​Humans are endlessly learning. How to walk, which brand of coffee is tastiest, the best way to calm an angry child – you name it, humans are learning it.
 
Some learning is informal, while some is institutionalised. The education system – from kindergarten to university – provides a formal learning environment that can shape life-long outcomes, including job opportunities, salary, health and well-being.
 
Given the importance of learning, we’d better we sure we’re doing it right.
 
What shapes learning outcomes?
 
Is it intelligence, effort, genes, or something else that makes a successful learner?
 
We know that people function better when they feel good about themselves and feel socially connected to others. That’s just common sense, right?
 
Humans flourish when they feel they belong and when they feel appreciated for who they are.
 
So, what does this have to do with learning? Well, let’s think for a moment about schools and universities and other learning institutions… classes, friends, crowds, teams, noise­ – education is always delivered in incredibly social contexts.
 
If a person’s ability to learn is affected by their sense of belonging and connection to others, are education systems unduly privileging those students who ‘naturally’ fit in?
 
Unfortunately, the statistics would answer ‘yes’ to that question.
 
Social class, race, sexuality, and gender are still significant predictors of academic outcomes. And recent international surveys of tens of thousands of high school children revealed that about one fifth of them report feeling that they do not fit in at school.
 
The irony of education is that when we think of academic achievement, we often make the assumption that it is all about individual intelligence. The question of fit or belonging, rarely enters the equation.
 
And every week…every semester…and every year, grades, percentages and GPAs, accumulate to create an indelible academic profile, which either opens doors, or quietly but firmly shuts them.
 
A sense of fit

So, what does it mean to fit in? And how do we help students who feel they don’t fit it?

Fitting in is feeling like to you share something with the people around you, feeling that your sense of who you are – your identity – is positively aligned with the group.

Feeling that being a student is an important part of who you are, and that you identify as a student, is therefore vital for successful learning. So how can we help people claim their student identity, and feel more able to fit within their educational setting?

In a recent book chapter, we investigated this very question. We asked over 300 university students to rate how independent, appreciated and connected to others they felt, and then we asked them about how much they identified as a student, and also how satisfied they were with their academic performance. The data was collected at different time points across the semester.

Results showed exactly what we suspected – when students felt that their life at university promoted a sense of positive autonomy, and feelings of competence and appreciation, both their level of identification as a student and their academic satisfaction was reported to be higher.
 
Learning, both formal and informal, shapes both who we are now and who we can be in the future. And yet we often assume that learning is an individual endeavour, and we rarely stop to think about learning from a social perspective.
 
In fact, learning is one of the most social activities that humans do!
 
Looking at learning in this new way not only allows us to understand why some students get left behind, but will also help us to come up with ways in which we can design educational programs to ensure real learning opportunities for all.

- Sarah Bentley

***
Read the full article:
Greenaway, K., Amiot, C.E., Louis, W. R., & Bentley, S.V. (2017). The role of psychological need satisfaction in promoting student identification. In K. I. Mavor, M. Platow, & B. Bizumic (Eds.), Self and Social Identity in Educational Contexts, pp. 176-192.  Routledge : New York, USA.

The annual cost of domestic abuse in Australia is estimated to be over $12.6 billion. That figure doesn’t account for the physical and psychological toll this abuse takes on victims, their friends and families.

The abuse depicted in domestic violence campaigns and on the news might lead people to believe that domestic abuse is men physically abusing women. While this is true in many cases, it fails to reflect the diverse reality of abusive relationships.
​
In Australia, non-physical violence (14% men, 25% women) in relationships is experienced at higher rates than physical violence (5% men, 16% women) by both males and females. 

What is non-physical domestic abuse and why is it important?

Non-physical domestic abuse is any harm inflicted by a past or present romantic partner that is not physical or sexual.

Behaviours like stalking, threats, emotional assaults, belittling comments, and humiliation of the victim are often used to control what their partner wears, where they go, who they see, where they live, what they can buy, where and whether they work, and many other aspects of daily life.

Like physical and sexual abuse, victims of non-physical domestic abuse have poor physical and mental health outcomes.

What you should know about domestic abuse

Abuse can be subtle, especially in the early stages of a relationship. It’s important to remember that many abusers are master manipulators.

