The Psychologist October 2011

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psychologist vol 24 no 10

october 2011

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

Incorporating Psychologist Appointments ÂŁ5 or free to members of The British Psychological Society

letters 710 news 728 careers 774 looking back 788

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

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

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JUSTIN TALLIS/ REPORTDIGITAL.CO.UK

The riots – a comment special What was behind England’s riots, and how can psychology contribute going forward?

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news and digest 728 brain imaging; the ‘difference in differences’ error; dance company ‘scientist in residence’; ‘Any Qualified Provider’; nuggets from the Digests; and more media disorder, distortion, and the Society response to the riots, with Fiona Jones

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Mindfulness in schools Can habits of mind boost the well-being and resilience of the nation’s children?

Dan Jones investigates

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Workaholism: a 21st-century addiction Mark Griffiths with a behavioural addiction perspective

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Life’s long and winding roads Jon Sutton talks to Howard Friedman and Leslie Martin about their longevity project

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Why might innocents make false confessions?

Kim Drake suggests a fruitful avenue of investigation into vulnerability

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736 JOHN HARRIS/REPORTDIGITAL.CO.UK

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october 2011

THE ISSUE People were burying their relatives.

Homes and businesses smouldered.

The nation grabbed blindly for explanations for the riots that had ripped through England. Where were the psychologists?

They were there, if you looked, and we did. The Research Digest blog collected links to comment and analysis, and the Society’s website encouraged comment. Yet much of it seemed almost ‘meta’ or ‘anti’ science: explanation about explanation, or views on what the riots weren’t and what we shouldn’t do, rather than what they were and what we should.

The riots cried out for the discipline: for once there genuinely seemed to be multiple, interacting causes. Yet we seemed quiet, perhaps wary that honest uncertainty would appear weak or that the media were in no mood to listen.

This month, an extended ‘Letters’ section (p.718) presents comment on the riots. Providing a forum for discussion across the discipline is central to The Psychologist, and we hope to offer new opportunities (in print and online) in future. Your views, as always, are welcome.

Dr Jon Sutton

methods 756 Kate Hefferon and Elena Gil-Rodriguez on interpretative phenomenological analysis

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

book reviews 760 Jung in the city; Freud on coke; positive psychology at work; and more

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

society 764 disaster, crisis and trauma in the President’s column; honorary awards; test use register; history prize; new subscriber grades; BPS journals

careers and psychologist appointments

new voices

looking back

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782

788

the strange case of Margery Kempe, by Alison Torn one on one …with Gail Coleman

read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk

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THE RIOTS

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Failure to learn would be criminal Through our work, violence has become a stated public health issue in Scotland, alongside other diseases like measles and TB. Adopting this approach led us to examine violence in a new way.

What was the scale of the problem? What were the risk and protective factors? What works in preventing violence and how could we scale it up to a population level? We now talk about how to prevent violence at three levels: primary prevention – for example early years; secondary prevention – targeting those at risk; and tertiary prevention – dealing with those victims and offenders already infected.

To achieve long-term change we need to work in all three of these areas.

Violence is complex and complicated.

This often inhibits us from acting – many people have said ‘it’s too big, don’t bother’ – but try we must. It is the study of the worst of human behaviour and the interaction of environment. For us, using practical psychology – around child psychology, health psychology, groups or around motivation to change – has allowed us to both look at the observed behaviour and try to be innovative around how we affect change in a large population. We have tried to develop JESS HURD/REPORTDIGITAL.CO.UK

We watched the coverage of the riots in England, like many readers of this publication, with concern and shock. Yet much of the violence seemed familiar to us in Scotland. The sensation seeking, the recreational violence, the lack of empathy – they are all things we’ve seen, and seen far too often on our streets. We can make no detailed comment on the English riots as all the facts are not known as yet. What we can do is offer some observations.

Seven years ago, Scotland was identified as the most violent country in Europe. Our murder and violence rates were appalling and a source of national shame, even though our crime detection rate was excellent (and still is). The strong bonds in Scotland between alcohol, gangs, knives and general violence prompted us to action. 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 within criminal justice for long-term violence prevention – the solution, by and large, was simply to lock up violent offenders.

We then looked at the public health approach 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 were diagnosed with measles, you were put in a sanatorium where you remained until you were better. It didn’t reduce the chances of anyone else getting measles, but it made us feel safer. We were doing the same thing with violence. If we considered someone a risk, a violent person, we locked them up. It made us feel safer. But putting someone in prison didn’t stop others being violent. We needed to focus on prevention, in effect ‘inoculating’ people against violence through prevention programmes.

Crowd psychology and public order management Having studied ‘riots’ for my entire career, what was shocking was not the disturbances but the explanations and reactions to them. On the one hand, moral outrage at the ‘riots’ led to situations where assertions that they could not be understood as ‘mindless criminality’ were openly attacked as apologism. On the other, a myriad of ‘experts’ sidelined crowd psychology by re-asserting the idea that crowds are irrational. But perhaps of more concern was that the UK government – speaking about ‘phoney human rights’ – asserted that the police required water cannon and baton rounds. Thankfully, the ACPO President Sir Hugh Orde retorted that the police neither needed nor wanted such weaponry.

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

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that the ‘riots’ represented a need for fundamental police reform. However, as she herself acknowledged, reform of public order policing was already well under way following the inquiries into the policing of the G20 protests in London in April 2009.

These reforms recognise the rationality within ‘riots’ and are underpinned by an adherence to human rights. As a consequence, these changes are not focused on distance weaponry but upon increasing police capacity for liaison and dialogue (HMIC, 2009); an approach that it would appear has little relevance in the ‘post-riot agenda’.

Research and theory suggests that there is a strong relationship between police capability for dialogue with radicalised groups, police legitimacy and their ability to prevent ‘riots’ (e.g. Stott, 2011; Stott et

al., in press). In this respect it is important that following the shooting of Mark Duggan no family liaison took place – as would be normal in such situations.

Consequently, on the following Saturday the family and local community representatives – already historically aggrieved at police actions toward the black community – decided to mount a protest outside Tottenham police station calling for information on the death of their son.

The crowd waited for nearly three hours, and information was not, from their point of view, adequately forthcoming. It was subsequent to these key circumstances that the attacks against police vehicles and the ‘riots’ in Tottenham took place. A central message then is that had the Metropolitan Police created

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

Understanding how and when people are motivated to change their behaviour has been key to tackling issues around knives, group violence, alcohol, child and domestic abuse. It has also allowed us to engage further upstream in child development and look at the acquisition of soft skills, such as empathy and communication, as protective factors, which are crucial in the prevention of violence. Adam Smith suggested in the 1700s that empathy was the glue that kept society together – how right he was.

Our gangs initiative, the Community Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV), which was highlighted by the Prime Minister recently, was founded from our study. It comes firmly within the literature around groups and behavioural change. Yet we also looked at what was different: whilst there was violence within our gangs, the participants also committed violence on their own and in pairs – violence was the issue, not the gang. Our aim was to reduce violence and we recognised that for many of the offenders we targeted, the gang provided many positive support functions that were absent within their home lives – as human beings we all seek the positive aspects that a group can bring. We are not gang busters – it is the behaviour of the gangs, the committing of violent acts, that we aim to stop and prevent.

