Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Danish and Nordic psychology has historically been inspired by traditions emphasizing the historical, material, political, and cultural contexts of mental life, such as ecological psychology, activity theory, critical psychology, and community psychology. One significant idea shared by these disciplines is that psychological phenomena are situated, i.e. that the situation or context wherein these phenomena occur contributes to the constitution and understanding of these phenomena. This contrasts with another dominant idea in the history of psychology, namely the view that humans develop their psychological understanding initially from a distance to, or in separation from the surroundings in which they are embedded. Here the situation or context is often ignored, or at best considered as an add on to be considered ex post facto when analysing the process of understanding. Classic cognitive psychology, for example, analyses how sensory processes are processed by different cognitive processes before leading to some sort of action. The focus is more on analysing how this process takes place within the mind, than the context wherein this occurs. Situated psychology, in contrast, describes humans as intentional and meaning-making beings situated in historical, material, and social contexts. Here psychological processes are taken out of the laboratory and understood as not only occurring in the mind, but as part of ordinary contexts. These contexts are necessary elements of psychological phenomena and need to be considered and paid attention to as part of an analysis.
Institution: Aalborg University
Language: English
Subfield: General Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,390
Funder: Aalborg Universitet
OpenAlex ID: W4410474209