PSY 4134 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Fundamental Attribution Error, Community Psychology

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 4134
• Professor: Shirley Griffith

Document Summary

The relationships of the individual to communities and society. Through collaborative research and action, community psychologists seek to understand and to enhance quality of life for individuals, communities, and society. Context minimization error: related to fundamental attribution error. Research or theory building in community psychology is related to social action; the end goal being to solve a particular kind of problem: looking into how a problem arises, and how it can be changed. The relationship between the person and context and intertwined and bi-directional. In attempting to solve a problem, one may alter, rearrange, or substitute the individual members of a group: e. g. Homelessness: counselling individuals about their problem, not dealing with the problem of affordable housing or unemployment. Second order change: requires attention to social systems or structures beyond the individual alters the role relationships of persons in a setting, a more collaborative way of decision-making, e. g. At what level are we looking at the problem: individual.