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

dialogue immediately following the shooting incident it is very unlikely the protest crowd would have emerged on Saturday afternoon. Had the protest not taken place it is unlikely that there would have been attacks on police cars and then therefore the escalation into Tottenham High Road and beyond (Reicher & Stott, 2011).

Taking this into account it should be clear that our science rejects calls for distance weaponry and locates effective police response in the capacity to establish links to the increasingly radicalised groups within our society.

Rather than simply accepting the challenge to our science, I would therefore argue it is actually the basis from which we can adequately start to address how the ‘riots’ originated and understand

CIRV works for gang members in Glasgow. An evidence-based approach that worked in Boston and in Cincinnati, it could work elsewhere with the right people involved. However, it is just one of the myriad solutions we have tried to put in place in Scotland to achieve longterm sustainable change.

So here is the challenge. For years we have been concentrating on why things have got so bad, and we endlessly describe the issues, always with the phrase at the end which states ‘we need more research’. What we need are solutions, both at a population and an individual level, if we are to move the country forward. We need to evolve the research paradigms to what works and why. We are already starting to see this practical application, but we need much more, we need evidence and ideas. We need your help.

We are a practical unit – a policing unit. Like partners in health and a range of other areas, we want to make a difference. It has required understanding, innovation, bravery, resilience, but most of all aspiration that this can be different and that we can change. Most of us will agree that what happened within the riots was criminal, but what will be more criminal will be if we fail to learn lessons and change for the better.

Karyn McCluskey Detective Chief Superintendent John Carnochan Co-directors, Violence Reduction Unit

the developments in policing that must subsequently take place.

Clifford Stott University of Liverpool

References Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (2009).

Adapting to protest – Nurturing the British model of policing. London: HMIC. Reicher, S. & Stott, C. (2011). Mad mobs and Englishmen: Myths and realities of the 2011 riots.

London: Constable & Robinson.

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

Stott, C., Hoggett, J. & Pearson, G. (in press). ‘Keeping the peace’: Social identity, procedural justice and the policing of football crowds. British Journal of Criminology.

read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk

It’s education, stupid I would place the education policies of successive governments at the centre of the causes of the riots that engulfed a wide range of young people and permitted criminal gangs to exploit them.

Society is not broken, but education policy has made a major contribution to alienation and disaffection, especially amongst the vulnerable and disadvantaged. In addition, our education has not prepared its ‘successes’ to manage their behaviour and lives in a reasonable, ethical and moderate manner so that others, particularly the young, can have respect for them.

Research has shown that Singapore, a country much admired by politicians because its students come top in international assessments in education, operates a high-stakes, assessment-driven system just as England does. It produces students who ‘exhibit a narrow mindedness, and see the paper chase as the means to the “good life”… They make good employees but few can think out of the box, much less lead’ (Heng & Tam, 2006, p.172). Gregory and Clarke (2003) found that one in three children in East Asian primary schools did not think life was worth living and were constantly in a state of fear because of the frequent tests and the authoritarian and punitive style of education. They were spending two to three hours per night on homework and taking extra classes to keep up.

This kind of didactic education, a teacher-led, lecture-style system in which pupils are taught what, not how, to think, is found in 90 per cent of classrooms worldwide. Children are viewed to have ‘learnt’ when they can reproduce what has been taught, and a good learner is equivalent to a databank filled with ‘stuff’ (Desforges, 1998). England had begun to leave this system behind in the 1980s (Montgomery, 1981, 1983) as teachers found critical and constructivist approaches more effective in promoting lifelong learning and academic stretch in a developed country. But just as the new strategic approaches were being introduced, central control was first exerted over teacher education and then over the design and implementation of a national curriculum.

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

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standards has inexorably led to a narrowing of the curriculum. Teachers are obliged to teach ‘to the tests’ in order to reach the standards and cover the syllabus. Extrinsic motivators such as these serve to damage intrinsic or personal motivation to learn for its own sake (Ryan & Deci, 2000). As SATs loom large and children fail in their own eyes early in primary school, our education

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

So how can we improve the general health of our educational system? We can look to methods that have proved to be successful in overcoming underachievement in disadvantaged and demotivated. The theory and practice is

based in constructivist approaches to learning. Children puzzle their way through to knowledge and learn how to think. They are repositories of concepts, strategies, rules and principles and acquire a greater mastery of content in the process. This approach has also been called teaching ‘the cognitive curriculum’ through every subject. An early example was the Perry Preschool Project

WHEN EXPLAINING BECOMES A SIN

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colleagues also offered the manager, and to answer participants the opportunity to questions about such things as engage in ‘moral cleansing’ by whether they think he should be subscribing to an organ donation removed from his job, and scheme. Those participants who whether, if he were a friend of read about the manager who theirs, they would end their chose to save the money over friendship with him. saving the child, and those who Unsurprisingly, if the vignette read about the manager who concludes by revealing that the took a long time to make his manager decided the treatment decision, regardless of what it was too expensive, participants was, were most motivated to are more keen to punish the donate their manager than if he organs. This decided that the shows, Tetlock hospital could afford argues, that it to treat the child. is merely The explanation enough for in terms of sacred the idea of values is breaking a straightforward: life, taboo to flicker especially the life of across your a child, is a sacred consciousness value; money is not to provoke and so should not be feelings of weighed against the disgust at sacred value of life. ourselves But the most (which provoke interesting contrast Riot: press hobby horse? the need for in the experiment is moral cleansing). between participants who read For some, then, the looting vignettes in which the manager may be an immoral act of such took a long time to make his a threatening nature that to think decision and those in which he about it too hard, to react with didn’t. Regardless of whether he anything other than a vociferous decided for or against paying for condemnation, is itself worthy of the treatment, reading that the condemnation. The Daily Mail manager thought for a long time editors feel they are in a moral before making a decision community in which society is provoked participants to want threatened by the looters and by to punish the manager more. those who give them succour Tetlock argues that we are (‘the handwringing apologists on motivated to punish not just the Left’, to quote from the same those who offend against sacred editorial). The sad thing about values, but also those who adopting this stance is that it appear to be thinking about prevents media commentators offending against sacred values – from thinking about how they by weighing them against nonthemselves might have sacred values.

In an added twist, Tetlock and contributed to the looting. The JESS HURD/REPORTDIGITAL.CO.UK

As the cacophony of politicians and commentators replaced that of the police sirens, I was interested to hear the particularly shrill voice of those who condemn as evil anyone with an alternative explanation for the looting than theirs. For an example, take the Daily Mail headline ‘To blame the cuts is immoral and cynical. This is criminality pure and simple’.

If I’ve got them right, this means that when considering what factors contributed to the looting, identifying government spending cuts is not just incorrect, but actively harmful.

For the Mail, the issue of explanations for the looting is of such urgency that they are comfortable condemning anyone who seeks an explanation beyond that of the looting being ‘criminality pure and simple’.

What could be motivating this?

Research into moral psychology provides a lead. One of my favourite papers is ‘Thinking the unthinkable: Sacred values and taboo cognitions’ by Philip Tetlock (2003). The argument he makes is that in all cultures some values are sacred and we are motivated not just to punish people who offend against these values, but also to punish people who even think about offending these values. The key experiment, from Tetlock et al.