Physical and sexual abuse is almost always preceded by non-physical abuse, and even in cases where the abuse never becomes physical, the non-physical abuse typically escalates in severity and overtness over the course of a relationship.

The earlier people become aware of abuse, the less committed they are to the unhealthy relationship which should reduce some of the barriers victims face is the process of leaving an abusive relationship.

Why some victims do not leave their abusive relationship

Leaving a relationship with abuse can be far more difficult and complex than many imagine. Barriers to leaving vary from victim to victim and it’s necessary to be compassionate towards victims. Two common barriers are explored below.
​
People may not know they’re being abused

This is particularly true for non-physical abuse. Such behaviours can be subtly manipulative and controlling, appearing to stem from jealousy or protective instincts that are often romanticised in popular culture.

For example, the popular Twilight and 50 Shades series idealise jealousy as an often controlling, ‘all consuming’ romance.  It’s important to challenge the ideals that may romanticise some forms of abusive and controlling behaviours.

Victims may feel blamed or shamed

Victims are often judged harshly with many people blaming victims for their abuse, especially when they fail to leave the relationship after the first instance of abuse. When victims take on this blame it becomes another barrier to leaving their abuser.

Victim blame may also be related to sexism. Victims who fail to behave in accordance with the traditional gender ideal of either a strong, dominant man, or a nurturing, submissive woman may be more likely to be blamed for their experience of abuse by those who endorse these ideals.

My PhD aims to explore these topics and themes, aiming to empower survivors and to reduce the prevalence of physical and non-physical intimate partner violence.

- Kiara Minto

In order to survive the potential chaos of our physical and social worlds, humans have developed a tremendous ability to find order in the chaos.

We do this by using the simple strategy of sorting information by looking for similarities and differences.

​Whether it be the stars in the night sky above us, or the people who live around us, we are constantly grouping things animate or inanimate (a classic example of grouping). 

We group others according to markers like species, age, apparent sex, skin colour, weight, facial features, and clothing. When we use these cues, we will perceive another as being similar or different.

Human enterprises such as the media and the social sciences also rely on sorting information according to similarity and difference. The end result is that we are constantly exposed to information through the lens of social groups, and more often than not, in terms of “us and them.”

The problem is that once things are categorised into social groups, there is a bias towards focusing on difference rather than similarity.

Media help propagate the cult of difference

The media, for example, tends to focus on how groups are different rather than similar to each other. 
​
If we use recent media accounts to process information about Americans, we would think that are two basic types – Republicans and Democrats. They even have their own colours – red and blue.

Many media stories lead us to believe that there are huge differences between these two “types” of Americans, because they are focusing on their differences rather than their similarities.

Social scientists also search for differences, often neglecting larger similarities

And what about the social sciences? The science of psychology has developed to favour difference over similarity.

We set up studies to look for differences between experimental and control groups or between people from different existing social groups (e.g., Australian vs. Chinese). We are trained to conduct statistical analyses that involve testing for difference, but not for similarity.

Publications also tend to report studies that found “significant” differences between groups rather than studies that found no differences (i.e., the file drawer problem). The bigger the difference the better and so we often see visual representations of data that make differences appear larger than they are!

How can we focus on similarities?

Our paper concentrates on  research and writing strategies that focus on similarities (without ignoring differences). Focusing on similarities is healthy for science and for the promotion of peaceful intergroup relations.

Following are a few research and writing strategies we highlight in our paper. We illustrate these strategies using some of our own cross-cultural data.

• Look for patterns of similarity in data and point them out to readers!
• Test for equivalence of means when appropriate. Yes there are statistical procedures for testing for hypothesised equivalence of means!
• Acknowledge the small magnitude of differences when they are found.

 
- Richard Lalonde

***
Read full article:
Lalonde, R.N., Cila, J., Lou, E. & Cribbie, R. A. (2015).  Are we really that different from each other? The difficulties of focusing on similarities in cross-cultural research. Peace and Conflict:  Journal of Peace Psychology, 21, 525-534.

After the recent US election people on the political left went into a frenzy mulling over all the reasons why Trump won.
Is America just full of racists? Are people scared of their economic prospects for the future?  Are people sick of political corruption and want to “drain the swamp”? Has Government regulation gotten out of hand?

