Thursday, September 10, 2015

A whirlwind tour of ISA

ISA stands for Identity Structure Analysis. Your identity is the continuity of the structure to your judgements over the years. In other words, in getting to know people you begin to form opinions of them. These opinions can strengthen to become convictions, against which those people, and new people, and self, are judged.

ISA provides numerical parameters to analysis the nature of your convictions on selected themes, your judgements of specified aspects of self or of others, and your identification with others. 

The answers are in the question
An ISA instrument takes the form of two lists: a list of convictions and a list of people. Technically, convictions (or characteristics or opinions or beliefs or values or traits…) are referred to as constructs. Technically, people (or groups or institutions or places or personified things…) are referred to as entities.

A good entity list comprises of both self and other (non-self) entities. The self-entities include entities that refer to the past, various contexts in the present, and aspirations for the future. The other-entities include entities that are likely to be judged positively (and admired person) and negatively (a disliked person).

A construct always comes with two poles: a favoured pole and a disfavoured pole. A pole of one construct may be favoured by the population as a whole. A pole of another construct may be favoured by a section of the population while the other pole is favoured by the rest of the population. A pole of a third construct may be favoured by an individual in one context while the other pole is favoured by the same individual but a different context. A good construct list will be made up of all three types of constructs: group favoured, individual favoured and context favoured.

Are you sitting comfortably?
When responding to an instrument a participant assigns each entity a place on the range that is delimited by the two poles of each construct. When all constructs have been attributed to all entities then the resulting grid of ratings can be analysed for the participants’ identity structure.

I think you’ll find
A construct has two poles: a favoured and a disfavoured part. Which pole is favoured is defined by the participant and not by the instrument. The first step of the analysis examines how the participant has attributed each construct to their aspirational self-entity. This analysis step results in each construct being assigned a polarity, hence tagging the favoured and disfavoured pole.

The next stage of analysis can now see how any entity has been scored across all the constructs. All the scores can be combined resulting in an overall evaluation, either positive or negative.

Now consider a construct where all positively evaluated entities have been attributed to the favoured pole, and all negatively evaluated entities have been attributed to the disfavoured pole. This construct has been used very consistently and therefore there is a strong conviction behind it. If some positively evaluated entities are attributed to the disfavoured pole and some negatively evaluated entities are attributed to the favoured pole, then the construct has been used inconsistently and there is little conviction behind it. The former construct can be said to be core, while the latter is conflicted.

The final stage of analysis compares two entities; one a self-entity and the other a non-self entity. When both entities have been attributed to the same poles of all the constructs then it can be said that there is a high degree of identification between self and the other. When one entity has been attributed to one pole of all the constructs and the other entity to the opposite pole then there is no identification between self and other.

In summary we have quickly walked through five of the ISA parameters: Polarity, Score, Evaluation, Structural Pressure and Identification



Tuesday, December 30, 2014

ipseus on the Mac

So a lot of folk have asked for ipseus on the Mac. However, ipseus is a Windows program built with Visual Studio 2008 on the .Net 2.0 platform. 

A colleague pointed me to Wineskin Winery as a way of wrapping the Window ipseus executable into something that can run on Mac OSX and after a bit of mucking I got things working. Can't say everything is working but you can create, response to and analysis an identity instrument. 

First off, if you don't care about the details, here is a link to my first working attempt at a Mac version of ipseus: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B821ulwDfsnTNk5GdVJKYklsN00/view?usp=sharing 

Just download the ipseusWineskin.zip file, extract the ipseus.app file and double click to run... I think... I'm a bit of a Mac novice and haven't tested this on any machine other than my own. For example, you might need Wine installed among other stuff. 
For any of you kind folk that are testing this, please provide feedback in the comments. 