(2000), concerns a vignette about a sick child and hospital manager, who must decided if the hospital budget can afford an expensive treatment for the sick child. After reading about the manager’s decision, participants in the experiment are given the option to say how they felt about

footage on TV and in newspapers such as the Daily Mail has been vivid and hysterical. Television has shown the most dramatic footage of the looting, while headlines have screamed about the police losing control and anarchy on the streets. You don’t have to be a scholar of psychology to realise that this kind of media environment might play a role in encouraging the copycat looting sprees that sprung up outside of London (although if you were, you would be aware of the ‘Werther effect’ literature on how newspaper headlines and TV footage can provoke imitation in the wider population).

Some, then, see any attempt at explaining the looting as excusing the looting. The looting becomes a moral issue of such virulence that they see people who understand society differently as part of the same threat to society as the looters.

Research in moral psychology provides some clues about their style of thinking. Unfortunately it doesn’t, as far as I know, provide much of a clue about how to alter it.

Tom Stafford University of Sheffield This is an edited version of a post on www.mindhacks.com References Tetlock, P.E. (2003). Thinking the unthinkable: Sacred values and taboo cognitions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(7), 320–324.

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

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(Headstart Programme), although the long-term beneficial effects for lifelong learning were not identified for over a decade.

In this country we have been teaching thinking and problem solving in the school curriculum in many projects (some under the wire) that have reclaimed the interest of disaffected learners and challenged the successful: for Smaller classes allow Reception teachers to give every example, Belle Wallace’s child a secure grounding in literacy and numeracy ‘Thinking Actively in a Social Context’ framework; Shayer and Adey’s Accelerated Learning in Science; and lacked any understanding of the and my own Cognitive Process Strategies effects of the mob. They became easy prey for inclusive teaching. These techniques for criminal gangs to incite to action for promote participative learning and their own purposes as well as to their own extended talk by pupils and assist social greed and exploitative natures under the and communication skills and formal licence and anonymity of the mob. writing. Aspects of some of these The auguries for change are not good. approaches have even been adopted in Although educationalists may be recent government strategies. optimistic, Wallace and Eriksson (2006) Critical and creative thinking have recognised a universal stubborn methodology needs to be backed by other adherence to a content curriculum, a strategies. Teacher education also needs dominant culture that seeks to preserve to be rethought, for the changes required itself, bureaucracies resistant to change cannot be made through ‘bolt on’ and 19th-century education systems based provision later. If teachers learn by the upon authority, didactics and methods we wish them to teach, their authoritarianism. standards are raised (Montgomery, 1993).

Indeed, Michael Gove, presenting the We can also learn from private education Schools White Paper, said: ‘The countries that the transition years in the state that come out top of international studies system are crucial. Class sizes in into educational performance recognise Reception and in Year 7 when pupils that the most crucial factor in determining move into secondary school need to be how well children do at school is the reduced to 15 pupils to one teacher. This quality of their teachers… We are putting will allow Reception teachers to give teachers in the driving seat of school every child a secure grounding in literacy improvement.’ Teachers can make a strong and numeracy, especially if articulatory contribution but they need to be allowed phonics and then morphemic approaches to redevelop as a profession first. Teaching are used. There also needs to be a teachers to teach is not just about balanced approach to literacy, giving teaching them how to teach their subject spelling and handwriting more in a lively manner. It is a third order set of appropriate emphasis. In Year 7 it will principles and practices that encompass gain time for each child to be known, to integrate and be heard. Related to this, size of an overall school population also needs to be reconsidered: the unintended consequences of institutions over 1200 can be to increase anonymity and Working in an NHS Child and Adolescent alienation amongst pupils.

Mental Health Service it is clear to me My argument is that pupils, especially that having little power to significantly those from socially and culturally affect important aspects of your life disadvantaged environments in a impacts on well-being. How young people developed society, are particularly behave often says more about the social vulnerable to failure, disaffection and structures they live in than some rigid set alienation in our current state education of underlying traits that define them in system. It can give rise to the generalised every circumstance. This is not anger and aggression expressed by many tantamount to excusing the inexcusable, of the young rioters. They found it and it is not helpful to portray young exciting, had little thought for the people as either victims or perpetrators. consequences of their actions, blamed It is my belief that the more we highlight ‘them’ (authority in general and the ‘rich’)

theory, research and practice across age ranges and disciplines. Teachers have to become theoreticians, researchers, subject and practice experts before they can develop the necessary skills and knowledge to do this work (Montgomery, 2002).

A few words of caution: ‘Because we have all been to school it does not mean we know all there is to know about teaching’.

Diane Montgomery Emeritus Professor in Education Middlesex University dmont407@aol.com

References Desforges, C. (1998). Learning and teaching. In D. Shorrocks-Taylor (Ed.) Directions in educational psychology (pp.5–18). London: Whurr.

Gregory, K. & Clarke, M. (2003). High stakes assessment in England and Singapore. Theory into Practice, 42, 66–78.

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

Montgomery, D. (1981). Education comes of age: A modern theory of teaching. School Psychology International, 1, 1–3.

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

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

Montgomery, D. (2002). Helping teachers develop through classroom 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 in gifted education: International perspectives on global issues. London: Routledge.

A creative response?

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social context the more likely our responses to violence are creative rather than reactive.

So far the government has focused the debate mainly on parents, single mothers, children having children and discipline in schools. But I do not believe that ‘getting tougher’ works. We need only look at the increasing prison population that has not significantly reduced crime and recidivism. Despite the importance of family, I am keen to challenge the assumption that antisocial behaviour

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results purely from an inferior familial environment. Otherwise, we may as well come to the same conclusion about banker’s greed, ‘journalist’ hacking and MPs abusing their expenses. Individuals live in a family context, yes, but families live in a community context and communities exist within a larger socioeconomic context, which is increasingly materialistic and unequal.

Even before the riots, it seemed to be a particularly difficult time to be young.

Less is said about young people being at risk, compared to the focus on viewing them as the risk themselves. Despite good intentions, such as the setting up of the now abandoned Social Exclusion Unit/task force (SEU), ideas about social inclusion have sat uncomfortably next to a punitiveness that calls for tougher policies, based on the criminalisation of young people and an increasing tendency to view children as adults who are fully responsible for their own conduct (Goldson, 2002). This ‘adulteration’ can be seen in the introduction of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs), which can be applied to children as young as 10, the age of criminal responsibility.

Recently when students were ‘rioting’, many of us understood their anger because it was collectively shared. Too many young people do not have the luxury of having a whole nation share and care about their circumstances, let alone the possibility of having money or going to university. The extent of poverty, deprivation and lack of opportunity, as well as the complexity of the problems that result from it, still surprises me after more than 15 years working in mental health. At least the students had something to lose; which meant they knew where to draw the line. I believe it is having a purpose and feeling valued that creates boundaries. Having no purpose, no hope and feeling the effect of constant attacks on your self-worth can create lack of boundaries, just as much as ‘bad parenting’.

Despite the fact that not all the rioters were young African/Caribbean men (some were white, were women, were middleclass professionals and undergraduates) the focus of vilification has been on

For more, including news of Society President Carole Allan’s letter to David Cameron, see p.734 and www.bps.org.uk.

Also see tinyurl.com/digestriots for the Research Digest’s round-up of links.

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immigration and claims that ‘multiculturalism has not worked’. Look on any social networking site and read the comments for evidence of this.

