Osgood’s Mediational Theory: What It Explains, And Examples
Osgood’s mediational theory proposes a variant to the most classic behavioral equation, which only considered stimuli and responses to understand how an individual reacted to the demands of the environment.
Charles E. Osgood postulated the existence of concepts to which human beings tended to attribute meaning, therefore posing a historical milestone in the evolution of behaviorism. From his model would emerge the semantic differential technique, whose purpose was to evaluate this extreme.
In the following lines we will delve into the fundamental ideas of his mediational theory, which constituted a milestone for Psychology and has inspired much research on how individuality mediates the relationship between stimuli and responses.
Osgood’s mediational theory gives a special value to words, since it assumes that they harbor the capacity to represent tangible objects of reality and mobilize in every human being some of the behaviors that would be articulated in the direct presence of these. It is, therefore, about a model that places special emphasis on the symbolic properties of language ; and that adds richness to the classic behavioral equation (from which any reaction to the environment was limited to the well-known stimulus-response).
This theory is based on the fact that words, and the cognitive processing that can be suggested from them, act as the mediational axis between the presentation of any stimulus and the response associated with it. It is because of that It is considered a model with a clear neobehavioral nature as it expands its theoretical framework and contemplates the constructive capacity of the human being in his interaction with the reality that surrounds him.
Next, we propose the three levels that are included in Osgood’s postulate, which detail the progressive transformation of sensations (dependent on the sense organs) to perceptions and meanings, which imply higher level elaborations and which base the selection. of a range of behaviors with which the natural environment will be mediated.
1. Projection level
The level of projection refers to the area of immediate sensations, as they occur at the moment they are perceived by the sense organs. It includes both those that belong to the visual domain and the rest of the sensory modalities, and traces the way in which every human being is immersed in the physical environment that surrounds them. Particularly, it is a broad universe of sensations that unfold during the experience, in a composition of nuances that can be captured by sensitive and organic limits.
This initial process obeys a perception of the facts as they are (icons), without the interpretation of them or the contribution of the individuality of the person participating in this situation.
On the other end of the equation, The projection level includes all the possible behaviors (movements) that the agent subject can use to interact with what surrounds him. Thus, the projective level brings together the stimuli and potential responses, without using filters of any other nature.
At this second level, two sequential processes occur, independent in their definition but functionally connected. First of all, the stimuli of the preceding phase come together in a rich subjective experience that integrates them according to the way in which they tend to present themselves. In any case, they are part of the canvas of a complex experience that can hardly be reduced to the sum of all its parts.
The way they all come together depends on past experiences, which constitute the second point of this process. Through our interaction with the world we learn that certain phenomena tend to occur together (due to temporal and spatial contingency) and also that their confluence gives them a new meaning.
This process is equivalent to perception, through which the sensation is reworked and certain behavioral expectations are generated. It is not, therefore, a passive reception of the stimulating matrix, but rather the person gives it value or meaning.
3. Level of mediation
At this level it would arise a semantic meaning to capture the experience, which would be translated into verbal terms (words) that differ in structure from the object to which they allude, but that represent a symbol in whose essence lies the convergence of all the elements that make it up. This symbol would play the role of a triggering stimulus, but not purely physical, but rather one with a very notable subjective charge (emotional, for example) of an abstract type.
And life allows us to understand that certain events make sense when they occur together, and that we do not react to each of them separately, but to what makes up their semantic uniqueness. This can be represented by a single word whose appearance is the result of social consensus. From it, and the value that is given to it, responses will unfold in the form of complex behavioral patterns and emotions personal cut.
In the same way that the stimulus is the union of icons of the perceptual field into a significant unit, the response implies a pattern of movements (understood as the most elementary form of action) that are selected from the entire range of possibilities, according to the way in which which the person values semantic unity. For this reason, each of them responds in a different way to the same situation.
The representational capacity
At this point, it is essential to consider that words symbolically represent things that occur in reality and elicit responses comparable to what they are representing, this being the key point of mediational processing. The aforementioned process involves a cognitive elaboration that goes beyond sensation or perception since it intrudes into the scope of the meanings that the event can have for each person.
Thus, the sensations that accompany each word (icons) They depend on the experiences that have been maintained with what it represents (a storm is not the same for someone who has never experienced one nearby as for someone who lost their home as a result of a storm), so it would precipitate in each individual a different pattern of behaviors/emotions when it is presented to consciousness (such as result of the perception of suggestive signs of it in the environment).
