Synchronization, Coordination, and Co-Regulation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
The tabula of human nature was never rasa.
W. D. HamiltonINTRODUCTION
Understanding the social in social cognition has presented a number of challenges that have been with us from the very beginnings of “modern” psychology (cf. Semin, 1986). The first challenge is to come to terms with what the “social” means. As Gallese noted recently: “The hard problem in ‘social cognition’ is to understand how the epistemic gulf separating single individuals can be overcome” (Gallese, 2006, p. 16). The foundations of Völkerpsychologie in the 1850s (Lazarus, 1861; Lazarus & Steinhal, 1860; Wedewer, 1860; Waitz, 1859) constituted an attempt to overcome the then prevailing individual-centered psychology in German psychology by introducing a social level of analysis. The emerging modern social psychology in the early 20th century grappled with this problem, fluctuating between notions of “group mind” and “instinct,” with Durkheim, LeBon, Ross, Tarde, and Wundt arguing in different voices for collective representations, group mind, collective mind, collective consciousness, or Völkerpsychologie. Of these various influences, the prevailing view that emerged was driven by Allport's vision of a social psychology that was individual-centered and regarded as a subdiscipline of psychology (Allport, 1924; cf. Post, 1980; Graumann, 1984, inter alia). This has very much remained the dominant view of mainstream social cognition and is underlined with reference to the biological finitude of the individual.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.