Time To Renew

To make space for itself on this landscape, then, the Liberal Party would have to show an unaccustomed boldness and sureness of purpose: a willingness to go where the other parties would not go, but where expert opinion and the national interest would advise, whether this placed it on the right or the left on any given issue. That would be its stamp, its brand: the bold party, the tell it like it is party, the party that did the right thing.

So it would seem advisable for third-partyists (tripartisans?) to be readying, at the very least, a Plan B. If, that is, the Liberals should prove incapable of saving themselves, it may be time to start thinking seriously about a new party.

Politics is about more than just governance - it's about competition, being oneself at the expense of someone else.  This is as true between political Parties vying for dominance and control as it is between nations fighting over land, resources or economic supremacy.  

Partisanship is as much about tribalism as it is ideology.  In fact, when all ideologies are taken to extremes, they tend to bleed in to each other.

Brand is the flag we veil our tribalism in (my country right or wrong, etc.) that allows us to identify competitors as Other, thereby skirting around the Golden Rule.

Policy, on the other hand, must be inclusive and balanced to be effective.  This cannot be achieved if policy makers - partisan politicians - are putting tribal interests ahead of the common good. 

There is not a single political institution in history that has continuously overcome the temptation to skew the public good here or there for partisan gain.  Of course, no government in history has been held to the mass scrutiny that is possible today.  The politics of the present is projected in HD; every blemish is magnified a hundred fold.  Increasingly, we don't like what we're seeing reflected - and increasingly, there's no where to hide from the truth.

There is an undeniable reality emerging.  I'm going to one-up Andrew Coyne and say it's not just Political Parties or even our political system that needs a revamp to meet the needs of the time.  The changes happening out there are too vast for that; society as a whole is chafing under the skin of outdated institutions. 

It's us that needs to change. 

Identity is about the trickiest form of governance - over oneself and the face one presents to the world.  Our selves don't exist in isolation; we are surrounded by id.  Of course, we have always been more than islands; human beings have a deep yearning to belong, to be part of something greater than ourselves, to know and be known. Which is why we became tribal, or partisan, in the first place.

To make space for ourselves in an increasingly interwoven social landscape, we must become conscious of who we are, as individuals, and where we fit in the broader social organism.  The process of doing so will redefine how we see ourselves and, frighentingly, remove some of the barriers of perception that have made us feel safe, like a garden wall.  It's as those walls come down and we are forced to define ourselves as individuals whose actions have broader, social  consequences that we will begin to experience true freedom - not of body in space, but of mind in body.

For some, this process will be too much and seem too cataclysmic, almost sinful.  Those who cling to the comforts of tradition in the face of progression will fight against change, as they do every generation.  That is their choice, but they will inevitably get washed away in the tide of social transformation. 

After all, there are some laws that transcend short-term societal conventions: first among them, adapt to survive.

Stephen Harper: Little Fish, Big Pond

It is all so penny-wise and pound foolish, especially for a country that once prided itself on punching above its weight and, more important, understood that this is a relatively small country with huge international interests. Now, Canada has retreated into an anglospheric worldview coupled with a focus on trade deals, but lacking any sense of a wider conception of international affairs.

Hectoring and lecturing undoubtedly appeals to the Conservative Party's core voters. It does not impress other governments, including friendly ones.

After all of his Machivellian planning, wooing ethnic voters, carefully building wedges between voter blocks and a never-ending attack on the personalities, values and family history of opponents, Harper has his majority.  That was what he was after – a chance to be The Man, get revenge for past rebukes and show those who have mocked him his whole life who’s boss.

It’s beyond tragic that as soon as he got that majority, Harper gave up his Machiavellian cunning; instead of strategically strengthening Canada’s already influential position on the world stage, he essentially morphed himself from bully to petulant.  Harper is trying to be tough in a traditional sense at a time where long-game strategic collaboration with partners is increasingly the way forward.  Because he’s so determined to not have anyone tell him what to do, directly, he is completely blind to the subtle forces leading him around by the nose.

Far from becoming a power player, Harper is turning Canada into a global farce, a shadow of what we once were.

Do Canadians care?  Not enough.  At least not yet.  None of this resonates in our daily lives in directly observable ways.  Equally, we have no alternative.

Here’s where a significant opportunity lies for a renewed Liberal Party – to step up to the plate in the global game and bring Canadians along with them.  The eventual new Liberal Leader should be unafraid to speak out about global issues that directly and indirectly impact Canada which, as the world’s most diverse country, can and should serve as a model for how the world can succeed together.

