Alex Gillespie

The London School of Economics and Political Science | LSE · Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science

Academic abstract: Social psychology's disconnect from the vital and urgent questions of people's lived experiences reveals limitations in the current paradigm. We draw on a related perspective in social psychology1-the sociocultural approach-and argue how this perspective can be elaborated to consider not only social psychology as a historical sc...

Policy Points • Patients and families can identify clinically relevant errors, including “blindspots”—safety hazards that are difficult for clinicians or organizations to see. • Health information transparency, including patient access to electronic visit notes, now federally mandated in the US and the subject of policy debate worldwide, creates a...

Safety reporting systems are widely used in healthcare to identify risks to patient safety. But, their effectiveness is undermined if staff do not notice or report incidents. Patients, however, might observe and report these overlooked incidents because they experience the consequences, are highly motivated, and independent of the organization. Onl...

Background Patients and family members make complaints about their hospital care in order to express their dissatisfaction with care received and prompt quality improvement. Increasingly it is being understood that these complaints could serve as important data on how to improve care if analysed using a standardised tool. The use of the Healthcare...

Objectives A range of public inquiries in the English National Health Service have indicated repeating failings in complaint handling, and patients are often left dissatisfied. The complex, bureaucratic nature of complaints systems is often cited as an obstacle to meaningful investigation and learning, but a detailed examination of how such bureauc...

Organisational culture is assumed to be a key factor in large-scale and avoidable institutional failures (e.g. accidents, corruption). Whilst models such as “ethical culture” and “safety culture” have been used to explain such failures, minimal research has investigated their ability to do so, and a single and unified model of the role of culture i...

Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) transcripts capture audio data within cockpit environments. This aids the investigation of causal factors contributing to aviation accidents by revealing communication and other sounds prior to aviation accidents. This dataset contains 172 unique CVR transcripts (with 21,626 lines of transcript: averaging: 106.001 conve...

Research shows that withholding safety concerns on encountering hazards-safety silence-is a critical contributor to accidents. Studies therefore aim to prevent accidental harm through interventions for reducing safety silence. Yet, the behaviour remains poorly understood, obstructing effective safety management: it is unclear to what extent safety...

Objective It is increasingly recognized that patient safety requires heterogeneous insights from a range of stakeholders, yet incident reporting systems in health care still primarily rely on staff perspectives. This paper examines the potential of combining insights from patient complaints and staff incident reports for a more comprehensive unders...

Safety voice is theorised as an important factor for mitigating accidents, but behavioural research during actual hazards has been scant. Research indicates power distance and poor listening to safety concerns (safety listening) suppresses safety voice. Yet, despite fruitful hypotheses and training programs, data is based on imagined and simulated...

Transcribed text from simulated hazards contains important content relevant for preventing harm. By capturing and analysing the content of speech when people raise (safety voice) or withhold safety concerns (safety silence), communication patterns may be identified for when individuals perceive risk, and safety management may be improved through id...

Background Although healthcare institutions receive many unsolicited compliment letters, these are not systematically conceptualised or analysed. We conceptualise compliment letters as simultaneously identifying and encouraging high-quality healthcare. We sought to identify the practices being complimented and the aims of writing these letters, and...

We systematically reviewed the literature using unobtrusive measures to study organizational culture. To synthesize, theorize, and evaluate this research, we introduce the concept of an unobtrusive indicator of culture (UIC) for organizations. A UIC measures organizational culture through collecting data without engaging employees, and is conceptua...

Patient safety research has adapted concepts and methods from the workplace safety literature (safety climate, incident reporting) to explain why patients experience unintentional harm during clinical treatment in hospital (adverse events). Consequently, patient safety has primarily been studied through data generated by health care staff. However,...

Debates about replication in psychology have focused on methodological issues and how to strengthen the replication culture. In most cases, these discussions have tended to assume that the phenomena being investigated are universal. In this paper, we are going to propose a theoretical distinction of different types of replication. The distinction i...

Introduction A global rise in patient complaints has been accompanied by growing research to effectively analyse complaints for safer, more patient-centric care. Most patients and families complain to improve the quality of healthcare, yet progress has been complicated by a system primarily designed for case-by-case complaint handling. Aim To unde...

Safety voice is the act of speaking up about safety in order to prevent accidents and physical harm. It occurs across contexts (e.g., healthcare, aviation, construction, mountaineering, high-risk sports) and understanding the phenomenon enables interventions. Despite recent interest, however, it remains unclear how safety voice (i) differs conceptu...

This is the manual for the Walking the Plank paradigm. It is available as supplementary material to the open-access article.

This is the video illustrating the Walking the Plank paradigm. It is available as supplementary material to the open-access article.

