I hope to use the blog to point to books that will be of interest to people working within different traditions of psychology and behavioural science. Installation Theory: The Societal Construction and Regulation of Behaviour by my colleague Professor Saadi Lahlou will be of interest to several readers here outside the traditions in which the book itself is grounded. The concept of installations is described by Lahlou as the manner "in which, even though, they are creatures of free will, humans are induced to behave in an overall predictable and standardised manner". Through nine chapters, Lahlou develops the theoretical foundations of installations and examines how they operate in a range of environments to shape behaviour and outcomes in complex societies. Many readers here will be interested in comparing installation theory to the development of the literature on choice architecture emerging from behavioural economics and related literature, with one key demarcation pointed to by the author being that Installation theory is more grounded in social and cultural analyses than in the literature on cognitive psychology. The book contains several detailed case-studies ranging from applications in road safety to the evolution of science, and provides a detailed account of the mythological foundations of the theory in detailed ethnographic studies. Chapter 8 on "Redesigning Installations to Change Behaviour" would be useful for any student of behavioural change to read with a view to understanding how these ideas compare to other behavioural change frameworks.
Installation Theory: The Societal Construction and Regulation of Behaviour provides researchers and practitioners with a simple and powerful framework to analyse and change behaviour. Informed by a wide range of empirical evidence, it includes an accessible synthesis of former theories (ecological psychology, activity theory, situated action, distributed cognition, social constructionism, actor-network theory and social representations). 'Installations' are the familiar, socially constructed, apparatuses which elicit, enable, scaffold and control - and make predictable most of our 'normal' behaviour; from shower-cabins or airport check-ins to family dinners, classes or hospitals. The book describes their threefold structure with a new model enabling systematic and practical analysis of their components. It details the mechanisms of their construction, resilience and evolution, illustrated with dozens of examples, from restaurants to nuclear plant operation. The book also provides a detailed analysis of the processes of creation and selection of innovations, proposing a model for the maintenance and evolution of social systems.
Proposes a new theory of social construction, based on massive empirical evidence obtained with a powerful technique of digital ethnography, from fields as diverse as family meals, road traffic, policing, nursing or piloting nuclear plants
Presents a synthesis of many theories of the determinants of behaviour in an original and easily applicable framework
Introduces a new unit of analysis, 'installations', which supercedes previous models in explanatory power for everyday situations
No comments:
Post a Comment