But what is the example that Canada sets?  Who are we, what do we stand for, what do we bring to the table?  We aren’t going to compete militarily with the US, let alone China.  Yes, we have natural resources, but so do many places, and Africa is going to be the big playing field tomorrow – not us, unless it’s over food security and fresh water.

Canada should exemplify the best of what the world has to offer – in terms of a diverse economic base, a rich culture that blends and builds on our rich multiculturalism and focuses on developing win-win scenarios for all nations.  In one phrase – strength through diversity.

Today, more than ever, Canada needs a leader with vision - one who isn't trying to be a small fish in a big pond, but who will serve as as a river to their people.

Find Success Through Empowering Your Employees

Most make minimum wage – for students, that’s $9.60 an hour; liquor servers make $8.90 an hour.

So, if you get good service, most people happily dig a little deeper for a tip.

The only snag is that recently some restaurants have been “tipping out” – a practices that forces staff to share their tips with managers and owners of the restaurant.

It’s petty, it’s cynical, it’s essentially feudal – I give you the privilege of working for me, you even get a salary; you owe me for that privilege.  I’ve written previously about this dominance-model mentality where the boss sees themselves as a feudal lord, entitled to do whatever with their employees, who are essentially beasts of burden.  In today’s economy, this generally takes the form of employers telling employees that their carrots and sticks will be determined not just on the quality of their work, but their ability to find new directions for a business/company to pursue.

Here’s the thing; though we tell ourselves that whoever has the gold makes the rules, the reality is there are social and motivational laws, almost like gravity, that trump any of our impositions.  We don’t motivate employees the right way, because we can’t be bothered to think of them as equals.  When one’s eye is so firmly fixed on the bottom line, you miss the opportunities you have to raise the bar.

If you want more money out of a business, don’t give your employees less and pressure them to do more.  That leads to poor service, higher turnover and lost customers.  Empower them.  Train them.  Give them skin in the game – make them feel like it’s as much their business as it is yours.

This is even truer in the creative sectors like consulting or policy.  Employers, fixed in their ways and uncertain where tomorrow’s opportunities lie are turning to employees and pressuring them through carrots and sticks to come up with new ideas and new markets.  They’re making it a competitive game between their teams to see who can be the most creative and get the perks.  This is so counterintuitive as to be comedic.

It’s also a trend that’s dying out.  Whether employers like it or not, the rules are changing further still – social media is empowering the individual in ways we’re just starting to grasp.  Knowing their personal brands are at stake through association, young folk are demanding more from their employers in terms of accountability.  Smart employers are realizing this trend now and twinning an increasing demand on employees with workspace accommodations, flex time and skin in the game.

People are spending more and more time working – as such, they want to enjoy what they do and feel that it means something.  In this world, success won’t be found by nickel and diming your employees, but by empowering them to share their two cents.

Satchmo - the Rumi of Jazz

It 'all came from the Old 'Sanctified 'Churches. I can remember—'way back in the 'old days in 'New Orleans, La—'My home town. And I was a little Boy around 'ten years old. My Mother used to take me to 'Church with her, and the Reverend ('Preacher that is') used to 'lead off one' of those 'good ol good 'Hymns. And before you realized it—the 'whole 'Congregation would be "Wailing—'Singing like 'mad and 'sound so 'beautiful. 'I 'being a little boy that would "Dig" 'Everything and 'everybody, I'd have myself a 'Ball in 'Church, especially when those 'Sisters 'would get 'So 'Carried away while "Rev" (the preacher) would be 'right in the 'Middle of his 'Sermon. 'Man those 'Church 'Sisters would 'begin 'Shouting 'So—until their 'petticoats would 'fall off. Of course 'one of the 'Deacons would 'rush over and 'grab her—'hold her in his 'Arms and 'fan her until 'she'd 'Come 'to.

"There are naked pilgrims, dressed only in sunlight... don't give them clothing."

 - When Rumi said that, he could have been referring to Louis Armstrong.  We should all wear a little more sunlight.

COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR AND THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGIES OF SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS

Very intersting.  Cribbed from here:

Here we will consider the most "macro" dimensions of social psychology, those social forces arising out of the interactions of large numbers of individuals and groups which, in turn, are the master templates patterning the cultural and social orders. One cannot study the behaviors of individuals without devoting some attention to the broader socio-cultural environments--their economic structures, stratification orders, technological systems of communication and transportation, family processes, demographics, and value systems-- structuring their social lives.
Humans have long been fascinated by the processes through which collective social wholes emerge out of individuals' separate activities. They have probably forever felt the sense of exhilaration and power of their unity in numbers when pressed into crowds. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts in the image on the left. In this 1947 photograph by E.O. Goldbeck, 21,765 members of the U.S. Army Air Force are fused into a symbol of their group.

