Tourists, Tourism and the Good Life

Philip Pearce, Sebastian Filep, Glenn Ross

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781136930263
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Commerce Général

Tourism is arguably one of the largest self-initiated commercial interventions to create well-being and happiness on the entire planet. Yet there is a lack of specific attention to the ways in which we can better understand and evaluate the relationship between well-being and travel. The recent surge of scholarly work in positive psychology concerned with human well-being and flourishing represents a contemporary force with the potential to embellish and augment much current tourism study. This book maps out the field and then draws links between tourists, tourism and positive psychology. It discusses topics such as the issue of excess materialism and its fragile relationship with well-being, the value of positive psychology to lifestyle businesses, and the insights of the research field to spa and wellness tourism. This volume will interest those who study and practise tourism as well as scholars and graduate students in a range of disciplines such as psychology, sociology, business and leisure.

1
Scholarship in Psychology and Tourism

It is the intention of this book to contribute some novel and stimulating ideas to the study of tourism. These fresh ideas derive essentially from the work of positive psychology in the last decade. The area of tourism study of specific interest is the happiness and well-being of those undertaking or shaping tourism. The stated aim of making a novel contribution is ambitious, possibly even arrogant. It is necessary therefore to acknowledge immediately the considerable efforts of previous scholars in the fields of activity which are of chief concern. These fields are broadly but not exclusively the science of psychology and the developing study of the phenomenon of tourism and well-being. As Gould (2004) reveals, contemporary researchers should reflect seriously on their relationships with previous studies. Too strong a preoccupation with the efforts of previous researchers can cast one into the role of a latter-day gold miner who is left picking over the tailings of a well-worked field for something new to say. Yet again, insufficient efforts to note what others have contributed can amount to the reinventing of wheels, surely a rather circular affair.

The problem of one’s relationship to previous study is particularly significant in a book where the implicit theme is “The Good Life” and the subthemes are happiness and well-being. Most attention will be given in this chapter, and indeed in the whole of the book, to the application of the efforts of positive psychology researchers. Nevertheless, for over two thousand years religious and humanities scholars have also considered how to live well and be happy. Such work can scarcely be ignored. Possibly the phrase Sir Isaac Newton used in a letter to his fellow physicist Hooke can be employed: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” (Gould 2004: 70). Merton (1965) reports that this was not a new phrase and its artistic representation is depicted in the twelfth-century Chartres Cathedral, where New Testament scholars are portrayed as dwarfs neatly astride the shoulders of much larger Old Testament prophets. While the authors are happy to conceive of themselves as gnomish academic dwarfs, the ensuing question is on whose shoulders are we standing? As an answer, we see ourselves perched on the back of previous work on the psychology of happiness while resting some weight on select concerns in tourism study. In essence, then, this volume amounts to a respectful but purposeful foray into the contemporary scholarly understanding of how people come to be happy and content, most especially in tourism settings. This chapter provides the context for the contribution and attempts to respect and learn from much previous analyses of human behaviour both in general and as specifically displayed through tourism.

It is important to provide one small note of preparation for reading this chapter. Not every contributor to the history of psychology whose work is mentioned is referenced in terms of their specific studies being cited. The interest in many formative figures is much more in their dominant ideas and overall contributions to a disciplinary history. To cite all or even select works from many such contributors would reduce the following pages to a spaghetti of names and dates. Nevertheless, acknowledgment of key sources and review material is made on a regular basis. For historical figures, birth and death dates are provided to place their work in a time frame but for contemporary figures this practice is not pursued.

PSYCHOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS

As many psychology undergraduate students rapidly discover, popular views of psychology tend to misrepresent the focus of the discipline in the twenty-first century.

The public stereotype of the psychologist often confuses the psychologist and the psychiatrist and to the extent that the television and film media portray psychologists at work, it is the clinician, the ever popular mind reader and the criminal profiler who feature most strongly. The experimental researcher, the cognitive scientist and the statistician are marginal characters in the public image. Becher and Trowler (2003) suggest that a discipline or area of study can be understood more formally through a number of pathways. One can, for example, track dominant themes and people in the evolution of the study area. Since our interest is in a contemporary shift in the way psychologists orient themselves to public life, this thematic and historical approach will be our first endeavour in this book.

