Variability in the collective behaviour of England fans at Euro2004: ‘Hooliganism’, public order policing and social change

This paper presents an analysis of collective behaviour among England football fans attending the European football championships in Portugal (Euro2004). Given this category's violent reputation, a key goal was to explore the processes underlying their apparent shift away from conflict in match cities. Drawing from the elaborated social identity model of crowd behaviour (ESIM) data were obtained using semi‐structured observations and interviews before, during and after the tournament. Qualitative analysis centres first on three key incidents in match cities where the potential for violence was undermined either by ‘self‐policing’ among England fans, or by appropriately targeted police intervention. These are contrasted with two ‘riots’ involving England fans that occurred in Algarve during the tournament. A phenomenological analysis of England fans' accounts suggests that the contexts created by different forms of policing helped bring to the fore different understandings of what constituted proper and possible behaviour among England fans, and that these changes in identity content underpinned shifts toward and away from collective conflict. The implications of this analysis for the ESIM, understanding public order policing, social change and social conflict are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social differentiation between ‘dominant’ and ‘dominated’ groups: Toward an integration of social stereotypes and social identity

In the experiment reported here, 116 male and female adult subjects allocated the points of Tajfel's matrices to the self; an ingroup (same sex), and an outgroup (opposite sex) member, on the basis of gender stereotypical comparison dimensions, individually or in the presence of an ingroup and two outgroup members. Results show that interindividual and intergroup differentiation are associated with masculine characteristics, but not with feminine ones and that there are differences in the male and female patterns of differentiation. Results are discussed within the framework of social identity theory. A theoretical integration of social stereotypes and social identity is proposed, in order to elucidate the process of intergroup discrimination between gender categories.     

The evolving normative dimensions of ‘riot’: Towards an elaborated social identity explanation

The question of how normative form changes during a riot, and thus how collective behaviour spreads to different targets and locations, has been neglected in previous research, despite its theoretical and practical importance. We begin to address this limitation through a detailed analysis of the rioting in the London borough of Haringey in 2011. A triangulated analysis of multiple sources of data (including police reports, media accounts, and videos) finds a pattern of behaviour shifting from collective attacks on police targets to looting. A thematic analysis of 41 interview accounts with participants gathered shortly after the events suggests that a shared anti‐police identity allowed local postcode rivalries to be overcome, forming the basis of empowered action not only against the police but to address more long‐standing grievances and desires. It is argued that collective psychological empowerment operated in a ‘positive feedback loop’, whereby one form of collective self‐objectification (and perceived inability of police to respond) formed the basis of further action. This analysis of the development of new targets in an empowered crowd both confirms and extends the elaborated social identity model as an explanation for conflictual intergroup dynamics.     

The new social psychology and ‘fascism’

This article examines the claims of ethnomethodologists, symbolic interactionists and ethogenists to provide an improved basis for social psychology. The basic assumptions of these approaches are outlined, especially their common emphasis upon language and meaning. However, differences between the approaches are also noted. The problem is how this new social psychology would be capable of dealing with important social issues, such as fascism. There are criticisms from the point of view of the new social psychology of previous approaches to the social psychology of fascism, i.e., the authoritarian personality and value-analysis. A historiographical survey of fascism is made to show the sorts of problems which could be tackled by the new social psychology, particularly in relations to the concept of ‘fascism’ itself. However, it is argued that the new perspectives are inappropriate for a serious examination of a social issue like fascism, because they lack clear political commitment. They are based upon attitudes of either disassociation or sympathetic understanding, both of which are unsatisfactory for an examination of fascism. A return to a socially committed social psychology is urged.     

