Introduction

Which scares you more: flying by plane or driving a motor vehicle? We expect you to answer “Flying, of course!” Why is this the case? One might predict that you would fear flying because you do it less regularly (you probably do not fly every day) and you are not able to have control over flying (how many of us are pilots?). Compare this with what most of us experience nearly every day, and feel we have understanding and some control over: driving. We feel more comfortable the more we drive, particularly because we (fortunately) do not regularly experience crashes, injuries, or fatalities. However, while the individual risk of road traffic crashes is low, the collective risk is rather high. Specifically, it has been estimated that more than 1 million people are killed worldwide on the roads each year, while 50 million people are injured (WHO, 2004). Within EU countries only, about 100,000 people die annually due to road traffic crashes (WHO, 2013), which is close to the population of some European cities, such as Exeter (England) or Linköping (Sweden). This chapter will argue why road traffic crashes are important to consider psychologically and discuss how social psychologists can contribute to a better understanding and reduction of such crashes.

It is clear that crashes are among the leading causes of injuries and fatalities around the world, and are thus a significant societal problem. An important question is: which factors predict crash likelihood? Is it insufficient road infrastructure? Or is it insufficient enforcement mechanisms? Is it fast-growing car use in developing nations? While all these factors certainly contribute to crash likelihood, human and behavioural factors are key predictors of crashes. Human and behavioural factors in traffic psychology refer to all factors that are initiated by road users sharing the traffic network. You are also a part of this network one way or another. Now think about your road-use behaviour. Have you ever entered the road as a pedestrian without waiting for the traffic light to turn green? Have you ever exceeded the speed limit when driving? Have you ever cycled without reflective clothing or a bike light at night?

In this section of the book we consider the process of research, as it is conducted, and the presentation of research, once it has been conducted. Chapter 11 discusses how to read works of social science (i.e., books and articles produced for an academic audience). Chapter 12 offers advice on how to find a topic for a research paper. Chapter 13 lays out various strategies for gathering data. (Since this is a large topic this is an especially long chapter.) Chapter 14 discusses the task of writing. Chapter 15 addresses the task of public speaking. Chapter 16 offers a short discussion of ethical issues associated with the research process.

As you can probably appreciate, these tasks are closely interwoven. Reading social science will help you develop a topic for your research and will help you develop a sense for how to construct your own project. Likewise, writing social science will help you appreciate the strengths, and realize the weaknesses, of other studies. Public speaking is another form of communication, closely linked to writing. Sometimes, a good way to write is to express an idea out loud (or sotto voce); sometimes, it is best to write it out first. There are lots of synergies. So these chapters – and their associated activities – are best approached together.

Sometimes, the task of writing is regarded as separate and independent from the study of social science. In this view, writing is a skill taught in English, rhetoric, or composition courses while theorizing and analyzing are reserved for courses in social science.

People who hold this view may also regard writing as an art (and hence the province of the humanities) in contrast to the task of analysis, which they may regard as more scientific (and hence the province of the social sciences). They may even be a bit suspicious of eloquent prose, regarding it as a sign of sophistry (a subtle, superficially plausible, but generally fallacious method of reasoning). From this perspective, the cultivation of style is a substitute for sound analysis – “mere rhetoric,” as the phrase goes.

We can all agree that substance should trump style in the realm of social science. Yet, in order to communicate ideas must be put into words. If an author is unable to do so the reader must put the pieces of an argument together him- or herself, with much effort and possible misunderstanding. A poorly written study is one that is poorly executed. It will have less impact on the world, and – if it has any impact at all – may have an impact that is different from what the author intended. Communication skills thus matter a great deal to the progress of social science.

Moreover, the act of communicating is impossible to separate from the act of reasoning. We think through prose. This recalls E. M. Forster's question: “How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?” In our own experience, writing out an argument usually leads to a reconceptualization of that argument. One cannot express an idea cogently without first understanding that idea, and one cannot understand an idea until one has effectively expressed it. Bad writing is usually a symptom of a deeper malaise.

Of course, everything depends upon how one chooses to define “good writing.” Some purely stylistic components of writing such as spelling, grammar (norms of usage), and word-choice are indeed rather superficial in nature and do not necessarily reflect on the logic of an argument or the thoughtfulness of the writer.

