Social psychology and philosophy: Problems in translation

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Volumn 45, Issue 4, 2011, Pages 776-791

  Keller, Simon ^a  

^a VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF WELLINGTON   (New Zealand)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 81855175374     PISSN: 00294624     EISSN: 14680068     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0068.2010.00818.x     Document Type: Article

References (15)

1. See, for example, B.D. Doss, G.K. Rhoades, S. M. Stanley, and H.J. Markman, 'The Effect of the Transition to Parenthood on Relationship Quality: An Eight-Year Prospective Study,' Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 96:3 (2009): 601-619;
2. Michael Argyle, 'Causes and Correlates of Happiness', in Daniel Kahneman, Ed Diener, and Norbert Schwartz (eds.) Well-Being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1999) pp. 353-373;
3. S.E. Taylor and J.D. Brown, 'Illusion andWell-Being: A Social-Psychological Perspective on Mental Health,' Psychological Bulletin 103:2 (1988): 193-210;
4. Philip Brickman, Dan Coates, and Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, 'Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: is Happiness Relative?' Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 36:8 (1978): 917-927.
5. Tim Kasser, The High Price of Materialism (The MIT Press, 2002);
6. Martin E. P. Seligman, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1991)
7. Martin E. P. Seligman, Authentic Happiness (New York: The Free Press, 2002)
8. Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness (New York: A. A. Knopf, 2006).
9. The High Price of Materialism, p. 32.
10. Aric Rindfleisch, James E. Burroughs, and Frank Denton, 'Family Structure,Materialism, and Compulsive Consumption,' The Journal of Consumer Research 32:4 (1997): 312-325.
11. Sandra L. Murray, John G. Holmes, and Dale W. Griffin, 'The Benefits of Positive Illusions: Idealization and the Construction of Satisfaction in Close Relationships,' Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 70:1 (1996): 79-98;
12. Sandra L. Murray, Gina Bellavia, John G. Holmes, Dale W. Griffin, and Dan Dolderman, 'Kindred Spirits? The Benefits of Egocentrism in Close Relationships,' Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 82:4 (2002): 563-581.
13. For an especially clear example of how the use of generic claims from social psychology can cause a philosopher to overreach, see Jonathan M. Weinberg, Shaun Nichols, and Steven P. Stich, 'Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions,' Philosophical Topics 29:1&2 (2001): 429-460
14. (reprinted in Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols, Experimental Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 17-45).
15. In Section III part A (p. 23 in Knobe and Nichols), the authors draw upon results reported in Richard E. Nisbett, Kaiping Peng, Incheol Choi, and Ara Norenzayan, 'Culture and Systems of Thought: Holistic Versus Analytic Cognition,' Psychological Review 108:2 (2001): 291-310. Weinberg, Nichols, and Stich move quickly from the claim that "there are large and systematic differences between East Asians and Westerners on a long list of cognitive processes" to the claim that "there are over a billion" people "whose reasoning and belief-forming strategies are very different from ours." The move is warranted only if the generic claim ("differences between East Asians and Westerners") is read as a near-universal generalization, which, based on the psychological source, it should not be. The article by Nisbett et al summarizes a number of studies, the findings of almost all of which are given as generic claims without any quantities attached. In addition, Nisbett et al say explicitly - though in light of a different consideration - that their generic claims should not be presumed to apply to all Westerners or all East Asians (Nisbett et al, 296).