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Imagination

Titre du projet
Imagination
Description
This theoretical project aims at understanding the dynamics of imagination from a sociocultural psychology perspective. Involving various collaborations and secondary analysis of diverse data, it has so far brought to modelise the loop of imagination, understood as individual and collective dynamic, and its outcomes in terms of problem solving, development, and social change. It also aims to examine imagination in the lifecourse, as well as resources and constraints for imagining. Further issues involve the relations between imagination and learning, remembering, creativity, etc.
Chercheur principal
Statut
Completed
Date de début
1 Janvier 2013
Date de fin
01 Janvier 2026
Chercheurs
Organisations
Identifiant interne
35111
identifiant
https://libra.unine.ch/handle/123456789/1806
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  • Publication
    Métadonnées seulement
    Difficult differences: a socio-cultural analysis of how diversity can enable and inhibit creativity
    (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.
  • Publication
    Métadonnées seulement
    Symbolic resources and imagination in the dynamics of life
    (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 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.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Imagining one's life: Imagination, transitions and developmental trajectories
    (Universidade Federal de Bahia, 2015-5-16)
    Zittoun, Tania 
    ;
    Gondim, Sonia Maria Guedes
    ;
    Bichara, Ilka Dias
    Life is not a quite river; it is exposed to curves, torrents, unpredicted turns and sometimes freezes... Sociocultural psychology gives us tool to analyze the diversity of life trajectories, and especially, the dynamics of transitions that offer occasions for learning and development after ruptures. To understand how new learning, new identities, or new life directions might emerge, it is very interesting to examine imagination. Imagination is the dynamic by which people leave the constraint of the here-and-now, and explore the past, the future and possible alternatives. A deeply social and cultural process, it is therefore the dynamic by which each person can define, alone and with others, his or her unique trajectory. Hence, through a theoretical exploration and empirical examples takes from a wide range of situations, I hope to indicate possible ways to understand and support human development.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Difficult differences: A socio-cultural analysis of how diversity can nable and inhibit creativity
    (2017-12-22)
    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.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Imagining the collective future: A sociocultural perspective
    (London: Palgrave, 2018)
    Zittoun, Tania 
    ;
    Gillespie, Alex
    ;
    de Saint Laurent, Constance 
    ;
    Obradovic, Sandra
    ;
    Carriere, Kevin R.
    The present chapter examines how groups imagine their future from a sociocultural perspective. First, we present our sociocultural model of imagination and its three dimensions, before building on it to account for how collectives imagine the future. We maintain that it is a mistake to assume that because imagination is “not real”, it cannot have “real” consequences. Imagination about the future, we argue, is a central steering mechanism of individual and collective behaviour. Imagination about the future is often political precisely because it can have huge significance for the activities of a group or even a nation. Accordingly, we introduce a new dimension for thinking about collective imagination of the future— namely, the degree of centralization of imagining—and with it, identify a related aspect, its emotional valence. Based on two examples, we argue that collective imaginings have their own developmental trajectories as they move in time through particular social and political contexts. Consequently, we suggest that a sociocultural psychology of collective imagination of the future should not only document instances of collective imagining, but also account for these developmental trajectories— specifically, what social and political forces hinder and promote particular imaginings.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    The wind of thinking
    (2022-5-31)
    Zittoun, Tania 
    The Life of the Mind (1978) opens with a reflection of thinking. By thinking, Hannah Arendt means our capacity to withdraw from the world so as to reflect about the meaning of things. Thinking is an activity with no results in itself: searching for meaning, it cannot reach a goal, as any meaning hence produced can only be questioned again. Thinking is made possible through imagination, and demands the use of language and metaphors. It also has to be part of a form of inner dialogue – a moment in which we become two-in-one. Hence, Arendt seems to define thinking as a dynamic, mediated dialogical process of meaning making. In this paper, I first situate Arendt’s reflection on thinking within her life work. I then present her main propositions: that thinking is not knowing; that it demands a form of withdrawal; that it implies imagination; that it is mediated by language and metaphors; that it is a form of inner dialogue; and that it escapes time. Finally, I examine some of the implications of this approach to thinking for contemporary cultural psychology.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Conclusion: An invitation to dialogue with The Life of the Mind
    (2022-5-31)
    Zadeh, Sophie
    ;
    Zittoun, Tania 
    ;
    Marková, Ivana
    ;
    Coultas, Claire
    ;
    Cabra, Martina 
    The Life of the Mind is an intriguing unfinished book written by Hannah Arendt, known as a political philosopher, at the very end of her life in 1975. We devote this Special Issue of Culture & Psychology to this work, because we are convinced that it raises interesting and important questions for social and cultural psychology today. In this Introduction to the Special Issue, we first explain why we believe that this book deserves closer attention. Second, we present the context of its publication, and a short biography of Arendt, to show its position in her life. Published posthumously, the book was her last project, yet it is based on some of her lifelong concerns. Third, we summarise Arendt’s ideas about the psyche, and the main three faculties of mind – thinking, willing and judging – with which the book is concerned. We then address three difficulties the book raises for psychologists reading her work. Finally, we explain the context in which we developed this Special Issue, and summarise the topics that will be addressed in the papers assembled here.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Interactive dynamics of imagination in a science classroom
    (2016-12-24)
    Hilppö, Jaakko
    ;
    Rajala, Antti 
    ;
    Zittoun, Tania 
    ;
    Kumpulainen, Kristiina
    ;
    Lipponen, Lasse
    In this paper, we introduce a conceptual framework for researching the dynamics of imagination in science classroom interactions. While educational interest in imagination has recently increased, prior research has not adequately accounted for how imagination is realized in and through classroom interactions, nor has it created a framework for its empirical investigation. Drawing on a theory of imagination situated in cultural psychology (Zittoun et al., 2013; Zittoun & Gillespie, 2016), we propose such a framework. We illustrate our framework with a telling case (Mitchell, 1984) of imagination from a Finnish primary science classroom community. Our illustration focuses on the dynamics of imagination as it unfolds in classroom interactions and how qualitatively distinct loops of imagination are formed. In specific, we show how the students’ meaning making expands in time and space and can become more refined and differentiated through loops of imagination and their dynamics. In all, our paper argues that imagination is a constitutive element of science learning. Our proposed conceptual framework provides potential avenues for further empirical research on the dynamics of imagination in science learning and teaching.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Imagining the past and remembering the future: how the unreal defines the real
    (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, 2016)
    Zittoun, Tania 
    ;
    Valsiner, Jaan
    ;
    Sato, Tatsuya
    ;
    Mori, Naoshi
    ;
    Valsiner, Jaan
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    On "Creative writers and day-dreaming" by Sigmund Freud (1908)
    (New Yrok: Oxford University Press, 2019)
    Zittoun, Tania 
    ;
    Glaveanu, Vlad Petre
    Relatively early in his career, Freud wrote a short text on creativity, arguing that, far from being the privilege of a few artists, it was part of a process naturally developing as a continuation of children’s play. After presenting that text, this chapter discusses it in the light of past and recent developments, focusing on the idea that creativity is a process. British psychoanalysis has examined that idea, with an emphasis on what may hinder creativity and its variations. In Russia, however, Vygotsky’s work, without quoting them explicitly, has largely drawn on Freud’s intuitions, yet including them in a more socioculturally aware psychology. Three ideas need further theoretical and empirical investigation: the continuum between child and adult creativity; the nuances between daydream, imagination, and creativity; and the role of emotions and personal motives in any creative endeavor.