The investigation of people raising or withholding safety concerns, termed safety voice, has relied on report-based methodologies, with few experiments. Generalisable findings have been limited because: the behavioural nature of safety voice is rarely operationalised; the reliance on memory and recall has well-established biases; and determining ca...

Policy Points: Health care complaints contain valuable data on quality and safety; however, there is no reliable method of analysis to unlock their potential. We demonstrate a method to analyze health care complaints that provides reliable insights on hot spots (where harm and near misses occur) and blind spots (before admissions, after discharge,...

This article examines advances in research methods that enable experimental substitution of the speaking body in unscripted face-to-face communication. A taxonomy of six hybrid social agents is presented by combining three types of bodies (mechanical, virtual, and human) with either an artificial or human speech source. Our contribution is to intro...

Background: Letters of complaint written by patients and their advocates reporting poor healthcare experiences represent an under-used data source. The lack of a method for extracting reliable data from these heterogeneous letters hinders their use for monitoring and learning. To address this gap, we report on the development and reliability testi...

Human development is mostly concerned with the sociomoral and cognitive development of a person during their lifespan. Societal development involves varying changes in resources, societal institutions, the spheres of the economy, education and health, technologies, values, social and gender relations, and power distribution, in historical time. The...

We use speech shadowing to create situations wherein people converse in person with a human whose words are determined by a conversational agent computer program. Speech shadowing involves a person (the shadower) repeating vocal stimuli originating from a separate communication source in real-time. Humans shadowing for conversational agent sources...

Social Relations in Human and Societal Development examines how social interaction, which can be more or less cooperative or constraining, is an engine driving both the psychological development of individuals and also changes at a societal level with a special emphasis on intergroup conflict and the financial crisis. The volume is a collection of...

This article examines how the Disability Living Allowance claim form, used in the United Kingdom to allocate £13 billion of disability benefits, translates and transforms disability and care. Twenty-two people with acquired brain injury and their main informal caregivers (n = 44) were video-recorded filling in the disability claim form. Participant...

The current article argues that researcher-as-subject self-experimentation can provide valuable insight and systematic knowledge to social psychologists. This approach, the modus operandi of experimental psychology when the field was in its infancy, has been largely eclipsed by an almost exclusive focus on participant-as-subject other-experimentati...

Assistive technology for cognition is technology which can be used to enable, enhance, or extend cognitive function. This book systematically examines how cutting-edge digital technologies can assist the cognitive function of people with cognitive impairments, with the potential to revolutionize rehabilitation. Technologies are reviewed which direc...

‘Multivoicedness’ and the ‘multivoiced Self’ have become important theoretical concepts guiding research. Drawing on the tradition of dialogism, the Self is conceptualised as being constituted by a multiplicity of dynamic, interacting voices. Despite the growth in literature and empirical research, there remains a paucity of established methodologi...

This article uses sociocultural theories of self-reflection to theorize how social representations are transformed. While there are several ways in which social representations change, we focus on one way that entails interactions with alterity, that is, other people, groups and representations. We use sociocultural psychology to explore how social...

ABSTRACT In two studies based on Stanley Milgram's original pilots, we present the first systematic examination of cyranoids as social psychological research tools. A cyranoid is created by cooperatively joining in real-time the body of one person with speech generated by another via covert speech shadowing. The resulting hybrid persona can subsequ...

Disagreements and misunderstandings between informal caregivers and care-receivers have been widely reported, but the causes are unclear. The present article compares the views of people with acquired brain injury and their main informal caregivers (28 dyads, n = 56). First, we report a quantitative analysis finding that the majority of disagreemen...

Background Patient complaints have been identified as a valuable resource for monitoring and improving patient safety. This article critically reviews the literature on patient complaints, and synthesises the research findings to develop a coding taxonomy for analysing patient complaints. Methods The PubMed, Science Direct and Medline databases we...

Much social science research entails interpreting the meaning of utterances, that is, phrases spoken, written or gestured. But how should researchers interpret the meaning of such utterances? A recent surge of research, informed by dialogism, emphasizes the contextual, social and unfinished nature of meaning. The present article operationalizes dia...

Assistive Technology for Cognition (ATC) is the use of technology to extend human mental capacity. The present chapter reviews the use of assistive technology in health and social care for people with cognitive impairment. This review updates the authors' previous reviews (Best, O'Neill, & Gillespie, 2013; Gillespie, Best, & O'Neill, 2012) on this...

The wide range of approaches to data analysis in qualitative research can seem daunting even for experienced researchers. This handbook is the first to provide a state-of-the art overview of the whole field of QDA; from general analytic strategies used in qualitative research, to approaches specific to particular types of qualitative data, includin...