You heard all the discussions on the news, between your co-workers, and in your Facebook feed. Everyone had an expert opinion.

But what does the science actually say? Here are three factors that psychological and political science suggest explain Trump’s popularity.

1. Opposition to immigration rises in times of prosperity, not recession 

We typically think that countries become more restrictive in their immigration policies when they suffer economically. Yet in the 4 years leading up to the 2016 election, the United States had steady growth in GDP, the job sector, and hourly pay rates.

With the economy doing so well, why did we see anti-immigrant sentiments flaring in this election cycle?

Despite common beliefs, research shows that that societies are actually more likely to oppose immigration when they are doing well economically. From America to Austria, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, we see right-wing parties rising to power during periods of economic prosperity.

2. It’s not just the poor; the rich also oppose immigration

 
After the election you probably heard that the working poor of America were the ones that supported Trump because of his tough stance on immigration. They thought immigrants would steal their jobs.

But it’s not just the working poor, but also those doing quite well economically that are likely to oppose immigration.  The research shows that, indeed, those with higher disposable income are just as likely to oppose immigration as those who have the least disposable income. 

It’s suggested that this is partly driven by fear of future deprivation. However, the idea that the poor vote conservatively is not supported by data. In fact we find the median income of Trump supporters was $72,000 (compared to the national median of $56,000).  
 
3. Conservative nostalgia for the ‘good old days’

“Make America great again” was the central slogan of Trump’s campaign. This glorification of the past is a common thread in the rise of right-wing parties.

Right-wing politicians tend to glorify the past and highlight how bad we’re doing in the present (even when it’s not objectively true). This creates a sense of urgency.

When people hear this type of talk they are more likely to support drastic changes and the right-wing parties that propose these changes.

The following clip, from Ava Duverney’s documentary the 13th (available on Netflix), highlights glorification of the past and the need to be tough in Trump’s election campaign (as well as the link to racist policing and crowd violence). Warning: strong language and violence.

​So next time you hear your friends, family and media pundits arguing the rise of Trump and the Right, you’ll know at least three factors based on research as to how these parties, and these politicians rise to power!

​- Zahra Mirnajafizadeh

Who are allies?
 
Allies are people from privileged groups, working together with or on behalf of socially disadvantaged groups, to improve the status and conditions for the latter. Think of White people protesting side by side with Black Lives Matter protestors, men supporting women in demanding equal pay, and straight people joining marches for marriage equality in support of LGBTIQ groups.
 
Allyship is not a new phenomenon
 
Researchers have only started discussing allyship in recent years. Yet allies have been around for as long as social movements have. For instance, the suffrage movement in the United States was a movement that was supported by many influential men of the time. Similarly, White politicians were important allies of the African National Congress in South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement.
 
What influences people to act as allies?
 
Social research shows that people generally tend to favour their own groups and communities. We are rewarded for actions that favour our own groups—perhaps through acceptance, recognition for being a valuable group member, receiving favours when in need, etc.  On the flip side, if we favour the interests of other groups or communities, we risk criticism, rejection, suspicion, and ostracism.
 
Given this context, how do advantaged group allies come to create and sustain support for disadvantaged groups outside of their own group? We identify 5 factors.

1. Normalising influences early in life

Allies tend to have had normalising influences while growing up, in the form of positive parental influence, contact with relatives or members of the community who probably belonged to these socially disadvantaged groups (like having a gay uncle, or a Black teacher), and exposure through popular culture and entertainment.

2. Feeling empathy for disadvantaged people

Allies report feeling empathy towards people they knew who may have identified as gay/lesbian/bisexual/trans, or been a racial minority, and saw them struggling with their identity. Studies show this can happen because of greater abilities for perspective-taking. This empathy also comes from the ability to relate the experiences of people from disadvantaged groups, to their own experiences of distress from being slighted, excluded or discriminated against in some way.

Humans are social beings. We all belong to social groups - for example family, friends, colleagues, church choir, or even political parties.
 
When we commit to a group, we act in accordance to the group’s standards for behaviours, and add the group’s identity to our sense of self.
 