---

COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

By "collective behavior" social scientists typically mean that realm of action not governed by the everyday rules and expectations which normally shape social behavior:

• the behavior of crowds (such as "the wave" rolling around a sports stadium) and mobs;
• religious revivalism;
• political bandwagons, fads and fashion (check out About.com's inventory of 20^th Century Fads & Fashions);
• mass sociogenic illness and collective hysteria (like Orson Welles' 1938 radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds" or the 1954 windshield pitting epidemic in the Pacific Northwest)
• and rumor (such as urban legends).

Besides being large-scale social phenomena, sociologists' interest in their genesis and development stem from the fact that they are major engines of social change.
Collective action can be understood as the result of an emerging collective definition of the situation. This definition includes elements of shared cognitive belief (the "facts" that are commonly defined as being real and relevant), emotional factors (such as the personal needs being frustrated and the dominant emotion evoked), and the predominant motivation of those present. How such a commonly-shared mindset comes to be gets us into such topics as how information flows through social networks (recall Stanley Milgram's "Small World" thesis, recently mathematically verified, that we are no more than six steps removed from any other person on earth?) and connectivity opportunities provided by email and the Web (also being explored in James Moody's Electronic Small World Project and at Columbia University's Small World Research Project).

A century ago one of the first social science investigations of collective action focused on the behavior of crowds. Gustave LeBon, in The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1897), wrote of the "crowd mind," emerging from anonymity and deindividuation (which often leads to antisocial behavior), contagion (e.g., epidemic hysteria, a variant of Functional Somatic Syndromes), convergence (such as the Seattle windshield pitting epidemic of 1954), and emergent norms. Though contemporary social scientists have dismissed LeBon's "crowd mind," his antecedents continue to influence social research. Indeed, individuals (whether crowd members or observers) frequently act on the basis of their inferences about what the crowd "thinks, fears, hates, and wants."

The crowds that go mad--such as the 1921 Tulsa race riot (see also The Nation's story of events)--have long intrigued social scientists. (See Tony Perez's Annotated Bibliography on Riots and Protest.) These intensely emotional mobs that violate the social norms and values have been both agents of social change and targets of severe repression by agencies of social control. Participants, anonymous and deindividualized and hypersensitive to any emergent definition of the situation, may find themselves engaging in acts of wanton destruction that they never envisioned nor intended.

Being major agents of social change, perhaps the most-studied forms of collective behavior are social movements, such as the American civil rights, anti-war, feminist, and environmental crusades of recent decades. These can arise, for instance, when cultural values become ambiguous during times of social change or crisis, when people find themselves in unanticipated situations, or when individuals' motives are similarly blocked. Such are the occasions when novel shared definitions of the situation arise and a collectivity is formed, experiences solidarity, and mobilizes for action.

Precisely how such collective action arises has likewise received considerable theory and research. Neal Smelser, for instance, develops such processes as:

• structural strain
• structural conduciveness
• generalized belief
• some precipitating factor
• mobilization of participants for action
• success or failure of social control mechanisms

A rich topic for research is the role of the photographer in triggering social movements. Consider the role, for instance, of Lewis H. Hine is bringing about reform in child labor laws.

Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1775-1940 by Thomas Dublin & Kathryn Kish Sklar (SUNY Binghamton)

ASA Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements

The American Social Movement Cultures (Washington State)

Richard Kimber's Political Parties, Interest Groups, and Other Social Movements (broken down by nation)

Protest.Net--discover where protests are percolating across the U.S. and internationally

WTO History Project, from the University of Washington with a focus on the 1999 Seattle protests

Lorry Britt & David Heise, "From Shame to Pride in Identity Politics"

Kenneth Andres & Michael Biggs, "The Dynamics of Protest Diffusion: The 1960 Sit-In Movement in the American South"

Nathan Wolfson on the structural preconditions for anti-semitic mobilization

Yahoo's social movements directory

Prohibition Materials

Underlying Causes of the LA Riots--Listserv Archive from the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs

Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Movements in the Abortion debate

INSTITUTIONAL PSYCHOLOGIES

Institutions are perceptual, cognitive, emotive and behavioral systems--conventional domains of "you knows." As grammar allows one to make sense of a string of words, so institutions provide individuals with consensual ways for deriving meaning from their social interactions. They also provide individuals routine ways for making decisions and acting in various situations with various types of others. As Mary Douglas observes in How Institutions Think (Syracuse University Press, 1986:102), "the instituted community blocks personal curiosity, organizes public memory, and heroically imposes certainty on uncertainty. In marking its own boundaries it affects all lower level thinking, so that persons realize their own identities and classify each other through community affiliation."