Causation is the central explanatory trope by which relationships among persons and things are established – the cement of the universe, in Hume's words. Without some understanding of who is doing what to whom we cannot make sense of the world that we live in, we cannot hold people and institutions accountable for their actions, and we cannot act efficaciously in the world. Without a causal understanding of the world it is unlikely that we could navigate even the most mundane details of our lives, much less plan for the future. This is obvious in the policy world, where causal understanding undergirds any rational intervention. One must have some sense of what impact a policy is likely to have in order to support its adoption.

Even where causal understanding does not relate to future changes in the status quo we are likely to be reassured when we can order events around us into cause-and-effect relationships. “When we have such understanding,” notes Judea Pearl, “we feel ‘in control’ even if we have no practical way of controlling things.” Causality is not just a methodological preoccupation. It is also a way of relating to the world. That said, there are important differences between causal inference in everyday contexts and in social-scientific contexts.

Chapter 5 introduces a variety of causal frameworks that are widely employed in social science today. They may be viewed as the building blocks of a causal explanation. Chapter 6 defines the topic of causality, and lays out the attributes of a good causal hypothesis and the core components of causal analysis. Chapter 7 discusses experimental research designs, where the causal factor of interest is randomized across groups. Chapter 8 discusses large-N observational designs (i.e., non-experimental designs). Chapter 9 deals with case study designs, where the number of units is limited to one or several. Chapter 10 reviews and reflects on various aspects of causal inference, serving as a coda for this part of the book.

Introduction

The application of social psychology to the study of politics is at the heart of the discipline called political psychology. Political psychology has been defined as the “application of what is known about human psychology to the study of politics” (Sears, Huddy, and Jervis, 2003, p. 3). Social psychology has been a more influential source of inspiration for the study of politics than any other subfield of psychology. Indeed, insights from social psychology have been of paramount importance in the study of both political elites and mass political behaviour. The many topics that have thus been studied include political socialization, public opinion, voting behaviour, collective political action, ideology, prejudice, political campaigns, presidential performance, policy making, conflict resolution, terrorism, and genocide (see Jost and Sidanius, 2004). Several insights about these topics have been used in attempts to change political attitudes and political behaviour that are considered undesirable, such as racial prejudice, low voter turnout, and political violence.

In this chapter we focus on three topics that have been central to political psychology: political leadership; voting behaviour; and ideology. We discuss how different types of psychological studies have contributed to understanding these crucial aspects of politics. The field of political psychology comprises at least four different types of studies.

First, some psychological studies are not directly about politics but contribute significantly to our understanding of political processes. A well-known example is Milgram's (1974) study on obedience. Asking subjects to deliver high-voltage electric shocks to other people in a learning experiment has little to do with politics per se. But the underlying principles that are uncovered – that most people obey when asked by an authority (in this case, the experimenter) – are crucial to understanding political behaviour, such as the loyalty of civil servants to their political leaders. These insights contribute, for example, to understanding how the tragedy of the Holocaust could have occurred.

The second type of research concerns studies by psychologists who select political topics as object of their research. An example that we discuss below is Ajzen and Fishbein's (1980) work on the theory of reasoned action. When applying their theory, one of the topics they focused on was voting behaviour. Ajzen and Fishbein's aim was not to explain political phenomena as such.

This chapter argues that the relationship between popular culture and the classroom remains a contentious issue. Its presence has been used as a symbol of how much our culture has declined, and how educationally corrupted our schools have become, while its absence has been used to suggest our schools are out of touch with their primary constituency – young people. This is not a simple issue to address; even the notion of ‘culture’ itself is subject to considerable disagreement.

Arguments are articulated with the use of key concepts. Indeed, the argument of a study is inseparable from its key concepts since the latter are the linguistic tools with which an argument is formulated. Any study of democracy, for example, must wrestle with the problem of how to define this key term – which will guide our discussion in this chapter.

Concepts, in turn, receive empirical meaning through the indicators chosen to measure them. Any study of democracy must be concerned not only with how to define democracy but also with how to operationalize (measure) this abstract concept.

