The Psychologist October 2011

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october 2011vol 24 no 10

The riots A comment special on disorder,distortion and how psychology cancontribute to the debate

mindfulness in schools 736workaholism 740life’s long and winding roads 748false confessions 752

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letters 710news 728

careers 774looking back 788

Incorporating Psychologist Appointments

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People were burying their relatives.Homes and businesses smouldered.The nation grabbed blindly forexplanations for the riots that hadripped through England. Wherewere the psychologists?

They were there, if you looked,and we did. The Research Digestblog collected links to comment andanalysis, and the Society’s websiteencouraged comment. Yet much of it seemed almost ‘meta’ or ‘anti’science: explanation aboutexplanation, or views on what theriots weren’t and what we shouldn’tdo, rather than what they were andwhat we should.

The riots cried out for thediscipline: for once there genuinelyseemed to be multiple, interactingcauses. Yet we seemed quiet,perhaps wary that honest uncertaintywould appear weak or that themedia were in no mood to listen.

This month, an extended ‘Letters’section (p.718) presents commenton the riots. Providing a forum fordiscussion across the discipline iscentral to The Psychologist, and wehope to offer new opportunities (inprint and online) in future. Yourviews, as always, are welcome.

Dr Jon Sutton

THE ISSUE

Mindfulness in schoolsCan habits of mind boost the well-beingand resilience of the nation’s children?Dan Jones investigates

Workaholism: a 21st-century addictionMark Griffiths with a behaviouraladdiction perspective

Life’s long and winding roadsJon Sutton talks to Howard Friedmanand Leslie Martin about their longevityproject

Why might innocents make falseconfessions?Kim Drake suggests a fruitful avenue of investigation into vulnerability

letters 710personality disorder; Milgram; NHS reform; benchmarking; and more

media 734

736

740

748

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disorder, distortion, and the Society response to the riots, with Fiona Jones

society 764disaster, crisis and trauma in thePresident’s column; honorary awards;test use register; history prize; newsubscriber grades; BPS journals

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life in the West London Mental Health Gender Identity Clinic; from the blues to CBT; featured jobs; how to advertise; and all the latest vacancies

looking back 788

new voices 782

the strange case of Margery Kempe, by Alison Torn

the power of suggestion: Krissy Wilson with the latest in our series encouraging budding writing talent

one on one 792…with Gail Coleman

news and digest 728brain imaging; the ‘difference in differences’ error; dance company ‘scientist inresidence’; ‘Any Qualified Provider’; nuggets from the Digests; and more

book reviews 760

methods 756

Jung in the city; Freud on coke; positivepsychology at work; and more

Kate Hefferon and Elena Gil-Rodriguezon interpretative phenomenologicalanalysis

careers and psychologist appointments

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The riots – a comment specialWhat was behind England’s riots,and how can psychologycontribute going forward?

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We watched the coverage of the riots in England, like manyreaders of this publication, withconcern and shock. Yet much ofthe violence seemed familiar to us in Scotland. The sensationseeking, the recreational violence,the lack of empathy – they are allthings we’ve seen, and seen fartoo often on our streets. We canmake no detailed comment on theEnglish riots as all the facts arenot known as yet. What we cando is offer some observations.

Seven years ago, Scotland wasidentified as the most violentcountry in Europe. Our murderand violence rates were appalling and a source of national shame, even thoughour crime detection rate was excellent(and still is). The strong bonds inScotland between alcohol, gangs, knivesand general violence prompted us toaction. The conversations we had then in Scotland are exactly the same ones that England is having now.

Through our research, we found that there was not much scope withincriminal justice for long-term violenceprevention – the solution, by and large,was simply to lock up violent offenders.We then looked at the public healthapproach to violence, as laid out by the

World Health Organization in 2002. This model treats violence as a disease.For example, years ago, if you werediagnosed with measles, you were put ina sanatorium where you remained untilyou were better. It didn’t reduce thechances of anyone else getting measles,but it made us feel safer. We were doingthe same thing with violence. If weconsidered someone a risk, a violentperson, we locked them up. It made usfeel safer. But putting someone in prisondidn’t stop others being violent. Weneeded to focus on prevention, in effect‘inoculating’ people against violencethrough prevention programmes.

Through our work, violencehas become a stated public healthissue in Scotland, alongside otherdiseases like measles and TB.Adopting this approach led us toexamine violence in a new way.What was the scale of theproblem? What were the risk andprotective factors? What works inpreventing violence and how couldwe scale it up to a populationlevel? We now talk about how toprevent violence at three levels:primary prevention – for exampleearly years; secondary prevention

– targeting those at risk; and tertiaryprevention – dealing with those

victims and offenders already infected. To achieve long-term change we need towork in all three of these areas.

Violence is complex and complicated.This often inhibits us from acting – manypeople have said ‘it’s too big, don’t bother’– but try we must. It is the study of theworst of human behaviour and theinteraction of environment. For us, usingpractical psychology – around childpsychology, health psychology, groups oraround motivation to change – hasallowed us to both look at the observedbehaviour and try to be innovativearound how we affect change in a largepopulation. We have tried to develop

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Crowd psychology and public order managementHaving studied ‘riots’ for my entire career, what was shocking was not thedisturbances but the explanations andreactions to them. On the one hand, moraloutrage at the ‘riots’ led to situations whereassertions that they could not beunderstood as ‘mindless criminality’ wereopenly attacked as apologism. On theother, a myriad of ‘experts’ sidelined crowdpsychology by re-asserting the idea thatcrowds are irrational. But perhaps of moreconcern was that the UK government –speaking about ‘phoney human rights’ –asserted that the police required watercannon and baton rounds. Thankfully, theACPO President Sir Hugh Orde retortedthat the police neither needed nor wantedsuch weaponry.

It was in this context of criticism thatthe Home Secretary Theresa May argued

that the ‘riots’ represented a need forfundamental police reform. However, asshe herself acknowledged, reform of publicorder policing was already well under wayfollowing the inquiries into the policing ofthe G20 protests in London in April 2009.These reforms recognise the rationalitywithin ‘riots’ and are underpinned by anadherence to human rights. As aconsequence, these changes are notfocused on distance weaponry but uponincreasing police capacity for liaison anddialogue (HMIC, 2009); an approach thatit would appear has little relevance in the‘post-riot agenda’.

Research and theory suggests that thereis a strong relationship between policecapability for dialogue with radicalisedgroups, police legitimacy and their abilityto prevent ‘riots’ (e.g. Stott, 2011; Stott et

al., in press). In this respect it is importantthat following the shooting of MarkDuggan no family liaison took place – aswould be normal in such situations.Consequently, on the following Saturdaythe family and local communityrepresentatives – already historicallyaggrieved at police actions toward theblack community – decided to mount aprotest outside Tottenham police stationcalling for information on the death oftheir son.

The crowd waited for nearly threehours, and information was not, from their point of view, adequatelyforthcoming. It was subsequent to thesekey circumstances that the attacks againstpolice vehicles and the ‘riots’ in Tottenhamtook place. A central message then is thathad the Metropolitan Police created

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21st-century solutions for a 21st-centuryScotland.

Understanding how and when peopleare motivated to change their behaviourhas been key to tackling issues aroundknives, group violence, alcohol, child anddomestic abuse. It has also allowed us toengage further upstream in childdevelopment and look at the acquisitionof soft skills, such as empathy andcommunication, as protective factors,which are crucial in the prevention ofviolence. Adam Smith suggested in the1700s that empathy was the glue thatkept society together – how right he was.

Our gangs initiative, the CommunityInitiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV),which was highlighted by the PrimeMinister recently, was founded from ourstudy. It comes firmly within theliterature around groups and behaviouralchange. Yet we also looked at what wasdifferent: whilst there was violencewithin our gangs, the participants alsocommitted violence on their own and inpairs – violence was the issue, not thegang. Our aim was to reduce violenceand we recognised that for many of theoffenders we targeted, the gang providedmany positive support functions thatwere absent within their home lives – ashuman beings we all seek the positiveaspects that a group can bring. We arenot gang busters – it is the behaviour ofthe gangs, the committing of violent acts,that we aim to stop and prevent.

There will be no single solution thatwill address all of our social problems.

CIRV works for gang members inGlasgow. An evidence-based approachthat worked in Boston and in Cincinnati,it could work elsewhere with the rightpeople involved. However, it is just oneof the myriad solutions we have tried toput in place in Scotland to achieve long-term sustainable change.

