The ‘anti-social’ nature of prosocial research; a psychosocial critique

This article provides a critical review of recent psychological articles on prosocial behaviour. Even though it focuses on a specific section of this literature – giving to charities and prosocial responses to humanitarian disasters – the paper aims to offer a wider critique as it interrogates the epistemological and methodological underpinnings of the prosocial literature as a whole. It aims to illustrate how the problematic aspects of traditional quantitative, deductive, experimental research in prosocial behaviour in general, when applied to giving to charities, preclude a deeper and more complex understanding of a phenomenon quintessentially social and altruistic. I identify three specific issues that make mainstream approaches to prosocial behaviour problematic and limited in scope. The first relates to the insularity of mainstream psychology and the lack of contextualisation of its findings, in particular the problematic neglect of ideological and socio-historical factors in prosocial behaviour. The second relates to mainstream psychology's disregard for the role played by conflict, contradiction and ambivalence, in attitudes and decision making as well as in the emotional aspects of prosocial behaviour. The third looks at the constraints imposed by scientifically inspired methods, how they predetermine the range of participants' responses and make it hard to apply the findings to real life situations. I claim that these epistemological and methodological constraints severely limit the applicability and comprehensiveness of current research. The discussion of these issues is woven through the review and uses some specific studies to illustrate the limitations imposed by these constraints. Throughout the paper I also argue for the need to incorporate a psychosocial approach to research into prosocial behaviour

Caring in crisis? Public responses to mediated humanitarian knowledge

Drawing on an original UK-wide study of public responses to humanitarian issues and how NGOs communicate them, this timely book provides the first evidence-based psychosocial account of how and why people respond or not to messages about distant suffering.. The book highlights what NGOs seek to achieve in their communications and explores how their approach and hopes match or not what the public want, think and feel about distant suffering

Caring in crisis – why development and humanitarian NGOs need to change how they relate to the public

This post was written by Dr Shani Orgad from the Department of Media and Communications at LSE and Dr Bruna Seu, Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck. Ian Birrell, a staunch critic of the humanitarian aid sector, has attacked ‘cash-swollen charities’ for focusing ‘on hitting on an outdated aid target, instead of on results’. Unfortunately, the UK public seems often to share similar sentiments of disillusionment and distrust towards humanitarian and development NGOs

'Intimacy at a distance' in humanitarian communication

While humanitarian communication has been scrutinized by practitioners and academics, the role and meanings of intimacy at a distance in this communication have been largely overlooked. Based on analysis of 17 in-depth interviews with professionals in 10 UK-based international NGOs engaged in planning, designing and producing humanitarian communications, this article explores how intimacy figures in NGOs’ thinking about and practice of humanitarian communication. Drawing on discussions of ‘intimacy at a distance’ and the ‘intimization’ of the mediated public sphere, the analysis explores three metaphors of intimacy used by interviewees to articulate the relationships they seek to develop with and between their beneficiaries and UK audiences: (1) sitting together underneath a tree; (2) being there; and (3) going on a journey. The article situates the governance of intimacy of practitioners’ thinking and practice as NGOs’ attempt to respond to criticisms from the humanitarian and international development sector, policymakers and scholars. It concludes by calling for a revisiting of the centrality of intimacy in humanitarian communication and the logic of emotional capitalism within which it is embedded, outlining its implications for both academic scholarship and practice

A psychoanalytic feminist inquiry into shame

This thesis offers an inquiry into shame; in particular a reading of some women's lived experience of shame from a psychoanalytic and feminist perspective. This work also reflects critically on epistemological issues and tensions between the adoption of qualitative methods of research and psychoanalytic, feminist and post-structuralist readings of texts. The thesis starts with an outline of its contents, a reflexive history of the research, and a brief introduction on shame. Chapters one to three review the main body of literature on shame, critically reflecting on how shame is constructed within different theoretical frameworks. This investigation begins with the work of Sigmund Freud and the different constructions of shame in Freudian metapsychology (chapter one) and continues with a review of the literature on the role of shame in social and interpsychic dynamics (chapter two). Chapter three focuses on the literature arguing for a crucial link between shame and femininity. Epistemological and methodological issues are discussed in chapters four; while chapter five provides a detailed description of how the research was carried out and of the analysis of the text. Chapters six to ten are based on in-depth semi-structured interviews on women's experience of shame. The discursive analysis investigates the ideological function of the shameful subject position within the context of the themes identified in the thematic decomposition of the interviews. The conclusion summaries and reflects on the thesis as a whole; it also comments on some implications of the different readings of shame proposed in the thesis