Conceptualization and measurement are thus closely linked. This is why we have chosen to present them together in this chapter, which begins with concept formation and proceeds to measurement.

Concepts

The key concepts of social science are never fixed and, regrettably, not always clear. Many abstract concepts – such as democracy or social capital – are employed in a variety of ways and thus mean different things in different contexts. This is true even of more specific concepts such as worker-training programs. (Does a one-day program focusing on advice for job-hunting qualify? How about a person who enlists government support to take classes at a community college, or an apprenticeship program?)

The persistent ambiguity of key concepts makes it difficult for the reader, who may struggle to figure out what a term means in a given context and how it connects with other work (using the same or similar terms). It also makes it difficult for writers, who must identify which of several terms they should adopt in their own work and how they should define the chosen term.

Sometimes, the task of forming concepts seems highly arbitrary. And this, in turn, may prompt readers to adopt a skeptical attitude toward the subject. At the same time, the choice of concepts is never entirely arbitrary. Some choices are usually better than others, and a few are patently absurd.

In this spirit, we offer the following criteria, intended to guide the process of concept formation in the social sciences. A good concept, we shall argue, is resonant, internally coherent, externally differentiated, theoretically useful, and consistent in meaning, as summarized in Table 3.1.

If we are to believe what we hear from some of our political leaders, and sections of the media, gender is now a settled issue – a battle won. However, the evidence suggests that a significant number of wider questions also still attract attention: just what is gender, and what is the best theoretical framework for approaching it? What roles do schools play in its construction? Do we still have to go down the ‘men are to blame for everything’ route? Why should schooling have anything to do with sexuality?

This chapter will unpack the complex and changing relationship between gender and education. In order to accomplish this, the chapter will link each of the most common myths in the area with one of the three waves of feminism that characterised the twentieth century. As with the arguments surrounding social class, it will ultimately be suggested that explanations relying upon a master discourse – not ‘the economy’ again, but rather in this case ‘patriarchy’: a unified system of male-domination – have had their day.

Introduction

Watching the evening news on any given night should assure you that applied social psychologists have much to do. Societal problems abound. Epidemics such as obesity and game addiction, increasing levels of consumer debt, bullying and drugs in schools, vehicle collisions in traffic, and environmental degradation pose significant economic problems, as well as devastating costs in terms of human suffering and loss of life. Because human behaviour contributes to each of these societal problems, human behaviour can also be a critical part of the solution. As experts in the development and evaluation of behaviour-focused interventions, behavioural scientists and social psychologists are uniquely equipped to tackle these problems and make a difference in improving the quality of life in our societies.

This chapter provides an overview of techniques used for large-scale behaviour-based intervention. When it comes to applying psychological principles to change behaviour on a large scale, behavioural scientists have been at the forefront. We therefore begin by describing some of the fundamental assumptions of a behavioural-science approach to intervention design and evaluation. Next, we outline six intervention techniques, which have been successfully used by behavioural scientists to improve behaviour in various domains. Finally, we outline six social-psychological principles that can enhance the beneficial impact of these interventions. When you finish reading this chapter, you will understand the principles and procedures of a variety of interventions which can be used to address problem-relevant behaviour.

A behavioural-science approach to intervention

The applied behavioural-science approach to intervention is based on the scientific philosophy of B. F. Skinner. Instead of targeting internal events such as thoughts and attitudes – as is often the focus of contemporary awareness campaigns – Skinner believed psychologists should focus on behaviour because, unlike thoughts and feelings, behaviours can be reliably observed and measured. Thus, the behavioural-science approach to intervention seeks to measure and influence observable behaviour.

A second principle of Skinner's approach is ‘selection by consequences’. In other words, we do what we do because of the consequences that follow our behaviour. More specifically, we do what we do in order to gain positive consequences or to avoid or escape negative consequences.