From a more social perspective, institutions are social housekeepers in that they program the routine services necessary for the day-to-day functioning of the group. With social evolution, distinctive institutions emerged to address the separate needs of society. For instance, out of society's need for protection against external threats arose the military; out of the social need for an informed and trained citizenry emerged education; and out of the social need for moral consensus and restraint of selfish impulses arose religion. Ideally these social needs addressed simultaneously address the needs of individuals, such as the social need for procreating the next generation of members matching the personal needs for intimacy and connectedness in the institution of the family.

From this social psychological perspective, the methodological tasks are to measure the way a given institution

• addresses the needs of both individuals and social systems;
• shapes perception, beliefs, and cognition;
• induces various emotional experiences, such as the feelings of awe and respect, love and hate;
• creates its own language, concepts, and metaphors;
• impacts identity: the bearing of its roles on the self-concepts and esteem of its actors, its rites-of-passages, its demands for biographical summaries and accountabilities;
• defines situations and creates settings for interaction;
• channels behavior, such as its encouragement of risk-taking or pro-social activities, restraint on sexual activity, or timing of activities;
• creates group dynamics, such as creating in-groups and out-groups, and specifying roles for leaders and followers, and groupthink;
• spawns collective action and social movements;
• relates to other institutional systems of action and thought.

To illustrate how institutions "work" consider the act of driving a car.

With these point in mind, consider the following findings from "The Diminishing Divide-- American Churches, American Politics" by The Pew Research Center For the People and the Press. In several national surveys (the last conducted in April 1996), Americans were asked for their views on the following issues:

• The death penalty for persons convicted of murder. (CAPPUN)
• President Clinton's decision to send 20,000 U.S. troops to Bosnia as part of an international peacekeeping force. (BOSNIA)
• Allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally. (HOMO MARR)
• Which comes closer to your view? Abortion should be generally available, ... but under stricter limits, ... against the law except in cases of rape, incest, and to save the woman's life,... not permitted at all. (ABORTION)
• Which comes closer to your view? The government should do more to help needy Americans even if it means going deeper in debt. The government today can't afford to do much more to help the needy. (GOVPOOR)
• Which comes closer to your view? This country should do whatever it takes to protect the environment. This country has gone too far in its efforts to protect the environment. (ENVIRON)
• Which comes closer to your view? Society has been improved because women are now represented in the work place. Society made a mistake in encouraging so many women with families to work. (WORKING WOMEN)

For each issue respondents were also asked "Which one of the following has had the biggest influence on your thinking on this issue: 1) a personal experience; 2) the views of your friends and family; 3) what you have seen or read in the media; 4) your religious beliefs; 5) your education; or 6) something else. Below, for each issue, are the percentages of individuals reporting each influence to be the largest.

ISSUE	PERSONAL EXPERIENCE	FRIENDS/FAMILY	MEDIA	RELIGION	EDUCATION	OTHER
CAPPUN	13	6	21	18	21	18
BOSNIA	15	7	35	6	18	16
HOMO MARR	10	7	9	37	17	17
ABORTION	18	7	7	28	22	16
GOVPOOR	26	7	22	6	24	13
ENVIRON	22	3	24	3	36	10
WORKING WOMEN	45	8	7	4	23	11

As can be seen, for only two of the seven issues were Americans' attitudes most influenced by personal experiences. The media, for instance, was the greatest influencer of orientations toward capital punishment and America's Bosnia interventions, while religion was the greatest shaper of opinions toward homosexual marriages and abortion.

To more easily gauge the relative influence of these various sources of opinion we can standardize each row, dividing each percentage by the largest percentage therewithin. For instance, 28 percent of Americans claimed that religion was the greatest shaper of their opinions toward abortion. Dividing each percentage in this row by .28 we find that Americans are only one-quarter as likely to cite the media (and the views of family and friends) as they are to cite religion as the greatest influence on their abortion attitudes.