Some groups are more important to us than others, providing meaningful identities and even personal life goals. Religious or faith groups often work like that. Research has found links between religious beliefs and our attitudes towards life or even how we vote for political leaders and choose to support national policies.  In general, being part of a religious group or faith is linked to higher well-being.
 
Life changes can make group memberships toxic
 
Yet sometimes group memberships can become toxic or undesirable for a person. Faith groups are no exception. For example, one participant in our study was rejected by their local church and congregation after they married their same-sex partner.
 
More broadly, life events such as migration or marriage, or societal events such as natural disasters or political revolutions, can introduce new environments and motivate changes to attitudes, beliefs and identities. Such changes may mean that our groups no longer ‘fit’ us.
 
Leaving toxic groups may preserve well-being
 
We conducted research with Americans who have had different experiences with religions. We asked people aged over 30 about their faith at age 20 and today, and compared people who have left their faith and become non-religious (n = 36) with those who maintained the same faith (n = 96).
 
Among other things, we were interested in to what extent being rejected by the faith group would affect their well-being today.
 
Our results show that being rejected at age 20 by people in their faith group was associated with lower well-being in the present (more than 10 years later) for people who continued with their faith. However, for those who left a faith group, the rejection did not do ongoing harm.
 
Such results affirm one reason why our social identities can be changed or lost. Previous research on identity loss has mostly focused on its harmful effects, such as increased depression and mortality. Here, however, we show that identity loss can sometimes be a buffer to protect our well-being from threats in a toxic group.
 
When groups become toxic, leaving the group can protect psychological well-being.
 
On a psychological level, the findings show how losing group membership can be beneficial in certain circumstances, where the benefits of abandoning a particular group membership outweigh the benefits of maintaining it. However, changes in faith have broad and far-reaching consequences.  Understanding changes in religious and political affiliation is the topic of my PhD research.

- Gi Chonu

* * * 
Chonu, G. K., Louis, W. R., Haslam, S. A., (2017). When groups reject us: Testing buffering effects of identity change and multiple group memberships. Manuscript in preparation.

Defining the environmental movement: who’s who, and what they do

Research about these questions has tended to focus on the operations of groups that shout the loudest. These groups are frequently those that are skilled at attracting media attention as part of their tactics, are the easiest to study, and have the systems in place to support external research.  As a result Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, WWF and other large multinational groups feature predominantly in the environmental movement literature.

But is that image of a Greenpeace banner down a coal stack, or a 350.org rally with shouting, placard holding people really representative of what environmentalism in the field actually is? What about what everybody else is doing?

There is a lot more to the environmental movement than its biggest, most vocal players.

A closer look at what’s going on in the environmental movement in Australia quickly uncovers the overwhelming diversity of issues, approaches and actors that together create this movement.

Over 500 groups with websites across Australia are active in some form of environmental advocacy—spanning diverse issues including pesticide use, population growth, climate change, catchment management, feral dog management and species conservation. If we add in those only using social media and word of mouth to promote their cause, then in fact thousands of groups, made up of tens of thousands of members and supporters are active in some way in creating this movement.

What of campaigning, that classic approach to building a movement?

Over 700 active campaigns are being promoted via Australian based websites. These range from local issues against coal mines to complex national campaigns focusing on marine protection, clean energy and land clearing.  They involve tree planting, placard waving, wildlife rescue and letter writing. It’s pretty clear that there’s a lot going on.

The vast majority of environmental groups in Australia have no paid staff, do not receive any substantial media attention, and do not use protest techniques or direct action to promote their cause.

While they may not ‘win’ all, or even many, of their causes, clearly there is something special about the environmental movement that has united such a diversity of voices in such a short span of time. I’d like to get a sense of the collective action tactics and strategies used by these campaigning groups and the failures and successes that they are experiencing in the course of their activities. My PhD research aims to look under the surface of the latest protest banner and begin to understand why, what and who actually makes the environmental movement the global phenomenon that it has become today.

- Robyn Gulliver

In a recent book chapter, we distilled key lessons from social psychology and discussed how these insights could be used to change behaviour.