So here is the challenge. For years we have been concentrating on whythings have got so bad, and we endlesslydescribe the issues, always with thephrase at the end which states ‘we needmore research’. What we need aresolutions, both at a population and anindividual level, if we are to move thecountry forward. We need to evolve theresearch paradigms to what works andwhy. We are already starting to see thispractical application, but we need muchmore, we need evidence and ideas. Weneed your help.

We are a practical unit – a policingunit. Like partners in health and a rangeof other areas, we want to make adifference. It has requiredunderstanding, innovation, bravery,resilience, but most of all aspiration that this can be different and that we can change. Most of us will agree thatwhat happened within the riots wascriminal, but what will be more criminalwill be if we fail to learn lessons andchange for the better. Karyn McCluskey Detective Chief Superintendent JohnCarnochanCo-directors, Violence Reduction Unit

dialogue immediately following theshooting incident it is very unlikely theprotest crowd would have emerged onSaturday afternoon. Had the protest nottaken place it is unlikely that there wouldhave been attacks on police cars and thentherefore the escalation into TottenhamHigh Road and beyond (Reicher & Stott,2011).

Taking this into account it should be clear that our science rejects calls fordistance weaponry and locates effectivepolice response in the capacity toestablish links to the increasinglyradicalised groups within our society.Rather than simply accepting thechallenge to our science, I wouldtherefore argue it is actually the basis fromwhich we can adequately start to addresshow the ‘riots’ originated and understand

the developments in policing that mustsubsequently take place. Clifford StottUniversity of Liverpool

ReferencesHer Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (2009).

Adapting to protest – Nurturing the British model ofpolicing. London: HMIC.

Reicher, S. & Stott, C. (2011). Mad mobs andEnglishmen: Myths and realities of the 2011 riots.London: Constable & Robinson.

Stott, C. (2011). Crowd dynamics and public orderpolicing. In T.D. Madensen and J. Knutsson (Eds.)Preventing crowd violence. Boulder, CO: LynneRienner.

Stott, C., Hoggett, J. & Pearson, G. (in press). ‘Keepingthe peace’: Social identity, procedural justice andthe policing of football crowds. British Journal ofCriminology.

I would place the education policies ofsuccessive governments at the centre of the causes of the riots that engulfed a wide range of young people andpermitted criminal gangs to exploit them.Society is not broken, but educationpolicy has made a major contribution to alienation and disaffection, especiallyamongst the vulnerable anddisadvantaged. In addition, our educationhas not prepared its ‘successes’ to managetheir behaviour and lives in a reasonable,ethical and moderate manner so thatothers, particularly the young, can haverespect for them.

Research has shown that Singapore, a country much admired by politiciansbecause its students come top ininternational assessments in education,operates a high-stakes, assessment-drivensystem just as England does. It producesstudents who ‘exhibit a narrowmindedness, and see the paper chase asthe means to the “good life”… They makegood employees but few can think out ofthe box, much less lead’ (Heng & Tam,2006, p.172). Gregory and Clarke (2003)found that one in three children in EastAsian primary schools did not think lifewas worth living and were constantly in a state of fear because of the frequent testsand the authoritarian and punitive styleof education. They were spending two tothree hours per night on homework andtaking extra classes to keep up.

This kind of didactic education, ateacher-led, lecture-style system in whichpupils are taught what, not how, to think,is found in 90 per cent of classroomsworldwide. Children are viewed to have‘learnt’ when they can reproduce what hasbeen taught, and a good learner isequivalent to a databank filled with ‘stuff’(Desforges, 1998). England had begun toleave this system behind in the 1980s(Montgomery, 1981, 1983) as teachersfound critical and constructivistapproaches more effective in promotinglifelong learning and academic stretch ina developed country. But just as the newstrategic approaches were beingintroduced, central control was firstexerted over teacher education and thenover the design and implementation of a national curriculum.

The audit culture of regular SATs,accountability, inspections (togovernment-specified criteria) and leaguetables all in the effort to ‘drive up’

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standards has inexorably led to anarrowing of the curriculum. Teachers areobliged to teach ‘to the tests’ in order toreach the standards and cover thesyllabus. Extrinsic motivators such asthese serve to damage intrinsic orpersonal motivation to learn for its ownsake (Ryan & Deci, 2000). As SATs loomlarge and children fail in their own eyesearly in primary school, our education

system – like those in East Asian schools– creates an elite of winners and a largeunderclass of losers (Gregory & Clarke,2003).

So how can we improve the generalhealth of our educational system? We canlook to methods that have proved to besuccessful in overcomingunderachievement in disadvantaged anddemotivated. The theory and practice is

based in constructivist approaches tolearning. Children puzzle their waythrough to knowledge and learn how tothink. They are repositories of concepts,strategies, rules and principles and acquirea greater mastery of content in theprocess. This approach has also beencalled teaching ‘the cognitive curriculum’through every subject. An early examplewas the Perry Preschool Project

As the cacophony of politiciansand commentators replaced that of the police sirens, I wasinterested to hear theparticularly shrill voice of thosewho condemn as evil anyone with an alternative explanationfor the looting than theirs. For an example, take the Daily Mail

headline ‘To blame the cuts isimmoral and cynical. This iscriminality pure and simple’.

If I’ve got them right, thismeans that when consideringwhat factors contributed to thelooting, identifying governmentspending cuts is not justincorrect, but actively harmful.For the Mail, the issue ofexplanations for the looting is of such urgency that they arecomfortable condemning anyonewho seeks an explanation beyondthat of the looting being‘criminality pure and simple’.What could be motivating this?

Research into moralpsychology provides a lead. Oneof my favourite papers is‘Thinking the unthinkable: Sacredvalues and taboo cognitions’ byPhilip Tetlock (2003). Theargument he makes is that in allcultures some values are sacredand we are motivated not just topunish people who offend againstthese values, but also to punishpeople who even think aboutoffending these values. The keyexperiment, from Tetlock et al.(2000), concerns a vignette abouta sick child and hospitalmanager, who must decided ifthe hospital budget can afford anexpensive treatment for the sickchild. After reading about themanager’s decision, participantsin the experiment are given theoption to say how they felt about

the manager, and to answerquestions about such things aswhether they think he should beremoved from his job, andwhether, if he were a friend oftheirs, they would end theirfriendship with him.Unsurprisingly, if the vignetteconcludes by revealing that themanager decided the treatmentwas too expensive, participantsare more keen to punish themanager than if hedecided that thehospital could affordto treat the child.

The explanationin terms of sacredvalues isstraightforward: life,especially the life ofa child, is a sacredvalue; money is notand so should not beweighed against thesacred value of life.But the mostinteresting contrastin the experiment isbetween participants who readvignettes in which the managertook a long time to make hisdecision and those in which hedidn’t. Regardless of whether hedecided for or against paying forthe treatment, reading that themanager thought for a long timebefore making a decisionprovoked participants to want to punish the manager more.Tetlock argues that we aremotivated to punish not justthose who offend against sacredvalues, but also those whoappear to be thinking aboutoffending against sacred values –by weighing them against non-sacred values.

In an added twist, Tetlock and

colleagues also offeredparticipants the opportunity toengage in ‘moral cleansing’ bysubscribing to an organ donationscheme. Those participants whoread about the manager whochose to save the money oversaving the child, and those whoread about the manager whotook a long time to make hisdecision, regardless of what itwas, were most motivated to

donate theirorgans. Thisshows, Tetlockargues, that itis merelyenough for the idea ofbreaking ataboo to flickeracross yourconsciousnessto provokefeelings ofdisgust atourselves(which provokethe need for

moral cleansing).For some, then, the looting

may be an immoral act of such a threatening nature that to thinkabout it too hard, to react withanything other than a vociferouscondemnation, is itself worthy ofcondemnation. The Daily Mail

editors feel they are in a moralcommunity in which society isthreatened by the looters and bythose who give them succour(‘the handwringing apologists onthe Left’, to quote from the sameeditorial). The sad thing aboutadopting this stance is that itprevents media commentatorsfrom thinking about how theythemselves might havecontributed to the looting. The

footage on TV and in newspaperssuch as the Daily Mail has beenvivid and hysterical. Televisionhas shown the most dramaticfootage of the looting, whileheadlines have screamed aboutthe police losing control andanarchy on the streets. You don’thave to be a scholar ofpsychology to realise that thiskind of media environment mightplay a role in encouraging thecopycat looting sprees thatsprung up outside of London(although if you were, you wouldbe aware of the ‘Werther effect’literature on how newspaperheadlines and TV footage canprovoke imitation in the widerpopulation).

