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Keith E Rice's Integrated SocioPsychology Blog & Pages

Aligning, integrating and applying the behavioural sciences

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Islamification: Europe’s Challenge

Relaunched: 28 November 2015 This feature was originally published as ‘Islamification: Britain’s Challenge’ in 9 June 2013. It is now updated, expanded and relaunched under its revised title to reflect the dramatic changes that have taken place since the original publication and to add more of a European dimension. Islamification is a highly-emotive word. For me personally, it instantly conjures up images of English Defence League (EDL) demonstrators with their ‘No more mosques!’ placards But Islamification should be a word that stirs the emotions, one way or the other. By definition (WordSense.eu), it is the process of converting a region or a society to Islam. If being in a society that is taken over by Islamists (political supporters of fundamentalist Islam) and introduces Sharia law is something you would welcome, then impending Islamification should give you comfort and possibly even joy. If, like me, you enjoy many of the freedoms (and indulgences) of living in what is increasingly a post-Christian, secular society, then Islamification may fill you with apprehension. In an Islamified Europe, non-Muslims would be ‘dhimmi’: second class citizens. So…is Islamification happening? If it is, how does Europe and, particularly for me, Britain deal with it? (Or does it deal with us?!?) Islam is… Read More

Is Racism Natural..?

Updated: 9 November 2015 In my past as a part-time teacher, teaching psychological and sociological approaches to prejudice & discrimination, every year I found myself confronted with this question from one or more of my A-Level students. With posters on some Internet discussion forums making statements like: “I think they [British National Party, Britain First, etc] is only saying what most people think but are too afraid to say” , it seems appropriate to me to revisit the students’ question from an Integrated SocioPsychology perspective. It was explaining Henri Tajfel & John Turner’s Social Identity Theory (1979) in relation to the formation of in-groups and out-groups that usually triggered the student’s question as to whether racism is natural. In essence, Tajfel & Turner say that, simply by identifying yourself with one group as opposed to another, your group becomes the in-group and the other becomes the out-group. According to Tajfel & Turner, this basic act of social categorisation – one group has one identity label and the other group has a different identity label – is enough to bring about prejudice and discrimination. Because we invest something of our self in the groups to which we belong, we need our in-groups to… 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

Attribution Theory

Updated: 17 June 2016 According to Fritz Heider (1958), we produce attributions (beliefs about the causes of behaviour) based on two sources of information… Internal attributions – based on something within the individual whose behaviour is being observed – their natural character External attributions – based on something external to that individual – nothing to do with who they are specifically, it is the situation they are in Internal attributions are often referred to as dispositional attributions while external attributions are called situational attributions. Internal or External Locus of Control? In his development of Attribution Theory, Heider was concerned primarily with how we understand the behaviour of others. The mechanisms for how we attribute the behaviour of others have been explored with varying degrees of success in Correspondent Inference Theory, Covariation Theory and Causal Schemata. However, Julian B Rotter (1966) focused on how people attribute the reasons for their own behaviour. From his research, Rotter concluded that people tend to have either:- internal locus of control – ie: they decide what to do – the root of their behaviour is dispositional external locus of control – ie: their behaviour is shaped by external, situational factors – eg: expectations Rotter found that,… Read More

Crime & Deviance – the Difference

12 June 2020 Crime can be defined as the form of deviance that involves an infraction of the criminal law and is subject to official punishment. Not all laws are criminal – civil law and constitutional law are 2 other key areas of the law. Not all illegal acts are necessarily deviant – eg: in the UK it is illegal to use your mobile phone (without it being handsfree) while driving but the sheer number of people who do so suggests that they do not see that behaviour as deviant. Sociologists have suggested 2 distinct definitions of deviance: normative and relativistic. Deviance: the Normative Definition This definition can be summed up as ‘the violation of social norms’. Thus, deviance is culturally determined. Deviance is often thought of in terms of deviation from accepted social standards – eg: certain kinds of sexual behaviour or drug use. However, people who are mentally ill are often treated as deviants. (See What is Mental Illness? ) Even harmless eccentrics may be considered deviant – or, according to Erich Goode (2008), people who have been heavily tattooed or pierced. In some cultures, deviation from a strict political and/or religious orthodoxy is considered deviant and may invoke penalties under… Read More

