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Keith E Rice's Integrated SocioPsychology Blog & Pages

Aligning, integrating and applying the behavioural sciences

stereotypes’

Chesham & Amersham: a Middle-Class Revolt brewing?

It was, of course, only a byelection. There were clearly very important local issues – in particular, the impact of HS2 on the area and fears about the Government’s planning reforms – and the Liberal Democrats have a long history of exploiting local issues with great success at byelections. However, the sheer size of Sarah Green’s victory – overturning a 16,000 Tory majority for an 8,000 Lib Dem majority in a seat that has only ever been Tory – has got a number of pundits looking for national electoral significance in the result. It could be as shallow as “Some voters just don’t like Boris” – as ‘one senior Tory’ told The Guardian’s Katy Balls. Certainly there are many things about Boris Johnson himself – from his dishevelled appearance to his overt contempt for the rule of law – that irk an awful lot of people. However, it may be that the voters of Chesham & Amersham have to come to dislike the narrow-minded, xenophobic, neo-racist, authoritarian and brazenly self-interested-to-the-point-of-outright corruption brand of Toryism that Johnson and his cronies have infected the Conservative Party with. A dislike so intense they broke with lifelong support of the Conservatives and gave their vote to… Read More

Prejudice & Discrimination Theories #2

PART 2 Realistic Conflict Theory It is widely recognised that people tend to identify with their groups. They also tend to have negative views about some other groups – out-groups. But why do some outgroups attract hostility and discrimination but others are treated neutrally or sometimes even admired? This is what Realistic Conflict Theory (RCT) tries to explain. RCT states that, whenever there are 2 or more groups seeking the same limited resources, this will lead to conflict, negative stereotypes and beliefs about the out-group – prejudice –  and discrimination between the groups. The negative beliefs about the out-group become shared memes, affecting the schematic set-up of the group members. The conflict generated can lead to increasing animosity and eventually to violence. Competition over resources can be played out as a ‘zero-sum game’, in which only one group is the winner (obtained the needed or wanted resources) and the other loses (unable to obtain the limited resource due to the winning group achieving the limited resource first). The likely length and severity of the conflict is based upon the perceived value and shortage of the given resource. It is tempting to think of ‘limited resources’ as BEIGE survival needs – eg:… Read More

Maintenance and Breakdown of Relationships

Relaunched: 8 December 2018 George Levinger (1977) developed a 5-stage model of relationships, providing a complete overview from beginning to end. In many ways the first 3 stages parallel the Stimulus-Value-Role model of Bernard Murstein (1970). However, like Ichak Adizes (1999) who applied his Organisation LifeCycle concept to relationships, the last 2 stages imply a certain inevitability that a relationship will decline unless strategies are deployed to maintain the relationship and keep it in what Adizes calls ‘Prime’. The first intention of this piece is to consider how relationships can kept in Prime or brought back to it. It is usually relatively easy to keep a relationship going in the ‘first flushes’ of love when the partners idealise each other and there is lots of sexual activity. A year or so later when sexual activity has decreased – William H James‘ (1981) ‘honeymoon effect’ – and the partners are struggling to deal with the ‘daily grind of real life’, maintaining those idealised feelings about your partner and the relationship can be quite a task. Peter Pineo (1961) identified that, in many marriages, relationship satisfaction decreases almost linearly with length of time of the relationship. Ted Huston, Susan McHale & Ann Crouter (1986)… Read More

Looking Beyond the Midterm Elections

In Quest for Humanity’s Master Code by Don Beck 6 November 2018 I am thrilled to publish this ‘guest blog’ by Spiral Dynamics co-developer Don Beck which has been published elsewhere – such as Said E Dawlabani’s MEMEnomics Group – and has been sent to several media outlets.  Don is, of course, writing about the left-right extreme polarisation in American politics which has become such as dominating and divisive discourse in the United States since Donald Trump began his presidential campaign in 2016. But the Brexit ‘debate’ – and ‘debate’ may too polite a term for it! – has wrought similar highly-polarised divisions in British society. As with the US, so superordinate goals will need to be created in the UK to bring our divided kingdom together in a healing process. A great deal of what Don has to say is relevant to all societies bedevilled by polarisation. You can e-mail Don or visit the Spiral Dynamics Integral website to find out more about his work. I want you to stand 30 years in the future and tell me if the America you see is the one you envisioned in November 2018. Has the ‘us v them’ polarization disappeared? Have we become a stronger union because of it, or did one… Read More

vMEMES #3

PART 3 BLUE (D-Q) (elements of Maslow’s Cognitive/Loevinger’s Conformist L-3/Kohlberg’s Law & Order) The BLUE vMEME is concerned with the imposition of order and the one right way of doing things. It often runs a Little Detail meta-programme because deviation from the ‘One True Way’ cannot be tolerated. BLUE-related memes are often couched in negative don’t! terms.) Cook-Greuter (p14) states that “Blind conformism, fundamentalism and prejudice can be expressions of this frame of mind.” Doing what is right is far more important than compassion or consideration of human cost. BLUE carries out the Conscience function of Freud’s Superego. In anthropological/historical terms, a major example of the large-scale emergence of the BLUE vMEME in the Western world was the coming of the mercantile trading laws in the 17th Century. (These are embodied today in the work of the World Trade Organisation.) However, the monasteries of the Middle Ages, several hundred years before, were prominent in promulgating a rigid set of moral ideals based on the ‘word of God’. In fact, it’s possible to trace BLUE back at least as far as Moses and the writing of the Pentateuch. BLUE’s requirement of detail means that the written word, particularly in terms of the… Read More

