History of SPoR

History of the Social Psychology of Risk

History of SPoR Mapped

The history of the Social Psychology of Risk (SPoR) is mapped in the PDF on the right (Mapping the Evolution of the Social Psychology of Risk).

The History of SPoR emerges out of the Frankfurt School and is a blend of a range of philosophies associated with a social and psychological construction of meaning. This means that SPoR has close ties to Critical Theory, Annales History, Cultural Theory, Ethnography, Phenomenology, Jungian Psychology, Semiotics, Culture as the Collective Unconscious and Dialectical-Existenialist thinking. It is from this foundation that SPoR understands the nature of existence, ontology and risk.

Risk and Human Decisions

What this essentially means is that SPoR understands risk and human decision making through the lens of social and psychological influences. Rather than avoiding the questions of human fallibility, mortality and subjectivity, SPoR embraces these tough questions and seeks to make sense of how people really tackle risk. SPoR rejects the absolutist assumptions of determinist and mechanistic understandings of life and living and rather proposes that all of living is socially constructed. SPoR is not very much interested in objects and is much more interested in subjects.