{"title":"Ayn Rand: Realism, Morality, Selfishness and Capitalism","authors":"Steve Ash","doi":"10.1111/jtsb.70014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.70014","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Moral theories are not just theories regarding the nature of the world and human behaviour but also societal influences that enable or constrain human behaviour. One theory with significant influence is Ayn Rand's philosophy of objectivism which holds that the highest moral value is selfishness and ‘the words “to make money” hold the essence of human morality’. For Rand and her followers, this argument is built on the recognition of reality and the avoidance of the error of contradictory thinking. In this paper I consider objectivism from the standpoint of the well-developed ontological and epistemological framework of critical realism. This metatheoretical position is used because Rand explicitly builds her moral philosophy on the same ontological realist premises that are argued for in <i>A Realist Theory of Science</i>. By taking this approach, I show that Rand's conception of both epistemology and moral value is incompatible with the ontological realism she professes and therefore her influence is unwarranted.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":47646,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour","volume":"55 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2025-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145228057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dementism: A New Line of Inquiry in Dementia Studies From a Social Psychological Perspective","authors":"Atiqur SM-Rahman, Anna Olaison","doi":"10.1111/jtsb.70013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.70013","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The progression of dementia often leads to significant life changes, with particular emphasis placed on memory decline and increased forgetfulness. People living with dementia (PlwD) are frequently subjected to stereotyping as profound forgetful individuals, a phenomenon termed dementism. This paper develops a comprehensive conceptual framework of dementism grounded in the social psychological theory of ageing. The proposed framework identifies four key psychosocial factors: <i>emotional reactions and beliefs</i>, <i>social attribution</i>, <i>exclusion and avoidance</i>, and <i>denial of humanness</i>. This framework does not aim to replace existing social research paradigm in dementia studies but rather offer novel theoretical insights through a critical lens to advance the field. We argue that psychosocial and cultural principles are fundamental to dementia care, emphasising the importance of valuing personhood and the subjective experiences of PlwD. This approach promotes enhanced sensitivity, social equality and justice in dementia care practices. Building on this framework, we conclude with targeted recommendations for future research, particularly focusing on strategies to prevent discriminatory behaviours towards PlwD. We propose that implementing antioppressive practices can help remediate dementism and foster more inclusive respectful care environments. This framework provides a foundation for understanding and addressing the complex psychosocial challenges faced by PlwD, ultimately contributing to more dignified and person-centred approaches to dementia care.</p>","PeriodicalId":47646,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour","volume":"55 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jtsb.70013","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145102113","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Simulated Sense-Making or Social Knowledge? Artificial Intelligence and the Boundaries of Representation","authors":"Lilian Negura","doi":"10.1111/jtsb.70012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.70012","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article examines whether AI-generated texts—such as stories produced by large language models (LLMs)—can be considered social representations as defined by social representation theory. This paper argues that AI-generated outputs simulate communicative behaviour without participating in social processes of meaning-making. Although these texts contain familiar symbols, metaphors or narrative structures, they lack dialogical co-construction, intentionality and embeddedness in cultural practices. This paper introduces the concept of quasi-agents to capture the distinctive role that AI systems occupy in social interactions: entities perceived as social interlocutors, despite lacking genuine intentionality or social consciousness. This conceptual innovation extends social representation theory's analytical vocabulary, facilitating clearer distinctions between socially constructed meanings and algorithmically generated simulations. Misidentifying machine-generated texts as genuine social knowledge risks eroding the dialogical foundations of public discourse, particularly in education, media and policy contexts. Ultimately, meaning-making remains fundamentally a human and collective endeavour—one that AI may mirror but not originate.