The Neo-Liberal Ideology and the Self-Interest Paradigm as Resistance to Change
Author(s)
Nafstad, Hilde Eileen
Abstract
The article shows that research within psychology and the social sciences over the past 50 years has produced a large body of evidence of humankind as asocial consumers of their social and material world. The author raises the question of whether we have to accept this understanding of human beings as only egoists; this understanding or ideal in the Western culture which people in general as well as the mainstream research community share of the individual only as a calculating being, steered by cost-benefit analyses and calculations of what gives positive and negative consequences for oneself and one’s own welfare. The author further claims that the 21st century society does not need more psychological and social science based on this predominant core assumption: Quite to the contrary, to attack the pressing problems of our civilization with knowledge based on this prevailing position of the individual as an asocial egoist, is totally insufficient. To fight inequality and dehumanization by means of a psychology based on this predominant outlook on human beings is bound to fail.