Edmund Boring, in his massive 777-page history of experimental psychology completed in 1950, observed “a psychological sophistication that contains no component of historical orientation seems to me to be no sophistication at all” (1950: ix). Boring also made the astute observation that the present changes the past or at least affects those parts of the historical record which authors seek to emphasise. At the outset of the review process in this chapter it can be clearly acknowledged that the following overview does indeed favour “presentism”, a term which specifies that the historical review is distorted towards those aspects of the past which are of greater interest to contemporary concerns (Pickren, 2007). In particular, it will be suggested that an understanding of the different kinds of psychology in both the nineteenth and twentieth century assists powerfully in defining the current approaches in positive psychology.

The landmark topics which stand out in the history of psychology and which need consideration as a context for applying contemporary work to tourism include empiricism, positivism, hedonism, dynamic motivation, attitudes, values, phenomenology, the experimental method and the application of evolutionary theory. In order to present these concepts and approaches to studying human well-being, it is possible to propose and report on a set of hypothetical events. In keeping with the spirit of the times in which the study of psychology evolved, the first event can be depicted as a “parlour game” where one is restricted to inviting three guests for a dinner conversation. The specific restriction is that they have to be the great psychologists of their era and the initial invitation is to those born in the first half of the nineteenth century. Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), the person responsible for the first planned psychology laboratory, is in attendance, together with William James (1842–1910), America’s foremost founding psychologist from Harvard. They are joined by Francis Galton (1822–1911), the British polymath who is independently wealthy and whose family is linked to that other prodigy of the age, Charles Darwin (1809–1882). At the turn of the twentieth century their conversation would undoubtedly have been lively since James was known to have complained that Wundt was so prolific that even when his ideas were dissected each fragment would regrow and he would write another book on that topic (Boring, 1950: 346).

Wundt’s conversation initially focuses on the value of the experimental method as it has been applied at his Leipzig laboratory from the late 1870s. Wundt argues in his thorough and erudite German way that the experimental method is not suitable for all of the topics of interest to psychology, but its application is leading to insights into sensation and perception beyond the reach of the previous armchair philosophers. Wundt is on sound ground here because, in addition to his experimental approach to the elements of sensation and perception, he is in the middle of writing his Volkerpsychologie (Folk Psychology), a ten volume (1905–1920) history of man which he sees as the other route to studying psychology and most especially the higher order processes. On this point, James and Wundt can be seen to agree, for while James too has experimental rooms at Harvard he is not inclined to use them. He is more attracted to dealing with problems of consciousness, emotion and religious experience at a philosophical and cultural history level. James claims that consciousness contains knowledge and meaning not just sense data and that emotions are intimately linked to the person’s perceptions of their own bodily changes. This perspective is still current and remains relevant to understanding the context-dependent nature of emotional responses in any situation including tourism settings.

Francis Galton is hardly a passive participant in the conversation and the extent of his work enables him to make several kinds of conversational contributions. Whereas Galton understands Wundt’s quest to isolate the elements of sensation and perception and establish lawful generalisations applicable to all people, his own interests lie more in the products and outcomes of human capacity. Consistent with Britain’s status in the world at the time, Galton asserts the value of understanding the ways in which the intelligence and the capacity of his countrymen and his country may be further improved. He explains his quest to establish the nature of individual differences and argues for the value of constructing tests and measures to describe statistically the distributions of talent and ability in the community. He is Darwin’s half cousin and the controversial evolutionary theory of his relative informs much of his interest in the genetic inheritance of abilities. James and Galton chat comfortably, united by an interest in the higher mental processes and the pragmatic value of the developing field of psychology. Wundt is not alienated from the conversation but sees a prime role for the purer form of study linking physiology and philosophy. In the seeds of these conversations we have the beginnings of the distinctions between applied and fundamental work in psychology, the nascent emergence of different methods for undertaking the exploration of human capacity and even the founding of testing procedures that will lead to the ability to describe markets and group differences.