Racism exists in British society. But I would like more acknowledgment and debate in Parliament on the gendered racism that oppresses people by virtue of being African/ Caribbean and male (Mutua, 2006). They are often stigmatised in ways that justifies Man on ‘Give our kids a future’ protest in north London after the riots their social and educational exclusion and makes them subject makes it difficult for them to participate to macro and micro-aggressions and in the labour market and that increases constant humiliation. Despite our the likelihood of poverty and isolation collective obsession with wealth, it is (Gingerbread, 2009). Female-headed aspects of youth culture that are seen single-parent households challenge the to mirror this preoccupation that come idea that only men can head families, under scrutiny and attack. and the labour market, social welfare Not only does the government fall and government policy impose sanctions into the trap of pathologising young against family constellations that do not people as the problem, but they explicitly conform to the heterosexual, two-parent, pathologise mothers who are unmarried, male-headed norm. live without a pronounced male head of There are also less visible social household, and/or are single parents. The context issues that impact on us under assumption seems to be that matriarchy the surface of living. For example, is pathological, unnatural and causes engrained social ideas about masculinity pathology by erasing the male presence dictate that ‘real’ men should be in from the lives of young people. The term control and use violence to achieve ‘single parent’ suggests solo parenting control. At the same time access to when in fact there are diverse styles of legitimate forms of aggression are only single parenting. Many single parents allowed to the police and army, who have have support from wider extended the authority to manage the illegitimate families, which may include important use of force while appearing (and male figures. Many have auxiliary parents claiming) not to be violent at all. Young who share the responsibility of parenting. people who are marginalised learn early Furthermore, there are multigenerational that the standards applied to them are households and for many gay couples very different to those applied to everyone support from ‘chosen family’ (Jay-Green else. Their presence, despite their & Mitchell, 2008; Weston, 1991). There intention and actions, is enough to are of course two-parent families where provoke fear. They become permanent one parent assumes almost all childcare suspects and are under permanent responsibilities, but they would not be surveillance (e.g. Social Exclusion Unit, considered single parent families, even 1998; Osler & Starkey, 2005; Goldson & though experientially, receiving no Muncie, 2006). If young people feel support from your spouse may feel more stigmatised at a time when the forming of like solo parenting than ‘single parents’ a coherent identity is important, it makes with support (Sands & Nuccio, 1989). sense that peer groups become significant Given that many young people get to them. This may or may not involve sound parenting within ‘single parent’ joining ‘gangs’. households, it is important to look It is imperative therefore to support beyond family constellations to think young people from deprived areas of about the social issues that constrain the Britain to have an effective response to resources of families. There is no doubt their circumstances that does not oppress ‘single parents’ suffer discrimination that others. Those of us working with young

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people in the NHS and in non-statutory/community and youth organisations work very hard at engaging them; supporting their emotional well-being and social inclusion. Non-statutory organisations do not merely provide distractions from wrong-doing but enable young people to organise their passions towards creatively affirming their stance on social justice via for example, dance, music, writing and drama (for example the ‘Music and Change’ or ‘InVolve’ projects). Statutory mental health services create spaces for young people and their families to talk about trauma, violence and oppression. Where a young person has been involved in antisocial behaviour, this space involves both bearing witness to the harm done to them that no one may have taken responsibility for and supporting them to face,

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acknowledge and take responsibility for harm they have committed. One without the other is futile.

It is clear from this work that the more we have opportunities to articulate, explore and challenge the constraints on our lives the less likely we are to engage in actions that are destructive and the more connected we feel to others. By talking about individual ‘sickness’ David Cameron not only ingeniously distracts us from social abuse, but also from the possibilities that exist for turning harmful resistance to it into creative and socially engaged resistance. Our analyses of extreme events have important consequences; either reinforcing an unfair and unjust society by drawing attention away from it, or giving full weight to the rhetoric on social inclusion.

Taiwo Afuape Clinical Psychologist and Systemic Psychotherapist

References Gingerbread (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 youth justice: Comparative analysis, international human rights and research evidence. Youth Justice, 6(2), 91–106.

Jay-Green, R. & Mitchell, V. (2008). Gay and lesbian couples in therapy: Minority stress, relational ambiguity 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 and representations of young people: A critique of government policies in France and England. Oxford Review of Education, 31(2), 195–215.

Sands, R.G. & Nuccio, K.E. (1989). Mother-headed single-parent families: A feminist perspective.

Affilia, 4(3), 25–41 Social Exclusion Unit (1998). Truancy and school exclusion. London: The Stationery Office.

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

You can’t explain something when you don’t even know what it is Steve Reicher, as interviewed by Taylor Burns for the Cognoculture blog – see www.nature.com/scitable/blog/cognoculture heterogeneous on three levels. They were course, is not only is it empirically based, heterogeneous in terms of different events but good science also guides you towards in different places on different nights. the important questions to ask about the They were heterogeneous in terms of data. To my mind, what our psychological different science gives us is – at this people acting stage – an indication of on different the types of questions we bases in the should be asking about same event. the riots. But, of course, They also had it can’t give us instant mixed and answers – it would be complex like asking a doctor to motivations. diagnose a patient when Therefore to they haven’t thoroughly use one examined the patient. anecdote and We don’t know what to generalise happened. on the basis of it is necessarily What of the reactionary 24-hour news – pushing for going to be response – by both right and explanations that can’t be right? wrong. left – to pinpoint this on the If there is a ‘marginalised’? bias that I’ve come across, it is the attempt It’s always been an instant response to by a media system – which has 24-hour riots to say that they are the marginal in rolling news – to push people to give society, they are people who are already explanations that can’t possibly be right. violent in society. Those studies that have And again, the point about science, of been done – and the biggest study was the

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JUSTIN TALLIS/REPORTDIGITAL.CO.UK

You were approached by the media in the days following the riots. What have you noticed in your interviews?

The first problem in interviews – and it’s not surprising – is that people are looking for instant explanations. So they want to push you and say, ‘Why did these things happen?’ But the basis of any good science is that any explanation has got to be rooted in a sound empirical account of the phenomena. The simple fact of the matter is that, at this stage, we don’t have that.

We don’t know who participated, we don’t know the extent to which action was collective or individual and opportunistic, and don’t have a systematic account of what the targets were. We certainly don’t know how participants conceptualised themselves. Did they see themselves in racial terms, in class terms, in terms of locality or something else? So the point is, how can you explain something when you don’t even know what that something is?

The danger is that we get explanations that are rooted in a single anecdote.

Clearly, one aspect of these riots is that they were heterogeneous. They were

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Kerner Commission after the American riots of the 60s – showed that the average ghetto rioter was not marginal. On the whole they were more educated than the norm, at least in the communities that participated. They were more likely to be members of more community organisations, and they were less likely to have a criminal background. So again, the presupposition that this is a gang phenomenon is untested – we simply don’t know.

Or again, that somehow there is a loss of parental respect. What our own research and contemporary research has shown that young people involved in violence don’t want their parents to know.

They do it in such a way that their parents don’t hear about it. But then when their mums do hear about this they don’t like it, in fact they’re upset if their parents are upset. The notion that these are people who come from broken homes and don’t give a damn what their parents think and we’ve got this young feral generation – again, this is an entirely untested set of assumptions based, on the whole, on political presuppositions.