Some, then, see any attemptat explaining the looting asexcusing the looting. The lootingbecomes a moral issue of suchvirulence that they see peoplewho understand societydifferently as part of the samethreat to society as the looters.Research in moral psychologyprovides some clues about theirstyle of thinking. Unfortunately it doesn’t, as far as I know,provide much of a clue about how to alter it.Tom StaffordUniversity of SheffieldThis is an edited version of a poston www.mindhacks.com

ReferencesTetlock, P.E. (2003). Thinking the

unthinkable: Sacred values and taboocognitions. Trends in CognitiveSciences, 7(7), 320–324.

Tetlock, P.E. et al. (2000). The psychologyof the unthinkable: Taboo trade-offs,forbidden base rates, and hereticalcounterfactuals. Journal of Personalityand Social Psychology, 78, 853–870.

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(Headstart Programme),although the long-termbeneficial effects for lifelonglearning were not identifiedfor over a decade.

In this country we havebeen teaching thinking andproblem solving in the schoolcurriculum in many projects(some under the wire) thathave reclaimed the interest ofdisaffected learners andchallenged the successful: forexample, Belle Wallace’s‘Thinking Actively in a SocialContext’ framework; Shayer andAdey’s Accelerated Learning in Science;and my own Cognitive Process Strategiesfor inclusive teaching. These techniquespromote participative learning andextended talk by pupils and assist socialand communication skills and formalwriting. Aspects of some of theseapproaches have even been adopted inrecent government strategies.

Critical and creative thinkingmethodology needs to be backed by otherstrategies. Teacher education also needs to be rethought, for the changes requiredcannot be made through ‘bolt on’provision later. If teachers learn by themethods we wish them to teach, theirstandards are raised (Montgomery, 1993).We can also learn from private educationthat the transition years in the statesystem are crucial. Class sizes inReception and in Year 7 when pupilsmove into secondary school need to bereduced to 15 pupils to one teacher. Thiswill allow Reception teachers to giveevery child a secure grounding in literacyand numeracy, especially if articulatoryphonics and then morphemic approachesare used. There also needs to be abalanced approach to literacy, givingspelling and handwriting moreappropriate emphasis. In Year 7 it willgain time for each child to be known, tointegrate and be heard. Related to this,size of an overall school population alsoneeds to be reconsidered: the unintendedconsequences of institutions over 1200can be to increase anonymity andalienation amongst pupils.

My argument is that pupils, especiallythose from socially and culturallydisadvantaged environments in adeveloped society, are particularlyvulnerable to failure, disaffection andalienation in our current state educationsystem. It can give rise to the generalisedanger and aggression expressed by manyof the young rioters. They found itexciting, had little thought for theconsequences of their actions, blamed‘them’ (authority in general and the ‘rich’)

and lacked any understanding of theeffects of the mob. They became easy preyfor criminal gangs to incite to action fortheir own purposes as well as to their owngreed and exploitative natures under thelicence and anonymity of the mob.

The auguries for change are not good.Although educationalists may beoptimistic, Wallace and Eriksson (2006)have recognised a universal stubbornadherence to a content curriculum, adominant culture that seeks to preserveitself, bureaucracies resistant to changeand 19th-century education systems basedupon authority, didactics andauthoritarianism.

Indeed, Michael Gove, presenting theSchools White Paper, said: ‘The countriesthat come out top of international studiesinto educational performance recognisethat the most crucial factor in determininghow well children do at school is thequality of their teachers… We are puttingteachers in the driving seat of schoolimprovement.’ Teachers can make a strongcontribution but they need to be allowedto redevelop as a profession first. Teachingteachers to teach is not just aboutteaching them how to teach their subjectin a lively manner. It is a third order set ofprinciples and practices that encompass

theory, research and practice across ageranges and disciplines. Teachers have tobecome theoreticians, researchers, subjectand practice experts before they candevelop the necessary skills andknowledge to do this work (Montgomery,2002).

A few words of caution: ‘Because wehave all been to school it does not meanwe know all there is to know aboutteaching’. Diane MontgomeryEmeritus Professor in EducationMiddlesex University [email protected]

ReferencesDesforges, C. (1998). Learning and teaching. In D.

Shorrocks-Taylor (Ed.) Directions in educationalpsychology (pp.5–18). London: Whurr.

Gregory, K. & Clarke, M. (2003). High stakesassessment in England and Singapore. Theory intoPractice, 42, 66–78.

Heng, M.A. & Tam, K.Y.B. (2006). Reclaiming soul ingifted education: The academic caste system inAsian schools. In B. Wallace & G. Eriksson (Eds.)Diversity in gifted education: Internationalperspectives on global issues (pp.178–186). London:Routledge.

Montgomery, D. (1981). Education comes of age: Amodern theory of teaching. School PsychologyInternational, 1, 1–3.

Montgomery, D. (1983). Teaching thinking skills in theschool curriculum. School Psychology International,3(4), 105–112.

Montgomery, D. (1993). Fostering learner managedlearning in teacher education. In N. Graves (Ed.)Learner managed learning (pp.59–70). Leeds: HigherEducation for Capability.

Montgomery, D. (2002). Helping teachers develop throughclassroom observation. London: David Fulton.

Ryan, R.M. & Deci, E.I. (2000). Intrinsic motivation:Classic definitions and new directions.Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25, 54–67.

Wallace, B. & Eriksson, G. (Eds.) (2006). Diversity ingifted education: International perspectives on globalissues. London: Routledge.

A creative response?Working in an NHS Child and AdolescentMental Health Service it is clear to methat having little power to significantlyaffect important aspects of your lifeimpacts on well-being. How young peoplebehave often says more about the socialstructures they live in than some rigid setof underlying traits that define them inevery circumstance. This is nottantamount to excusing the inexcusable,and it is not helpful to portray youngpeople as either victims or perpetrators. It is my belief that the more we highlight

social context the more likely ourresponses to violence are creative ratherthan reactive.

So far the government has focused thedebate mainly on parents, single mothers,children having children and discipline inschools. But I do not believe that ‘gettingtougher’ works. We need only look at theincreasing prison population that has notsignificantly reduced crime andrecidivism. Despite the importance offamily, I am keen to challenge theassumption that antisocial behaviour

Smaller classes allow Reception teachers to give everychild a secure grounding in literacy and numeracy

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results purely from an inferior familialenvironment. Otherwise, we may as wellcome to the same conclusion aboutbanker’s greed, ‘journalist’ hacking andMPs abusing their expenses. Individualslive in a family context, yes, but familieslive in a community context andcommunities exist within a larger socio-economic context, which is increasinglymaterialistic and unequal.

Even before the riots, it seemed to bea particularly difficult time to be young.Less is said about young people being atrisk, compared to the focus on viewingthem as the risk themselves. Despite goodintentions, such as the setting up of thenow abandoned Social ExclusionUnit/task force (SEU), ideas about socialinclusion have sat uncomfortably next toa punitiveness that calls for tougherpolicies, based on the criminalisation ofyoung people and an increasing tendencyto view children as adults who are fullyresponsible for their own conduct(Goldson, 2002). This ‘adulteration’ canbe seen in the introduction of Anti-SocialBehaviour Orders (ASBOs), which can beapplied to children as young as 10, theage of criminal responsibility.

Recently when students were ‘rioting’,many of us understood their angerbecause it was collectively shared. Toomany young people do not have theluxury of having a whole nation shareand care about their circumstances, letalone the possibility of having money orgoing to university. The extent of poverty,deprivation and lack of opportunity, aswell as the complexity of the problemsthat result from it, still surprises me aftermore than 15 years working in mentalhealth. At least the students hadsomething to lose; which meant theyknew where to draw the line. I believe itis having a purpose and feeling valuedthat creates boundaries. Having nopurpose, no hope and feeling the effect of constant attacks on your self-worth cancreate lack of boundaries, just as much as‘bad parenting’.

Despite the fact that not all the rioterswere young African/Caribbean men (somewere white, were women, were middle-class professionals and undergraduates)the focus of vilification has been on

immigration andclaims that ‘multi-culturalism has notworked’. Look onany socialnetworking site andread the commentsfor evidence of this.Racism exists inBritish society. But I would like moreacknowledgment anddebate in Parliamenton the genderedracism that oppressespeople by virtue ofbeing African/Caribbean and male(Mutua, 2006). Theyare often stigmatisedin ways that justifiestheir social andeducationalexclusion and makes them subject to macro and micro-aggressions andconstant humiliation. Despite ourcollective obsession with wealth, it isaspects of youth culture that are seen to mirror this preoccupation that comeunder scrutiny and attack.

