Social psychology, with a very short history, only 100 years, is studied in the human world. Significant results have been achieved in the study of human love and hate, belief and fantasy, herd and independence, and it is possible to answer very rigorous questions that plague human development, such as: What is the trigger of social conflict? Why do humans sometimes hurt each other and sometimes help each other? Answering these questions rigorously and scientifically is the mission of social psychology.
Social issues have always been in a vague state of "random flowers becoming more and more attractive to the eye"
The people, for the sake of the country and the world, have broken their hearts, which is the root of the puzzle. In the eyes of the worldly people, the worldly beauty is dry bones in the eyes of the Buddhists, in the eyes of the Confucians it is the disaster, in the eyes of the Dharma, it is desire, and in the eyes of the Taoists, it has become a white bone essence; and the butterfly in your eyes is a dream in Zhuangzi's life, and in the Western world, it has become the culprit of natural disasters; the world is too diverse, and the sad us can only survive on one earth, and we have no choice.
For more than two years of the epidemic, some countries have been lying flat at the beginning, and some countries have risen up to prevent the epidemic; the situation in Russia and Ukraine has been more than thirty days, some countries have looked from left to right on the left, and some countries have looked from right to left on the right; public opinion has guided the people where to go, and the situation of the epidemic and war is also changing every day, and the thinking, analysis and judgment ability of people's brains is almost unable to catch up with the development speed of the situation.
Everything thanks to the progress of science and technology and the development of the Internet, if the time goes back to the era of Nokia mobile phones, all kinds of news and public opinion guidance and lead to cognitive conflicts, may not happen at all, people as always in their own situation to live their own lives, until the conflict comes around, will look up to see what is happening in the sky, do not know whether that kind of day is happy or unhappy.
The world is too complex, and if the human brain does not upgrade, it means that life may be eliminated. From women's personal safety to how to avoid being kidnapped, trafficked or PUA; from how humans resist the virus to face the blockaded community and mortgages and car loans without choice; from aggression to the two ends of the hegemony to get personal benefits or after-dinner talks... When a visitor is good, or let the brain upgrade? All this has to be thought about carefully, and then think about it, only the sentence at the end of the film "Gone with the Wind" is worth recalling, "Tomorrow is a new day, I think about it tomorrow, I will definitely be able to come up with a way to do it..."
Finally, and finally, there is no other explanation, and social psychologists who study human behavior and psychology all boil down to different ways of thinking and different endings due to differences in "interpretations of the environment in which they live."
Is social psychology an adjunct in the face of politics?
The French philosopher Jean-Paul-Sartre said: "Human beings first exist in the environment, we cannot be separated from the environment, the environment shapes us, determines our possibilities." ”（Sartre, 1946，pp.59-60）。
Social psychology, on the other hand, says, "is not so much the science of the impact of situations around humans as a set of strategies for answering questions." Psychology cannot be completely objective, and values will directly affect the study of psychology. Thus social psychology has always faced two of the harshest and contradictory criticisms: one is that what social psychology proves is something obvious and insignificant. Second, research in social psychology has found that it can be used to manipulate humans, which is dangerous.
French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre
An important part of the content of social psychology research is about "social beliefs and judgments." The famous American psychologist David Myers wrote at the beginning of this chapter of his Social Psychology that "motivational reasoning" often transcends the biases of political parties, and emotions have a great influence on our understanding of evidence and on reality, such as the instinctive dislike or liking of a political figure. And partisanism can skew our perceptions, as a Chinese proverb goes: the eyes are not trustworthy, the heart is not enough.
LamentIng Myers's erudition (he actually quoted Confucius!). In addition, I have to admire the level of research and social application of Americans in the field of social psychology, which far exceeds that of other countries.
Psychologist David Myers speaks at Tsinghua University
In the process of development of the situation in Russia and Ukraine, the United States has combined social psychology theory with political skills and applied it vividly, from using the situation prediction of "motivational reasoning" when there were no guns in the early stage, relying on social influence to promote, to using persuasion techniques when the fire was incessant, using the psychology of conformity and obedience to promote its own attitude towards the Situation in Russia and Ukraine; and then using group influence to assist in achieving its own interest goals.
Myers went on to write after the quote from Confucius: "Different parties have different reactions to public evidence, this phenomenon is not uncommon in politics around the world, it shows the degree (process) of social perception and belief, one is to perceive and recall events through our own assumptions filtered; the other is to rely on our intuition, implicit rules and moods, to judge events, in which implicit rules lead us to make rapid judgments; third, when interpreting events, sometimes attributed to the situation, Sometimes attributed to the individual; the fourth is to expect certain events to occur, sometimes making those events more likely to occur. ”（Social Psychology，2013，pp.77-79）
Objective existence, or actual conditions, corrects perceptual biases.