The explanations that are coming out are very much bound up with this politics of blame.

controversial. If you look at a radio interview or a TV interview and they all agree and form a consensus, that’s not interesting.

Academics are sometimes lazy as well. They will talk, and they will offer opinions on things for which they are non-experts. On the one hand, we have a responsibility to put our ideas in the public domain – we absolutely do. But at the same time, we need to restrain ourselves to talking about things where we have something distinctive to say that is based on a particular knowledge of the area.

It’s hard, sometimes, to limit yourself.

When you have a charming journalist who invites you to go beyond the

neuroscientists who have, all of a sudden, become experts in crowd psychology.

We have also had epidemiologists talking about crowds and taking literally the metaphor of contagion. So there is a real danger of people straying into areas they know nothing about and talking nonsense as a result.

These are all models of social influence rooted in the classic Le Bonian notion that, in crowds, people lose identity, lose the standards against which they would normally judge events and judge actions, and therefore are automatically influenced by whatever ideas and emotions are out there. So the notion of ‘copycat’ is that it is automatic,

Is the politics of blame not present in the media as well, and perhaps indirectly perpetuated by academics?

One of the problems, I think, is that 24-hour rolling news and the desire for instant accounts and instant explanations mean that we make claims on events before we know what those events are. In part, of course, it’s academics themselves. Especially in the current ‘impact’ climate, academics want that visibility, they want to come out and say these things, they want to claim their patch, they want to be the expert so they can claim their funding.

Kerner Commission after the American riots of the 60s – showed that the average ghetto So we’re not entirely innocent victims, rioter was not marginal we’re part and parcel of this system.

Journalists are working to very tight deadlines. They have to get hold boundaries, it does happen. And that’s it’s not that what you’re doing has any of somebody, so they will get hold of quite flattering. Especially at an meaning, it’s not that it’s connected to whoever is available – it doesn’t have to international level – if someone from your reality. It is, if you like, a mindless be the best person. And the other thing is, another country phones you up there form of action. of course, journalists want news. They is that sense that ‘Oh, this makes me They are all theories that root crowd want somebody to say something an international expert’. There are great action in the pathology of the actor. Now, temptations. We have to be very clear it could be a permanent pathology: these about the limits. are criminal peoples, people with a flawed culture. Or it could be a temporary Have your say via the ‘Letters’ pages of The Is this a particular burden of the social pathology: these are perfectly reasonable Psychologist by e-mailing sciences? It’s tantamount to a stem cell people who have been carried away by psychologist@bps.org.uk. Alternatively, use biologist being called in to comment on the mob. These classic crowd our forum at www.psychforum.org.uk. a behavioural biology story – something psychologies – the two versions of them – you’d rarely see. But, in one week, we’ve are a permanent pathology (Allportian) or had clinical psychologists or the temporary pathology (Le Bonian).

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Again these explanations are about mindlessness, meaninglessness and they’re about rooting crowd action in the pathology of the actor.

Now, these are ideas that have been around for a very long time. Science, at some level, can move fast but permeate slowly. For instance, take the notion of deindividuation. It’s about how anonymity in the group leads to lack of restraint. It’s perfectly true that you will still see deindividuation in the textbooks.

But there is evidence from the last 20 or 30 years that the idea does not stack up.

In groups, when people become anonymous, what they do is they shift from individual to social identity and then act on the basis of collective norms, values, standards.

There are published meta-analyses of deindividuation data that support that idea. There have been individual studies and crowd studies. One of the odd things about the deindividuation literature is that it’s one of those examples of psychological studies that assume the nature of the phenomenon and then study it in the laboratory, and what they find in the laboratory they then project back on to the real-world phenomenon. The problem is, this is false. On the whole, people know each other in crowds, they recognise each other, often they’re part of the same community.

When you start, not by looking at the process in the lab, but looking at the phenomena you are trying to understand, what you nearly always find in crowds are meaningful patterns of action. Let me give you a couple of quite 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 an incredibly simple thing – people get hungry, they need food, they grab food, they eat it. In other words, an explosion based on a biological need. What you find, however, is that food riots had very clear patterns. They didn’t happen at the period of greatest dearth, they tended to happen when there was slightly more food available. They happened around the transport of food outside of localities.

And then, in the rioting, the food was seized, sold at a popular price, and the money was sometimes given back to the merchants.

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

And therefore – this is a critical point – what people do in crowds is a beautiful reflection of their collective understandings.

Certain historians are recognising that. For historians, one of the problems is how to understand the perspective of those groups who don’t leave written records. And the answer is, in crowds. The crowd is an incredibly powerful resource. It tells you about the perspectives that have led to forms of rioting. At an explanatory level, to pathologise the crowd is to lose the best resource you have for understanding why the people are acting as they are.

What do you think of some scientists’ abstract connections between the riots and, say, theories of developmental psychology and even neuroscience? whereby you move a commodity to One thing that is happening is that people market where it can command the are ridiculing distal explanations by greatest price. It’s when those two turning them into proximal explanations. moralities or two visions of the world It’s perfectly reasonable to suggest that the clash – i.e. when food is transported out whole cacophonation of political choices of the locality – that you get a riot. This lead to a sense that certain groups are is what E.P. Thompson called the moral marginalised in society and don’t have economy of the crowd. In other words, opportunities. the collective understandings of the It’s when you overextend what you’re participants are enacted in what they do trying to explain that you come undone. and what they say.

When it comes to these other types of Now, you can go from E.P. Thompson explanations – the role of the father, the to a whole series of crowds, and almost empathic brain, and so on –] there is every time you precious little basis for do, you find believing that they are similar patterns. relevant. Of course I wouldn’t “…to pathologise the That pattern is rule them out of court. But my crowd is to lose the best sometimes a bit concern with them is, firstly, resource you have…” messy, because the the fact that some of the other thing to be assumptions on which they are said about based are entirely untested. And crowds, of course, is that there might be secondly, that what’s unclear is exactly at some people acting collectively on the what level – proximal or distal – they are social identity, then once they’re doing supposed to explain these events. that, people can do all sorts of things for The other thing that has been individual advantage. So clearly, in a riot, particularly problematic and pernicious there will be people who want to get is confusion over what is an explanation flatscreen TVs or settle some grievances. and what is a description. Criminality is So things are messy, but overall, when undoubtedly a description of the act. you look at patterns of events, what you There is no doubt that criminality is a tend to find is an ideologically intelligent description. The problem is it’s conflated pattern. with an explanation. This is circular A physical crowd is a mixture of reasoning. Criminality is not an people acting as psychological group explanation. members and some people acting for Something profoundly anti-scientific individual advantage. But those, on the is going on. And the worst of all those whole, who act collectively act things, is the attempt to pathologise meaningfully based on social identities. anybody who tries to explain.

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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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they chose to donate to charity. By contrast, among participants who considered themselves lower in socioeconomic status, the opposite pattern was observed. The greater their empathyrelated brain activity in the scanner (based on extra right somatosensory cortex and inferior frontal cortex activity), the less empathy they said they had, and the less money they chose to donate. The researchers said the extra empathy-related inferior frontal cortex activity observed in these participants could be a sign of inhibitory processes quashing the emotional impact of seeing another person in pain.

There are many potential confounding factors in this study, but a tantalising possibility is that the result reflects a kind of defence mechanism for those feeling low in status, whereby self-interest dominates over empathy for others. ‘Our findings have significant implications to the social domain,’ the researchers said, ‘in that, besides improving objective socio-economic status, raising subjective socioeconomic status via education may possibly manifold altruistic behaviours in human society.’