Not only does the government fallinto the trap of pathologising youngpeople as the problem, but they explicitlypathologise mothers who are unmarried,live without a pronounced male head ofhousehold, and/or are single parents. Theassumption seems to be that matriarchy is pathological, unnatural and causespathology by erasing the male presencefrom the lives of young people. The term‘single parent’ suggests solo parentingwhen in fact there are diverse styles ofsingle parenting. Many single parentshave support from wider extendedfamilies, which may include importantmale figures. Many have auxiliary parentswho share the responsibility of parenting.Furthermore, there are multigenerationalhouseholds and for many gay couplessupport from ‘chosen family’ (Jay-Green& Mitchell, 2008; Weston, 1991). Thereare of course two-parent families whereone parent assumes almost all childcareresponsibilities, but they would not beconsidered single parent families, eventhough experientially, receiving nosupport from your spouse may feel morelike solo parenting than ‘single parents’with support (Sands & Nuccio, 1989).

Given that many young people getsound parenting within ‘single parent’households, it is important to lookbeyond family constellations to thinkabout the social issues that constrain theresources of families. There is no doubt‘single parents’ suffer discrimination that

makes it difficult for them to participatein the labour market and that increasesthe likelihood of poverty and isolation(Gingerbread, 2009). Female-headedsingle-parent households challenge theidea that only men can head families, and the labour market, social welfare and government policy impose sanctionsagainst family constellations that do notconform to the heterosexual, two-parent,male-headed norm.

There are also less visible socialcontext issues that impact on us underthe surface of living. For example,engrained social ideas about masculinitydictate that ‘real’ men should be incontrol and use violence to achievecontrol. At the same time access tolegitimate forms of aggression are onlyallowed to the police and army, who havethe authority to manage the illegitimateuse of force while appearing (andclaiming) not to be violent at all. Youngpeople who are marginalised learn earlythat the standards applied to them arevery different to those applied to everyoneelse. Their presence, despite theirintention and actions, is enough toprovoke fear. They become permanentsuspects and are under permanentsurveillance (e.g. Social Exclusion Unit,1998; Osler & Starkey, 2005; Goldson &Muncie, 2006). If young people feelstigmatised at a time when the forming ofa coherent identity is important, it makessense that peer groups become significantto them. This may or may not involvejoining ‘gangs’.

It is imperative therefore to supportyoung people from deprived areas ofBritain to have an effective response totheir circumstances that does not oppressothers. Those of us working with young


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For more, including news of SocietyPresident Carole Allan’s letter to DavidCameron, see p.734 and www.bps.org.uk.Also see tinyurl.com/digestriots for theResearch Digest’s round-up of links.

Man on ‘Give our kids a future’ protest in north London after the riots


people in the NHS and innon-statutory/community andyouth organisations work veryhard at engaging them;supporting their emotionalwell-being and socialinclusion. Non-statutoryorganisations do not merelyprovide distractions fromwrong-doing but enableyoung people to organise theirpassions towards creativelyaffirming their stance onsocial justice via for example,dance, music, writing anddrama (for example the‘Music and Change’ or ‘In-Volve’ projects). Statutorymental health services create

spaces for young people andtheir families to talk about trauma,

violence and oppression. Where a youngperson has been involved in antisocialbehaviour, this space involves bothbearing witness to the harm done to themthat no one may have taken responsibilityfor and supporting them to face,

acknowledge and take responsibility forharm they have committed. One withoutthe other is futile.

It is clear from this work that themore we have opportunities to articulate,explore and challenge the constraints onour lives the less likely we are to engagein actions that are destructive and themore connected we feel to others. Bytalking about individual ‘sickness’ DavidCameron not only ingeniously distractsus from social abuse, but also from thepossibilities that exist for turning harmfulresistance to it into creative and sociallyengaged resistance. Our analyses ofextreme events have importantconsequences; either reinforcing an unfairand unjust society by drawing attentionaway from it, or giving full weight to therhetoric on social inclusion. Taiwo AfuapeClinical Psychologist and SystemicPsychotherapist

ReferencesGingerbread (2009). Single parents, equal families:

Standing up for single parents against poverty and

prejudice. [PDF via tinyurl.com/678lxop]Goldson, B. (2002). New punitiveness: The politics of

child incarceration. In J. Muncie, G. Hughes & E.McLaughlin (Eds.) Youth justice: Critical readings.London: Sage.

Goldson, B. & Muncie, J. (2006). Rethinking youthjustice: Comparative analysis, international humanrights and research evidence. Youth Justice, 6(2),91–106.

Jay-Green, R. & Mitchell, V. (2008). Gay and lesbiancouples in therapy: Minority stress, relationalambiguity and families of choice. In A.S. Gurman(Ed.) Clinical handbook of couple therapy (4th edn).New York: Guilford Press.

Mutua, A.D. (2006). Progressive black masculinities.London: Routledge.

Osler, A. & Starkey, H. (2005). Violence in schools andrepresentations of young people: A critique ofgovernment policies in France and England. OxfordReview of Education, 31(2), 195–215.

Sands, R.G. & Nuccio, K.E. (1989). Mother-headedsingle-parent families: A feminist perspective.Affilia, 4(3), 25–41

Social Exclusion Unit (1998). Truancy and schoolexclusion. London: The Stationery Office.

Weston, K. (1991). Families we choose: Lesbians, gaysand kinship. New York: Columbia University Press.


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You can’t explain something whenyou don’t even know what it isSteve Reicher, as interviewed by Taylor Burns for the Cognoculture blog – see www.nature.com/scitable/blog/cognoculture

You were approached by the media in thedays following the riots. What have younoticed in your interviews?The first problem in interviews – and it’snot surprising – is that people are lookingfor instant explanations. So they want topush you and say, ‘Why did these thingshappen?’ But the basis of any good scienceis that any explanation has got to berooted in a sound empirical account of thephenomena. The simple fact of the matteris that, at this stage, we don’t have that.We don’t know who participated, we don’tknow the extent to which action wascollective or individual and opportunistic,and don’t have a systematic account ofwhat the targets were. We certainly don’tknow how participants conceptualisedthemselves. Did they see themselves inracial terms, in class terms, in terms oflocality or something else? So the point is,how can you explain something when youdon’t even know what that something is?

The danger is that we get explanationsthat are rooted in a single anecdote.Clearly, one aspect of these riots is thatthey were heterogeneous. They were

heterogeneous on three levels. They wereheterogeneous in terms of different eventsin different places on different nights.They were heterogeneous in terms ofdifferentpeople actingon differentbases in thesame event.They also hadmixed andcomplexmotivations.Therefore touse oneanecdote andto generaliseon the basis ofit is necessarilygoing to bewrong.

If there is abias that I’ve come across, it is the attemptby a media system – which has 24-hourrolling news – to push people to giveexplanations that can’t possibly be right.And again, the point about science, of

course, is not only is it empirically based,but good science also guides you towardsthe important questions to ask about thedata. To my mind, what our psychological

science gives us is – at thisstage – an indication ofthe types of questions weshould be asking aboutthe riots. But, of course, it can’t give us instantanswers – it would be like asking a doctor todiagnose a patient whenthey haven’t thoroughlyexamined the patient. We don’t know whathappened.

What of the reactionaryresponse – by both right andleft – to pinpoint this on the‘marginalised’?

It’s always been an instant response toriots to say that they are the marginal insociety, they are people who are alreadyviolent in society. Those studies that havebeen done – and the biggest study was the

24-hour news – pushing forexplanations that can’t be right?

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Kerner Commission after the Americanriots of the 60s – showed that the averageghetto rioter was not marginal. On thewhole they were more educated than thenorm, at least in the communities thatparticipated. They were more likely to bemembers of more communityorganisations, and they were less likely to have a criminal background. So again,the presupposition that this is a gangphenomenon is untested – we simplydon’t know.

Or again, that somehow there is a loss of parental respect. What our ownresearch and contemporary research hasshown that young people involved inviolence don’t want their parents to know.They do it in such a way that theirparents don’t hear about it. But thenwhen their mums do hear about thisthey don’t like it, in fact they’re upset if their parents are upset. The notionthat these are people who come frombroken homes and don’t give a damnwhat their parents think and we’ve gotthis young feral generation – again,this is an entirely untested set ofassumptions based, on the whole, on political presuppositions.

