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Keith E Rice's Integrated SocioPsychology Blog & Pages

Aligning, integrating and applying the behavioural sciences

Jonathan Haidt’

Conformity & Obedience #3

PART 3 Dispositional and Situational The 2 approaches to explaining obedience were to some extent reconciled via the work of Alan Elms (Alan Elms & Stanley Milgram, 1966). One of Milgram’s assistants, Elms tested sub-samples of the 20 most obedient and the 20 most defiant from Milgram’s first 4 experiments, using Adorno’s F-Scale questionnaire. He found that those who tested highest on the F-Scale gave more stronger shocks and held the shock buttons down longer than those who were low scorers. Participants were also asked a series of open-ended questions about their relationship with their parents and their attitudes towards the experimenter (authority figure) and the ‘learner’. Elms reported that participants high in authoritarianism were more likely to see the learner as responsible for what happened to him, rather than themselves or the experimenter who was seen as an admirable figure by many of the authoritarian participants, They also often spoke in negative terms about their fathers. Though Elms’ sample groups were small, the implication is that there is indeed a dispositional element in blind obedience – so that some will respond to a situation demanding obedience more than others. In Integrated SocioPsychology terms the vMEME most likely to obey blindly the orders of a legitimate… Read More

Boris and Trump: How do They get away with it?

Boris Johnson has learned very well from his hero, Donald Trump. If the populist right-wing leader of a ‘democratic’ country contradicts himself repeatedly, breaks his promises, has a scurrilous personal life, makes deeply offensive and totally insensitive remarks about anything and anybody, and even tells bare-faced lies, he can get away with it. That’s provided he’s got the right-wing press totally on his side; they attack and smear his opponents with unsubstantiated half-truths and even outright lies, and its journalists avoid taxing the leader and his close political allies with probing questions. Even when the leader’s opponents are succeeding in exposing the corruption of the leader and his cronies. It also helps a great deal, if you have organisations like Cambridge Analytica and lots of Russian bots manipulating social media on your behalf. Daniel Dale at CNN is just one analyst who has delved into what he terms Trump’s “bombardment of lies — Trump’s unceasing campaign to convince people of things that aren’t true.” He goes on to write:- “Trump made more than 2,700 false claims this year [2019]. (We’re still calculating the final total.) Some of them were innocent slips, some of them little exaggerations. But a large number of… Read More

What makes People vote Republican?

by Jonathan Haidt September 2008 annotated by Bruce L Gibb, September 2008 [Reference update: April 2009] Jonathan Haidt is associate professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia and author of ‘The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom’ (2005) . He wrote this piece for www.edge.org. Bruce L Gibb is an organisational psychologist in private practice in Ann Arbor and an adjunct professor in the School of Natural Resources & the Environment at the University of Michigan. He is also a frequent contributor to the Spiral Dynamics e-lists. While a commentary on the current American presidential election is clearly highly topical and would normally be more appropriate for the Blog, what gives this piece a more permanent currency is Bruce’s Spiral Dynamics-based annotation. Haidt’s article read together with Gibb’s footnotes provides an excellent and more generalised explanation for the points I raised in the September 2008 Blog: Should the Democrats have chosen Hilary? Jonathan has kindly given explicit written permission for his work to be used in this way. What makes people vote Republican? Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies?… Read More

3 Stage Theories of Development #2

PART 2 Stages of Moral Development Lawrence Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development constitute an adaptation of a psychological model originally conceived of by Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1932). Kohlberg, while a Psychology postgraduate student at the University of Chicago, expanded Piaget’s concepts and then developed them throughout the course of his life. The theory holds that moral reasoning, the basis for ethical behaviour, has 6 identifiable developmental stages, the thinking at each more adequate at responding to moral dilemmas than its predecessor. Kohlberg followed the development of moral judgement far beyond the ages studied earlier by Piaget who also claimed that logic and morality develop through constructive stages. Expanding on Piaget’s work, Kohlberg (1963) determined that the process of moral development was principally concerned with justice and that it continued throughout the individual’s lifetime – a notion that spawned dialogue on the philosophical implications of such research. Kohlberg also took the concept beyond Piaget’s model in that he allowed for moral development to be influenced by aspects of the social environment such as what other people might say. (Piaget limited moral development to the effects of the individual’s own active self-discovery.) Kohlberg’s methodology used the Moral Judgement Interview he had first developed… Read More