The findings add to a complex existing literature that suggests lower socioeconomic status is sometimes associated with more empathy and altruism (tinyurl.com/5utpgw2), sometimes with reduced empathy (tinyurl.com/6hfx9ee).

Another angle to the riots, according to many observers, is the central role of gang membership as a powerful predictor of future criminal behaviour. Another new study (tinyurl.com/6hhjhs3), this one by Vincent Egan and Matthew Beadman at the University of Leicester, has looked at the personality correlates of past and intended gang membership among 152 prisoners incarcerated in a London prison.

Fifty-eight of the interviewed prisoners said they’d been in a gang, either in their youth or more recently. The researchers said most of the variance was explained by two super-ordinate factors: JUSTIN TALLIS/REPORTDIGITAL.CO.UK

In the avalanche of aperçus that followed the English summer riots, two new, highly pertinent journal articles floated along, unnoticed by mainstream commentators – one on empathy and altruism, the other on gangs.

Media and political opinion was divided between whether the behaviour of the rioters and looters was caused by their individual predispositions and choices or whether their criminality was instead a consequence of wider social problems, such as poverty and exclusion.

A paper in NeuroImage by a Chinese lab managed the awkward feat of marrying these two perspectives (tinyurl.com/6dqfxql).

Yina Ma and her team at Peking University investigated whether a person’s subjective sense of their socio-economic status mediated the relationship between neural markers of empathy and levels of generosity in a real altruistic act.

The researchers scanned the brains of 33 student participants while they watched video clips of people being pricked painfully by a needle or touched by a cotton bud.

Extra brain activity in response to the needle clips relative to the cotton bud clips was taken to be a neural marker for empathy.

The participants also rated their own empathy levels and their subjective sense of their socio-economic status. Shown a ladder with 10 rungs, with the top rung representing people with the best jobs and education and most money, the participants indicated their own position.

Although the participants were students at the same university, their answers varied. Finally, participants were left alone in a room with an anonymous donation box, labelled as raising money to help impoverished patients with cataracts.

Among participants who considered themselves privileged in terms of socioeconomic status, there was the positive relationship you’d expect between empathy and altruism. The more neural signs of empathy they displayed in the scanner (based on extra activity in the left somatosensory cortex), the more empathy they said they had, and the more money

‘antisocial personality’ (characterised by commitment to negative peers, a lack of commitment to positive peers, low selfcontrol, low agreeableness, positive reinforcement from antisocial company and low conscientiousness) and ‘resilience’ (low impulsivity, high selfesteem, high conscientiousness, low neuroticism, extraversion and openness, and low social isolation). Crucially, it was only antisocial personality that had a direct association with past and intended gang membership (directly and indirectly it accounted for 50 per cent of the variance in membership). Resilience and age also had an indirect relationship with gang membership via their covariation with antisocial personality – younger prisoners tended to score higher on antisocial personality traits, whereas high scorers on the resilience measures tended to score lower on antisocial personality.

Egan and Beadman said their research suggested that an ‘assortative process’ is at play in gang membership, whereby ‘individuals with low agreeableness seek out similar peers (in terms of disposition and attitudes)’. Past research, they explained, has found that the formation of antisocial groups is strengthened if low-agreeableness individuals feel rejected by their prosocial peer groups. In fact, they noted a 2005 study showing that ‘peer group rejection predicts gang membership and deviance, even after factoring out the influence of education’.

Egan and Beadman highlighted other findings pertinent to our understanding of the riots. A study in 2003 emphasised the importance of resilience, showing how personality traits and intelligence can serve a protective function. People lower in neuroticism and higher in IQ, extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness were able to resist antisocial influences, even in dysfunctional settings. More recently, Monahan and colleagues in 2009 and Granic and Dishon in 2003 documented the way that ‘excluded people socialise with each other, mutually reinforcing their shared outlook, consolidating their interpersonal bonds and deviant attitudes’. There are surely clear lessons here for the importance of fostering in young people a sense of belonging and in providing social opportunities that bring vulnerable people into contact with positive role models and peers.

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100 concession places available for qualifying Society members

18–20 April Grand Connaught Rooms London

Registration is open Poster submission deadline open until 30 November

www.bps.org.uk/ac2012 ‘big picture’ pull-out www.thepsychologist.org.uk

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

Dr Page says: ‘As part of our School’s work on behaviour change in a number of different domains, such as smoking cessation and healthy eating, we have been looking at factors which affect behaviour change in relation to the environment.

If we are to mitigate the problems of climate change, we are going to need to deal with the bigger picture, problems that are as much psychological problems as they are technological problems. The Cube Project is an attempt to show that many of the technologies that we need are already commonly available and at an affordable price. The question is, why aren’t we using them? This is a psychological question.’

Small home, big picture ‘The Cube’, designed by Mike Page, on display during the Edinburgh Sc Festival. To feature in ‘Big Picture’, e-mail jon.sutton@bps.org.uk.

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

www.thepsychologist.org.uk

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FEATURE

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really help teachers get to the heart of the skills SEAL tries to nurture, and achieve what they want to,’ says Weare.

Mindfulness in schools Dan Jones investigates whether ‘habits of mind’ can boost the well-being and resilience of the nation’s children

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references 736

Baer, R.A. (2003). Mindfulness training as a clinical intervention: A conceptual and empirical review. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice 10(2), 125–143.

Biegel, G.M. & Brown, K.W. (2010).

Assessing the efficacy of an adapted in-class mindfulness-based training program for school-age children: A pilot study. White Paper [pdf available at tinyurl.com/6ftayyx]

A major development in this direction was the introduction of Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) to schools under the previous Labour government. The goals of SEAL are to encourage self-awareness, ‘emotional intelligence’, and motivation, and to nurture social skills and empathy. SEAL is not a neatly defined syllabus nor a mandatory content-specific course – schools pursue SEAL in highly varied ways. Nonetheless, published SEAL guidance documents do provide a framework for achieving these expanded goals. ‘When SEAL is implemented as written, it has a big impact on outcomes,’ says Katherine Weare, Professor of Education at the University of Southampton. Today, SEAL is pursued in 90 per cent of primary schools, and 70 per cent of secondary schools, and they like it, says Weare.

Yet educationalists may have overlooked a powerful and cheap tool that can help deliver on SEAL objectives – ‘mindfulness’ training. Mindfulness is a ‘mode of being’ that is rooted in paying attention, non-judgementally, to the present moment, to our current conscious experience of the world. It’s a mode of being that can be taught, typically as a series of simple meditation-style exercises.

Mindfulness exercises increase awareness of the contents of our minds, and provide ways to respond to our thoughts and feelings ‘skilfully’, such that they are less likely to lead to emotional distress or harmful behaviours. ‘Mindfulness could

Burke, C.A. (2010). Mindfulness-based approaches with children and adolescents: A preliminary review of current research in an emergent field. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 19, 133–144.

Claxton, G. (2008). What’s the point of school? Rediscovering the heart of education. Oxford: OneWorld.

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

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hat’s the point of school? It’s a question most pupils will have asked themselves at one time or another. And it’s one that parents, teachers and government ministers ponder too, though not always for the same reasons.