The explanations that are comingout are very much bound up with thispolitics of blame.

Is the politics of blame not present in the media as well, and perhapsindirectly perpetuated by academics? One of the problems, I think, is that24-hour rolling news and the desire for instant accounts and instantexplanations mean that we makeclaims on events before we know whatthose events are. In part, of course, it’sacademics themselves. Especially inthe current ‘impact’ climate, academicswant that visibility, they want to comeout and say these things, they want toclaim their patch, they want to be theexpert so they can claim their funding.So we’re not entirely innocent victims,we’re part and parcel of this system.

Journalists are working to verytight deadlines. They have to get hold of somebody, so they will get hold ofwhoever is available – it doesn’t have tobe the best person. And the other thing is,of course, journalists want news. Theywant somebody to say something

controversial. If you look at a radiointerview or a TV interview and they allagree and form a consensus, that’s notinteresting.

Academics are sometimes lazy as well. They will talk, and they will offeropinions on things for which they arenon-experts. On the one hand, we have a responsibility to put our ideas in thepublic domain – we absolutely do. But at the same time, we need to restrainourselves to talking about things wherewe have something distinctive to say thatis based on a particular knowledge of thearea.

It’s hard, sometimes, to limit yourself.When you have a charming journalistwho invites you to go beyond the

boundaries, it does happen. And that’squite flattering. Especially at aninternational level – if someone fromanother country phones you up there is that sense that ‘Oh, this makes me an international expert’. There are greattemptations. We have to be very clearabout the limits.

Is this a particular burden of the socialsciences? It’s tantamount to a stem cellbiologist being called in to comment ona behavioural biology story – somethingyou’d rarely see. But, in one week, we’vehad clinical psychologists or

neuroscientists who have, all of asudden, become experts in crowdpsychology. We have also had epidemiologists talkingabout crowds and taking literally themetaphor of contagion. So there is a realdanger of people straying into areas theyknow nothing about and talking nonsenseas a result.

These are all models of socialinfluence rooted in the classic Le Boniannotion that, in crowds, people loseidentity, lose the standards against whichthey would normally judge events andjudge actions, and therefore areautomatically influenced by whateverideas and emotions are out there. So thenotion of ‘copycat’ is that it is automatic,

it’s not that what you’re doing has anymeaning, it’s not that it’s connected toyour reality. It is, if you like, a mindlessform of action.

They are all theories that root crowdaction in the pathology of the actor. Now,it could be a permanent pathology: theseare criminal peoples, people with a flawedculture. Or it could be a temporarypathology: these are perfectly reasonablepeople who have been carried away bythe mob. These classic crowdpsychologies – the two versions of them –are a permanent pathology (Allportian) orthe temporary pathology (Le Bonian).


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Have your say via the ‘Letters’ pages of ThePsychologist by [email protected]. Alternatively, useour forum at www.psychforum.org.uk.

Kerner Commission after the American riots of the 60s – showed that the average ghettorioter was not marginal


Again these explanations are aboutmindlessness, meaninglessness andthey’re about rooting crowd action in the pathology of the actor.

Now, these are ideas that have beenaround for a very long time. Science, atsome level, can move fast but permeateslowly. For instance, take the notion ofdeindividuation. It’s about howanonymity in the group leads to lack ofrestraint. It’s perfectly true that you willstill see deindividuation in the textbooks.But there is evidence from the last 20 or30 years that the idea does not stack up.In groups, when people becomeanonymous, what they do is they shiftfrom individual to social identity andthen act on the basis of collective norms,

values, standards.There are published meta-analyses

of deindividuation data that supportthat idea. There have been individualstudies and crowd studies. One of theodd things about the deindividuationliterature is that it’s one of thoseexamples of psychological studies thatassume the nature of the phenomenonand then study it in the laboratory, andwhat they find in the laboratory theythen project back on to the real-worldphenomenon. The problem is, this isfalse. On the whole, people know eachother in crowds, they recognise eachother, often they’re part of the samecommunity.

When you start, not by looking atthe process in the lab, but looking atthe phenomena you are trying tounderstand, what you nearly alwaysfind in crowds are meaningful patternsof action. Let me give you a couple ofquite classic examples.

The first one – which I really like –is E.P. Thompson’s study of food riots.You might think of food riots as anincredibly simple thing – people gethungry, they need food, they grab food,

they eat it. In other words, an explosionbased on a biological need. What youfind, however, is that food riots had veryclear patterns. They didn’t happen at theperiod of greatest dearth, they tended tohappen when there was slightly morefood available. They happened around the transport of food outside of localities.And then, in the rioting, the food wasseized, sold at a popular price, and themoney was sometimes given back to themerchants.

Thompson explains it as follows:we’re looking at a period where there are two different visions of how societyshould be organised. There’s an olderversion based on feudal society wherebythe locality is central. And then there’s the emergent market-based philosophy

whereby you move a commodity tomarket where it can command thegreatest price. It’s when those twomoralities or two visions of the worldclash – i.e. when food is transported outof the locality – that you get a riot. This is what E.P. Thompson called the moraleconomy of the crowd. In other words,the collective understandings of theparticipants are enacted in what they doand what they say.

Now, you can go from E.P. Thompsonto a whole series of crowds, and almostevery time youdo, you findsimilar patterns.That pattern issometimes a bitmessy, because theother thing to besaid aboutcrowds, of course, is that there might besome people acting collectively on thesocial identity, then once they’re doingthat, people can do all sorts of things forindividual advantage. So clearly, in a riot,there will be people who want to getflatscreen TVs or settle some grievances.So things are messy, but overall, whenyou look at patterns of events, what youtend to find is an ideologically intelligentpattern.

A physical crowd is a mixture ofpeople acting as psychological groupmembers and some people acting forindividual advantage. But those, on thewhole, who act collectively actmeaningfully based on social identities.

And therefore – this is a criticalpoint – what people do incrowds is a beautiful reflectionof their collectiveunderstandings.

Certain historians arerecognising that. For historians,one of the problems is how tounderstand the perspective ofthose groups who don’t leavewritten records. And theanswer is, in crowds. Thecrowd is an incredibly powerfulresource. It tells you about theperspectives that have led toforms of rioting. At anexplanatory level, topathologise the crowd is to losethe best resource you have forunderstanding why the peopleare acting as they are.

What do you think of somescientists’ abstract connectionsbetween the riots and, say,theories of developmental

psychology and evenneuroscience?

One thing that is happening is that peopleare ridiculing distal explanations byturning them into proximal explanations.It’s perfectly reasonable to suggest that thewhole cacophonation of political choiceslead to a sense that certain groups aremarginalised in society and don’t haveopportunities.

It’s when you overextend what you’retrying to explain that you come undone.

When it comes to these other types ofexplanations – the role of the father, theempathic brain, and so on –] there is

precious little basis forbelieving that they arerelevant. Of course I wouldn’trule them out of court. But myconcern with them is, firstly,the fact that some of the

assumptions on which they arebased are entirely untested. And

secondly, that what’s unclear is exactly atwhat level – proximal or distal – they aresupposed to explain these events.

The other thing that has beenparticularly problematic and pernicious is confusion over what is an explanationand what is a description. Criminality isundoubtedly a description of the act.There is no doubt that criminality is adescription. The problem is it’s conflatedwith an explanation. This is circularreasoning. Criminality is not anexplanation.

Something profoundly anti-scientificis going on. And the worst of all thosethings, is the attempt to pathologiseanybody who tries to explain.


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“…to pathologise thecrowd is to lose the bestresource you have…”


In the avalanche of aperçus that followedthe English summer riots, two new,highly pertinent journal articles floatedalong, unnoticed by mainstreamcommentators – one on empathy andaltruism, the other on gangs.

Media and political opinion wasdivided between whether the behaviourof the rioters and looters was caused bytheir individual predispositions andchoices or whether their criminality wasinstead a consequence of wider socialproblems, such as poverty and exclusion.A paper in NeuroImage by a Chinese labmanaged the awkward feat of marryingthese two perspectives(tinyurl.com/6dqfxql).

Yina Ma and her team at PekingUniversity investigated whether a person’ssubjective sense of their socio-economicstatus mediated the relationship betweenneural markers of empathy and levels ofgenerosity in a real altruistic act.