These four conclusions are the classic conclusions of social psychology. The analysis reveals that what is missing in the construction of social perceptions and beliefs? The answer is: objective. "Objective" seems to be filtered out when people construct beliefs.
This can be used to explain why the situation in Russia and Ukraine has now shown a global chaotic situation in attitude, because all perceptions and beliefs are unconsciously filtered through their own (national) assumptions, while intuitions are different, implicit rules and moods are also different, countries or individuals are the same, so the attitudes presented are not the same, even although they belong to the same camp.
For example, there are differences in the attitude of NATO member states to Russia sanctions, especially in the treatment of whether to impose energy sanctions on Russia, because countries are differently dependent on Russia's energy supply, in the face of this important interest condition may be filtered out when self-filtering, but because objective existence is reality, when the interests are at stake, when there is a real need to make a decision, the objective reality will correct the perception bias, and the interests will of course not be filtered out, so NATO members have diverged in the attitude of sanctioning Russia in the field of energy.
Attribution situation or attribution to an individual?
And when the situation in Russia and Ukraine developed to a current uncontrollable degree, the United States for the first time took control of the initiative to explain this event to the world, and directly attributed the problem to individuals, that is, Putin, and the situation and root cause of this situation were directly ignored by the Americans, which caused the eastward expansion of the US-led NATO and greatly stimulated Russia.
Russia or Putin, in the eyes of social psychology, interprets events by making situational attribution. NATO's eastward expansion is an objective national security threat to Russia. And all attribution is the assumption that NATO really expanded eastward into Ukraine, and that the national security threat to Russia is unacceptable. This is the judgment of Russia and Putin about their environment.
Conflicts are therefore irreconcilable.
How does Ukraine explain its perception of the world and its environment?
When social psychology studies the subject of the perception of the social world, what cannot be avoided is the political content of the world. In textbooks, the remarks of some well-known politicians are often quoted.
For example, in the social psychology study "Interpreting and Perceiving the World," politician Robert-Jervis is quoted as saying in 1985: "Once you form a certain belief, it affects your perception of all other relevant information." Once you see a country as an enemy, you tend to interpret its ambiguous behavior as an expression of hostility. ”
What does this mean? Social psychology explains that human perception and understanding of each other is correct most of the time, but many times, pre-judgments are wrong, social perception, and political perception is also true. The vague information presented in politics, religion, and science is often the cause of conflict.
Robert Jervis, Professor of International Relations at Columbia University
When Ukraine's access to NATO becomes a fuzzy future unpredictable event, it creates an irritation to Russia, and the vague political situation provokes conflict.
The expectation of joining NATO is Ukraine's perception of the world and the decision to make, do not evaluate the right or wrong of this decision, wise or stupid, just or improper, in short, the result is: this decision and expectation has not been clearly recognized by NATO, this is the beginning of the ambiguity of political events, in the face of an unpredictable future, russia that needs to make decisions at this time has made a decision, and the United States and NATO allow the ambiguous political state to continue, can be seen as the root of the conflict.
From the fact that NATO is a military organization, Ukraine's pursuit of NATO membership can be understood as an interpretation of its environment, that is, the need to join NATO in order to seek national security and thus to join the European Union.
The explanation for Russia's political appeal to JOIN NATO in Ukraine, which is clear but vague in the future, is that, based on the importance of its geographical location, Ukraine's accession to a military organization like NATO is the greatest threat to Russia's national security. There is a very different contradiction between the two interpretations of their environment, which is the essence of the conflict.
Beliefs shape people's interpretation of things
Social psychology believes that human behavior depends not only on the objective environment, but also on how to explain the environment in which they live, focusing on how people see and influence each other, studying attitudes and beliefs, conformity and independence, love and hate; this is true for individuals and countries. People often look at society through their own beliefs, attitudes, and values, which is one of the reasons why beliefs are so important, and it is people's beliefs that shape people's interpretation of things.
When Russia and Ukraine had not yet met each other, the United States began to say that what would happen, it would happen, and the result was really magical. Don't get me wrong, this situation cannot be paraphrased to the conclusion of the fourth point above: "Expecting certain events to happen sometimes makes it more likely that these events will occur".
This theory, also known as the expectation effect (Pique marion effect), refers to the fact that expectations are a judgment of oneself or others, hoping that oneself or others will achieve a certain goal or meet certain behavioral expectations. This behavioral result produced by expectations is called the "expectant effect."
Rosenthal, a psychologist at Harvard University in the United States, once used mice and rat trainers to conduct a "anticipatory training experiment" and achieved initial success, and then conducted an experiment between teachers and students in schools that "students who are expected to perform better really became excellent students for a period of time after being treated as excellent students", and achieved success, so that this theory was practically applied in the field of education, and later expanded to the field of business management.