The reported research uses an extension of Bartlett's method of repeated reproduction to provide data on the sociocultural processes underlying reconstructive remembering. Twenty participants worked in pairs to remember the War of the Ghosts story 15 min and 1 week after presentation. The observed transformations were comparable to previous researc...

In this paper we demonstrate that societal psychology makes a unique contribution to the study of change through its focus on the 'contextual politics' of change, examining the different interests at stake within any social context. Societal psychology explores the contexts which promote or inhibit social and societal change and can be seen as a br...

What is meaning? And how does it arise? Werner and Kaplan's approach to symbol formation was prescient in understanding the importance of the body and activity. However, their embodied approach needs to be complemented by a broader conceptualization of social institutions and complex semiotic structures in the genesis and function of symbolic proce...

What do social networking sites reveal about the relation between the self and the community? We conceptualise social networking sites as technologies of the self and the community enabling individuals to self-present and also objectifying the community's evaluation of individuals (through ‘structures of recognition’ such as page views, friends and...

Despite the technological and organisational advances of 21st century health-care systems, care scandals and burgeoning complaints from patients have raised concerns about patient neglect in hospitals. This article reviews the concept of patient neglect and the role of community health psychology in understanding its occurrence. Patient neglect has...

Inclusive, unconstrained and honest communication is widely advocated as beneficial and ethical. We critically explore this assumption by reflecting upon our research in acute care, informal care and public health. Using Habermas' ideals of dialogue to conceptualise ideal speech, we concur with observations that health care is often characterised b...

This article examines meaning making with nuclear bombs and military manoeuvres. The data is verbatim audio recordings from the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The analysis uses concepts from impression management and dialogism. It is found that actions often speak louder than words and that even non-linguistic communication with nucle...

The concept and practice of dialogue has underpinned key developments in humanistic psychotherapy and counseling. However, dialogue has also been adopted by, and incorporated into, a range of educational, community and social theories and practices, and in this sense forms a valuable bridge between humanistic psychology and the wider field of socio...

Background Patient neglect is an issue of increasing public concern in Europe and North America, yet remains poorly understood. This is the first systematic review on the nature, frequency and causes of patient neglect as distinct from patient safety topics such as medical error. Method The Pubmed, Science Direct, and Medline databases were search...

Assistive Technology for Cognition (ATC) is the use of technology to extend human mental capacity. The present chapter reviews the use of assistive technology in health and social care for people with cognitive impairment. The review conceptualizes ATC in terms of function (reminding, alerting, micro prompting, distracting, storing and displaying,...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to test the efficacy of an interactive verbal prompting technology (Guide) on supporting the morning routine. Data have already established the efficacy of such prompting during procedural tasks, but the efficacy of such prompting in tasks with procedural and motivational elements remains unexamined. Such tasks,...

Research on lay categorization processes has revealed that it can lead to distortions. Yet researchers routinely categorize people into groups and cultures. We argue that researchers should be aware that social categories are (1) perspectival, (2) historical, (3) disrupted by the movement of people, and (4) re-constitutive of the phenomena they see...

This chapter analyzes the semantic consequences of crossing national borders. When crossing borders, identities change, and alterity is encountered. We ask: what are the semantic structures, or meanings, that enable alterity to be either embraced or resisted? We start by distinguishing between movements in geographic space and semantic movements of...

Research on the dialogical self has tended to emphasize instability over stability. Grossen and Salazar Orvig (2011) show how norms, values, material objects, and institutions feed into the stability of the self. We expand upon this contribution by introducing Goffman’s (1974) concept of “frames” to theorize both stability and instability. Social i...

The relationship between assistive technology for cognition (ATC) and cognitive function was examined using a systematic review. A literature search identified 89 publications reporting 91 studies of an ATC intervention in a clinical population. The WHO International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) was used to categorize...

Understanding contexts is an important challenge that is made harder for designers by the increasing speed at which contexts change. To assist designers, three types of contextual dynamism are distinguished: physical, ontological and social. To inform understanding ontological dynamism and social dynamism, "social contraptions" - a form of socially...

When people occupy different social positions within a cooperative task they experience discrepant role and situation demands and thus have divergent perspectives. The reported research predicts that exchanging social positions within a cooperative task can overcome divergences of perspective. This prediction was tested in two experiments using the...

The aim was to support people with cognitive impairment through speech-based dialogues that guide them through everyday tasks such as activities of daily living. The research objectives were to simplify the design of prompting dialogues, to automate the checking of prompting dialogues for syntactic and semantic errors, and to automate the translati...

Studies of the relation between family caregivers and care-receivers have identified large divergences between their perspectives. It has been suggested that these divergences may adversely affect the care relationship. However, there has been little research examining the source of these divergences. Aims: The reported mixed-method study aimed to...

