University (BA 1957) und der Duke University (PhD 1962) war er zunachst als Assistant Professor fur Sozialpsychologie an der Harvard University tatig, bevor er 1967 zunachst als Associate, ab 1971 als Full Professor an das Department of Psychology des in der Nahe von Philadelphia gelegenen Swarthmore College wechselte, dem er noch heute als Senior Research Professor angehort. Kenneth Gergen war und ist ein weltweit gefragter Gastprofessor. In Deutschland hat er z. B. an den Universitaten Marburg und Heidelberg gelehrt. Ihm sind zahlreiche wissenschaftliche Preise und Auszeichnungen verliehen worden, darunter eine Honorarprofessur der Universitat von Buenos Aires. Er ist Mitbegrunder und Vorsitzender des Boards des Taos Instituts, einer Einrichtung zur Ausbildung in der Theorie und Praxis des sozialen Konstruktionismus. Kenneth Gergen ist mit Mary Gergen verheiratet, einer inzwischen emeritierten Professorin an der Penn State University, die wesentlichen Anteil an der Entwicklung seines Ansatzes hat und zu den fuhrenden feministischen Psychologinnen sozialkonstruktionistischer Pragung gehort. Einer der drei Bruder von Kenneth Gergen ist David Gergen, ein renommierter Politologie-Professor an der Harvard University, der mehreren Prasidenten der Vereinigten Staaten als Berater gedient hat.

Explanation: Conceptions in the Social Sciences

Explanation is an important goal of any scientific inquiry. An explanation is a statement or account which makes what is to be explained clearer than it was before and promotes its understanding. There are different kinds of entities to be explained in the social sciences: events or phenomena; scientific laws or theories; the functioning of systems; the meaning of expressions, ideas, or behaviors; actions in the sense of their (moral) justification. The most important kind are events and phenomena. The question ‘What is the proper structure and which are the characteristics of a good or adequate explanation of events or phenomena?’ is at the heart of a lively debate between the proponents and opponents of different models of scientific explanation. The best known ones are the deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation and the statistical-relevance model of probabilistic explanation. These models presuppose a comprehensive and well articulated knowledge base which is not available in most of the social sciences. More realistic recent alternatives are the model of aleatory explanation and, as the most promising one, the embedding theory of scientific explanation which will presumably play a leading role in future discussions of the issue.