</p>","PeriodicalId":47646,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour","volume":"55 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jtsb.70012","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144918850","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Brandom Without Entitlement","authors":"Santiago Napoli","doi":"10.1111/jtsb.70011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.70011","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>This paper undertakes the test of deflating the notion of entitlement in Robert Brandom's main approach to explain human discursive agency: the deontic scorekeeping model. The core claim is that entitlement can be either irrelevant, subsidiary, or less relevant than the other major notion of Brandom's model: commitment. The underlying goal of the article is to test the extent to which entitlement can be more or less dispensable in the overall project of normative pragmatics. To carry out this exploration, I propose three versions of the entitlement deflation argument: a strong one, which regards commitment without entitlement; a standard one, which views entitlement as subordinate to commitment; and a weak one, which considers both concepts in their reciprocal determination with the priority of commitment in one particular aspect. The result of the test will allow a better understanding of Brandom's deontic scorekeeping model from the inside through the interaction between its two main conceptual tools, while opening the possibility of a simplification of the model in its theoretical components to make it more robust. Finally, the analysis will reveal the moral foundations implicit in Brandom's model.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":47646,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour","volume":"55 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144853692","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Welcome to the Dark Side: Use of Humour in Indoctrinating to Extremist Ideologies","authors":"Jani Sinokki","doi":"10.1111/jtsb.70010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.70010","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The paper argues that humour can be very effective in disseminating extremist ideologies, in part because of humour's inherent capacity to hinder critical reflection and in part because humour requires bringing together two conflicting frames of interpretation. With extremist humour, the other frame needed to make sense of what is funny is the extremist ideology itself. Thus, merely grasping what is funny in an extremist joke entails the ability to see and interpret other things through the lenses of that extremist ideology. Although this ability does not amount to accepting the ideology, the ability is the crucial first step in the process of converting audiences to the ideology. I argue that ideology should be understood as an interpretational framework, following the political theorist Michael Freeden, so that it is something that can be parsed from the joke by the audience making sense of the joke. This view of ideology opens a way for understanding how indoctrination to an ideology with humour occurs, explaining how ideology is transmitted, how it bypasses critical reflection and how it might cause dogmatism. The paper argues that this power stems not only from the cognitive mechanisms of humour processing but also from the deeper human needs that humour serves, the desire for communality and belonging and the creation of in-group/out-group distinctions (schismogenesis). The neo-Nazi website, the Daily Stormer, which is notorious for using humour to garner new adherents for the white supremacist ideology and antisemitism, is used as a case study.</p>","PeriodicalId":47646,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour","volume":"55 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jtsb.70010","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144833237","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Immanent Idealism","authors":"Christoforos Bouzanis","doi":"10.1111/jtsb.70008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.70008","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article introduces immanent idealism as an alternative path in social ontology and theory. It argues for a distinction between three basic ontological dimensions, the ideational, the institutional and the structural. This approach highlights the cognitional priority of worldviews as the core element of the ideational dimension, and it also argues for the immanence, the transhistorical existential priority (over the institutional and the structural dimensions) and the transituational pervasiveness of the ideational dimension. It is argued that this approach is both antirealist and antinaturalist in socio-theoretical terms, and that it has decisive implications for the emerging subfield of cognitive sociology. These steps lead us to the invocation of a new idealism standing in opposition to new materialist approaches in social theory.</p>","PeriodicalId":47646,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour","volume":"55 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jtsb.70008","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144767449","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Governing Dynamics of Social Reality: A Unified Theory","authors":"Gustaf Glavå","doi":"10.1111/jtsb.70009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.70009","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper seeks to describe the fundamental properties of social reality and elucidate the normative behavioural processes constituting these properties. Relying on previous theoretical work on social behaviour and institutions, the paper synthesises key theoretical concepts and put forward a formal expression of these. Social reality is conceptualised as an institutional reality, where normatively based phenomena such as language, cultures and ideologies are considered institutions. These institutions are established through collectively accepted systems of rules, known as status functions. The creation of institutions relies on collective intentionality and brings about deontologies that provide reasons for action independent of personal inclinations. Norm circles are described as the social entities that establish and enforce normative pressure, thereby maintaining status functions. These circles are crucial for the creation and sustenance of institutions, as the rules of institutions lack causal power on their own. Social structures are understood as both the ontologically subjective characteristics internalised by individuals and the epistemically objective phenomena that shape these characteristics. The proposed theory acknowledges the existence of external social structures while addressing critiques of reductionism by highlighting the internalisation of characteristics by individuals.