How can human agency be reconciled with bio-physical determinism? Starting with a discussion of the long standing debate between determinism and agency, we argue that the seeds of a reconciliation can be found in George Herbert Mead's ideas concerning social acts, perspectives, differentiation, self-other interactivity, and conscious understanding....

Technology supporting the production of academic knowledge has come a long way and Europe’s Journal of Psychology is at the forefront of a new phase in the dissemination and discussion of knowledge. Before the advent of writing, knowledge was spread by word of mouth often through poems to aid memory. Writing was obviously a breakthrough, but it has...

Intersubjectivity refers to the variety of possible relations between perspectives. It is indispensable for understanding human social behaviour. While theoretical work on intersubjectivity is relatively sophisticated, methodological approaches to studying intersubjectivity lag behind. Most methodologies assume that individuals are the unit of anal...

The idea that culture comprises resources that are used has become a popular means to re-conceptualize the culture—agency antinomy. However, the theorization of using resources is fragmented. The present article reviews several attempts to theorize resources, arguing that there has been too much focus upon the resources themselves, while the notion...

A variety of cognitive deficits can lead to difficulties performing complex behavioural sequences and thus, disability in the performance of routine and rehabilitation behaviours. Interventions to date involve increasing support or providing behavioural training. Assistive technologies for cognition have the potential to augment cognitive capacity...

Human agency can be defined in terms of acting independently of the immediate situation. Humans have a considerable independence from immediate situational demands because, on the one hand, they are able to distanciate from ongoing activity and reflect upon it, while on the other hand, they are able to identify with other people in different situat...

Social representations are produced and reproduced through social interactions. Gerard Duveen made an important contribution by revealing the subtle processes through which the microgenetic production of knowledge is constrained by the identity relations between the participants in an interaction. Relations of symmetry and asymmetry constrain what...

The multiplicity of forms of health-related knowledge, including biomedical knowledge, lay knowledge and critical constructionist knowledge, raises challenges for health researchers. On one hand, there is a demand for a pluralist acceptance of the variety of health-related knowledge. On the other, the need to improve health calls for action, and th...

There is a recurrent discourse about the fragmentation of psychology and its crises as a science, which often leads to a disenchanted view about its future. To this discourse we oppose a developmental one, in which crises can be occasions for development, and in which development might imply differentiation. We first review why psychology can be sa...

Social representations research has tended to focus upon the representations that groups have in relation to some object. The present article elaborates the concept of social representations by pointing to the existence of ‘alternative representations’ as sub-components within social representations. Alternative representations are the ideas and im...

If identities are socially produced, what happens when individuals grow up participating in divergent or conflicting social contexts? This paper reports upon research with second generation Turkish adolescents in London. Using the concept of the dialogical self, the research examines the dialogical structure of these young Turks’ selves. The analys...

A variety of brain pathologies can result in difficulties performing complex behavioural sequences. Assistive technology for cognition (ATC) attempts support of complex sequences with the aim of reducing disability. Traditional ATCs are cognitively demanding to use and thus have had poor uptake. A more intuitive interface may allow ATCs to reach th...

The history of societies is marked by ruptures such as wars, pandemics, new technologies and natural disasters. In response to such ruptures, societies generate social knowledge that enables the population to master the given rupture. The concept of social representations theorizes this production of social knowledge (Moscovici 1984). Social repres...

Recent developments of the concept of ‘sense of community’ have highlighted the multiplicity of people’s senses of community. This paper introduces the theory of the dialogical self as a means of theorizing the conflicts that can arise between a person’s commitments to multiple communities. The paper asks: When faced with conflicting community comm...

Bartlett in the digital age T HE work of F.C. Bartlett (1886–1969) has been recognised as one of the most substantial contributions to psychology of the past century. Yet much of his work has been inaccessible for scholars and researchers without access to a long-established university library. In order to address this problem, and make Bartlett's...

There is a widely recognized tendency for people to positively differentiate Self from Other. The present paper asks: What counter dynamic constrains this othering tendency? A phenomenon, termed identification through differentiation is presented in which the positive differentiation of Self from Other collapses in a moment of identification. This...

This essay reports on discussions that took place at a workshop on collaborative research in European cultural psychology. The production of knowledge in social interaction is, for sociocultural psychologists, something that is observed and theorised as it is undertaken by research participants. Researchers less frequently reflect on the social rel...

Developmental psychologists have a long history of using triangle metaphors to conceptualise the social constitution of psychological development. In this paper, we present a genealogy of triadic theories, to clarify their origins, distinctions between them, and to identify key themes for theoretical development. The analysis identifies three core...