Articles

The articles on these pages explore the concepts of Integrated SocioPsychology, vMEMES, Neurological Levels, Dimensions of Temperament and related Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), Psychology and Sociology models from theoretical and general standpoints. Features dealing with the particular practical applications of the concepts and models are posted in the Lifespan, Society, Global and Mental Health sections of this site. Features on application of the concepts outside of those topic areas are included in this section. Thanks to those leading psychologists, sociologists and Gravesian/NLP practitioners who have generously allowed their work to be published here alongside my own. The articles appear in ascending chronological order – ie: the newest are at the top of the list below and the oldest at the bottom. Graves: Systems more than Stages      30/08/20 Piece examining the nature of stage the nature of stage theories and how the Graves Model is so much more than a stage theory Citizen-Driven Community and Nation-Building Article by Bjarni Snæbjörn Jónsson dealing with community engagement in large-scale change and using the drive for constitutional change in Iceland as application How the Plutocrats are waging War on the Bureaucrats… Piece using sociopsychological theory to explain the rise of nationalistic populism in the West The Trouble with… Read More

Bibliography H

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 Haaretz Service (2010): ‘Shas Spiritual Leader: Abbas and Palestinians should perish’ (Haaretz) http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/shas-spiritual-leader-abbas-and-palestinians-should-perish-1.310800 (Accessed: 08/08/14) Habermas, Jürgen (1962; translated by Thomas Burger with Frederick Lawrence, 1989): ‘The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry Into a Category of Bourgeois Society’ (Polity, Cambridge) Hackett, Conrad (2015): ‘5 Facts about the Muslim Population in Europe’ (Pew Research Center) http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/17/5-facts-about-the-muslim-population-in-europe/ (Accessed: 24/11/15) Haggbloom, Steven, Renee Warnick, Jason Warnick, Vinessa Jones, Gary Yarbrough, Tinea Russell, Chris Borecky, Reagan McGahhey, John Powell, Jamie Beavers & Emmanuelle Monte (2002): ‘The 100 Most Eminent Psychologists of the 20th Century’ in Review of General Psychology 6/2 Haggerty, Michael (1999): ‘Testing Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: National Quality-of-Life across Time’ in Journal of Social Indicators Research 46/3 Haidt, Jonathan (2001): ‘The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: a Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgement’ in Psychological Review 108/4 Haidt, Jonathan (2005): ‘The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom’ (Basic Books, New York NY) Haidt, Jonathan, Craig Joseph & Jesse Graham (2009): ‘Above and Below Left–Right: Ideological Narratives and Moral Foundations’ in… Read More

Bibliography G

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 Gaertner, Samuel, John Dovidio, P A Anastasio, B A Bachman & M C Rust (1993): ‘The Common In-group Identity Model: Recategorisation and the Reduction of Intergroup Bias’ in Wolfgang Stroebe & Miles Hewstone (eds): ‘European Review of Social Psychology Vol 4’ (Fourth Edition, Wiley New York NY) Galeano, Eduardo (1971; translated by Cedric Belfrage, 1973): ‘Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent’ (Monthly Press Review, New York NY) Galen, Claudius (translated by G Helmreich, 1878): ‘Galeni de Elementis ex Hippocrates Libri Il’ [‘On the Elements according to Hippocrates’] [Deichert, Erlangen) Gall, Carlotta & Thomas de Waal (1997): ‘Chechnya: A Small Victorious War’ (Pan, London) Galtung, Johan & Marie Holmboe Ruge (1970): ‘The Structure of Foreign News’ in Jeremy Tunstall: ‘Media Sociology: a Reader’ (Constable, London) Gamson, William, Bruce Fireman & Steven Rytina (1982): ‘Encounters with Unjust Authority’ (Dorsey Press, Homewood IL) Gana, Kamel, Yaël Saada & Aurélie Untas (2013): ‘Effects of Love Styles on Marital Satisfaction in Heterosexual Couples: a Dyadic Approach’ in Marriage & Family Review #49 Garcia, John, Frank Ervin & Robert Koelling… Read More