Zittoun, Tania

2019-7-24, Hawlina, Hana, Gillespie, Alex, Zittoun, Tania

The relationship between diversity and creativity can be seen as paradoxical. A diversity of perspectives should be advantageous for collaborative creativity, yet its benefits are often offset by adverse social processes. One suggestion for overcoming these negative effects is perspective taking. We compared four dyads with low scores on trait perspective taking with four dyads who were high on trait perspective taking on a brainstorming task followed by reconstructive interviews. Trait‐based perspective taking was strongly associated with greater creativity. However, contrary with expectation, interactional perspective taking behaviors (including questioning, signaling understanding, repairing) were associated with lesser creativity. The dyads that generated the fewest ideas were most likely to get stuck within ideational domains, struggling to understand one‐another, having to elaborate and justify their ideas more. In contrast, the dyads that generated many ideas were more likely to recognize each other's ideas as valuable without extensive justification or negotiation. We suggest that perspective taking is crucially important for mediating diversity in the generation of new ideas not only because it enables understanding the perspective of the other, but because it entails an atmosphere of tolerance, playfulness, and mutual recognition.

2016, Zittoun, Tania, Valsiner, Jaan, Marsico, Giuseppina, Chaudhary, Nandita, Sato, Tatsuya, Dazzani, Vriginia

Among the many objects of interest of cultural psychology is imagination. Imagination is a higher function of the mind – that is, it requires the mediation of internalized cultural means. As such, it is both deeply cultural in nature, as well as unique in the way it is experienced by a given person, in a specific time and place. Altogether, it plays a major role in individual and collective change. However, like many others higher functions, it cannot be studied directly: one cannot observe what or how someone is imagining. This is where psychologists have either the choice to give up, or to devise alternative ways to access to imagination. The chapter first defines imagination as sociocultural process. In a second part, it examines methods that have been used, or could be used, to study imagination, especially: case studies, projective tests, lab studies, introspection, autoanalysis, autoethnography, observation, and everyday life enquiry. In the third part, the chapter proposes a synthetic analysis of these techniques, highlighting the specific perspectives they allow for studying imagination. Finally the chapter suggests that such exploration might offer new keys for the study of higher psychological function, that is, for culture in mind and mind in culture.

2015, Zittoun, Tania, Yasuda, Yuko, Nameda, Akinobu, Fukuda, Mari, Sato, Tatsuya

2014, Zittoun, Tania, Gillespie, Alex, Wagoner, Brady, Chaudhary, Nandita, Hviid, Pernille

2018-5-31, Cabra, Martina, Zittoun, Tania

We propose a theoretical discussion on Piaget’s model on the real, the possible and the necessary, within Valsiner’s child development theory (1997), showing how constraints operate defining the field of possibles at a psychological level (Piaget, 1983). For metatheoretical analysis (Laudan, 1977; Castorina, 2007; Valsiner, 2017) intrinsic to dialogue attempt between theories, we outline three areas where relationships are established: a) Entities composing the world b) Nature of relationships between existents c) Change and transformation. Critical realism, complex system theory and dialectical perspective constitute the basis for both models. Piaget’s can explain relationships between Valsiner’s Zone of Promoted Action (ZPA) and Zone of Free Movement (ZFM) (1997), and the construction of the latter. Relationships between psychological possibles and what we present as “social possibles” specifies within children’s areas for movement and thinking (ZFM) a process leading to novel forms, creations beyond social possibles. This can help understand that different subjects may behave differently in similar settings, even in situations of fictional play, creation of psychological possibles and usage of imagination or creation appears more clearly for some, whereas for others, conditions of possibility, conquests of limitations in the field of possibles is yet to be attained or enabled in interaction.

2016, Zittoun, Tania, Marsico, Giuseppina, Ruggero Andrisano, Ruggeri, Salvatore, Sergio

This chapter considers reflexivity as the process by which people can learn from their experience of living, and develop personal life philosophies. Within the theoretical frame of a semiotic, cultural psychology, I characterize reflexivity as process demanding: (1) distancing from an initial lived, relational experience; (2) an explorative loop; (3) and the enrichment of the initial experience. Social others, symbolic resources and ruptures might trigger or facilitate reflexivity; yet at times, reflexivity might be constrained socially and psychologically. The case study of the life-courses of two partners, Ivana and Vaclav, over 25 years, allows identifying modalities of reflexive loops, their social and personal limitations, and their various consequences for developmental trajectories.

2015, Zittoun, Tania, Gillespie, Alex, Joerchel, Amrei C., Benetka, Gerhard

2018, Zittoun, Tania, Rosa, Alberto, Valsiner, Jaan

This chapter presents two mutually dependent conceptual developments in sociocultural psychology: the concept of “symbolic resources” and a theory of imagination. It argues that, although both have been considered as side problems, these might actually enable to highlight fundamental dynamics in the study of human development in the lifecourse, as well as cultural change. The chapter is organized five sections. The first section sketches a sociocultural psychology of lifecourse and highlights some of its challenges. The second section presents a sociocultural psychological theory, while the third retraces the concept of symbolic resources. These two sections each present a short historical summary and a theoretical model. The fourth section puts these two concepts at work, and shows how they may participate to the definition of the lifecourse and societal change, but also, how these can be constrained. The fifth section opens on further theoretical and methodological challenges.

2015, Zittoun, Tania, Cabell, Kenneth R., Marsico, Giuseppina, Cornejo, Carlos, Valsiner, Jaan

2014, Zittoun, Tania, Iannaccone, Antonio, Zittoun, Tania, Iannaccone, Antonio