People engage in behaviours seen to be central or defining of their group

Health behaviours are not simply personal choices but rather reflect habits that are part and parcel of belonging to particular groups. These behaviours can have negative or positive consequences depending on which behaviours have become tied up with group membership. As an example, consider how the central role in the national psyche of the full English breakfast or the meat-laden Australian BBQ determines day-to-day food choices and compare this to the classic Mediterranean diet or the abundance of fresh fish and vegetables in Japan.

Students often describe behaviours with negative implications for health – such as excess alcohol consumption – as ‘normal’ within the university context. Many have expectations about these norms even before they step foot on campus. So, when students are thinking about themselves as a student, being healthy is not at the forefront of their minds – in fact, the opposite is clearly the case.

Efforts to change student behaviour that make student identity salient may backfire because student identity does not promote health behaviour.

Those who want to change student behaviour need to encourage students to see themselves in terms of another identity for which healthy behaviour is expected – such as athletic identities – or make health behaviour more central to what it means to be a student.

Changing group norms is no easy task

If unhealthy behaviours are seen as central to what it means to be a group member – such as students and drinking – group members may be very resistant to attempts to change their behaviour, even if such change would improve their health.

Norms themselves are quite complex. They have both a descriptive element (what is commonly done) and a prescriptive element (what should be done). And these two elements don’t always align. For example, students might approve of more responsible drinking but still go out and binge drink anyway!

When these descriptive and prescriptive elements are in conflict, people tend to go along with what their group actually does, rather than what their group thinks should be done. So, if people try to change one element without paying attention to the other, these efforts may be ineffective or even counterproductive.

If you want to encourage health behaviours, you need to communicate that the group both approves of healthy behaviour and actually engages in that behaviour.

Change agents should try to frame identities and norms in ways that communicate that being a student means being healthy. And work with students on health messages to ensure that these are credible and acceptable.

We believe that bringing a stronger understanding of how social factors shape students’ choices about their health allows us to unlock the full potential of groups so that these become a positive – rather than a negative – force for students’ health behaviours. Stay tuned for more updates on our progress!

- Joanne Smith (Guest blogger and Social Change Lab collaborator)

***
Read the full article:
Smith, J. R., Louis, W. R., & Tarrant, M. (2017). University students’ social identity and health behaviours. In K. Mavor, M. J. Platow, & B. Bizumic (Eds.), Self and social identity in educational contexts (pp. 159-174). London: Routledge. 

Winnifred Louis and Cassandra Chapman, The University of Queensland

Statistics is a useful tool for understanding the patterns in the world around us. But our intuition often lets us down when it comes to interpreting those patterns. In this series we look at some of the common mistakes we make and how to avoid them when thinking about statistics, probability and risk.

1. Assuming small differences are meaningful
 
Many of the daily fluctuations in the stock market represent chance rather than anything meaningful. Differences in polls when one party is ahead by a point or two are often just statistical noise.

You can avoid drawing faulty conclusions about the causes of such fluctuations by demanding to see the “margin of error” relating to the numbers.

If the difference is smaller than the margin of error, there is likely no meaningful difference, and the variation is probably just down to random fluctuations.

2. Equating statistical significance with real-world significance
 
We often hear generalisations about how two groups differ in some way, such as that women are more nurturing while men are physically stronger.

These differences often draw on stereotypes and folk wisdom but often ignore the similarities in people between the two groups, and the variation in people within the groups.

If you pick two men at random, there is likely to be quite a lot of difference in their physical strength. And if you pick one man and one woman, they may end up being very similar in terms of nurturing, or the man may be more nurturing than the woman.

You can avoid this error by asking for the “effect size” of the differences between groups. This is a measure of how much the average of one group differs from the average of another.

If the effect size is small, then the two groups are very similar. Even if the effect size is large, the two groups will still likely have a great deal of variation within them, so not all members of one group will be different from all members of another group.

3. Neglecting to look at extremes

The flipside of effect size is relevant when the thing that you’re focusing on follows a "normal distribution" (sometimes called a “bell curve”). This is where most people are near the average score and only a tiny group is well above or well below average.

When that happens, a small change in performance for the group produces a difference that means nothing for the average person (see point 2) but that changes the character of the extremes more radically.