ISSUE	PERSONAL EXPERIENCE	FRIENDS/FAMILY	MEDIA	RELIGION	EDUCATION	OTHER
CAPPUN	.62	.29	1.0	.86	1.0	.86
BOSNIA	.43	.20	1.0	.17	.51	.46
HOMO MARR	.27	.19	.24	1.0	.46	.46
ABORTION	.64	.25	.25	1.0	.79	.57
GOVPOOR	1.0	.27	.85	.23	.92	.50
ENVIRON	.61	.08	.67	.08	1.0	.28
WORKING WOMEN	1.0	.18	.16	.09	.51	.24
MEAN INFLUENCE	.65	.21	.60	.49	.74	.48

Reflecting on the "Mean Influence" row on the bottom, the institutional bearing of Americans' attitudes and values cannot be denied. The concerns of critics of the messages delivered by mass media and educational curricula appear well-grounded as the influence of these two institutions rival that of personal experience.

THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF INEQUALITY

inequality among men [is] a rich source of much that is evil, but also of everything that is good.

--Kant
Consider the concept of "The American Dream": the expectation of achieving a higher standard of living than one's parents. Has this expectation changed historically? Has it changed historically more so for some groups--social classes, minorities, or women--than for others (or might the notion historically referred only to the condition of white middle- class males)? What are the social psychological implications of not holding this belief?

Individuals' positions in the stratification orders of sex, race, and social class determine the language the speak, their values, happiness, self-esteem, sense of personal efficacy, physical and mental health, rate of aging and life-expectancy, sexual activities, childrearing practices, and nature of their work.

THOUGHT PROBLEM

Suppose that you are a member of a dominant group. What social psychological tactics would you use to ensure that your "social lessers" remain in their place?

EXPLORING AMERICANS' ATTRIBUTIONS OF WHY THE POOR ARE POOR

In the 1990 NORC General Social Survey, Americans were asked why there are poor people in this country. Two questions dealt with internal loci of control (e.g., they blame the victims): People are poor because of: Loose morals and drunkenness, and Lack of effort by the poor themselves. Two deal with external loci (e.g., they locate the cause in society): Failure of society to provide good schools for many Americans, and Failure of industry to provide enough jobs. Out of these questions was created a scale of poverty attributions, where 1=society's fault, 2=both social and personal faults, and 3=self-fault. Not surprisingly, those identifying themselves as members of the lower class are most likely to see poverty being society's fault (43%) than are the other classes, but there is virtually no difference in attributions of the working, middle, and upper classes (27% of whom blame society). Women are slightly more to blame society (30%) than men (26%), as are those 18-29 years of age (32%) compared to those 70 and older (19%).

Click to see:

• Poverty attributions by race and social class
• Poverty attributions by political ideology
• Poverty attributions by education and newspaper readership (newspaper read daily, several times/week, less)
• Poverty attributions by religious faith and religiosity

Related resources:

T.R. Young's "The Contributions of Karl Marx to Social Psychology"

Dimostenis Yagcioglu's "Psychological Explanations of Conflicts Between Ethnocultural Minorities and Majorities"

Explorations in Social Inequality

THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION

Decency is veiled from sight; indecency is exposed to view. Scenes of evil attract packed audiences; good words scaredly find any listeners. It is as if purity should provoke a blush, and corruption give ground for pride. But where else should this happen but in devils' temples, in the resorts of delusion?

--St. Augustine
According to a 1995 Gallup Survey, virtually all Americans (96%) say they believe in God or a universal spirit, and most Americans (88%) say religion is important in their lives. Certainly any description of American Exceptionalism must include Americans' profound religiosity and their faith in the existence of an afterlife. To see how your personal beliefs match up with those of twenty-six world religions try the Religion Selector by SelectSmart.com and SpeakOut.com.

RELIGION'S ROLE IN ADDRESSING THE NEEDS OF SELF AND SOCIETY

In numerous ways, religion acts as a shock absorber that cushions the inevitable tensions between self and society. Social frustrations must be resolved; the incongruities between personal desires and social needs must be explained. Social order may well require individuals' absolute faith in the order, meaningfulness, and justice of social life. Religious faith is a potent source of human motivation, whether directed toward orthodoxy or fanaticism.

Considering the needs of selves and societies addressed by religion, let's first investigate the extent to which religiosity contributes to the happiness of individuals. As can be seen, when controlling for Americans' age and education, those who report being "strongly" religious are significantly more likely to be "very happy" than are their less religious counterparts-- particularly among those 18-30 and those 45-64 years of age.

In addition to emotional health, religion contributes to physical well-being as well, evidenced by Mormons' prohibitions against alcohol, tobacco and caffeine. In the October 1997 issue of The International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine is reported a study by Harold Koenig and Harvey Cohen of 1,718 older North Carolinians. They found that those who attended religious services at least once a week were significantly less likely to have high levels of interleukin-6, an immune-system protein implicated with a number of diseases, in their bloodstreams. Perhaps it should not be surprising that one-quarter of Americans report using prayer as a form of health care. For other studies, check out The National Institute for Healthcare Research ("Bridging the Gap Between Spirituality and Health").

