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Keith E Rice's Integrated SocioPsychology Blog & Pages

Aligning, integrating and applying the behavioural sciences

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The West and Russia: a Divergence of Values?

Published in Eugene Pustoshkin’s Eros & Kosmos e-zine, August 2014. Click here to read it in English on the Eros & Kosmos site. Click here to read Part 1 in Russian and here for Part 2. It’s difficult to write an article triggered by, but not about, an ongoing crisis that has no obvious outcome in any predictable timeframe. The Ukrainian army may be gaining ground but the United Nations’ concern about a growing humanitarian crisis may force them to slow down their assaults – perhaps helped by rockets fired at them allegedly from across the Russian border. The brutal fact is that West is not going to go to war over the low-level but brutal civil war in eastern Ukraine. The West is likely to continue to support Kiev diplomatically and with military supplies and intelligence and there will be reluctant incremental upgrades to the European Union sanctions on Russia (and retaliatory Russian sanctions on the West); but no American or European soldiers are going to die for Donetsk or Luhansk, even if there were to be an overt Russian military incursion. Russian militiamen causing trouble in the Baltic states could be a very different proposition, though. Treaty obligations would… Read More

Modernisation Theory vs Stratified Democracy #4

PART 4 Stratified Democracy Stratified Democracy, as defined by Don Beck (2000b), shifts the focus from economic development to cultural mindsets, with the understanding that the prime area for ‘development’ is sociopsychological rather than economic or fiscal. The aim of ‘development’ in this paradigm is not to become a consumeristic society along the lines of the Western model – though that may well be what some developing countries eventually become. The aim is for the country to be ‘healthy’ in itself – ie: the sociopsychological well-being of the peoples and the inter-relations between the different internal groupings of whatever type – and to have ‘healthy’ relations with other countries of whatever type. Achieving these healthy states at whatever level a country is at facilitates it moving on to whatever is next on the Spiral. In terms of governance, Stratified Democracy proposes that a core element of Democracy – representative government – be implemented in such as way as to fit with the values and norms – the culture – of the people to be governed. In 4Q/8L terms, this means constructing the Lower Right (the form of government) to match the Lower Left (culture of the people to be governed). As Elza Maalouf… Read More

vMEMES #4

PART 4 How complex is people’s thinking? The issue of just how far the bulk of any population ascend the Spiral/Hierarchy – experience the emergence of vMEMES in an ascending sequence – is a contentious one. In 1996 Beck & Cowan conjectured that the percentages of the world’s population dominated by a nodal vMEME in their thinking was:- BEIGE: 0.1% PURPLE: 10% RED: 20% BLUE: 40% ORANGE: 30% GREEN: 10% YELLOW: 1% TURQUOISE: 0.1% The percentages, of course, don’t add up to 100% and there is no breakdown of percentage to continents, cultures or societies. Cowan (Chris Cowan & Nastasha Todorovic, 2006b) has admitted that the figures were a (very!) rough interpretation/extrapolation of various data sets (including United Nations data) while Beck has never commented (for public consumption) on the estimates. Nonetheless, in general it supported the notion that the bulk of the population – the Western population, at least – were not significantly beyond a BLUE (Kohlberg) or BLUE/orange (Loevinger) way of thinking. Further support for this notion came from research using Kohlberg’s concepts. Using what effectively was a 9-stage model incorporating 3 sub-stages, Lawrence Walker, Brian De Vries & Shelley Trevethan (1987) found general agreement with Kohlberg. They interviewed 40 boys and 40 girls… Read More

Bibliography F

A    B    C    D    E    F    G    H    I    J    K    L    M    N    O    P-Q    R    S     T     U    V    W    X-Y-Z Fagin, Claire (1966): ‘The Effects of Maternal Attendance during Hospitalisation on the Behaviour of Young Children’ (FA Davis, Philadelphia PA) Falkai, Peter, Bernhard Bogerts &  M Rozumek (1988): ‘Limbic Pathology in Schizophrenia’ in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA #2 Farage, Nigel (contributor, 2015): ‘Today’ (BBC Radio 4, 14 January) Farage, Nigel (contributor, 2018): ‘The Wright Stuff’ (Channel 5, 11 January) Farage, Nigel (2018): ‘I do not want a Second Vote on Brexit, but My Fellow Leavers must be ready to fight for It again’ in Daily Telegraph (12 January) Farina, Amerigo, Charles Holland & Klaus Ring (1966): ‘Role of Stigma and Set in Interpersonal Interaction’ in Journal of Abnormal Psychology 71/6 Farmer, Ben & Ruth Sherlock (2013): ‘Syria: nearly half Rebel Fighters are Jihadists or Hardline Islamists, says IHS Jane’s Report‘ in Daily Telegraph (15 September) Farrington, David (1995) ‘The Development of Offending and Anti-Social Behaviour from Childhood’ in Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry 36/6 Farrington, David, Jeremy Coid, Louise Harnett, Darrick Jolliffe, Nadine Soteriou, Richard Turner & Donald West (2006): ‘Criminal Careers… Read More