Other conversations are needed to develop the review of the issues and concepts in the field. Our next soiree brings together figures born in the second half of the nineteenth century. The gathering is a little larger because the study of psychology expands in the three principal locations—in Germany following Wundt, in Britain following Galton and especially in the United States following James and a wide band of other scholars. Our principal invited guests this time are Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), John C. Watson (1878–1958) and Kurt Lewin (1890–1947). Others drop by and the guest list records the attendance of William McDougall (1871–1938), Granville Stanley Hall (1844–1924), Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909), Edward Titchener (1867–1927), some learning theorists, young psychoanalysts, educational psychologists and gestalt enthusiasts. All of these attendees provide snippets of interesting conversation.

The differences in perspective at this fresh gathering are palpable. G. S. Hall and Ebbinghaus, the two oldest members of the gathering, report the successful application of the experimental method to topics of broader social and psychological concern. In Hall’s case he has applied the questionnaire technique, derived in part from Galton’s work, to a detailed study of adolescence and he has amassed much statistical information. Like his educational psychology colleague John Dewey (1859–1952), he is effectively developing the groundwork for a functional approach to psychology where the questions to be asked are oriented to the use of the ideas as opposed to an inherent interest in the structure of thought. Ebbinghaus, too, fits broadly into this approach. He has studied memory with meticulous and inventive experimental procedures and is formulating important ideas about contiguity and repetition as frames for understanding this higher order mental process. Titchener leaves the gathering early because he is disillusioned with this new functional and useful kind of psychology, preferring to remain true to the Wundtian tradition (in which he trained) of trying to understand the human mind at an abstract rather than an applied level. For William McDougall, the Englishman who has migrated to the United States, there is no such conflict. He describes the ideas informing his now very popular first ever textbook of social psychology. His approach is in accord with some recent experimental research on teams and competition and McDougall envisages an important future for the study of social behaviours. In his view it will be a future independent of sociology. In this new social psychology the individuals responding to their social worlds are the objects of interest rather than the analysis of the structure of society which looks at social behaviour from a more molar view. In McDougall’s scheme to explain rather than just describe social behaviour, he suggests the use of the term purposive psychology and list numerous needs which drive behaviour. After a period of neglect, the topic of motivation or, in more philosophical terms will or volition, reappears in the psychology conversation and is addressed here most directly through McDougall. There is another voice in the meeting which is about to take the gathering by storm and rebuild the concept of motivation from an altogether different perspective. The voice belongs to the Austrian Sigmund Freud.

Freud’s complex scheme for understanding damaged individuals takes the listeners on a long historical journey linked to the topic of hedonism. Freud, like McDougall, is concerned with motivation but he suggests that there are deeper and less obvious motives to be considered. The notion that there are elemental, possibly unconscious, forces guiding human conduct has a long history and Freud’s creative and often original perspective on these motivational themes is of interest to any researcher looking at pleasure, play and psychology. Freud says that his pleasure principle or libido is the driving factor motivating all individuals. The excesses which would result in a constant lust for pleasure, as represented by the libido, are subdued by a monitoring psychological counterweight, the censorious superego. The outcome of their warring control of the individual’s desires results in varying levels of personal control depending on the individual’s life experiences and the resolution of key childhood issues. The importance of pleasure as a prime mover for social life is not unfamiliar to the gathered assembly. It is also a key concept in many popular views of what constitutes the good life (Diener and Biswas Diener, 2008: 244). Freud’s idea is a recasting of the concept of hedonism, which has a long philosophical and political lineage (Grayling, 2005). The founding figures here were the Greek scholars Aristoppos and Epicurus, who claimed that the highest purpose of life was an active devotion to pleasure. At core, hedonism proposes that individuals seek to maximise their pleasure and avoid pain. Immediate pleasure and gratification when enjoyed without any view of their consequences tend in the end, however, to let people down. Whereas continuous sensory indulgence, even licentiousness might appeal—a position adopted by the Greek writer Aristippos—a slightly longer term view recognises that such a set of actions quickly results in conflict with others. The ensuing interpersonal conflict can be painful. Some of the key writers in English philosophy and early political thought, such as Locke, Mill and Bentham, built their analyses on hedonism. It is conceived here as the optimal ratio of pleasure to pain or, more colloquially, the best deal to be had in terms of both immediate gratification and longer term gratification. The discipline of economics, itself built on the work of Adam Smith, is underpinned by just such a view of humanity as driven by hedonistic self-interest (Gould, 2004). In the economics case, the necessary social condition to enable the self-interest to be expressed is defined as free trade. This kind of calculus, where the happiest communities were viewed as those achieving the greatest good for the greatest number, was most clearly expressed in the work of Jeremy Bentham. His approach is expressed in the concept of utilitarianism, although Bentham had a slightly grander vision of the greatest good than hedonism alone can provide.