The answer might seem straightforward: to provide children with an education in the traditional sense of imparting knowledge and understanding to students, so that they can pass exams and enter the workplace or further education with the intellectual tools to get them ahead in life.

Guy Claxton, Professor of Learning Sciences at Winchester College, UK, has written a rather different book-length answer to what the point of schools should be (Claxton, 2008). ‘There’s an increasing recognition that there is a broader range of mental and emotional skills that are useful to cultivate, whether you’re going to read medicine at Cambridge or do an NVQ in hairdressing,’ says Claxton.

And these skills are not just bodies of knowledge, but ‘habits of mind’ that guide how we learn and develop. Indeed, Lauren Resnick, an educational psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh and former President of the American Educational Research Association, argues that ‘our intelligence is merely the sum total of our habits of mind’. As Claxton points out, ‘This isn’t to deny intellectual skills, but it’s a new way of bringing psychology to bear on education, in terms of understanding what those habits are – and how those habits could be trained and changed in normal school lessons.’

What is mindfulness?

Mindfulness is not an abstract or remote body of knowledge, like physics or history. It’s more of a practical skill, like being able to ride a bike or play the piano. To get a handle on what this means, you have to look at how mindfulness 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 on your breath. As you sit still – relaxed, but alert – you direct your attention to the sensation of each inhalation and exhalation: 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 will enter your mind unbidden: ‘I must pay that gas bill later’, ‘Did I come off as stupid in the meeting earlier?’ or even ‘I keep losing track of my breath and thinking about other things – I’m rubbish at this!’.

These intrusions of thought don’t mean that you’re failing to be mindful; what matters is how you respond to these thoughts. The idea in a mindfulness session is to merely note these thoughts, without judgement, and to let them pass.

You then return to focusing on the breath – and then, as further thoughts enter your mind of their own accord, you simply note them, and move on.

How is mindfulness beneficial?

At first, achieving mindfulness can seem difficult, even pointless – much like practising scales on a piano. But perseverance pays off. Over the past 20 years, dozens of studies have demonstrated that mindfulness provides benefits in a range of clinical settings, from pain management 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

your inner optimist and thrive. Oxford: OneWorld.

Greeson, J.M. (2009). Mindfulness research update 2008.

Complementary Health Practice Review, 14(1), 10–18.

Huppert, F.A. & Johnson, D.M. (2010). A controlled trial of mindfulness training in schools: The importance of practice for an impact on well-being.

Journal of Positive Psychology, 5(4),

264–274.

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

The prosocial classroom: Teacher social and emotional competence in relation to student and classroom outcomes. Review of Educational Research 79, 491–525.

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

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therapeutic intervention and as a tool to aid everyday well-being, have been done with adults, but in recent years researchers have begun to explore how it might be applied to teenagers and even to very young, pre-school children. The results to date in this emerging field suggest that mindfulness training is both feasible and beneficial for children across a wide range of ages and contexts (Burke, 2010).

Mindfulness training has at least five broad beneficial effects, according to Felicia Huppert, Professor of Psychology of the University of Cambridge’s Well-Being Institute. 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 regulate attention.

Sensory awareness Mindful practices nurture the capacity to bring our current sensory experience to the forefront of consciousness. In doing so, they create the mental space to ‘stop and smell the roses’, to be charmed by a child’s smile or moved by a dramatic sunset. ‘In Western societies, most of us, most of the time, are on autopilot, and what’s going on in our heads is mostly about the past and the future,’ says Huppert. ‘We spend so little time in the moment.’ Being in the moment, and appreciating positive sensory experiences, is not only intrinsically enjoyable, but also elicits positive emotions that feed into overall well-being.

Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has demonstrated that recurrently experiencing positive emotions simultaneously broadens our sensory awareness – creating further opportunities for sensory savouring – and also builds psychological and emotional resilience (Fredrickson, 2009).

Cognitive control Unlike some forms of meditation, the goal of mindfulness is not to clear one’s mind of all thoughts and feelings, but to anchor oneself to current sensory experiences and

to allow thoughts to enter the mind freely.

The key is to note these passing thoughts non-judgementally, without analysing them or elaborating on their contents.

Perhaps you think, ‘I keep losing focus on my breath and keep thinking about my to-do list!’. In a mindful state, you don’t expand on this thought and start asking ‘Does this mean I can’t do mindfulness?

Am I doing it wrong?’ – you simply acknowledge the thought and bring your focus back to your breath. In this way, mindfulness promotes a ‘decentred’

be noted, and let pass. ‘Simply recognising your feelings gives you a choice in how you’re going to respond, rather than reacting automatically in ways that lead to trouble,’ says Huppert.

Acceptance The non-judgemental, detached perspective on our thoughts and feelings encouraged by mindfulness training is another way of talking about acceptance of these thoughts and feelings. ‘That’s a huge thing,’ says Huppert. ‘You’re not beating yourself up for having this thought or that feeling. You’re learning to be kind to yourself – and it’s believed that this has knock-on effects for being kind to others, though the evidence is not yet as clear as we would like.’

Attention regulation Mindfulness doesn’t demand that you clear your mind of all thoughts and feelings, but that you allow them to float by without being caught up in them, and return your focus of attention to whatever mindful practice you are engaged in. In other words, it provides training in how to regulate and direct, at will, your attention.

In his 1890 classic The Principles of Psychology, William James celebrated the importance of this skill: The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention over and over again, is the very root of judgement, character and will.

No one is compus sui if he have it not.

An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence. But it is easier to define this ideal than to give practical instructions for bringing it about.

From clinics to schools perspective on our teeming thoughts, and creates some distance between thoughts that arise and our cognitive reactions to them. ‘The idea is that thoughts come and go like clouds,’ says Huppert. ‘Just because you’re having a thought doesn’t mean you have to act on it, or even that it reflects anything about reality, or you. It’s just a thought.’

Emotion regulation Many of our intrusive thoughts come with an emotional flavour. Often these are negative – we suddenly remember a recent argument, which makes us angry, or the time we embarrassed ourselves in front of the boss. It’s all too easy to get caught up by these intrusive emotional thoughts, and to ruminate on them at length. Again, mindfulness encourages a more decentred perspective on these feelings: they should

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Historically, mindfulness has mainly been used in the clinical context of treating mental health problems such as stress and depression. ‘But we now realise that we had neglected its potentially preventative applications, and the possible benefits of mindfulness for children in the nonclinical context of schools,’ says psychotherapist Jini Lavelle, who has taught mindfulness in schools around Oxfordshire in recent years. ‘We need this in schools so that rather than having people come to learn mindfulness as adults to deal with stress and depression, we teach these skills as children grow up.’

This perspective stresses that the benefits of mindfulness training for children and adolescents are not education-specific, nor limited to the classroom. Yet they do have a remarkable degree of overlap with the SEAL objectives

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of self-awareness, emotional intelligence, motivation and social skills. ‘For all of the SEAL outcomes, there are good reasons to think that mindfulness helps,’ says Weare.

Mindfulness inherently increases selfawareness, and nurtures the capacity to regulate automatic emotional reactions to life’s slings and arrows. This is not just beneficial for the mindful individual, but also for those around them. ‘If you manage your impulses better, you can avoid wrangles with other people, and listen to them and see their point of view,’ says Weare.

