Portal:Psychology

Positioning theory is a theory in social psychology that characterizes interactions between individuals. "Position" can be defined as an alterable collection of beliefs of an individual with regards to their rights, duties, and obligations. "Positioning" is the mechanism through which roles are assigned or denied, either to oneself or others. The theory describes malleable roles and storylines that determine the boundaries of future acts and the meanings of what people say and do. The theory expands upon the work of psychologist Lev Vygotsky, especially his theory of zone of proximal development (ZPD). It emphasizes the interdependence of positions, speech and other acts, and storylines that arise from them; a change in any one aspect affects the other two. The theory provides a framework to understand a person's specific behavior by considering social, individual, and moral factors.

There are three orders of positioning based on how positions are assumed: first-, second- and third-order positioning. Positioning can also be classified into various types depending on the specifics of the situation; these include self, other, tacit, intentional, interactive, reflexive, moral, personal, indirect, and malignant positioning. Positioning theory originated in the 1990s from Positioning: the discursive production of selves, which looked to solve a problem that arose "out of a discussion about the problems inherent in the use of the concept of role in developing a social psychology of selfhood". Since its inception, Positioning theory has been developed further with contributions from Bronwyn Davies, Rom Harré, Luk Van Langenhove, and Fathali Moghaddam. The theory has provided a structure for social discourse analysis, and it has been used to study various social situations. Its application has extended into fields such as education, anthropology, communication, and political science. (Full article...)

• "Don't become a mere recorder of facts, but try to penetrate the mystery of their origin." — Ivan Pavlov

George Armitage Miller (February 3, 1920 – July 22, 2012) was an American psychologist who was one of the founders of cognitive psychology, and more broadly, of cognitive science. He also contributed to the birth of psycholinguistics. Miller wrote several books and directed the development of WordNet, an online word-linkage database usable by computer programs. He authored the paper, "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two," in which he observed that many different experimental findings considered together reveal the presence of an average limit of seven for human short-term memory capacity. This paper is frequently cited by psychologists and in the wider culture. Miller won numerous awards, including the National Medal of Science.

Miller began his career when the reigning theory in psychology was behaviorism, which eschewed the study of mental processes and focused on observable behavior. Rejecting this approach, Miller devised experimental techniques and mathematical methods to analyze mental processes, focusing particularly on speech and language. Working mostly at Harvard University, MIT and Princeton University, he went on to become one of the founders of psycholinguistics and was one of the key figures in founding the broader new field of cognitive science, c. 1978. He collaborated and co-authored work with other figures in cognitive science and psycholinguistics, such as Noam Chomsky. For moving psychology into the realm of mental processes and for aligning that move with information theory, computation theory, and linguistics, Miller is considered one of the great twentieth-century psychologists. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Miller as the 20th most cited psychologist of that era. (Full article...)

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