Click here to see influence of religion on Americans' outlooks toward science and belief in the theory of evolution.

It is in society's interest that individuals voluntarily become involved in its groups and organizations, particularly in a democratic society such as ours. Being so "plugged into" the social order not only keeps individuals out of mischief but intertwines personal motivations with group objectives. Over the years, the NORC General Social Surveys have asked Americans if they are members of fraternal groups, service clubs, political clubs, school service groups, farm organizations, professional societies, and the like. As can be seen, even when controlling for age and education, religiosity significantly increases the likelihood of individuals belonging to four or more of the sixteen groups inquired of--particularly for those with at least some post-secondary education. And, as developed elsewhere, religiosity is significantly related to volunteerism. For instance, strongly religious individuals were found to be two-thirds more likely (45% vs. 27%) to have volunteered for two or more causes over the previous year. This religiosity effect is most pronounced among the most highly educated: among those with four or more years of college (who were three times more likely than high school dropouts to be high volunteers), the strongly religious were three-quarters more likely (71% vs. 45%) to have volunteered for two or more causes.

From the Independent Sector and the National Council of Churches: Faith and Philanthropy: The Connection Between Charitable Behavior and Giving to Religion (2002)

RELIGION'S ROLE IN SHAPING AMERICANS' MORAL OUTLOOKS

Click here to see religion's role in shaping Americans' attitudes toward some of the moral issues of our times:

• Religion's role in shaping attitudes toward abortion
• Religion's role in shaping attitudes toward euthanasia

Michael Nielson's Psychology of Religion Page, including full text of William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience

Diana Eck's (Harvard) The Pluralism Project

The American Religious Experience Project, a consortium of UWV, UNC, LA State, AZ State, Barnard-Columbia, and Franklin and Marshall

Religion Online--over 900 articles & chapters by religious scholars

From PEW/Public Agenda "For Goodness Sake" --a survey released in 2003 finding the American public strongly equates religion with personal ethics and views faith as an antidote to the nation's moral problems

Rutgers Anthropology/Sociology of Religion links

Adherents.com statistics galore on over 4000 religions

Hartford Institute for Religion Research

Jeffrey Hadden's New Religious Movements Page

American Religion Data Archive (Purdue): downloadable files in ASCII, SPSS, and MicroCase formats, with such studies as "Anti-Semitism in the U.S., 1981"

Beliefnet.com--"We all believe in something."

The Pluralism Project--"Our mission is to help Americans engage with the realities of religious diversity through research, outreach, and the active dissemination of resources."

Religion & Ethics Newsweekly

Weberian Sociology of Religion

RELIGION'S ROLE IN SHAPING AMERICANS' TEMPORAL OUTLOOKS

RELIGION AS ANTIDOTE TO ANOMIE AND PERCEIVED CRISES OF MORALITY

Briane Turley's American Religion Links

Case study: American Guardian: "America's Frontline Defense Against Perversion"

Ronald Fagan on religion's role in restraining excessive individualism in Habits of the Heart

RELIGION AS ANTIDOTE TO CRISES OF THE LIFESPAN

UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute's National Study of of College Students' Search for Meaning and Purpose--results of the 2004 survey of more than 112,000 students from 236 colleges

RELIGION AS MECHANISM OF OPPRESSION AND LEGITIMATOR OF VIOLENCE

Donald G. Mathews, "The Southern Rite of Human Sacrifice" in The Journal of Southern Religion

THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF CULTS

• The Rick A. Ross Institute for the Study of Destructive Cults, Controversial Groups and Movements
• Cult Database
• Steven Alan Hassan's Freedom of Mind Center
• TheologyWebsite's Cults and sects internet resources
• Psychological Issues in Spiritual Movements, with articles by former cult members
• How Cults Manipulate People
• AFF's Information about Cults and Psychological Manipulation, including Robert Jay Lifton on "Cult Formation"
• Ontario Consultants Religious Tolerance: Doomsday, destructive religious cults
• Anti-cult page of Watchman Fellowship on-line, with sizable index of contemporary cults

THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF WORK AND LEISURE

When people meet for the first time, a question that invariably arises is, "What do you do for a living?" We believe that to know another person's line of work is to have a highly predictive framework for inferring his or her social status, interpersonal traits and skills, value orientations, personal interests, and even personality type. So central is work to establishing one's social that King John of England proclaimed that people must use surnames pertaining to their trade. As populations were growing rapidly and the social system was becoming increasingly specialized, it was no longer practical to refer to others by their first names (even when coupled with one's residence, such as Edward-of-Dover). What better way to index other selves than by what they do? Those who made carts became Cartwrights and Wainwrights; metal workers became Smiths; and Shepard became the surname of people who tended sheep.