</p>","PeriodicalId":47646,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour","volume":"55 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2025-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jtsb.70009","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144705686","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Patrimonial Imperialism: A Taxonomy of the Causes of the Russo-Ukrainian War","authors":"Gabriel A. Pierzynski, Jonathan Joseph","doi":"10.1111/jtsb.70007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.70007","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Explanations of the causes of the Russo-Ukrainian war tend to drift towards one of two lines of argument. These are the ‘NATO expansion’ argument, chiefly focusing on the structure of the international system and the possibility of the acceptance of Ukraine into NATO, and the ‘Putin's war’ argument, which attempts to place the bulk of blame for the war on the actions and agency of Putin himself. Both arguments might better be considered as focused on <i>processes</i> rather than structures, and this leads to explanations operating at the level of actual manifestation of causes rather than real and underlying structures. Critical realism cannot tell us what structures are the right ones to study, but a plausible explanation might lie in the notion of the patrimonial imperialism of Russian state–society relations. To address the issue of an alternative to these arguments, one overly structural and the other overly agential, this article proposes a framework referred to as patrimonial imperialism. It will attempt to show how an imperialist state structure can come to perpetuate and ingrain itself and thereby induce actors to behave in certain ways consistent with the state structure. The above framework will be integrated into a model of stratified reality and will situate the constituent arguments surrounding the causes of the war into an ontological framework that will allow greater clarity and coherence of thought when attempting to grapple with the causes of the Russo-Ukrainian war.</p>","PeriodicalId":47646,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour","volume":"55 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2025-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jtsb.70007","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144663777","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Denaturalisation and Liberation Psychology: Implications for Memory and Political Imagination","authors":"Nick Malherbe","doi":"10.1111/jtsb.70006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.70006","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Although denaturalisation has been formulated in several different ways, for those working in the liberation psychology paradigm, denaturalisation refers to the practice of resisting mainstream psychology's psychologisation—and thus naturalisation—of systemic oppression. In this article, I work from within the liberation psychology paradigm to consider what denaturalisation means for psychologists working with collectives to consolidate anti-capitalist struggles through radical political imagination and collective historical memory. Where denaturalising political imagination pushes us to envision a world outside of the naturalised limits imposed by patriarchal and colonial capital, denaturalising memories foregrounds the processes by which structural oppression has become naturalised. In considering memory and imagination in this manner, I attempt to make clear how denaturalised fragments of liberation can be located across historical, contemporary and future-oriented timescales. Liberation psychology, I argue, draws out how such denaturalisation processes are psycho-political and can assist activists in taking on the agonistic, psychically demanding and intersubjective processes inherent to denaturalisation. I conclude by reflecting on some of the directions that future liberation psychology work might take in making use of denaturalisation to advance emancipatory grassroots politics.</p>","PeriodicalId":47646,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour","volume":"55 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jtsb.70006","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144220251","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Generalising Social Behaviour and Theory of Social Behaviour: When Is It Statistical and When Not?","authors":"David Trafimow","doi":"10.1111/jtsb.70005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.70005","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Researchers and philosophers interested in findings pertaining to social behaviour, or theory of social behaviour, are necessarily concerned with generalising findings, theory or both. There are statistical issues that are ignored at one's peril, pertaining to generalising from a sample to the population from which that sample was drawn. However, if the goal is to generalise to other populations, more conceptual issues come into play. Moreover, if the goal is to test a theory's ability to generalise or be useful for an applied goal, yet more conceptual issues come into play. The present aim is to clarify some of these issues, including relevant questions, so researchers and philosophers can better understand that although certain statistical issues are always relevant, there are many conceptual issues that are sometimes relevant and sometimes not. Those who are interested in social behaviour must necessarily be interested in generalising something, and so the issues discussed are ubiquitously germane.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":47646,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour","volume":"55 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2025-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144085352","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}