The evidence for the benefits of mindfulness and related practices in school settings has been a long time coming.

About 15 years ago, a PhD student of Claxton’s, Caroline Mann, took meditation practices to classes of Year 8 students (12- and 13-year-olds). Pupils reported that meditation was useful in terms of maintaining psychological equanimity and coping with stress and incidents in the playground, and Mann also found that meditation improved performance on memory tests.

Now there is increasing evidence that mindfulness really does make a difference when delivered in the classroom. Last year,

private-practice psychotherapist Gina Biegel and psychologist Kirk Warren Brown of Virginia Commonwealth University released a ‘White Paper’ (not a peer-reviewed publication) reporting the results of a pilot, school-based mindfulness programme in young children (Biegel & Brown, 2010). This study explored whether mindfulness training could improve academic achievement, powers of attention, social skills, behavioural problems and engagement with academic studies among 2nd and 3rd grade pupils (= Years 3 and 4 in the UK).

This pilot study enrolled 79 Biegel and Brown’s study explored whether mindfulness children at Berkley Maynard training could improve academic achievement Academy, an elementary school in Oakland, California, for a five-week course in mindfulness. The programme mindfulness course, and then three months comprised three 15-minute sessions a later to see what effects the course had. week, which both teachers and students Biegel and Brown report that this attended. The 15 sessions involved a range programme was generally well tolerated of mindful activities, including listening, without any adverse side-effects, and also breathing, movement, walking and eating, improved attention and teacher-rated as well as lessons on the promotion of social skills among students. The kindness and caring. Students were attentional capacities of children were assessed using a number of quantitative measured using the Attention Network measures immediately before and after the Task-Child Version (ANT-C). A

CHAIR OF THE PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE 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?

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

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

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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?

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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 nigel.atter@bps.org.uk or tel: 0116 252 9901.

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

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particularly important aspect of attention tapped by the ANT-C is the capacity for executive or cognitive control – the ability to override impulses and focus attention on salient sensory information, which enables goaldirected behaviour and creates cognitive flexibility. Cognitive control is crucial to decision making and is correlated with academic success (Visu-Petra et al., 2011). Overall, between the beginning and end of the five-week course, 64 per cent of children improved their scores on ANT-C cognitive control – an effect that persisted at three-month follow-up. At the beginning and end of the study teachers also completed the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS) to assess students’ social behaviours. Biegel and Brown report that their mindfulness programme improved teacher-rated social skills over the course of the intervention, which, like the effects on attention, remained evident three months later.

Last year also saw the publication of the first peer-reviewed, controlled study on mindfulness in schools. This was carried out by Felicia Huppert and Daniel Johnson from the Cambridge Well-Being Institute, working with teachers Richard Burnett of Tonbridge School and Chris Cullen of Hampton School, both of whom are mindfulness practitioners (Huppert & Johnson, 2010).

Drawing on the practical experience of Cullen and Burnett (who wrote a master’s thesis on mindfulness in schools), the team drew up a four-week syllabus for use in Tonbridge and Hampton (both independent, fee-paying boys’ schools) among 14- and 15-year-olds. The course consisted of four 40-minute classes, taken once a week, in which students were introduced to the principles and practice of mindfulness meditation. In addition, students were encouraged to practise mindfulness daily with the aid of short audio files that talked them through what they should do (these were recorded by Michael Chaskalson, an experienced Cambridge-based mindfulness trainer).

In total, 173 students were enrolled in the study. Mindfulness was taught during religious education classes, with each student being in one of 11 classes at the two schools. Six classes took normal classes to provide a control group, while the other five undertook mindfulness

training. At the beginning and the end of the study, students completed a series of online questionnaires to assess their psychological well-being, resilience and self-reported mindfulness. (These were measured using the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale, the Ego Resiliency Scale, and the Cognitive and Affective Mindfulness Scale-Revised, respectively.) Students also completed the Ten-Item Personality Inventory so that personality differences could be explored in the context of mindfulness training.

At the beginning of the study, the students in these schools tended to fall in the middle or upper range of the wellbeing, resilience and mindfulness scales.

These baseline measures in part depended on the personality styles of the students: those who scored highly on conscientiousness and emotional stability tended to show greater well-being, resilience and mindfulness. In addition, high extraversion was an additional predictor of greater resilience and wellbeing, and openness to experience was positively correlated with well-being.

Overall, there was a significant increase in well-being among the students who received mindfulness training. But perhaps more importantly, these effects on wellbeing were dose-dependent. Not all students practised mindfulness equally – some practised at least three times a week, others did not practise at all – but the more practice they did, the more benefit they gained. Interestingly, students low in emotional stability (i.e. anxious or neurotic) derived particular benefit – and these are arguably the students most in need of an intervention promoting mental well-being.

In this short trial mindfulness did not show any significant benefits on resilience.

‘It could be that you get an effect on wellbeing sooner than you get one on resilience,’ says Huppert. Alternatively, this result may turn on the resilience measure used. ‘It was the best we could find at the time, but it’s not the measure I’d use now,’ says Huppert.

Since completing this pilot study, Huppert, Burnett and Cullen have worked with other colleagues to create an expanded eight-week course that is currently being trialled in a number of state schools around the UK, and in some other European countries. Although not yet part of a controlled study, the aim is get feedback on the course from teachers and students so that it can be refined and tweaked to optimise its use in the classroom, with the aim of running another randomised controlled trial in the 2012/2013 academic year. At the same time, Lavelle’s research assistant Sarah

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Hennelly is currently completing a master’s degree at Oxford Brookes University looking at mindfulness in schools. Results from this are expected later this year.

The future of mindfulness in schools Despite widespread recognition of the benefits of mindfulness training, there are a number of challenges in getting it into schools. Some parents and teachers might worry that mindfulness training is part of a broader tendency to label kids with having problems that need fixing, as in the case of medical treatments of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Yet this is not how most mindfulness practitioners see it being applied. ‘In schools it’s quite important that it’s taken out of therapeutic box and put squarely in the territory of flourishing,’ says Burnett.

‘Mindfulness is about helping young minds flourish in the broadest sense.’ Cullen agrees: ‘For some kids mindfulness may be about managing stress or anxiety, but for others it’s about how they play on the sports field, practise music, dance or drama, or maintain concentration during homework.’

Another major challenge of bringing mindfulness to schools is the dearth of teachers trained in the relevant practices.

Just as teaching someone to play the piano or football requires some practical experience in these skills, so too for mindfulness. ‘You don’t have to be a Zen master, but you can’t train kids in the classroom if you don’t have your own mindfulness practice,’ says Burnett.

This suggests that there may be a place for mindfulness training in teacher training. ‘I feel very strongly that it should be part of teacher training, because apart from anything else it will benefit the trainee teachers enormously – and then they can use it in their schools,’ says Lavelle. Accumulating evidence suggests that the social and emotional competence of teachers is a key factor in establishing healthy student–teacher relationships, managing the classroom, and teaching social and emotional aspects of learning – creating what Patricia Jennings and Mark Greenberg call the ‘prosocial classroom’ (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009). Claxton agrees that mindfulness would be hugely beneficial for both teachers and students: ‘If I ruled the world I would make it mandatory – there is no downside risk, and the evidence shows these things work.’

I Dan Jones is a freelance writer based in Brighton dan.jones@multipledrafts.com

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