Abstract

SHINN, Marybeth. Contextos comunitários favoráveis ao bem-estar. Aná. Psicológica [online]. 2007, vol.25, n.1, pp.35-61. ISSN 0870-8231.

This chapter identifies "context minimization error" as the tendency to ignore the impact of enduring neighbourhood and community contexts on human behaviour. The error has adverse consequences for understanding psychological processes and efforts at social change. The chapter describes a series of theoretical models of how neighbourhoods and community settings are associated with various aspects of human welfare and reviews evidence of associations of context with health, psychological distress, risk behaviours, psychological attitudes, and child development. It suggests that many psychological processes may play out differently in different contexts and that contextual factors interact with socio-cultural characteristics of individuals in predicting outcomes. People, in turn, can shape community contexts. A more sophisticated understanding of the effects of contexts depends on more sophisticated approaches to assessing them.

Keywords : Neighbourhood; setting; social ecology; risk.

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