The remarks Freud makes about pleasure are then less of a surprise than the other parts of his system which addresses the development of personalities. Theories of motivation and personality development tend to have deficit, balance or energy models as their underlying force. Freud reveals that his defining energy force is the libido, a kind of surging current of power that develops in childhood and needs correct management at oral, anal and genital stages of development. The mismanagement of desires built around these key childhood experiences can leave the individual with strong phase-linked characteristics in adult life such as the love of talking and eating deriving from inadequate or excessive oral stimulation.

The gathering of psychology scholars is both intrigued and dismayed by Freud’s ideas. J. B. Watson and Thorndike both contend that Freud, in giving power to the superego, places too much emphasis on the individual’s view of future consequences, something with which they are not at all comfortable. The prevailing tradition in animal and human behaviour studies is based much more on the individual’s reactions to past consequences. Other younger psychoanalysts, as well as the broader community, murmur discontentedly at the periphery when the most sexually charged notions of the Freudian system are mentioned. Like Darwin before him, Freud’s views are readily mocked, with his view of personality later to be depicted as the outcome of brawls between a maiden aunt and a sex-craved monkey (Kelly, 1955).

Freud’s perspective undoubtedly reintroduces motivation to the psychology conversation. Kurt Lewin tackles many of the same topics but with a more experimental mind-set and a less clinical orientation. While Freud forces the audience to think about the past stages of their development, Lewin makes immediate tensions the driving force of life. For Lewin, objects in the individual’s life space have positive or negative attracting power, a term he calls valences. Lewin accounts for people’s lives and actions in terms of field theory. This is a psychological field in that the conditions and goals are as they are perceived. Lewin notes that he seeks to understand individuals through all of the particulars of the forces and interrelationships in which they are involved. The discharge of tension when a goal is reached resets the force field until new tensions are generated by the passage of time or the actions of others. Lewin informs the listening gathering that recent studies with children’s play and with the challenge of leaving an activity unfinished are vindicating his approach of conceptualising behaviour in terms of tension levels, valences and the actual life space in which the individual is embedded at the immediate point where we are studying the behaviour.

Lewin’s ideas about driving tensions resonate with the approach to human needs to be found in the work of Henry Murray. It is Murray who makes the concept of needs accessible to scientific study with a tight definition which sees needs as direction-giving forces terminated only by achieving specific end states. Murray provides a compelling case that social and cultural needs must accompany biological needs to account properly for human conduct.

Watson and Thorndike, powerful figures of their age, argue for the value of the tradition of behaviourism which they represent. In their view, the understanding of behaviour is best approached by avoiding the nebulous world of the mind, force fields and needs, and it is through concentrating on what people do and how they are rewarded or punished that we will best build a study of people’s well-being. Their work is at the core of the field of learning at the time. A young B. F. Skinner is in the wings of this conversation and he will push these ideas to their limits in the coming decades.

There are other conversations taking place at the same time as these key figures describe their distinctive kinds of psychology. The dominant theme in th...

Table of contents

• Routledge Advances in Tourism
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Scholarship in Psychology and Tourism
• Part I Principally About Individuals
• Part II Individuals and Tourism Contexts
• Bibliography
• Author Biographies
• Author Index
• Subject Index