Functionalism

Updated: 18 May 2017 Functionalism is a Structuralist theory – hence it is sometimes known as Structural Functionalism. It is a ‘top-down’ theory that focuses on society rather than the individuals within it. As such, it is a powerful concept for exploring the Lower Right in 4Q/8L and how it influences and is influenced by the Lower Left – structuration, in Anthony Giddens’ (1984) terms. In Functionalism society is the focus because the individual is produced by society – ‘social products’, as George Herbert Mead (1913) termed them. People are the product of all the social influences on them: their family, friends, educational and religious background, their experiences at work, in leisure, and their exposure to the media. All of these influences make them who and what they are and how they perceive themselves: the confluence of schemas in their selfplexes. In this view, people are born into society, play their role in it – like cogs on a wheel – and then die. However, the deaths of individuals do not mean the end of society. Society continues long after they are gone. According to Émile Durkheim (1893), beliefs and moral codes are passed on (memetically) from one generation to the next.… Read More

Reciprocal Determinism

Updated: 2 May 2016 The model of Reciprocal Determinism was developed by Albert Bandura (1977). It considers how what we do and who we spend time with – our Behaviour – impacts upon and changes the life conditions in the Environment we experience and how we respond cognitively and emotionally – and possibly physiologically too – as a Person to the environmental feedback we then receive. Unlike the determinism of straight-forward Behaviourism, Bandura posits that we can influence the Environment as well as the Environment influencing us. Bandura (1999) terms the actor acting upon their environment personal agency. If the environmental feedback is favourable, then that will have a reinforcing effect likely to lead to repetition of the behaviour. If the environmental feedback is unfavourable, then that may lead to changes in beliefs and attitudes and consequently behaviour, depending on just what sense we make of the feedback. The sense we make will clearly depend on what meta-programmes are being run by what vMEMES and what schemas are challenged. Bandura was the leading Social Learning theoretician of the mid-late 20th Century. While the concept of the Environment determining Behaviour is rooted in Behaviourism, Social Learning Theory built on Edward C Tolman’s (1932) position of there… Read More

Career

Updated: 5 December 2020 1988-1996    1997   1998     1999     2000     2001    2002      2003     2004     2005     2006     2007     2008     2009     2010     2011     2012     2013     2014      2015     2016     2017     2018      2019     2020    2021-2023 21st Century Group     HemsMESH     Humber MeshWORKS     Humberside MESH Network A middle class boy, born to parents from the upper working classes who had worked their way up into the lower professional grades, I was privileged to have parents who both cared for me and drove me – especially my father. My parents – like most! – had many faults and left me with more than a few issues – see: The Counsellor gets counselled! Yet overall they gave me a good start in life, pushing me through the 11-Plus and the grammar school system to do what had been almost impossible for upper working class teenagers of their generation: to go to university. I was raised mostly in the Lancashire (now Merseyside) town of St Helens…but the bulk of my family were in nearby Liverpool. And Liverpool, in the early-mid 1960s was the epicentre of the musical and social revolution that began with The Beatles and expanded through ‘Merseybeat’. A tremendously exciting… Read More

North Lincolnshire CIT

Investing in the Team…to invest in the Community! written with Jenny Gavin-Allen Updated: 1 October 2004 In early 2002 David Burnby was doing some extended work as a freelance facilitator and consultant with North Lincolnshire Council’s Community Investment Team. In conversation with Team Manager Jenny Gavin-Allen, he talked several times about a Psychology course he had undertaken training in the previous Summer, An Introduction to Spiral Dynamics & Related Models of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. For David, in part at least, the course was something of a life-changing experience. Both challenged by the models presented in the workshop programme and emboldened by the understanding they gave him, he subsequently quit his lucrative position as Director of Common Purpose in Hull to fulfil his frustrated ambition of working as an independent operator. Listening to him so talk enthusiastically about the models and their applicability to community regeneration issues, Jenny was intrigued. David then let on that his enthusiasm for the course was so great he had decided to promote and stage the next programme – the third to be delivered in Hull – under his own name – thus allowing me, as course facilitator, to concentrate purely on delivery. Naturally David invited Jenny to… Read More