Paste yoThis essay aims to explore how the concept of situated knowledge contributes to the understanding of how social psychological knowledge is produced and how it is applied in a wider context. When knowledge is produced and disseminated it is situated within a certain time historically, politically and geographically and is also situated socially within terms of cultural differences, belief systems and values. It can therefore be interpreted that different knowledges are produced in different situations (Holloway, 2012). Previously, universal claims were based on research conducted on North American college students. This was legitimised due to a set of principles governing the use statistical samples to negate the effect of location on findings and thus assume that consequent findings were applicable to other contexts. However, people do not behave in the manner of statistical objects and it is relevant to question how the knowledge is produced; the influence of the social identity of the researcher and participants, what perceived power they possess and what effect this has on findings. The theme of power is also situated within who the findings are relevant to and why they are applicable to that group, in that specific situation at that specific time. Noted as situated knowledge, factors of social, historical and cultural relevance are important in the process of knowledge construction (Holloway, 2012). This essay will utilize the theme of situated knowledge to discuss how it has contributed to our understanding of two areas of psychological research. The first area is bystander intervention, with focus on the 1995 critique by Frances Cherry of Darley and Latané experimental study on the murder of Kitty Genovese. The second area of social psychological research will be attitudes, specifically the mainstream cognitive social perspective and the discursive psychological approach.
Research into the phenomenon of bystander intervention was inspired by the rape and murder of Kitty Genovese by Winston Moseley in March 1964 on the streets of New York. Thirty-eight people either heard Kitty’s cries or witnessed part of the 30-minute ordeal yet no-one came to her aid or contacted the police. Kitty’s murder was widely publicised and the popular interpretation at the time of the events was that apathy and New York indifference was the reason for witnesses not intervening. This common placed view purported by the media was refuted by John Darley and Bibb Latané (1968) who sought to identify an alternative explanation of situational rather than dispositional factors (Burr, 2012). Darley and Latané conducted a series of experiments within a laboratory environment aimed at identifying the likelihood and speed at which someone would respond in an emergency. Darley and Latané’s findings suggest in such circumstances when faced with an emergency an individual maybe conflicted with a desire to help but also hesitant as to any preconceived consequences of intervening. Furthermore, they suggest a diffusion of responsibility occurs when there is a greater number of people present and diffusion increases with the number of witnesses and it is this diffusion of personal responsibility rather than apathy that is the cause of non-involvement (Darley et al in Burr, 2012).
At the time of Darley and Latané there was a taken for granted assumption that explanations for social phenomena, such as the bystander intervention, could be found in the examination of the behaviour of individuals and groups out with their social context formed from the cognitive social epistemology which sought general causal or correlational laws. Darley and Latané conducted their experiment with psychology students as participants within a controlled laboratory environment with the individual as the focus of knowledge. The experimental methodology employed by Darley and Latané yielded concrete results and evidence and can be viewed as socially relevant as it identified a link between people and intervention and challenged the notion that people were self-serving and apathetic. However, the knowledge produced surrounding the theory of bystander intervention is situated as situationally specific as the quantitative findings do not represent the complexities of behaviour and social relationships. There is situational power held by the researchers in their interpretation of the findings as they are situated in their history, experiences of society and culture and therefore their theories, methodology and interpretative understandings are a reflection of their situated knowledge.
In contrast to the cognitive social perspective, Frances Cherry (1995) noted the importance of not relying upon experimental methods to understand social psychology. From a feminist critique Cherry identifies that experiments discount a person’s interpretation of a situation which may be influenced by their personal history, values and morals within the society and community to which they belong (Burr, 2012). Cherry’s feminist critique points to the requirement for standpoint epistemology, reflexivity and strong objectivity to demonstrate the power of the researcher in influencing the knowledge which is produced. As researchers they interpret but are situated and cannot escape the context of which the research is set and therefore Darley and Latané, as the researchers should of employed reflexivity to establish locatedness in relation to their findings.
Cherry’s critique identifies how situational and individual variables cannot be isolated from the historical time of the Kitty Genovese murder as the events were situated within the social context where violence against women was not something that was challenged. As noted by Cherry the knowledge produced by Darley and Latané was gained from an experiment utilising a simulated emergency and as such stripped away key features of gender, race, context and power relations as experiments are unable to deal with these factors and therefore the true understanding of what occurred cannot be reached from experimental research. By not incorporating these factors it cannot tell us about societal assumptions, prevailing social values and inequalities of gender, class or race and as such the knowledge is constrained historically by the mainstream cognitive epistemology (Motzkau, 2015).
Darley and Latané cognitive social perspective focuses on the experimental work argues that action or inaction can be due to a person’s disposition or perhaps situational factors. Cherry believes that the gendered aspects have been ignored by Darley and Latané and believes that qualitative research would be more beneficial in understanding bystander intervention as it foregrounds meanings. The debate is that the experiments lack ecological validity and fail to account for the socio cultural context which constructs the situation, the response and also how it is theorised. An approach from a social constructionist epistemology would look at how knowledge is socially constructed rather than the cognitive realist approach from which knowledge is empirical and tested experimentally (Burr, 2012).
According to Cherry the knowledge is situated within the boundaries created by Darley and Latané as white, middleclass researchers unable to perceive the issues of gender and violence and societal inequalities and from a feminist viewpoint are key to further understanding of bystander intervention. Cherry’s critique points to the view that the experiment is not a reflection of societal truth of diffusion but is merely a reflection of the researchers’ viewpoint and not situated within the context of the time and as such the scientific methodology ignores the socio cultural processes of the time normalising the murder of Kitty Genovese and applied a reductionist model of bystander intervention to all situations of non-intervention as social and cultural influences were stripped away. The cultural framework from which events are interpreted and how knowledge is situated within the framework of gender relations, societal structures and the framework of power and powerlessness, race, age and class indicates that experiments may lack ecological validity if they fail to consider socio-cultural contexts which construct the situation, the response and the way the researchers theorise it which has implications for how situated knowledge contributes to the social psychological understanding of the bystander intevention.
ur essay in here…