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Keith E Rice's Integrated SocioPsychology Blog & Pages

Aligning, integrating and applying the behavioural sciences

Eysenck’

Integrated SocioPsychology

Updated: 20 December 1920 ‘Integrated SocioPsychology’ is the term I have coined for developing a highly-practical and integrated approach to the behavioural sciences… Integrated – the aim is to learn how all the elements of the behavioural sciences and the complementary ‘hard’ sciences’ of Biology and Neuroscience fit together to explain… Psychology – how and why people think and behave as they do in different contexts in different times… Socio – taking into account group dynamics and the influence of culture and the society people live in as those cultures and societies morph and change This page provides a basic overview of the Integrated approach and how the key models link together. More specific detail on the individual models is available on their linked pages. Psychology, Sociology and Anthropology are fractured fields of study, with several different (and often competing!) schools of thought and even areas of exploration. The history of the behavioural sciences is littered with disputes both between those competing schools (which are accepted academically) and also between academia and ‘fringe’ or ‘alternative’ approaches such as Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). The structure of an Integrated approach Integration is made possible by building the structure of SocioPsychology around the frame of… Read More

Theory

‘Integrated SocioPsychology’ is the name I have coined for the meta-approach I am developing – along with several other key thinkers – to integrate and align the many theories and schools/disciplines in the behavioural sciences. The overarching framework of this construct is 4Q/8L and the vMEMES of the Gravesian approach. Together they form undoubtedly the most advanced mapping of the ebb and flow of human motivational systems, both at an individual and a collective/cultural level. How vMEMES influence the identities and values & beliefs we hold in our selfplex and how they play out in our interaction with the external environment can be monitored via Robert Dilts’ Neurological Levels model. With the aid of Reciprocal Determinism we can see how memes – external ideas – are internalised into our own internal schemas via the meta-stating process, each stage of which involves one and often more elements of the Cognitive Triad and the attribution process. Temperament – as best defined via Hans J Eysenck’s Dimensions – frequently influences an individual’s behaviour and the interrelationship between temperament and motivation is a key area for exploration in my thoughts on Integrated SocioPsychology. Certainly it would seem some meta-programmes will fluctuate more as motivational patterns… Read More

Schizophrenia and the Tragic Story of Moby Grape

Recently, after several years without a turntable, I treated myself to one and started digging out LPs I hadn’t played in years. Among the delights I rediscovered was the music of Moby Grape. Moby Who? I hear you say. Well, for 6 months or so back in 1967, Moby Grape were the ‘next big new thing’ for the record companies starting to take a serious interest in the burgeoning hippie music scene of San Francisco. Unfortunately Moby Grape’s star did not rise for very long, crashing down in a tragic welter of legal disputes, drug abuse and ‘madness’. RCA already had an album out by Jefferson Airplane by late 1966. Warner Bros had signed the Grateful Dead but didn’t quite know what to do with them. Quicksilver Messenger Service were just getting going and Janis Joplin was beginning to find her feet in Big Brother & The Holding Company. For most A&R men/talent scouts filtering into the San Francisco Bay Area, the local hippie bands, with to some extent the exception of the Airplane, were just weird. They didn’t understand the music business. Moreover, in their insular, stoned way, most of them didn’t want to understand that music was a business!… Read More

Wanted: Suitable Latvian Men for Latvian Women

This article on the BBC News the other day (13 October) really caught my eye…about there being a shortage of suitable men for the women of Latvia. Of course, there have been many shortages of men before. Usually after wars there are shortages of men since men do most of the fighting. Even in the one and only truly ‘total war’ of World War II, far more men were killed than women. Eg: the Germans lost over 5 million men and the Soviet Union an estimate of upto 10 million. (If just some of the anecdotes I’ve heard are true, British and American soldiers in the ruins of Berlin in 1945 could have almost any German woman they wanted, especially if they had chocolate, cigarettes, nylons, etc, to give away.) However, a significant shortage in peace time is unusual. Paradoxically statistics show that more male babies are born in Latvia than girls. However, a high early male mortality rate means there are 8% more women than men in the country. Among the under-30s, there are almost 9,000 more men than women. However, this is inverted between the ages of 30-39 so that there are almost 3,000 more women than men. This… Read More

‘Lost’ in Purgatory?

Over 2 weeks later it’s still being remarked upon in the internet fan forums about just how similar in theme were the final episodes of 2 of the biggest TV dramas of the past few years, Ashes to Ashes (21 May) and Lost (24 May). The Life On Mars/Ashes to Ashes story arcs ended with ‘rough diamond’/’Neanderthal throwback’ [take your pick!] DCI Gene Hunt revealed to be a Christ-like figure living in purgatory to work with the souls of dead coppers to help them accept their untimely demise and move on to the afterlife proper. Hunt even got to fend off the devil-like Discipline & Complaints investigator Jim Keats’ attempts to steal the dead coppers’ souls. Truth to tell, I wasn’t much impressed with the ‘Ashes to Ashes’ finale, ruminating that the purgatory explanation was something of a cop-out, saving the writers from having to come up with some kind of science fiction story of alternate realities/dimension shifts/etc, etc. But – blow me! – just a few days later a near-identical theme was acted out in ‘Lost’s’ 2.5-hour grand finale. This time around it was Jack Shephard being Christ-like to save the island from the darkness brought on by the devil-like ‘Man in… Read More

Time to turn against Cannabis!

The dangers of cannabis use are back on the front pages thanks to a report just published in The Lancet from a team led by Theresa Moore & Dr Stanley Zammit. From their meta-analysis of 35 studies from around the world, Moore & Zammit inferred that any use of cannabis – which means even taking the drug just once – was associated with a 41% greater risk of experiencing some form of psychosis – and possibly even developing full-blown Schizophrenia. People who smoked the most cannabis were the most likely to suffer a psychotic breakdown; for frequent users, the risk rose to between 50% and 200%. Overall, cannabis could be to blame for one in seven cases of Schizophrenia and other life-shattering mental illness. With up to 40% of teenagers and young adults in the UK believed to have tried cannabis, the researchers estimated that the drug could be behind 14% of cases of Schizophrenia and other psychotic illnesses. Perhaps fortuitiously Gordon Brown announced on 18 July that the status of cannabis was to be considered as part of a wide-ranging drugs review commissioned by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. The Brown-Smith move was initiated a week after former Tory Party leader Iain Duncan Smith called for reclassification of cannabis from ‘C’ back to ‘B’ in… Read More