However, it is impossible for Biden to carry out "war behavior expectations and success" for Putin, social psychology in the face of politics, only in a certain link or at a certain point of an auxiliary means, the Americans accurately judged the situation between Russia and Ukraine, must be the credit of the intelligence services.
Americans mix social psychology with political techniques, knowing that the ambiguous state of politics is the hotbed of conflict, and anticipating the occurrence of conflict at the right time. There are such contradictions and conflicts in this respective interpretation of the environment, so can the situation still be solved?
According to common sense, fights generally end in reconciliation or one side concedes defeat; if there is no reconciliation, it can only end if you fight to the death and win or lose.
Social psychology says: "The more people try to prove that their theories and explanations are correct, the more closed they are to the information that challenges their beliefs and explanations."
That is to say, the Americans want to prove that their judgment of the situation in Russia and Ukraine is correct, and the explanation and reaction to the occurrence of the event are just, so the Americans will try to block all information that challenges their theories or explanations, or try to prove the falsity of this information.
Of course, Ukraine also wants to prove that its actions are not wrong, and it is a legitimate choice and decision, so it also tries to use the media to prove its innocence and bravery to the world.
The Russians are clearly slightly inferior in this regard, basically giving up or losing the right to express their demands to the world and using practical actions to express them.
European countries have interests, choose different attitudes according to their different interests, and take a stand and choose political direction according to the strength or weakness of interests.
In this way, the situation does not develop in the direction of reconciliation, and everyone closes off and talks to themselves about information that challenges their own convictions, so that there is no hope of solving the problem through reconciliation.
Social psychology has demonstrated the effectiveness of this method through experiments (psychologist Charles Lorde et al. did a "death penalty experiment" in 1984, which will be described in detail in another article. It proves that there is a way to correct the "fixation of beliefs", and gives the name, which is directly translated into Chinese called the "method of interpreting the opposite point of view", which in Chinese layman's terms is similar to "putting oneself in the shoes of" thinking, although it is a way to correct the psychological phenomenon of biased "conviction fixation", but it seems that for the Situation in Russia and Ukraine, which is currently unable to achieve reconciliation, it is also a solution that can be considered and chosen.
Speaking of this, I would like to insert a short digression: as Chinese, we really should admire the cultural heritage left to us by our ancestors, China's psychological discipline started very late, and the political application of Western social psychology in China is in the early stages, and the advanced social psychology theory and verification methods in the United States are so similar to the teachings left to us by our ancestors 1,000 years ago.
As mentioned earlier in Confucius's "untrusted eyes, not enough to be ashamed", and the Western social psychology "fixed belief" theory, the Chinese phrase used to explain this theory is "preconceived", which comes from the "Book of Han - Shifu Gongwei", which means that the words heard first or the impressions obtained first often dominate the mind, and it is not easy to accept when different opinions are encountered later.
Then there is the "method of interpreting the opposite view" to correct the "preconceived notion" method in the context of Chinese, which is actually "putting oneself in the shoes of the people", the language comes from the "Book of Rites - Moderation", Song Zhu Jixi notes that it means "the body is to put yourself in its place and to observe its mind", which can be understood as observing the thoughts of others in the situation of others, and its purpose is to look at problems and things from an objective and multi-angle perspective, so that the "way to solve" will be obtained.
These idioms and allusions with the significance of modern social psychology predate the West by thousands of years, which shows the richness and diversity of political wisdom Chinese.
By the way, when we express our speech in the Western world, the use of idioms is actually not easy for Westerners to thoroughly understand the accurate meaning, from the perspective of psychology, with the special vocabulary and theory of Western social psychology to replace the Chinese ancient sayings, idioms, it is easier to make the West empathetic, at least let the Western world understand more accurately.
Back to the main topic, it seems that now Russia and Ukraine have their own interpretations of the objective environment that are different from each other, and they do not seem to put themselves in the shoes of each other, otherwise the conflict will not occur, and all of this, in the final analysis, is the contradiction of multiple interests focused on this particular country, a specific region, the future of vague political demands is unpredictable, all gathered at this point of conflict, all of which are rooted in different interpretations of their respective environments, and this explanation comes from the theory of social psychology. It seems that in terms of the classic criticism that preceded it, "the discipline of social psychology is a subject that is obviously insignificant, but at every turn it seems to be a tool used to manipulate human beings, and it is dangerous."
There is no hope of reconciliation in the Situation between Russia and Ukraine, in which the United States is bound to achieve the clear interests of the expected "cognitive warfare" and "group influence"; NATO is struggling on the brink of "following or independence", weighing between short-term interests and long-term interests; other countries are also explaining their own environment in their own environment and seeking their own correct solutions according to this...
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