‘Coming out’ and sexual debut: understanding the social context of HIV risk-related behaviour

This paper explores HIV risk-related behaviour in the context of men's entry into the gay community. It is an exploratory study which employed a qualitative approach to describe men's accounts of the process of acculturation. Twenty in-depth interviews were conducted with working-class gay men from Barnsley, UK. These were translated and analysed, using interpretative phenomenological analysis, for recurrent themes which reflect the way gay men thought about HIV risk-related behaviour, ‘coming out’ and their sexual debut. As men began to socialize with other gay men in their local community they had much to learn with regard to local gay culture, e.g. a distinct new vocabulary and local sexual mores. By virtue of their lack of experience and the personal impact of first sexual experiences, some men reported feelings of disempowerment with their initial sexual partners. Theoretical accounts relating to gay men's sexual health would benefit from a consideration of the way gay men report the process of acculturation. Sexual debut and the particular vulnerabilities of entry into the gay community highlight a temporal context in which affective experiences are privileged above considerations of sexual health. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Contact and identity: The experience of ‘China goods’ in a Ghanaian marketplace

The rise in Chinese traders and increased availability of low‐cost imported goods benefits consumers, challenges local African retailers and is a point of tension in local communities. China's presence in Africa has been largely discussed and analysed through a political economy perspective. The social impact in local communities has been documented anecdotally but has yet to be empirically studied. This study took place in Makola Market, Accra, Ghana, to investigate the emerging intergroup encounters between established Ghanaian traders and nascent Chinese traders. Photo‐elicited semi‐structured interviews were conducted to explore how their interrelated experiences shape their interpretative framework and inform the dialectic of contact and social identity. I draw on these interpretative frameworks to propose a new model of contact, the Tri‐relational Contact Model, to capture and highlight how people's experiences include contact relationships with not just each other, but also with their places of business and the goods of trade. The findings from this study empirically highlight the micro‐level impact of China's presence in Ghana and help re‐conceptualize the contact hypothesis through a new model of contact with greater analytical utility to explicate the relational nature of contact and social identity formation. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Perceptions of social influence when messages favour ‘us’ versus ‘them’: A closer look at the social distance effect

The third‐person effect (TPE) is the tendency for individuals to assume that persuasive communications have a stronger effect on other people than on themselves. In turn the social distance effect (SDE) is the tendency for this TPE to increase with the psychological distance between self and comparator. Two experiments showed that the SDE is moderated by whether the message favours the ingroup or the outgroup, holding all other content constant. In Study 1, male and female participants read a message arguing that either women were better drivers than men or vice versa, and then indicated how much they thought themselves, ingroup members, outgroup members and society would be influenced. The results indicate that for the pro‐outgroup message the SDE was found. However, for the pro‐ingroup message the SDE was reversed with ingroup members perceived as more influenced than all other targets, including the self. Study 2 replicated this finding using minimal groups, which eliminated the effects of prior stereotypes about male and female drivers. Across both studies the self was perceived as relatively invulnerable to influence regardless of message bias. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The ‘why’ and ‘why not’ of job search behaviour: their relation to searching,unemployment experience,and well‐being

Two studies (n = 273 and 254) used self‐determination theory (SDT) to examine unemployed people's motivation both to search and not to search for a job. The self‐regulation questionnaire format (Ryan & Connell, 1989) was used to assess participants' autonomous and controlled job‐search motivation (the ‘why’ of job search) as well as their amotivation for searching. Additionally, both autonomous and controlled motivation for not searching (the ‘why not’ of job search) was assessed. Results provide validity for these five motivational constructs and indicate, in line with SDT, that the constructs predicted reports of search behaviour, affective experiences, and well‐being. The addition of autonomous and controlled motivation for not searching contributed additional predictive power beyond the motivational constructs that focused only on searching. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Proposal for a heuristic quasi-social analysis of social behaviour: The case of Harlow's ‘Nature of Love’

Social psychology traditionally studies conspecific (homosocial) determinants of human behaviour. This suggests that an adequate understanding of (human) conspecific influence and interaction presupposes research on uniquely social psychological processes, effects and theories that lay beyond the reach of standard psychological concepts, procedures and theories. A fundamental and cumulative science of behaviour (homosocial or not) might profit from a heuristic quasi-social analysis, as a research tool for a more parsimonious conceptual screening of homosocial phenomena. Whenever the phenomenon under study is experienced, at the pre-scientific level, as genuinely social, one of three quasi-social contrast filters can be superposed upon it: (1) a heteroquasisocial contrast in which the homosocial determinant is substituted by a member of another species (e.g. man-dog); (2) an object-quasisocial contrast in which the other becomes an inanimate object (e.g. woman-P. C.); (3) an auto-quasisocial contrast in which the organism interacts with or influences itself (dog chasing her own tail). Theories and processes whose essential features are masked by any of the three quasi-social filters, should be considered as only quasi-social. They do not justify a separate homosocial science of behaviour. The proposal is illustrated by a quasi-social screening of Harlow S classic analysis of the Nature of Love.     