The researchersscanned the brains of 33student participants whilethey watched video clipsof people being prickedpainfully by a needle ortouched by a cotton bud.Extra brain activity inresponse to the needleclips relative to the cottonbud clips was taken to bea neural marker forempathy.

The participants alsorated their own empathylevels and their subjective sense of theirsocio-economic status. Shown a ladderwith 10 rungs, with the top rungrepresenting people with the best jobsand education and most money, theparticipants indicated their own position.Although the participants were studentsat the same university, their answersvaried. Finally, participants were left alonein a room with an anonymous donationbox, labelled as raising money to helpimpoverished patients with cataracts.

Among participants who consideredthemselves privileged in terms of socio-economic status, there was the positiverelationship you’d expect betweenempathy and altruism. The more neuralsigns of empathy they displayed in thescanner (based on extra activity in the leftsomatosensory cortex), the more empathythey said they had, and the more money

they chose to donate to charity. Bycontrast, among participants whoconsidered themselves lower in socio-economic status, the opposite pattern was observed. The greater their empathy-related brain activity in the scanner(based on extra right somatosensorycortex and inferior frontal cortexactivity), the less empathy they said theyhad, and the less money they chose todonate. The researchers said the extraempathy-related inferior frontal cortexactivity observed in these participantscould be a sign of inhibitory processesquashing the emotional impact of seeinganother person in pain.

There are many potential confoundingfactors in this study, but a tantalisingpossibility is that the result reflects a kindof defence mechanism for those feelinglow in status, whereby self-interestdominates over empathy for others. ‘Ourfindings have significant implications to

the social domain,’the researchers said,‘in that, besidesimproving objectivesocio-economicstatus, raisingsubjective socio-economic status via education maypossibly manifoldaltruisticbehaviours inhuman society.’

The findings addto a complex existing

literature that suggests lower socio-economic status is sometimes associatedwith more empathy and altruism(tinyurl.com/5utpgw2), sometimes withreduced empathy (tinyurl.com/6hfx9ee).

Another angle to the riots, accordingto many observers, is the central role ofgang membership as a powerful predictorof future criminal behaviour. Anothernew study (tinyurl.com/6hhjhs3), thisone by Vincent Egan and MatthewBeadman at the University of Leicester,has looked at the personality correlates of past and intended gang membershipamong 152 prisoners incarcerated in a London prison.

Fifty-eight of the interviewedprisoners said they’d been in a gang,either in their youth or more recently. Theresearchers said most of the variance wasexplained by two super-ordinate factors:

‘antisocial personality’ (characterised bycommitment to negative peers, a lack ofcommitment to positive peers, low self-control, low agreeableness, positivereinforcement from antisocial companyand low conscientiousness) and‘resilience’ (low impulsivity, high self-esteem, high conscientiousness, lowneuroticism, extraversion and openness,and low social isolation). Crucially, it wasonly antisocial personality that had adirect association with past and intendedgang membership (directly and indirectlyit accounted for 50 per cent of thevariance in membership). Resilience andage also had an indirect relationship withgang membership via their covariationwith antisocial personality – youngerprisoners tended to score higher onantisocial personality traits, whereas highscorers on the resilience measures tendedto score lower on antisocial personality.

Egan and Beadman said their researchsuggested that an ‘assortative process’ is atplay in gang membership, whereby‘individuals with low agreeableness seekout similar peers (in terms of dispositionand attitudes)’. Past research, theyexplained, has found that the formationof antisocial groups is strengthened iflow-agreeableness individuals feel rejectedby their prosocial peer groups. In fact,they noted a 2005 study showing that‘peer group rejection predicts gangmembership and deviance, even afterfactoring out the influence of education’.

Egan and Beadman highlighted otherfindings pertinent to our understandingof the riots. A study in 2003 emphasisedthe importance of resilience, showinghow personality traits and intelligencecan serve a protective function. Peoplelower in neuroticism and higher in IQ,extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness were able to resistantisocial influences, even indysfunctional settings. More recently,Monahan and colleagues in 2009 andGranic and Dishon in 2003 documentedthe way that ‘excluded people socialisewith each other, mutually reinforcingtheir shared outlook, consolidating theirinterpersonal bonds and deviantattitudes’. There are surely clear lessonshere for the importance of fostering inyoung people a sense of belonging and inproviding social opportunities that bringvulnerable people into contact withpositive role models and peers.


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What does the research say?Christian Jarrett, editor of the Society’s Research Digest (see www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog), with some relevant studies

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‘big picture’ pull-out www.thepsychologist.org.uk i

www.bps.org.uk/ac2012

100 concession placesavailable for qualifying

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Registrationis open

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The Cube Project is an initiative of Dr Mike Page at theUniversity of Hertfordshire. He set out to build a compact home,no bigger than 3x3x3 metres on the inside, in which one personcould live a comfortable, modern existence with a minimumimpact on the environment.

Dr Page says: ‘As part of our School’s work on behaviourchange in a number of different domains, such as smokingcessation and healthy eating, we have been looking at factorswhich affect behaviour change in relation to the environment. If we are to mitigate the problems of climate change, we aregoing to need to deal with the bigger picture, problems that are as much psychological problems as they are technologicalproblems. The Cube Project is an attempt to show that many ofthe technologies that we need are already commonly availableand at an affordable price. The question is, why aren’t we usingthem? This is a psychological question.’

Dr Page addressed these issues as part of an online book,Going Green at Work, published by the British PsychologicalSociety’s Division of Occupational Psychology. You can read itand find out more via www.cubeproject.org.uk.

Small home, big picture‘The Cube’, designed by Mike Page, on display during the Edinburgh ScFestival. To feature in ‘Big Picture’, e-mail [email protected].

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What’s the point of school? It’s aquestion most pupils will haveasked themselves at one time or

another. And it’s one that parents, teachersand government ministers ponder too,though not always for the same reasons.The answer might seem straightforward:to provide children with an education inthe traditional sense of impartingknowledge and understanding to students,so that they can pass exams and enter theworkplace or further education with theintellectual tools to get them ahead in life.

Guy Claxton, Professor of LearningSciences at Winchester College, UK, haswritten a rather different book-lengthanswer to what the point of schools shouldbe (Claxton, 2008). ‘There’s an increasingrecognition that there is a broader range ofmental and emotional skills that are usefulto cultivate, whether you’re going to readmedicine at Cambridge or do an NVQ inhairdressing,’ says Claxton.

And these skills are not just bodies ofknowledge, but ‘habits of mind’ that guidehow we learn and develop. Indeed, LaurenResnick, an educational psychologist at theUniversity of Pittsburgh and formerPresident of the American EducationalResearch Association, argues that ‘ourintelligence is merely the sum total of ourhabits of mind’. As Claxton points out,‘This isn’t to deny intellectual skills, but it’sa new way of bringing psychology to bearon education, in terms of understandingwhat those habits are – and how thosehabits could be trained and changed innormal school lessons.’

A major development in this directionwas the introduction of Social andEmotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) to schools under the previous Labourgovernment. The goals of SEAL are toencourage self-awareness, ‘emotionalintelligence’, and motivation, and tonurture social skills and empathy. SEAL is not a neatly defined syllabus nor amandatory content-specific course –schools pursue SEAL in highly variedways. Nonetheless, published SEALguidance documents do provide aframework for achieving these expandedgoals. ‘When SEAL is implemented aswritten, it has a big impact on outcomes,’says Katherine Weare, Professor ofEducation at the University ofSouthampton. Today, SEAL is pursued in90 per cent of primary schools, and 70 percent of secondary schools, and they like it,says Weare.

Yet educationalists may haveoverlooked a powerful and cheap tool that can help deliver on SEAL objectives – ‘mindfulness’ training. Mindfulness is a ‘mode of being’ that is rooted in payingattention, non-judgementally, to thepresent moment, to our current consciousexperience of the world. It’s a mode ofbeing that can be taught, typically as aseries of simple meditation-style exercises.Mindfulness exercises increase awarenessof the contents of our minds, and provideways to respond to our thoughts andfeelings ‘skilfully’, such that they are lesslikely to lead to emotional distress orharmful behaviours. ‘Mindfulness could

really help teachers get to the heart of theskills SEAL tries to nurture, and achievewhat they want to,’ says Weare.

