The word Positive is fraught. In the 1300's its meaning was firmly on the side of a legal understandings, formally laid out, decreed by authority, if it was positive, it was there to be obeyed. The point is, "decreed by authority" doesn't or shouldn't mean good and it doesn't or shouldn't mean bad. So, when you ask the question "what does Positive Distinctiveness" mean, one answer might include the suggestion that positive, in this context, is better understood as the opposite to negative rather than as a value judgement on the condition of meaning in the word distinctiveness. In almost every way, social psychologist's who use the expression drive for positive distinctiveness would be better off placing this urgent need or tension that motivates a social being firmly within the meaning of the words Optimal Distinctiveness. And, joy of joys, in 1991 Marilynn Brewer, a great name, put the pin into Social Identity Theory, with its Positive Distinctiveness, by flaunting her Optimal Distinctiveness Theory. A theory which said there's much more to the 1979 Positive Distinctiveness theory of social Identity than was first admitted to. Dr. Marilynn Brewer, whose argument through most of her work in social psychology, a body of work that includes titles such as "Choice Behavior in Social Dilemmas" which is a big one for me, offers a window into the idea that our identities are shaped by our group membership. She suggests that an individual's identity within a society isn't just a drive for Positive Distinctiveness. No, the motivating tension, the urgent need, the drive is about being Optimally Unique. Of course Marilynn, and this is just typical, didn't mean wonderfully unique and special, she defined Optimal as a unique balancing point which in Distinctiveness Theory meant possessing just the right amount of being someone in the group without being nobody in the group. This balance allows the person to fit comfortably enough into the group to maintain a lonely belonging that was never actually going to be the complete person. And here it might be well worthwhile taking a moment to remember that in the social psychology of groups the wider meaning of Optimal Distinctiveness includes the meanings of leadership and followership. It's all very accurate I'm sure, but, even when you recover from the daintiness of the word followership, the exploration isn't a pretty commentary on the independent mindedness of us people. Makes some of us yearn to become a hedgehog, a spitting cobra, or even one of Arthur Schopenhauer's poodles instead of a sheep. Social Psychologists, as well as owning an approach to understanding optimal value in the balance between Us and Me, interesting ideas on the extent to which membership of a group is predicted to reduce social uncertainty and apparently provide a psychologically comforting blueprint for behavior, not to mention a road map for both self evaluation and for the evaluation of other possibly less wholesome group members. These, perfectly acceptable and arguably vital demands from the imperatives for social cohesion are pretty much everything Arthur Schopenhauer disliked about the world of people he lived in. Is it fair to ask, I wonder, whether Arthur's "choice behaviors" or how he managed attitudes and behaviors in social situations that presented him with a dilemma, were positively or negatively influenced by contact with society. After all we do have the great comfort of Arthur's assertion that Will is the manifestation of a primal force that is "blind, irrational, aimless and incessantly striving," which, without tossing a seamstress downstairs, is somehow more encouraging than the Calvinist potted plant notion that the "Will is in bondage to a sinful disposition."
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