Of all the institutionalized arenas of human activity, work is the most central, both sociologically and psychologically. From a macro perspective, work is a way of keeping social actors "out of mischief" by harnessing and coordinating their energies to produce socially necessary goods and services. The products of work become the basis of trade, which brings cultures into contact with each other, thereby providing opportunities for social innovation.

From a micro perspective, work satisfies a broad spectrum of individual needs, such as the needs for solidarity and a feeling of self-worth. One way to appreciate this function of is to study those who lack it: the unemployed and unemployable, those who have been fired and laid off, and retired people. In many ways these individuals become nonpersons; their activities are no longer perceived as wholly legitimate, since only through working is one generally seen as contributing to the social system. The centrality to individuals' needs is further evidenced by the movements for equal opportunity for women and minorities.

Topic ideas in the social psychology of work:

• professional argots and jargon (e.g., legalese, bureaucratese)
• how do organizations harness worker loyalties?
• the centrality of work role to individuals' identities and lives
• the connection between work satisfactions and overall happiness with life--and how this varies across societies, the lifespan, and between the sexes
• what does "success" in work mean to individuals? (e.g., income, respect and recognition of superiors and/or peers, having control over work content and schedules, etc.)
• what kinds of selves are spawned by capitalism vs. socialism?
• distributive justice and workplace ethics; see Public Agenda's 2004 study "A Few Bad Apples? An Exploratory Look at What Typical Americans Think about Business Ethics Today"
• the impacts of retirement on identity
• the bifurcated work-self/private-self. In 1990s there emerged what was known as the California self, a new Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: the corporate dictator who morphs into a loving parent and hospice volunteer

Economic Beliefs and Behaviour--downloadable discussion papers

How did the Wall Street Crash of 1929 occur? Play the market with this interactive simulation.

Eva Bertram and Kenneth Sharpe's "Capitalism, Work and Character"

Robert Merton's "Bureaucratic Structure and Personality"

David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald, "Well-being, Insecurity, and the Decline of American Job Satisfaction" (1999, pdf format)

The Temporalities of Work and Leisure

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INDUSTRIAL PSYCHOLOGY

Working papers from the Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies at Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations

The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychologist

Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis

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CONSUMERISM

P.S. It is my observation that too many of us are spending money we haven't earned to buy things we don't need to impress people we don't like.

--H. Jackson Brown's mother (from "P.S. I Love You")

During the winter of '94-95 throughout the Midwest there appeared the following mall advertisement: "Shop like you mean it." What does this supposed to mean?

The mass production wrought by industrialization required mass consumption, which brings us to the social psychology of materialism and abundance. How are individuals socialized and conditioned to consume? One place is in the schools. Check out Arizona State University's Commercialism in Education Research Unit, the Center for Commercial-Free Public Education, and Schools Inc. from PBS's NOW.

Collection of articles and essays on advertising

Mass consumerism requires a buy-now-pay-later mindset. Check out PBS Frontline's Secret History of the Credit Card

Temples of Consumption: Shopping Malls as Secular Cathedrals, an essay written with Beth Gill

"Identity and Desire in Consumption: Interactions between Industry and Consumers by the Use of Commodities", by Mineo Hattori (1997)

Inconspicuous consumption: the sociology of consumption and the environment, by Elizabeth Shove and Alan Warde

Don Slater's "Researching Consumer Cultures" page (with sizable bibliography)

Signaler "Analyzing commercials and advertisements. How products get their meaning and the way they signify."

Richard Taflinger's Taking ADvantage

John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History

Celebrating 75 Years of Supermarkets: 1930-2005 facts and figures from the Food Marketing Institute

NPD Group "leading international provider of marketing information...[tracking] retail and e-commerce sales plus consumer behavior and attitudes"

Bad Fads Museum--Look at what Madison Avenue has made us consume

For further mirth, check out a collection of bad ads at The Gallery of the Absurd

Consumerism gotten you down? Check out Overcoming Consumerism: Citizen-Activist's Anti-consumerism site

Have a complaint? Place to gripe is eComplaints.com--"a better way to complain"

Want to see a future tool of retailers to know precisely what button of yours to push? Check out IBM's BlueEyes software to determine individuals' physical, emotional or informational states by analyzing video and audio information. Other researchers of consumers' minds (and impulses):

Links to Consumer Psychology Research

Ipsos --"features a collection of behavioral tracking products and services that help clients throughout a broad range of industries learn how to marry consumers' behaviors with their attitudes."

