Rethinking attitudes and social psychology – Issues of function, order, and combination in subject-side and object-side assessments in natural settings

ABSTRACT

This paper overviews limitations in both the way attitude function has been conceptualized in social psychology, and in the empirical basis for the claims made. We suggest that the premise that attitudes are expressed for cognitive/motivational reasons is an untested artefact of the methodological procedures commonly used. In contrast, an investigation of ‘attitudes’ in the wild (assessments, evaluations, judgements) is offered as an alternative pathway to address questions of function. The analytic core of the paper is the analysis of a collection of interactional examples where an Object-side assessment (e.g. ‘this soup is lovely’) is issued in combination with a Subject-side assessment (e.g. ‘I love this soup’). We investigate what is achieved by combining O-side and S-side assessments: why use an O-side assessment and then an S-side assessment? Or, why use an S-side assessment and then an O-side? We show that (a) O-side and S-side assessments support different actions; (b) the combination manages world and speaker issues in a single package; (c) the combination of O-side and S-side can be hearably complete; (d) O-side first, S-side second can be a resource for building (on) affiliation; (e) S-side first, O-side second can be a platform for continued dispute. Programmatic work on the function of assessments is proposed.

KEYWORDS:

• Assessments
• attitudes
• subject-side
• object-side
• functional attitude theory
• discursive psychology
• conversation analysis
• social psychology methods
• assessment function
• assessment combinations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jonathan Potter

Jonathan Potter is Distinguished Professor, and Dean of the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. He has worked on basic theoretical and analytic issues in social psychology for more than 40 years. This is seen in his engagement with and development of post-structuralism (in Social Texts and Contexts, with Margaret Wetherell and Peter Stringer), discourse analysis (in Discourse and Social Psychology, with Margaret Wetherell), discursive psychology (in Discursive Psychology, with Derek Edwards) and constructionism (in Representing Reality). He is currently interested in the way basic psychological notions can be reconfigured as an object in and for interaction.

Alexa Hepburn

Alexa Hepburn is a Research Professor in the Department of Communication at Rutgers University, USA, and Honorary Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at Loughborough University, UK. She has published widely on developments in discursive and critical psychology. Her three books - An Introduction to Critical Social Psychology, Discursive Research in Practice: New approaches to psychology and interaction and her latest co-authored book, Transcribing for Social Research - have been successful in advancing the empirical rigor of the analysis of communication practices in human relations. Her current research focuses closely on video materials of family mealtimes and medical and clinical encounters, as well as various types of telephone interaction.

Derek Edwards

Derek Edwards is Emeritus Professor at Loughborough University, England.  He analyzes language and social interaction in everyday and institutional settings.  He specializes in discursive psychology, in which relations between psychological states and the external world are studied as discourse categories and practices in everyday conversation and in settings including school classrooms, police interrogations, telephone calls, and counselling.  His books include Discursive Psychology, with Jonathan Potter, and Discourse and Cognition.