You may have heard of sociological imagination...
You may have heard of sociological imagination...
Embedded Files
...but what about social psychological imagination? What is it and how can we use it in our research?
...but what about social psychological imagination? What is it and how can we use it in our research?
OCTOBER 02, 2025 • WRITTEN BY PAT NICDAO
C. Wright Mills first introduced the idea of the sociological imagination to refer to the “vivid awareness of the relationship between personal experience and the wider society” (1959). Building on this, Kurt Lewin, the father of modern social psychology, reorients this to take into account the dynamic interdependence between the person and society (1939). Together, these ideas form the basis of the social psychological imagination–a way of thinking that encourages critical, reflexive, historically-informed, and person-sensitive practices.
Utilizing this perspective helps us go beyond surface-level interpretation of people’s behaviors. It invites us to consider how people’s environments, psychological dynamics, and histories shape their behavior, especially in the unique and multi-cultural context of Philippine society.
For example, a social psychological imagination prompts us to consider the social and psychological forces that keep Filipinos trapped in the cycle of poverty– from inadequate social services to everyday discrimination. Rather than accepting the commonly held belief that people are poor because they are lazy, this perspective invites us to critically reflect on the broader social forces at play, considering not only their lived experiences but also our own set of privileges and the system that has historically failed them. By seeing poverty through this lens, we gain a deeper understanding of why it persistently traps Filipinos. Poverty is not a result of individual shortcomings, but is a consequence of entrenched social inequalities.
To help students tap into this way of thinking, Sweeney (2018) conducted an initial experiment with junior and senior psychology students in a university in New York.
Read more below about how the experiment was done, what the students discovered, and how igniting a social psychological imagination transformed their view of others and themselves.
References
Lewin, K. (1939). Field theory and experiment in social psychology: Concepts and methods. American Journal of Sociology, 44, 868–896. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/218177
Mills, C. W. (1959). The Sociological Imagination. Oxford, England: New York: Oxford University Press
Sweeney, P. (2018). Teaching qualitative inquiry to ignite the social psychological imagination. Qualitative Psychology, 5(2), 275–289. https://files.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/2434/files/2018/09/Sweeney_QUP2018.pdf
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Pat Nicdao is a fourth year MA Psychology student specializing in Social Psychology. She currently works as a Senior Policy Specialist at Parabukas Pte. Ltd. and as a Just Transition Researcher with the Asian Development Bank, focusing on climate change, environmental policy, and multilateral climate negotiations.
Driven by a strong passion for both social psychology and climate justice, her research explores how different social groups, especially Indigenous Peoples and Persons with Disabilities, experience and make meaning out of the worsening climate change. Through her work, she aims to understand how social, cultural, and historical forces shape people’s social representations of climate injustices, with the goal of informing more inclusive, effective, and context-sensitive policies and interventions.
Report abuse