The American Marketing Association

Public Relations Society of America Home Page

International Advertising Association

The Institute For Retail Studies

Advertising Age

Journal of Material Culture

THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF MASS MEDIA

POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGIES

Return to Social Psychology Index

An Oft-Forgot Rule in Politics

It’s hard to say if the smears will ever see the light of day. But in the Internet age — when a lie can travel around the world 10 times before its target is even out of bed — anything is possible. It’s disgusting, of course. It’s dumb, it’s despicable. It’s also bad strategy. Only now emerging from the political burn unit in the “Vikileaks” affair, you’d think Liberal apparatchiks would have learned their lesson about trading in this sort of garbage.

A friend and experienced Liberal operator currently serving as a successful consultant once gave me this piece of advice: "in politics, you have to look out for #1.  Nobody else will and few would think twice about putting a knife in your back."

In a recent campaign, some young candidates went to great lengths to tar-and-feather their opponents, people of their own team, because they were pulling out all the stops to win.  In the end, the result was a much more mixed bag than expected and different teams were forced to merge and find ways to work together.  They're still at it.

Politics, as it generally stands now, is survival-of-the-fittest, which in practice always translates into the one willing to elbow out the competition.  Frequently, aggressiveness is twinned with talent, but that isn't always the case.  When aggressiveness becomes a fallback, there's no question that collaboration and innovation suffers.

I understand this as well as anyone.  Several friends have had their reputations dragged through the mud by their own teams because they stood by their beliefs or had personal challenges that no one was prepared to recognize, while eager political beavers tried to tell them brand should trump belief and personal well-being.  I've watched many a hard-working young be staffer cut loose and be forgotten about after an all-in dedication to the Party they believed in (and that's all Parties).  The wheels of the political bus are stained with the shattered faith of all those staff and politicians who have been thrown under it with nary a shrug from the drivers.  The disillusionment of those left behind stains the windows, obscuring the way forward. 

But it doesn't have to be this way.

I've also seen the best in politics - people who connect with a common vision of what their riding, province or country can look like and work together to achieve it.  Some of the best days of my life were spent working for an MPP, Jim Brownell, who unwaveringly put his constituency and the things he believed in first.  Jim may never have been leader of a Party, but damned if he wasn't one of the best-respected and most-accomplished MPPs at Queen's Park.  Plus, he served as a stone in the soup, bringing together staff and friends, building a family out of a place of work.  It was the Fellowship of the Duke - and it still resonates to this day.

More than once, I've been in the trenches among provincial Liberal staff and run into the Premier, out to meet with his troops.  Across Facebook and Twitter, there are more pictures of him with staff and staff's families than one would expect possible, given how busy he is.  I will never forget the time he took to meet with my grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, or how patient he was with an old man's jokes.  McGuinty never forgets that success stems from hard work - done as a team.

Recently, I've had the opportunity to watch Justin Trudeau and Gerrard Kennedy, both visionary thinkers, in action.  Both are smart, both are engaging, but above all both ascribe to a vision of Canada as a country that is more than the sum of its parts, a place that's internationally-recognized greatness is a product of its people.  All three of these leaders - McGuinty, Trudeau and Kennedy understand it isn't about them, it's about us.  The role of leaders is to empower their teams and empower the people to be at their best so we can continue to excel as a nation.

We do this by setting the example, as human beings first, as Canadians second, only lastly as partisans.  We are not in politics to serve ourselves or to gain glory through tribal affiliation - at least, we shouldn't be.  Parties and Parliaments aren't meant to be tribes, but rather forums.  A nation cannot be built around "the last man standing;" that's a race to the bottom.  It's not what we leave behind that should be our focus, but what we find along the way, what we can build together and what we leave behind for future Canadians - not just after four years, but for generations.

Warren Kinsella, through an unnamed Trudeau friend, says it best:

Said one, who emphasizes his friend has not decided to run yet, and isn’t sure if he will: “Liberals are always good at attacking each other. They should be trying to get to know Canada again — and stop with the smears.”

Any attack you make is now carved into Internet stone, and will be brought back to haunt you time and time again.  Conversely, every thing you do that is right will equally be immortalized for posterity.  That's how social media is changing the game.  But as the face of politics changes, there's one truth that does not waver:

 

If you want to go fast, go alone.

If you want to go far, go together.