The Argument of Community Psychology - Essay Example

There is a complexity in the social order: There are catalysts driving individual complacency and adherence to these widely-accepted community values worthy of exploration at the individual level that is dictated by cognitive and emotionally-based constructs.

“Community psychology uses conceptual tools to show how problem definitions are related to approaches for interventions” (Holman, 2012, p.38). In a collectivist community, problems occur through non-conformance and individual resistance to the social order. Thus, community psychology would identify these root causes to determine what variances exist that drive this behavior that interrupts social harmony in a region. In a Western country, complacency is often discarded by individuals and thus community psychology practitioners would examine the factors of resistance that lead to more effective efforts to drive complacency.

The argument of community psychology as being common sense does not take into consideration the qualitative and quantitative approaches to finding correlations or deviations between community values and what drives individual behavior. Arguing this case does not look at broader factors such as personality, lifestyle history, or cognitive functioning that drive individualism versus collective community behaviors. The argument is simply not valid. Read More