Understanding of consumers' needs for luxury: the mechanism of interpretation and its role in knowledge creation
type: CreativeWork
description: In a constant search for meaning we humans cannot stop interpreting the world we find around us (Kelly, 1955) and this act of interpretation in its turn affects the way we behave. And yet, in spite of the obvious importance of interpretation, researchers have tended to shy away from studying it. Interpretation itself is a paradoxical undertaking and is difficult to face up to, even though paradox is an intrinsic part of our human nature (Pinker, 2003). This act of evasion has negative consequences. Instead of acknowledging our interpretations as subjective and changeable, they are assimilated as ultimate and objective truths, thereby distorting our behaviours. The mechanism of human interpretation is based on two paradoxical premises: preference and attitude. In practice, interpretation tends to become contorted in futile attempts to relieve the inevitable tensions between these two premises. By examining aspects of philosophy, psychology and linguistics, this study argues that the tendency to substitute truth for subjective interpretation is persistent and damaging, but can in fact be resolved by applying the Janusian attitudinal mapping tool (Mostovicz, Kakabadse and Kakabadse, 2008). The mapping tool looks specifically at one dimension of the paradox distortion - consciousness, and offers a conscious, purposeful and dynamic interpretative process to relieve the contortion. The study then explores the difficulties and the benefits of dealing with paradox in a conscious, purposeful, and dynamic way, noting that these are precisely the challenges that truth-substitution seeks to evade. As human purpose is dynamic by its nature, this study rejects traditional static research paradigms and instead proposes a Janusian paradigm. Similarly, traditional static tools of enquiry have been adapted to reflect individual motivations, taking into account the learnings from dynamic personal construct theory (Kelly, 1955; Hinkle, 1965). The study examines the mechanism of interpr…
abstract: In a constant search for meaning we humans cannot stop interpreting the world we find around us (Kelly, 1955) and this act of interpretation in its turn affects the way we behave. And yet, in spite of the obvious importance of interpretation, researchers have tended to shy away from studying it. Interpretation itself is a paradoxical undertaking and is difficult to face up to, even though paradox is an intrinsic part of our human nature (Pinker, 2003). This act of evasion has negative consequences. Instead of acknowledging our interpretations as subjective and changeable, they are assimilated as ultimate and objective truths, thereby distorting our behaviours. The mechanism of human interpretation is based on two paradoxical premises: preference and attitude. In practice, interpretation tends to become contorted in futile attempts to relieve the inevitable tensions between these two premises. By examining aspects of philosophy, psychology and linguistics, this study argues that the tendency to substitute truth for subjective interpretation is persistent and damaging, but can in fact be resolved by applying the Janusian attitudinal mapping tool (Mostovicz, Kakabadse and Kakabadse, 2008). The mapping tool looks specifically at one dimension of the paradox distortion - consciousness, and offers a conscious, purposeful and dynamic interpretative process to relieve the contortion. The study then explores the difficulties and the benefits of dealing with paradox in a conscious, purposeful, and dynamic way, noting that these are precisely the challenges that truth-substitution seeks to evade. As human purpose is dynamic by its nature, this study rejects traditional static research paradigms and instead proposes a Janusian paradigm. Similarly, traditional static tools of enquiry have been adapted to reflect individual motivations, taking into account the learnings from dynamic personal construct theory (Kelly, 1955; Hinkle, 1965). The study examines the mechanism of interpr…
author: Mostovicz, E Isaac
language: eng
date published: 2008
date modified: 2026-07-24T03:26:33Z
provider: University of Northampton
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Northampton