Awareness (psychology)

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Awareness in psychology refers to a person's current, situation-related awareness or "awareness" of their surroundings, as well as the resulting implications for action. By taking the implications for action into account, the “awareness” construct affects not only perceptual psychological phenomena (e.g. attention ), but also socio-psychological processes (e.g. the decision-making behavior of individuals)). Even if "Awareness" is a mental construct in terms of its terminology, research on awareness mostly focuses more on the use of certain tools (so-called awareness tools) that inform an individual about their surroundings, as well as on the subsequent actions of the individual . Strictly speaking, it is often impossible to make a statement about the “awareness” that lies “between” the information about the surroundings and the resulting action.

Origin of the concept

The “awareness” concept originally comes from ergonomics . The focus here was initially on how people in work-intensive environments (e.g. air traffic controllers) can be enabled to adequately capture a complex environmental situation, to interpolate it over time and to act accordingly. Awareness about the physical environment is therefore often called situation awareness ( situational awareness refers). Over time, the term "Awareness" was included in the research field of computer-aided cooperative work ( Computer Supported Cooperative Work ). As a result, the term was expanded from the physical to the social environment. It was no longer a question of how users of awareness tools can be adequately informed about objects in their environment, but about other people in their environment. Awareness about the social environment is often referred to as "group awareness". Group awareness plays an important role in spatially distributed work teams in which interaction partners cannot see each other directly and know less about each other (cf. decontextualization ). The area of ​​application of “Group Awareness” was finally transferred to the field of computer-supported collaborative learning (Computer Supported Collaborative Learning).

Situation Awareness

Situation awareness plays a central role in time-critical work processes in complex and dynamic environments, e.g. B. in aviation , in air traffic control , in military command posts , or in the rescue service . The main question here is how technologies must be designed to enable workers to act optimally in real time.

Group awareness

Group awareness is the amount of information about an individual's social environment. This level of information plays a special role in computer-mediated communication , i. H. in situations in which the information about communication partners is limited (e.g. by e-mail ). Accordingly, research on group awareness in the 1990s primarily focused on conveying information about their respective counterparts to spatially separated communication partners in order to reproduce the richness of face-to-face communication. This included information on who is actually present or absent in a virtual environment ( presence information ), or who is currently doing what activity. From the 2000s, the term “group awareness” was increasingly applied to shared, computer-aided learning. At the same time, developments were also tested that convey information that can only be accessed in direct communication: e.g. B. about the knowledge of the communication partner, or their attitudes and opinions. The data for capturing knowledge and attitudes are often captured through self-assessments (e.g. similar to likes ). The use of such group awareness tools aims to improve learning in groups.

Types of group awareness

Technologies to support group awareness have in common that they make certain elements of the social environment visible ( salience ) in order to enable appropriate action. The psychological effect of such tools depends on whether they inform a person about individual individuals (e.g. their activities, their knowledge, their attitudes) or whether they provide aggregated information about a collective (e.g. about the potential for conflict in a group). A group awareness tool that provides information about individuals can e.g. B. informing about who in a group or a team has which specialized knowledge (so-called transactive memory system). In addition, such tools often provide information about oneself and thus enable social comparison processes . A group awareness tool, which informs about a collective, can e.g. B. make the norms in a group visible, show majority or minority relationships ( social influence ) or conflicts within a group.

Effectiveness of group awareness tools

A number of psychological studies have shown the effectiveness of group awareness tools, especially for learning. For example, learners adapt their communication behavior to the respective learning partner if they know what strengths and weaknesses their counterpart has. However, a precise knowledge of the partner's knowledge can also lead to strategic withholding of one's own knowledge. It also shows that groups whose individuals present their respective knowledge with a concept map show better problem-solving skills and concentrate more on eliminating differences in knowledge than groups without such support. For group awareness tools that aggregate information at group level, it has been demonstrated that certain cognitive biases can be reduced with them. For example, the confirmation error could be reduced if a person's awareness was directed to content that contradicts their own opinion. In addition, the social influence of a minority in a group discussion could be strengthened by minority contributions e.g. B. have been highlighted as particularly novel.

Awareness in psychotherapy

In psychotherapy, especially gestalt therapy , awareness (which is usually translated as "consciousness" or "awareness" into German, if the term awareness is not retained) forms an important part of psychotherapeutic work and is an aspect of various methods and Techniques. Awareness designates both an unintentional, active, inner attitude of attention / mindfulness, as well as a more directed form of attention / mindfulness that relates to all phenomena of perception and experience.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ J. Buder: Group awareness tools for learning: Current and future directions. In: Computers in Human Behavior. 27 (3), 2011, pp. 1114-1117.
  2. ^ J. Janssen, D. Bodemer: Coordinated computer-supported collaborative learning: Awareness and awareness tools. In: Educational Psychologist. 48 (1), 2013, pp. 40-55.
  3. ↑ T. Engelmann, J. Dehler, D. Bodemer, J. Buder: Knowledge awareness in CSCL: A psychological perspective. In: Computers in Human Behavior. 25 (4), 2009, pp. 949-960.
  4. ↑ J. Dehler-Zufferey, D. Bodemer, J. Buder, FW Hesse: Partner knowledge awareness in knowledge communication: Learning by adapting to the partner. In: The Journal of Experimental Education. 79 (1), 2011, pp. 102-125.
  5. ↑ D. Ray, J. Neugebauer, K. Sassenberg, J. Buder, FW Hesse: Motivated shortcomings in explanation: The role of comparative self-evaluation and awareness of explanation recipient knowledge. In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 142, 2013, pp. 445-457.
  6. ↑ T. Engelmann, FW Hesse: Fostering sharing of unshared knowledge by having access to the collaborators' meta-knowledge structures In: Computers in Human Behavior. 27, 2011, pp. 2078-2087.
  7. ↑ C. Schwind, J. Buder, U. Cress, FW Hesse: Preference-inconsistent recommendations: An effective approach for reducing confirmation bias and stimulating divergent thinking? In: Computers & Education. 58, 2012, pp. 787-796.
  8. ^ J. Buder, D. Bodemer: Supporting controversial CSCL discussions with augmented group awareness tools. In: International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning. 3 (2), 2008, pp. 123-139.
  9. ↑ Gary M. Yontef: Awareness, dialogue process: towards a relational Gestalt therapy . EHP-Verlag, Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-89797-001-5 .