What is mindfulness?Mindfulness is not an abstract or remote body of knowledge, like physicsor history. It’s more of a practical skill,like being able to ride a bike or play thepiano. To get a handle on what thismeans, you have to look at howmindfulness is actually practised.

A commonly used way to get into a mindful state is to simply sit on a chair,close your eyes, and begin to focus onyour breath. As you sit still – relaxed, butalert – you direct your attention to thesensation of each inhalation andexhalation: perhaps the gentle rise and fall of your chest, or the feeling of air as it enters and leaves your nostrils.

While doing this, other thoughts willenter your mind unbidden: ‘I must paythat gas bill later’, ‘Did I come off as stupidin the meeting earlier?’ or even ‘I keeplosing track of my breath and thinkingabout other things – I’m rubbish at this!’.These intrusions of thought don’t meanthat you’re failing to be mindful; whatmatters is how you respond to thesethoughts. The idea in a mindfulnesssession is to merely note these thoughts,without judgement, and to let them pass.You then return to focusing on thebreath – and then, as further thoughtsenter your mind of their own accord, you simply note them, and move on.

How is mindfulness beneficial?At first, achieving mindfulness can seemdifficult, even pointless – much likepractising scales on a piano. Butperseverance pays off. Over the past 20years, dozens of studies have demonstratedthat mindfulness provides benefits in arange of clinical settings, from painmanagement and stress to depression, as well as in non-clinical groups (Baer,2003; Greeson, 2009). The vast majority of studies on mindfulness, as both a


Mindfulness in schoolsDan Jones investigates whether ‘habits of mind’ can boost the well-being andresilience of the nation’s children

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Baer, R.A. (2003). Mindfulness training asa clinical intervention: A conceptualand empirical review. ClinicalPsychology: Science and Practice 10(2),125–143.

Biegel, G.M. & Brown, K.W. (2010).Assessing the efficacy of an adaptedin-class mindfulness-based trainingprogram for school-age children: Apilot study. White Paper [pdf availableat tinyurl.com/6ftayyx]

Burke, C.A. (2010). Mindfulness-basedapproaches with children andadolescents: A preliminary review ofcurrent research in an emergentfield. Journal of Child and FamilyStudies, 19, 133–144.

Claxton, G. (2008). What’s the point ofschool? Rediscovering the heart ofeducation. Oxford: OneWorld.

Fredrickson, B. (2009). Positivity –Groundbreaking research to release

your inner optimist and thrive. Oxford:OneWorld.

Greeson, J.M. (2009). Mindfulnessresearch update 2008.Complementary Health PracticeReview, 14(1), 10–18.

Huppert, F.A. & Johnson, D.M. (2010). Acontrolled trial of mindfulnesstraining in schools: The importance ofpractice for an impact on well-being.Journal of Positive Psychology, 5(4),

264–274.Jennings, P.A. & Greenberg, M.T. (2009).

The prosocial classroom: Teachersocial and emotional competence inrelation to student and classroomoutcomes. Review of EducationalResearch 79, 491–525.

Visu-Petra, L., Cheie, L., Benga, O. &Miclea, M. (2011). Cognitive controlgoes to school. Procedia – Social andBehavioral Sciences 11, 240–244.

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therapeutic intervention and as a tool toaid everyday well-being, have been donewith adults, but in recent years researchershave begun to explore how it might beapplied to teenagers and even to veryyoung, pre-school children. The results to date in this emerging field suggest thatmindfulness training is both feasible andbeneficial for children across a wide rangeof ages and contexts (Burke, 2010).

Mindfulness training has at least fivebroad beneficial effects, according toFelicia Huppert, Professor of Psychology of the University ofCambridge’s Well-BeingInstitute. Specifically,mindfulness promotes:I increased sensory

awareness;I greater cognitive

control;I enhanced regulation

of emotions;I acceptance of transient

thoughts and feelings;and

I the capacity to regulateattention.

Sensory awareness Mindful practices nurturethe capacity to bring ourcurrent sensory experienceto the forefront ofconsciousness. In doingso, they create the mentalspace to ‘stop and smellthe roses’, to be charmedby a child’s smile or movedby a dramatic sunset. ‘InWestern societies, most ofus, most of the time, areon autopilot, and what’sgoing on in our heads ismostly about the past andthe future,’ says Huppert. ‘We spend solittle time in the moment.’ Being in themoment, and appreciating positive sensoryexperiences, is not only intrinsicallyenjoyable, but also elicits positive emotionsthat feed into overall well-being.Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson of theUniversity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill,has demonstrated that recurrentlyexperiencing positive emotionssimultaneously broadens our sensoryawareness – creating further opportunitiesfor sensory savouring – and also buildspsychological and emotional resilience(Fredrickson, 2009).

Cognitive controlUnlike some forms of meditation, the goalof mindfulness is not to clear one’s mind ofall thoughts and feelings, but to anchoroneself to current sensory experiences and

to allow thoughts to enter the mind freely.The key is to note these passing thoughtsnon-judgementally, without analysingthem or elaborating on their contents.Perhaps you think, ‘I keep losing focus on my breath and keep thinking about myto-do list!’. In a mindful state, you don’texpand on this thought and start asking‘Does this mean I can’t do mindfulness?Am I doing it wrong?’ – you simplyacknowledge the thought and bring yourfocus back to your breath. In this way,mindfulness promotes a ‘decentred’

perspective on our teeming thoughts, andcreates some distance between thoughtsthat arise and our cognitive reactions tothem. ‘The idea is that thoughts come andgo like clouds,’ says Huppert. ‘Just becauseyou’re having a thought doesn’t mean youhave to act on it, or even that it reflectsanything about reality, or you. It’s just athought.’

Emotion regulationMany of our intrusive thoughts come with an emotional flavour. Often these arenegative – we suddenly remember a recentargument, which makes us angry, or thetime we embarrassed ourselves in front ofthe boss. It’s all too easy to get caught upby these intrusive emotional thoughts, and to ruminate on them at length. Again,mindfulness encourages a more decentredperspective on these feelings: they should

be noted, and let pass. ‘Simply recognisingyour feelings gives you a choice in howyou’re going to respond, rather thanreacting automatically in ways that lead to trouble,’ says Huppert.

AcceptanceThe non-judgemental, detachedperspective on our thoughts and feelingsencouraged by mindfulness training isanother way of talking about acceptance of these thoughts and feelings. ‘That’s a huge thing,’ says Huppert. ‘You’re notbeating yourself up for having this thoughtor that feeling. You’re learning to be kindto yourself – and it’s believed that this hasknock-on effects for being kind to others,though the evidence is not yet as clear aswe would like.’

Attention regulationMindfulness doesn’t demand that you clear your mind of all thoughts andfeelings, but that you allow them to floatby without being caught up in them, andreturn your focus of attention to whatevermindful practice you are engaged in. Inother words, it provides training in how toregulate and direct, at will, your attention.In his 1890 classic The Principles ofPsychology, William James celebrated theimportance of this skill:

The faculty of voluntarily bringingback a wandering attention over and over again, is the very root ofjudgement, character and will. No one is compus sui if he have it not.An education which should improvethis faculty would be the educationpar excellence. But it is easier todefine this ideal than to give practicalinstructions for bringing it about.

From clinics to schoolsHistorically, mindfulness has mainly beenused in the clinical context of treatingmental health problems such as stress anddepression. ‘But we now realise that wehad neglected its potentially preventativeapplications, and the possible benefits ofmindfulness for children in the non-clinical context of schools,’ sayspsychotherapist Jini Lavelle, who hastaught mindfulness in schools aroundOxfordshire in recent years. ‘We need this in schools so that rather than havingpeople come to learn mindfulness asadults to deal with stress and depression,we teach these skills as children grow up.’

This perspective stresses that thebenefits of mindfulness training forchildren and adolescents are noteducation-specific, nor limited to theclassroom. Yet they do have a remarkabledegree of overlap with the SEAL objectives


mindfulness in schools


of self-awareness, emotional intelligence,motivation and social skills. ‘For all of theSEAL outcomes, there are good reasons tothink that mindfulness helps,’ says Weare.Mindfulness inherently increases self-awareness, and nurtures the capacity toregulate automatic emotional reactions to life’s slings and arrows. This is not justbeneficial for the mindful individual, butalso for those around them. ‘If you manageyour impulses better, you can avoidwrangles with other people, and listen to them and see their point of view,’ saysWeare.