Introduction

Mental health disorders represent one of the most common problems facing adults: within a twelve-month period, nearly 30 per cent of the population in developed countries experiences some diagnosable mental health disorder. Although exact numbers are lacking, it is estimated that, because of the emotional burden of poverty, mental disorders are even more common in underdeveloped countries. Mental health disorders pose an enormous emotional burden on the individuals suffering from them, as well as an economic burden on society, especially in terms of people's incapacity to work. The global costs of mental illness are estimated to rise from US$2.5 trillion in 2010 to US$6.0 trillion by 2030.

Clinical psychologists are concerned with analysing the causes of mental problems from which people may suffer, and with helping people to deal with such problems. Yet, mental health problems are of interest to social psychologists as well. Mental health problems are to an important extent rooted in how individuals perceive their social world, and in how individuals function in their interpersonal relationships. It is, of course, not possible to describe everything that social psychologists do in the field of mental health in just one chapter. Therefore, this chapter focuses on three mental health problems: a disturbed body image, depression, and relationship problems. These three problems are highly relevant topics for applied social psychologists because of their high incidence and debilitating consequences for both the individuals suffering from them and their social context. For instance, marital problems may cause not only spouses to suffer from depression, anxiety and/or drug and alcohol abuse, but also their children, as well as increase the chance that their grandchildren experience family problems and divorce. In this chapter, we discuss what social psychological factors may give rise to these problems, how social psychologists conduct research to understand these problems, and how social psychology can contribute to their prevention and, possibly, treatment.

Disturbed body image

The term body image refers to the internal representation individuals have of their appearance: the thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and evaluations they have of their body. A central component of body image is the extent to which individuals are satisfied with the way they look. Body image (or body satisfaction) may best be conceptualized as a continuum, with levels of disturbance ranging from none to extreme.

There are countless histories of modern Britain but little agreement about what it is, when it was, where it happened, who was part of it, or how it should be told. These histories share similar titles but cover different periods of time, extend across different geographical areas and tell very different stories. This is as it should be. History is about debate and interpretation. What some have recently dubbed the ‘History Wars’ are a set of arguments about how the national past should be understood and taught. As countries become demographically and culturally more diverse, politicians frequently offer increasingly prescriptive versions of their national pasts. In 2015 the British prime minister David Cameron claimed that ‘British values’ of democracy, equality, tolerance and the rule of law were rooted in a national history that stretched back 800 years. Those seeking to become British citizens are tested on a similar version of this national history and it is often proposed that this is the history British school children should be taught through the National Curriculum.

Those who advocate such histories complain that in recent decades an emphasis on economic, social and cultural history has undermined the seamless and self-congratulatory chronological narrative of the past anchored in political history. Once economic, social and cultural historians insisted that the experience of ordinary Britons – women and men of all classes, as well as people of all colours and creeds – had to be included in the national history, the question was to what degree they would change it. Similarly, as historians began to recognize the different roles of Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England in Britain's history, as well as their entanglement with continental Europe, the British Empire, and the rest of the world, it became increasingly difficult to imagine the national past as an ‘island story’ that stopped on the shores of the British Isles.

While our knowledge of British history is broader and richer in many ways, it remains hampered by two critical absences. The first is any sustained account of Britain's economic history and its local and global footprint. At a historical moment when the changing forms, locations and injuries of capitalism are painfully evident, they have receded from view in accounts of our national past. The second is the lack of an organizing narrative that can explain not just what changed, but why it did so.

Introduction

This chapter begins by providing a background to the current property regime in the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) (‘FLA’) and includes an overview of the current statutory provisions and key case law. The interaction between the legislation and the cases will provide an illustration of how family law remains a mechanism for privileging the nuclear family structure and maintaining the gender hierarchy created by the sexual division of labour. This is achieved by the unequal distribution of the costs of relationship breakdown between men and women, while the cost to the state is minimised. This analysis will demonstrate the need for everyone engaged in the law to understand how the family property relations form part of wider financial relations in society. In particular we argue that in family law the issue of financial inequality stems from the FLA's inability to address the issue of attributing an adequate economic value to non-financial work – that is, care work. Our argument is directed at the limitations of the substantive provisions of the legislation as well as those of the judicial interpretations of these provisions, illuminating how both legislators and judges have been unable to adequately address the prevalent social reality of the sexual division of labour.