Bibliography B

A    B    C    D    E    F    G    H    I    J    K    L    M    N    O    P-Q    R    S     T     U    V    W    X-Y-Z Bachen, Elizabeth, Sheldon Cohen & Anna Marsland (1997): ‘Psychoimmunology’ in Andrew Baum, Stanton Newman, John Weinman, Robert West & Chris McManus(eds): ‘Cambridge Handbook of Psychology, Health and Medicine’ (Cambridge University Press) Badawy, Abdulla (2006): ‘Alcohol and Violence and the Possible Role of Serotonin’ in Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health 13/1 Baechler, Jean (1979): ‘Suicides’ (Blackwell, Oxford) Bagdikian, Ben (2004): ‘The New Media Monopoly’ (7th Edition, Beacon Press, Boston MA) Bailey, Heidi, Greg Moran, David Pederson & Sandi Bento (2007): ‘Understanding the Transmission of Attachment using Variable- and Relationship-Centred Approaches’ in Development and Psychopathology 19/2 Bailey, Rodger (1991): ‘The Language and Behaviour Profile’ (self-study manual and audio-tape set, Language and Behaviour Institute, Poughkeepsie NY) Bain, Jerald, Ronald Langevin, Ronald Dickey & Mark Ben-Aron (1987): ‘Sex Hormones in Murderers and Assaulters’ in Behavioural Science & the Law #5 Baize, Harold & Jonathan Schroeder (1995): ‘Personality and Mate Selection in Personal Ads: Evolutionary Preferences in a Public Mate Selection Process’ in Journal of Social Behaviour & Personality 10/3 Bakan, Joel (2004): ‘The Corporation: the Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power’ (Constable, London) Baker, Robin &… Read More

David Cameron’s right about Multiculturalism BUT…

This past weekend David Cameron pushed forward considerably ideas his predecessors Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had been moving progressively towards …. In essence, this is to say pretty explicitly that, if you want to be British, you need to buy into the British identity and British values. (Ironically, freed from the collective responsibility of Cabinet, Blair on these issues is almost certainly well to the right of Cameron these days – see: ‘Radical Islam’ and the Return of Tony Blair). Cameron criticised ‘state multiculturalism’ and argued the UK needs a stronger national identity to stop people turning to extremism. With MI6 warning last week that Britain faces an “‘unstoppable wave of home-grown suicide bombers”, Cameron could hardly have ignored the threat from radicalised young Muslims; and it seems logical to ascribe their lack of identification with ‘British values’ as one cause of their radicalisation. In his speech on Saturday (5 February) Cameron accused multiculturalism of leading to a Britain of ‘divided tribes’. The prime minister posited that the multiculturalist dogma, which increasingly dominated political and social thinking from the early 1970s on, had meant the majority had to accord each minority ethnic group respect and the freedom to pursue its… Read More

‘Radical Islam’ and the Return of Tony Blair

Wow, Tony Blair sure is back in the news in a BIG way! First the Gordon Brown-bashing memoirs, then having eggs and shoes thrown at him in Dublin on Saturday and being a star guest yesterday on the inaugural showing of the new breakfast programme, Daybreak. And, of course, in the Sunday Telegraph both he and Brown were bashed by former Chief of the General Staff General Sir Richard Dannatt for failing to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq adequately. (Dannatt was in uncompromising mood, blaming Blair and Brown explicitly and personally for needless deaths.) Perhaps the most interesting set of comments to emerge from the seemingly endless round of interviews the former prime minister has conducted were those to do with ‘radical Islam’ and the threat that would be posed by a nuclear Iran. Talking about radical Islam in general, he described it to ABC News as “…the religious or cultural equivalent of [Communism] and its roots are deep, its tentacles are long and its narrative about Islam stretches far further than we think into even parts of mainstream opinion who abhor the extremism but sort of buy some of the rhetoric that goes with it.” Blair told the… Read More

Afghanistan: Sex or starve! What’s the Issue?

If the stories are true – and there does seem to be some confusion in the accounts – then Hamid Karzai’s government sneaked into law on 27 July an amended version of the Personal Status Law for Afghanistan’s minority Shi’ite population. (Around 15% of the country’s 30 million citizens – the vast majority of whom are Sunnis, to whom the new law does not apply.) The coming into law of this measure certainly does seem ‘sneaked’. With the likes of Barrack Obama, Gordon Brown, France’s Human Rights Minister Rama Yade and NATO boss Jaap de Hoop Scheffer joining the international chorus of protest against the original version of the bill in the Spring, Karzai promised to review the measure before implementing it. Now, just days before the increasingly tightly-contested elections, he appears to have sneaked it into law with some different words but the same meanings. Human Rights Watch says it has seen a copy of the final law that requires Shia women to satisfy their husbands’ sexual appetites at least every 4 days, an article which critics have said could be used to justify marital rape. It enshrines a husband’s right to withdraw basic maintenance from his wife, including food, if… Read More