States of mind in conflict: offerings and translations from the psychoanalytic and psychosocial fields

Drawing on the fields of psychoanalysis and psychosocial studies, this article investigates the states of mind of both the parties in conflict and the mediators. It proposes that, when framed as a relational intersubjective encounter, mediation can have transformative potentials beyond the political goals. The article aims to rebalance the current rationalistic orientation in mediation and argues that valuing and engaging with the affective register in mediation processes and the states of mind of the mediation actors can better equip mediators to understand and deal with the unpredictability, instability, and blockages in mediation processes. The article discusses the relevance for mediation of selected clinical and psychological concepts and proposes them as potential tools for mediators. It looks at the role of trauma, mentalization, shame, and group identity when considering the state of mind of parties in conflict and proposes countertransference, emotional attunement, and empathic mutual positioning as facilitative skills when reflecting on the role of the mediator. It discusses the need for mediators to reflect on their own story and investment in the process and urges practitioners to consider the toxic impact of mediation on the mediator’s well-being. The article concludes with recommendation for training and practice

Landscapes of empathy: spatial scenarios, metaphors and metonymies in responses to distant suffering

This study re-analyses focus group data on responses to human rights abuses, to investigate how participants’ experiences in their local social and physical worlds influence empathy with distant suffering others. Metaphors, metonymies, narratives and typifying scenarios were identified in the discourse dynamics. Scenarios, metaphors and metonymies of space and place emerge as particularly significant in the dialogic co-construction of moral reasoning. Embodied experiences, specifically encounters with people begging in the street, become emblematic of perceived threats to personal space that should feel private and secure. Systematic spatial metaphors construct a landscape of empathic understanding with an optimal distance for empathy, neither too close nor too far. Faced with distant suffering others in prompt materials, participants respond with parallel reasoning on the symbolic landscape. Implications for increasing empathic understanding of distant others are discussed

Knowing about and acting in relation to distant suffering: mind the gap!

A report aimed at NGOs and journalists working within the marketing and media coverage of disasters, human rights and development. “If people only knew, then they would act!” The image of a suffering child or the story of a starving mother supposedly should make us care and want to alleviate that suffering and make a change. People know, but they do not necessarily act

The mediation of humanitarianism: towards a research framework

This article examines existing research on the role of mediated narratives and images of distant suffering in cultivating moral response, identifying two central strands: Philosophically oriented accounts and empirical studies of text, audience, and production. On the basis of this critical review, we suggest a research framework that simultaneously builds on and departs from existing work, helping to expand and strengthen a program of research on the mediation of humanitarianism. This framework highlights the importance of: (a) studying mediated humanitarianism as a multisited dialectical process; (b) moving away from prescriptive normativity to studying how the mediation of humanitarianism is experienced, affected, and negotiated; and (c) “undoing” despair as the motivation and consequent impulse of critique of the mediation of humanitarianism

How art constitutes the human : aesthetics, empathy, and the interesting in autofiction

This chapter examines ‘graphic autofiction’ in Lynda Barry’s One! Hundred! Demons! (2002) and What It Is (2009) and Phoebe Gloeckner’s A Child’s Life and Other Stories (2000) and The Diary of A Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures (2002), demonstrating how it allows feminist performances that visualize cartoonists’ authentic experiences of sexual and other forms of trauma. The chapter makes a valuable contribution to current debates on autofiction by moving beyond its literary expressions and investigating how the hybrid medium of comics accommodates the genre and how that, in its turn, complicates the representation of trauma. It also proposes that ‘graphic autofiction’ allows the formation of feminist counter-narratives to the silencing of female abuse victims and the latter’s representation beyond victimhood