Avoid this error by reflecting on whether you’re dealing with extremes or not.  When you’re dealing with average people, small group differences often don’t matter. When you care a lot about the extremes, small group differences can matter heaps.

4. Trusting coincidence

Did you know there’s a correlation between the number of people who drowned each year in the United States by falling into a swimming pool and number of films Nicholas Cage appeared in?

If you look hard enough you can find interesting patterns and correlations that are merely due to coincidence.

Just because two things happen to change at the same time, or in similar patterns, does not mean they are related.

Avoid this error by asking how reliable the observed association is. Is it a one-off, or has it happened multiple times? Can future associations be predicted? If you have seen it only once, then it is likely to be due to random chance.
 
5. Getting causation backwards

When two things are correlated – say, unemployment and mental health issues – it might be tempting to see an “obvious” causal path – say that mental health problems lead to unemployment.

But sometimes the causal path goes in the other direction, such as unemployment causing mental health issues.

You can avoid this error by remembering to think about reverse causality when you see an association. Could the influence go in the other direction? Or could it go both ways, creating a feedback loop?
 
6. Forgetting to consider outside causes

People often fail to evaluate possible “third factors”, or outside causes, that may create an association between two things because both are actually outcomes of the third factor.

For example, there might be an association between eating at restaurants and better cardiovascular health. That might lead you to believe there is a causal connection between the two.

However, it might turn out that those who can afford to eat at restaurants regularly are in a high socioeconomic bracket, and can also afford better health care, and it’s the health care that affords better cardiovascular health.

You can avoid this error by remembering to think about third factors when you see a correlation. If you’re following up on one thing as a possible cause, ask yourself what, in turn, causes that thing? Could that third factor cause both observed outcomes?
 
7. Deceptive graphs

A lot of mischief occurs in the scaling and labelling of the vertical axis on graphs. The labels should show the full meaningful range of whatever you’re looking at.

But sometimes the graph maker chooses a narrower range to make a small difference or association look more impactful. On a scale from 0 to 100, two columns might look the same height. But if you graph the same data only showing from 52.5 to 56.5, they might look drastically different.

You can avoid this error by taking care to note graph’s labels along the axes. Be especially sceptical of unlabelled graphs.

- Winnifred Louis and Cassandra Chapman 
​
***
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Who are the radicals? 5 types of radical group defined by motivation
 
Bertjan Doosje and his colleagues categorise radical groups into five different types based on their main concerns. These are:

1. Nationalistic or separatist groups
2. Extreme right-wing groups
3. Extreme left-wing groups
4. Single issue groups (e.g. animal rights), and
5. Religiously motivated groups.  

The diversity of radical groups both in terms of their focus and in terms of their methods needs to be acknowledged so that we can avoid over-simplification in how we understand them and how we respond.
 
Radical religious groups in Indonesia seek to change the entire social structure
 
Indonesia is governed by common law. Nonetheless, polls suggest that the majority of Indonesians would support the implementation of Islamic law. In this context, many of the country’s radical groups are driven by religious motivation – without necessarily supporting violence, they seek to fundamentally alter the state.
 
In the course of my research, I recently talked with the regional spokesman of one Indonesian religious movement that aims to revive the Islamic State, a borderless state that governs all Muslims in the world and non-Muslims within their territory, and hearkens back to the Caliphate that included parts of Asia, Europe, and Africa during the second millennium. I asked if his movement endorsed the use of physical violence as part of their strategy. “Absolutely Not!”, he replied, “We are a peaceful movement and our orientation is educating Muslims on the vision of Caliphate.”
 
This group criticises specific governmental policies and social norms, but attributes the root cause of problems to the underlying structure of Indonesian society. In their view, for instance, harmful policies are merely symptoms of a wider problem: the “wrong” constitution and a fundamentally flawed system of managing the nation. So, for radical groups like this one, the solution is changing the structure of rules that influence the whole governmental and social system.  
 
Thus, although such movements never use physical violence as the strategy, we can categorise them as radical due to their ideas and visions.
 
How do such movements promote change? And how do people respond to peaceful revolutionary or radical movements within their society?  These are topics that I hope to pursue in my PhD research.
 
-  Susilo Wibisono