Knowing Me, Knowing You – Excerpts

Excerpt #1: Do I really know Myself? Well, do you? Do you really know yourself? And, if you do know yourself, are you happy with your self? Do you like you? If you do…great! If you don’t…not so great…. I’ve been a management consultant for some 16 years, working in both the public and private sectors. This has often involved close coaching and/or mentoring with senior people, leading sometimes to deeply personal conversations and periodically therapeutic interventions. For the last 6 years I have also worked as a practitioner in ‘personal change therapy’ for people from all walks of life. And still, occasionally, it surprises me how many people who come to me on a professional basis either don’t know who they really are or what they’re about. Or they don’t understand why they behave in certain ways. In other words, they don’t understand themselves. Why they are like they are. In some cases, they can’t really see what they are like – and the impact what they are like has on others. Often the people they care for most!   These folks are confused. Sometimes they really hurt. It’s even worse when they do recognise what they are like …and they… Read More

Glossary I

Nos   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 Id: in Psychoanalytic Theory the Id is the innate part of the mind which operates on the ‘Pleasure Principle’ and is concerned only with fulfilling its desires, without regard to either morality or consequence. According to Sigmund Freud (1923), the Id has 2 instinctual drives:- Eros – the life instinct, the drive to express oneself as alive – Freud (1905) originally conceived the Id in terms of sex drive but later broadened it into the life drive (perhaps with sex, the creation of new life, as the ultimate expression of life) Thanatos – the death instinct, the drive to destroy self as well as others – a late addition to Freud’s theories reputed to be inspired by the wanton slaughter on the battlefields of World War I and, according to Max Schur (1972), the death of his daughter Sophie in the influenza epidemic of 1919. In Integrated SocioPsychology terms the concept of the Id is reflected in the self-orientation of the warm-coloured vMEMES on Clare W Graves’ Spiral and can be seen at its most… Read More

What is Romantic Love?

Relaunched: 5 November 2018 Being able to define ‘romantic love’ and understand how it comes about, how it works, how it lasts, how it changes and how it all too often fades is a set of challenges that has beguiled philosophers throughout the millennia and over the past couple of centuries psychologists and, to some extent, sociologists too. The theme of romantic love – and the sex that usually goes with it – is one of the most pervasive memes of our times. It dominates Western culture: approximately 90% of all pop music is concerned with it and it is at the core of many dramas – whether on TV, in films or in books. In so doing, it gives a great many of us a mission in life: to find that ‘special person’ to love and be loved by. The love to be obtained is as seen as somehow mystical; and terms with a hint of mysticism are often used for the special person such as ‘soulmate’ and ‘life partner’. Of course, while men and women in all civilisations seem to experience romantic love, not all cultures regard it as a suitable basis for marriage. Phil Shaver, Shelley Wu & Judith Schwartz (1991) compared… Read More

Prejudice & Discrimination Theories

Relaunched: 22 November 2020 Prejudice and discrimination blight our world, causing misery to billions and often leading to violence, sometimes in the extreme. Discriminatory violence can range from an attack on an individual to war by one country against another – even to genocide, So it is desperately important to understand how such processes work and what leads to them. Accordingly it is important to understand the difference between prejudice and discrimination – especially as they are often confused in the popular media. Prejudice This is defined by John Dovidio & Samuel Gaertner (2010) as an attitude towards a person based on their perceived group membership. The term is often used to refer to a preconceived, usually unfavourable, evaluation of another person based on that person’s political affiliation, sex, gender, beliefs, values, social class, age, disability, religion, sexuality, race, ethnicity, language, nationality, physical appearance, occupation, education, criminality, sport team affiliation or other personal characteristics. This attitude towards another person may be based on little or no knowledge of them. Eg: someone is considered to be untrustworthy with young children because they are gay. However, not all prejudice is considered negative. For example, patriotism is often thought to be desirable. In prejudice… Read More

Schemas & Memes

Updated: 15 May 2017 Love is a meme. The Beatles made great music is a meme. Smart clothes is a meme. Smart is a meme. Clothes is a meme. Depression, as a description of a weather system, is a meme. Weather system is a meme. Weather is a meme. System is a meme. Depression, as a description of a mental state, is a meme. Mental is a meme. State is a meme. Schema is a meme. Meme is a meme. And, if you take this in and believe it, then meme is one of your schemas! (The plural of schema is sometimes referenced as schemata.) Schemas and memes are arguably two reflectors of the same concept – ideas! (from the instinctive and unspoken structural to the metaphysical abstract) – in different contexts. The theories around both terms emphasise the enormous impact of ideas upon the human psyche. A schema can be defined as any cognitive construct or encoded packet of information in the mind-brain. A meme is a unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is contained in a medium of communication – eg: a book – or is transmitted verbally or by repeated action (behaviour) from one… Read More