The evidence for the benefits ofmindfulness and related practices in schoolsettings has been a long time coming.About 15 years ago, a PhD student ofClaxton’s, Caroline Mann, took meditationpractices to classes of Year 8 students (12- and 13-year-olds). Pupils reportedthat meditation was useful in terms ofmaintaining psychological equanimity andcoping with stress and incidents in theplayground, and Mann also found thatmeditation improved performance onmemory tests.

Now there is increasing evidence thatmindfulness really does make a differencewhen delivered in the classroom. Last year,

private-practice psychotherapistGina Biegel and psychologist KirkWarren Brown of VirginiaCommonwealth University releaseda ‘White Paper’ (not a peer-reviewedpublication) reporting the results ofa pilot, school-based mindfulnessprogramme in young children(Biegel & Brown, 2010). This studyexplored whether mindfulnesstraining could improve academicachievement, powers of attention,social skills, behavioural problemsand engagement with academicstudies among 2nd and 3rd gradepupils (= Years 3 and 4 in the UK).

This pilot study enrolled 79children at Berkley MaynardAcademy, an elementary school inOakland, California, for a five-weekcourse in mindfulness. The programmecomprised three 15-minute sessions aweek, which both teachers and studentsattended. The 15 sessions involved a rangeof mindful activities, including listening,breathing, movement, walking and eating,as well as lessons on the promotion ofkindness and caring. Students wereassessed using a number of quantitativemeasures immediately before and after the

mindfulness course, and then three monthslater to see what effects the course had.

Biegel and Brown report that thisprogramme was generally well toleratedwithout any adverse side-effects, and alsoimproved attention and teacher-ratedsocial skills among students. Theattentional capacities of children weremeasured using the Attention NetworkTask-Child Version (ANT-C). A



CHAIR OF THE PROFESSIONALPRACTICE BOARD 2011/14

Call for nominations

● Could you lead the Board’s strategic vision and take a lead for the Board as a whole in achieving the aims and objectives

of promoting professional practice?

● Could you manage the business of the Board effectively and expeditiously?

● Could you encourage the full participation of the members of the Board in its business?

● Could you contribute to the development and implementation of the corporate policies of the Society, as a member of

the Board of Trustees and Representative Council?

● Could you be the next Chair of the Society’s Professional Practice Board?

If you would like to know more then please contact Nigel Atter, Policy Advisor, Professional Practice.

For an information pack and a Statement of Interest form, email [email protected] or tel: 0116 252 9901.

Closing date for receipt of statements of interest is Friday 14 October 2011.

Biegel and Brown’s study explored whether mindfulnesstraining could improve academic achievement


particularly importantaspect of attentiontapped by the ANT-C isthe capacity forexecutive or cognitivecontrol –the ability to overrideimpulses and focusattention on salientsensory information,which enables goal-directed behaviour and creates cognitiveflexibility. Cognitivecontrol is crucial todecision making and is

correlated with academicsuccess (Visu-Petra et al.,

2011). Overall, between the beginning andend of the five-week course, 64 per cent ofchildren improved their scores on ANT-Ccognitive control – an effect that persistedat three-month follow-up. At thebeginning and end of the study teachersalso completed the Social Skills RatingSystem (SSRS) to assess students’ socialbehaviours. Biegel and Brown report thattheir mindfulness programme improvedteacher-rated social skills over the courseof the intervention, which, like the effectson attention, remained evident threemonths later.

Last year also saw the publication ofthe first peer-reviewed, controlled study onmindfulness in schools. This was carriedout by Felicia Huppert and Daniel Johnsonfrom the Cambridge Well-Being Institute,working with teachers Richard Burnett ofTonbridge School and Chris Cullen ofHampton School, both of whom aremindfulness practitioners (Huppert &Johnson, 2010).

Drawing on the practical experience ofCullen and Burnett (who wrote a master’sthesis on mindfulness in schools), theteam drew up a four-week syllabus for use in Tonbridge and Hampton (bothindependent, fee-paying boys’ schools)among 14- and 15-year-olds. The courseconsisted of four 40-minute classes, takenonce a week, in which students wereintroduced to the principles and practice of mindfulness meditation. In addition,students were encouraged to practisemindfulness daily with the aid of shortaudio files that talked them through whatthey should do (these were recorded byMichael Chaskalson, an experiencedCambridge-based mindfulness trainer).

In total, 173 students were enrolled inthe study. Mindfulness was taught duringreligious education classes, with eachstudent being in one of 11 classes at thetwo schools. Six classes took normalclasses to provide a control group, whilethe other five undertook mindfulness

training. At the beginning and the end of the study, students completed a series of online questionnaires to assess theirpsychological well-being, resilience andself-reported mindfulness. (These weremeasured using the Warwick-EdinburghMental Well-Being Scale, the EgoResiliency Scale, and the Cognitive andAffective Mindfulness Scale-Revised,respectively.) Students also completed theTen-Item Personality Inventory so thatpersonality differences could be exploredin the context of mindfulness training.

At the beginning of the study, thestudents in these schools tended to fall in the middle or upper range of the well-being, resilience and mindfulness scales.These baseline measures in part dependedon the personality styles of the students:those who scored highly onconscientiousness and emotional stabilitytended to show greater well-being,resilience and mindfulness. In addition,high extraversion was an additionalpredictor of greater resilience and well-being, and openness to experience waspositively correlated with well-being.

Overall, there was a significant increasein well-being among the students whoreceived mindfulness training. But perhapsmore importantly, these effects on well-being were dose-dependent. Not allstudents practised mindfulness equally –some practised at least three times a week,others did not practise at all – but themore practice they did, the more benefitthey gained. Interestingly, students low in emotional stability (i.e. anxious orneurotic) derived particular benefit – andthese are arguably the students most inneed of an intervention promoting mentalwell-being.

In this short trial mindfulness did notshow any significant benefits on resilience.‘It could be that you get an effect on well-being sooner than you get one onresilience,’ says Huppert. Alternatively, thisresult may turn on the resilience measureused. ‘It was the best we could find at thetime, but it’s not the measure I’d use now,’says Huppert.

Since completing this pilot study,Huppert, Burnett and Cullen have workedwith other colleagues to create anexpanded eight-week course that iscurrently being trialled in a number ofstate schools around the UK, and in someother European countries. Although notyet part of a controlled study, the aim is getfeedback on the course from teachers andstudents so that it can be refined andtweaked to optimise its use in theclassroom, with the aim of runninganother randomised controlled trial in the 2012/2013 academic year. At the sametime, Lavelle’s research assistant Sarah

Hennelly is currently completing a master’sdegree at Oxford Brookes Universitylooking at mindfulness in schools. Resultsfrom this are expected later this year.

The future of mindfulness inschoolsDespite widespread recognition of thebenefits of mindfulness training, there area number of challenges in getting it intoschools. Some parents and teachers mightworry that mindfulness training is part ofa broader tendency to label kids withhaving problems that need fixing, as inthe case of medical treatments ofattention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Yet this is not how most mindfulnesspractitioners see it being applied. ‘Inschools it’s quite important that it’s takenout of therapeutic box and put squarely inthe territory of flourishing,’ says Burnett.‘Mindfulness is about helping young mindsflourish in the broadest sense.’ Cullenagrees: ‘For some kids mindfulness may beabout managing stress or anxiety, but forothers it’s about how they play on thesports field, practise music, dance ordrama, or maintain concentration duringhomework.’

Another major challenge of bringingmindfulness to schools is the dearth ofteachers trained in the relevant practices.Just as teaching someone to play the pianoor football requires some practicalexperience in these skills, so too formindfulness. ‘You don’t have to be a Zenmaster, but you can’t train kids in theclassroom if you don’t have your ownmindfulness practice,’ says Burnett.

This suggests that there may be a placefor mindfulness training in teachertraining. ‘I feel very strongly that it shouldbe part of teacher training, because apartfrom anything else it will benefit thetrainee teachers enormously – and thenthey can use it in their schools,’ saysLavelle. Accumulating evidence suggeststhat the social and emotional competenceof teachers is a key factor in establishinghealthy student–teacher relationships,managing the classroom, and teachingsocial and emotional aspects of learning –creating what Patricia Jennings and MarkGreenberg call the ‘prosocial classroom’(Jennings & Greenberg, 2009). Claxtonagrees that mindfulness would be hugelybeneficial for both teachers and students:‘If I ruled the world I would make itmandatory – there is no downside risk,and the evidence shows these things work.’



I Dan Jones is a freelance writer based [email protected]

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The Psychologist October 2011

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