On the humanity of teaching social psychology: Representation, perspective and compassion

Samuel R. Sommers

Chapter 1 in Teaching Social Psychology, 2024, pp 2-14 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: It is hardly novel to assert that the concept of humanity plays a central role in social psychology. But ‘humankind’ is only one of the dictionary definitions of the word. The central argument of this chapter is that the teaching of social psychology benefits from attending to other meanings of humanity as well. For one, instructors should emphasize the humanness of the research venture. By spotlighting the human beings who conduct the research our students learn about, we guide students to new discoveries and enable them to consider the representativeness (and lack thereof) of the field. Humanity also means humaneness, and there is an important role to be played by compassion in teaching. This refers to the consideration and flexibility we owe students during times of crisis, but also to capitalizing on the unique potential of social psychology for promoting coping, perspective-getting, empathy and prosocial action.

Keywords: Sociology and Social Policy; Teaching Methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035327133.00009 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:23059_1

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().