The truth is that words like “storm” could be associated with a very varied range of responses, but the individual will display only those that are congruent with the value that they have for him.
Thus, for those who have never experienced its dramatic effects, it will be enough to walk home, but for those who have suffered them, it will be inevitable to make the same journey running as if their life depended on it or to look for a place to immediately safeguard themselves.
The semantic differential
The semantic differential is an evaluation procedure to explore how a person perceives a specific word (and therefore what it represents).
A list of several pairs of adjectives is usually used, each of which forms a continuum at the ends of which are the opposites expressed in bipolar terms (good or bad, adequate or inadequate, etc.), with the subject being able to be located at some point. between the two (with seven different response options, ranging from -3 to +3 and with a value of 0 indicating neutrality).
Because the best way to understand Osgood’s mediational theory is through examples, we proceed to present the case of a person who faces a natural disaster. We will break down the process into its most specific parts, in order to shed light on each of the points raised throughout the article.
Osgood’s mediational theory in action
It was a peaceful June afternoon on the eastern shores of Japan. Shigeru spent his time fishing on a makeshift rocky beach, although he hadn’t had much success so far. For an unknown reason the fish were wary of taking the bait, so he was simply resting after a busy week at work. There he often found a haven of peace, where he could shelter from the hustle and bustle of the city.
Suddenly he felt that the earth seemed to tremble beneath him. A flock of seagulls scurried inland from the sea horizon, squawking erratically until they disappeared behind the silhouette of the small houses that lined a few meters from the coast. A dense, foaming wave lapped against the shore and moved unusually forward on the sand. Behind her, the ocean seemed to shrink and retract as if inhaling, revealing hundreds of meters of bright boulders and colorful shells. A wild roar, bubbling and aquatic, filled the air and crashed into his ears.
Somewhere a nervous bell rang, barely discernible behind the furious growl of a suddenly rough sea. It wasn’t the first time I had experienced something like this. Her body shook and she began to put together everything she had seen and felt in just a few seconds. The noise, the birds fleeing, the shaking… Without a doubt, it was a tsunami. He got up in a flash and picked up a few pieces of gear, the ones he valued most, and stormed out of there like hell.
A few years ago he lost everything because of a natural phenomenon like that, so wild and uncertain. His possessions were annihilated or engulfed by a brutal mass of destructive water, and from that day on he had always lived with the floating sensation that he could repeat himself again. Just by hearing the word “tsunami” he felt a deep horror, so dense that it even took his breath away. After all, it was something that only those who had experienced firsthand the destruction that the sea can leave in its wake could understand.
He survived, but after many months, Shigeru continued to think about everything that had happened. The word “tsunami” came to his head from time to time, and just by saying it he felt the need to run and hide somewhere. It was as if he suddenly had the power to awaken a primal panic, stark and visceral; which forced him to seek refuge. But he was sitting on a central terrace, safe, in a city located in the center of the Japanese archipelago. Far, far from the coast.
She was then able to capture that, a few meters away, a group of young women were talking loudly about the recent news of another tsunami that had devastated the fishing villages in the south and east of the country. And although his words seemed affected by that tragedy, It was perceived behind them that they had never experienced the cruel fury of nature on their own skin to. They paid for their respective coffees and left the place, chatting about some mundane and completely different matter.
Interpretation of the example
Shigeru was spending a pleasant day in solitude, fishing without any major pretensions. After some time, he felt a series of events around him (raging sea, fleeing birds and the low roar of the ocean) that could have been meant in a single word: tsunami.
This term would act for him as a stimulus to respond to, of which he already had enough knowledge to understand its scope and risk. And all this despite the fact that the tsunami was not really present in the natural environment, but only objective indications of its imminence (being, at that time, a symbolic threat).
Because he once lost everything due to a natural phenomenon like that, and associated the term “tsunami” with very particular adverse experiences, he chose to quickly flee from there (out of all the options available in that situation). Thanks to the behavior he emitted, he managed to take refuge and save his life.
The word “tsunami” would symbolize for him a whole series of difficult emotions, since it had the power to evoke dramatic events in his life, but the women who drank coffee were able to address this issue without feeling overcome by the same pain. In this point the different meanings that each human being can attribute to the same term are appreciated according to the way in which he has related during his life with the reality to which he alludes, which is closely associated with the behavior and emotion that will be displayed when he emerges into consciousness.