The most significant legal reform in the family laws of western states has been the granting of a share of property to the financially dependent spouse, usually the wife. A share of property rather than ongoing maintenance is supposed to facilitate a clean break for individuals when their relationships break down. These principles were extended to the regulation of de facto relations, most notably with the introduction of the Family Law Amendment (De Facto Financial Matters and Other Measures) Act 2008 (Cth).

The changes to the law appear progressive in the way they break with the past by allowing women to claim a share in the family property. This change can be understood as the law upholding the norm that marriages (and other affective unions) are partnerships where the two partners may predominantly perform either financial or caring work. It is a joint undertaking and the law acknowledges that each of them may be entitled to a share of the accumulated property or wealth. Yet the disjuncture between the law's discourse on marriage as a partnership and the unequal gendered financial consequences of marriage breakdown requires explanation.

Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of the development of the concept of ‘the child’ in its historical and theoretical context. Central to the development of this concept is the understanding of the child as the most vulnerable member of society, in need of protection by the law. This understanding permeates family law provisions, whether in the context of resolving disputes over children when family relationships have broken down (discussed in this and the following chapter); or in the legal regulation of child protection, adoption and assisted reproductive technologies (discussed in Chapters 11 and 12). However, the influence of liberal notions of autonomy has also seen a parallel development in promoting the discourse of the rights of the child. In our discussion we will analyse the concept of ‘the child’ in terms of these competing discourses to explain the consequences of the law simultaneously adopting a paternal concern for the vulnerable child and recognising the child as a bearer of rights.

These discourses of the dependent or autonomous child come together in parenting disputes when courts are determining whether shared parental responsibility is in the best interests of the child. The discussion in this chapter includes an overview of changes in terminology in the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) (‘FLA’) that are indicative of changing ideology about the role of adults in the lives of children: the concept of parental responsibility imports the understanding that children have certain rights and their parents have certain responsibilities that need to be fulfilled. Notably, the legislation has been very prescriptive in setting out what these rights and responsibilities should be in making parenting orders, as is most evident in the Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibility) Act 2006 (Cth) (‘2006 amendments’), which commenced on 1 July 2006. These provisions, however, show that the legal conception of the rights of children, and the responsibilities of the adults involved in their care, continue to be informed by the nuclear family model. In emphasising the importance of both parents in the child's life, the law normalises the two-parent family as the ideal environment for rearing children. But it also functions to erase the reality of the sexual division of labour in ongoing relationships and replace it with the concept of parenting as a gender-neutral activity after the relationship ends.

Introduction

The International Monetary Fund loan and structural adjustment programme accepted by the Labour government in December 1976 stabilized the plummeting value of the now free-floating pound, and by the summer of 1978 inflation had fallen from 23 to 8 per cent while the number of unemployed had levelled out at 1.4 million or 5 per cent of the workforce. To keep inflation in check the government insisted that public sector wages should continue to be set below the rate of inflation, in part to offset the wage inflation in the private sector. In 1978, with inflation hovering between 8 and 10 per cent, it sought to impose a 5 per cent pay deal upon public sector workers who were represented by two of the largest unions with 1.4 million members. The resulting strikes and disruption to public services – from rubbish collection to grave-digging – became known as ‘the Winter of Discontent’. During it, the leftist social theorist Stuart Hall took stock of what he called Britain's ‘Great Moving Right Show’. After all, a Labour government had ceded sovereignty over economic policy to the IMF, cut public services, partly privatized BP, and taken on the powerful public sector unions. These policies had a striking resemblance to those of the Conservative Party under its new leader Margaret Thatcher. Describing these for the first time as ‘Thatcherism’, Hall suggested they had been remarkably successful at forging a new ‘populist common sense’. The new creed combined a belief that only the competitive pressures of free markets could end welfare dependency and restore personal responsibility, with an insistence upon respect for the rule of law and the primacy of the Christian family. Three months after Hall published this article, Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party was elected to form a new government.

In the decades that followed, Conservative and Labour governments continued ‘The Great Moving Right Show.’ Within a generation the central pillars of Britain's post-war social democracy had been largely dismantled. The aspiration of government was no longer to manage a mixed economy to provide prosperity and social security for all.