The ‘crisis’ in social psychology,an empirical approach

The preponderance of empirical research in social psychology has ofren been a central issue in the ‘crisis literature’. However, no extensive empirical study has ever been undertaken vis a vis the ‘crisis’ in social psychology. In two studies, factors effecting the perceptions of social psychologists of their discipline were investigated. Although in the first study, among Dutch social psychologists, four hypotheses were tested and confirmed, a large part of the total variance in the perception of the ‘crisis’ remained unexplained. In the second study, both a worldwide sample of active social psychological researchers as well as a sample of authors of the ‘crisis literature’ were surveyed. The stances of both groups differed considerably. Although a majority of the active researchers did not agree that a crisis is at hand in social psychology, a large minority did. The active researchers agreed with many of the criticisms of social psychological research and theorizing. Attitudes on nine central issues, including the functioning of the editor/reviewer publishing system, predicted a large percentage of the total variance in the subjects' attitude toward the existence of a ‘crisis’ in their discipline.     

From the ‘Village of a Thousand Souls’ to ‘Race Crossing in Jamaica’: Arnold Gesell,eugenics and child development

Perhaps best known for providing age‐related norms in early development, norms that are still used as a basis for measures of developmental maturity, Arnold Gesell was a key figure in developmental psychology from the 1920s through the 1950s. After examining Gesell's reputation and status in the field, we explore Gesell's changing relationship to eugenics, both in terms of Gesell's often contradictory attitudes about the role of hereditary and environmental influences in development, and in terms of the broader relationship between the eugenics movement and science. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The sandwich model: The ‘music and dance’ of therapeutic action

My premise is that a ‘layered’ approach is necessary to understand the process of exchanges that result in therapeutic change. I imagine these processes occurring in three layers – although the number of domains in which change is taking place is actually infinite – such as in a sandwich. The top layer, or top slice of bread of the sandwich, represents a broad view of the change process; it is non‐linear and includes the feature of uncertainty, a general principle of dynamic systems theory. The middle layer, or the meat of the sandwich, is explained by theories that are immediately and clinically useful to a therapist, such as psychoanalytic theories. These are primarily linear theories and use language and symbols to ‘tell a story of what happened’. The bottom layer, or bottom slice of bread of the sandwich, is the micro‐process; this layer includes the moment‐to‐moment patterns of coordinated rhythms that both communicate meaning and provide the essential scaffold for all higher‐level change processes. The micro‐process also requires a non‐linear theory to make sense of its variability and emergent properties. Taking a bite out of the sandwich will include a ‘polysemic bundle of communicative behaviors’ (Harrison and Tronick, 2011). I will illustrate the ‘sandwich model’ with the clinical case of the analytic treatment of a 5 year‐old boy.     

Rational model and justification model in ‘outcome bias’

The authors of this study suggest that the harm‐punishment link (‘outcome bias’) can be explained by the activation of different judgment processes depending on the outcome severity of an offense: (1) a rational model for mild outcomes in which punishment is necessarily linked to responsibility of the perpetrator; (2) a justification model for severe outcomes in which punishment and responsibility are linked only when assessment order allows the latter to rationalize the former. Participants (126 university students) considered an unintentional road accident with mild or severe outcomes and made judgments of responsibility, punishment, and perceived seriousness of the offense. The results support the authors' hypothesis. In the discussion, the authors suggest different motives of punishment (preventive or compensative justice) which explain why responsibility and punishment are not necessarily linked. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Beyond ‘nothing to hide’: When identity is key to privacy threat under surveillance

Privacy is psychologically important, vital for democracy, and in the era of ubiquitous and mobile surveillance technology, facing increasingly complex threats and challenges. Yet surveillance is often justified under a trope that one has ‘nothing to hide’. We conducted focus groups (N = 42) on topics of surveillance and privacy and using discursive analysis, identify the ideological assumptions and the positions that people adopt to make sense of their participation in a surveillance society. We find a premise that surveillance is increasingly inescapable, but this was only objected to when people reported feeling misrepresented, or where they had an inability to withhold aspects of their identities. The (in)visibility of the surveillance technology also complicated how surveillance is constructed. Those interested in engaging the public in debates about surveillance may be better served by highlighting the identity consequences of surveillance, rather than constructing surveillance as a generalised privacy threat.     

From cooperation to conflict: The role of collective narratives in shaping group behaviour

In this paper, we review the concept of collective narratives and their role in shaping group behaviour. We see collective narratives as ‘meta-stories’ embraced by groups that incorporate values and beliefs about social reality, therefore providing a blueprint for group norms which, in turn, inform group members' behaviour. Our aim is to both describe the psychological processes underpinning the relation between collective narratives and group behaviours and develop an integrative typology of the functions of collective narratives (as they connect to various collective behaviours). We start by discussing definitions in the recent literature and propose an integrative conceptualisation which positions collective narratives in the context of collective action research. Next, we focus on the process by which collective narratives provide the bases for identity formation, development, and change, thus shaping group behaviour. We see collective narratives as central in understanding group behaviour, as they function as ‘meta-stories’ that incorporate moral codes and values, and beliefs about the ingroups and outgroups—providing a blueprint for group norms which, in turn, inform group members' behaviour. In the second part of the article, we describe a typology of collective narratives according to their functions, structured around two core dimensions: the context/s in which collective narratives develop and are shared (i.e., intragroup vs. intergroup) and their effects within these contexts (i.e., driving consensus vs. driving dissent). We identify four distinctive types of collective narrative functions and review research showing how each of them shapes specific social identity content, including behaviour prescribing norms. We then show how these specific norms shape behaviours ranging from cooperation and pro-social action to hostile intergroup conflict. The implications of this contribution are twofold. First, by providing a systematic account and categorisation of how collective narratives function in society and of their connections to social identities (and their content), we can more accurately deduct group norms and predict behaviours in specific circumstances, including in relation to political violence. Second, by better understanding the narratives that provide the bases of identity formation, development, and change, we can improve attempts to create alternative narratives that unify rather than divide people, so that pathways to co-operation might be chosen over conflict.     

From parent education to collective action: ‘Childrearing with love’ in post‐war Guatemala

The paper discusses the implementation and effect of group‐based parenting workshops oriented by the principles of liberation psychology in a low‐income, hispanicized community in Guatemala City. The objective of this initiative was not only to improve outcomes in the parent–child relationship, but to galvanize the formation of community‐based support groups that could have multiple ends. The theoretical foundations of the project are introduced, before illustrating their practical application. Sixteen months post‐intervention, largely positive effects were being sustained in parent child relations. The project was also successful in generating social action through the formation of grass‐roots women's organizations. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘Translation’ and ‘transformation’ in the analytic situation: Freud – Bion – Laplanche

Following a short introduction to the core theses of Jean Laplanche’s theory of a ‘general seduction’ the author presents the resultant clinical position of the analyst. In the same way that an adult sends ‘enigmatic messages’ to the child, it is the analyst’s task to reopen this primal situation so that the patient can find new ‘translations’ for these messages. Laplanche distinguishes between the function of the analytic frame – which represents and supports attachment – and the ‘sexual’– which is the repressed and constitutes the unconscious. Only the focus on this unconscious facilitates the deconstruction of ‘incorrect’ translations. Accordingly, the analyst, says Laplanche, should not take part in construction – this is a self‐construction of the patient – but only in reconstruction. The author compares this clinical model with Freud’s notions and the ‘transformation processes’ through the alpha function as described by Bion. She illustrates Laplanche’s model and the interpretation strategy with case material.