So this is want I did:
  1. Downloaded ipseus: http://www.identityexploration.com/Download-Free-Ipseus.asp
  2. Downloaded Wineskin Winery from here: http://wineskin.urgesoftware.com/tiki-index.php?page=Downloads 
  3. In Wineskin Winery select 'Create New Blank Wrapper'
  4. Choose a name for your new wrapper e.g. 'ipseus'
  5. Select 'View Wrapper in Finder'
  6. Right (Ctrl) click on ipseus.app file and select 'Show Package Contents'
  7. Double click on 'Wineskin' application
  8. Select 'Install Software' followed by 'Choose Setup Executable'
  9. Find and select the 'ipseusSetup.msi' file you downloaded in step 1 above.
  10. Once installed, double click the 'Wineskin' icon again. It may complain about no executable being set and ask you if it should use '/Program Files/Identity Exploration/ipseus/Sycadex.Idio.exe'. Accept this suggestion. 
  11. In the Wineskin window now select 'Advanced'
  12. The configuration settings should include the 'Windows EXE' filename as mentioned in 11) but you may wish to change the 'Menubar Name' and add to the 'Associated Extensions' list.
  13. Select 'Set Screen Options' and toggled 'Use Mac Driver instead of X11' to have ipseus covering the full window pane.
  14. Select the 'Tools' tab and click the 'Winetricks' button.
  15. After a bit of mucking around, I installed the following in the DLLs subcategory (though to be honest all of them might not be needed, and the install order may be important!):
    • dotnet20
    • gdiplus 
    • gdiplus_winxp
    • jet40 
    • mdac27 
    • mdac28 
    • msflxgrid
    • msftedit
    • mshflxgd
    • msls31
    • msvcirt
    • msxml3
    • msxml6
    • riched20
    • riched30
    • richtx32
    • wsh56vb
    • wsh57
  16. I also installed the following from the FONTs subcategory (again possibly not necessary):
    • corefonts
    • eufonts
  17. All of these settings in 15 & 16 evolved through trial & error and an understanding of components used in the initial Windows application. The Winetricks install ordering might be important. I say this as on retesting these instructions a few times I got different results.

    I finally had to select the 'Config Utility (winecfg)' button in the 'Tools' tab.
  18. In the 'Applications' tab of the dialog box that appeared I set the 'Windows Version' to 'Windows 2000'
  19. In the 'Libraries' tab of the same dialog box I had to add some overrides (specifically 'gdiplus (native)' and 'riched20 (native, builtin)'
  20. Close the Wineskin dialog
  21. Cross fingers
  22. Double click your new ipseus for Mac OSX application
I've replicated the steps a few times and got most of the ipseus application working. Well the important bits anyway. The embedded screenshots show the specific areas that wreaked my head. I don't understand the implications of everything I added under 'Winetricks', nor the important order to install them. However, if everything is added and the settings in the screenshots above duplicated you should have a working version of ipseus on your Apple hardware.

I doubt printing is working, so I recommend exporting reports and data out to Excel or PDF files and just print them natively instead.

I can't say I'll keep every update to ipseus also updated for use on the Mac, but at least with this blog entry any nerdy Mac users (or Mac buddies) should be do it yourselves. Go fish.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.




Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Meditation or Medication

Can anyone give me an example of a spiritual experience that doesn't just fall into the realm of senses that are heightened or communicating better?

I don't like the term "spirituality". It doesn't have any clear meaning to me, while at the same time it has the ability to encompass anything the user likes. Its modern usage wraps the old religious baggage with the new age laundry, like a mouldy old trunk full of stinky damp straw men. I would say that of course, being a biased atheist. 

It does not mean that I am not interested in digging into the notion behind the term a bit more.

In 'Brain Cuttings', Carl Zimmer has a chapter on anaesthesia and talks about a possible way it works by disrupting communications between the senses (a bit like that TED talk about the neuro-scientist that experienced brain damage). 

Think of what are the opposite effects of anaesthesia. What would some specific sense heightener provide? What would some anti-anaesthesia heightened sense communication device be like? Perhaps meditation performs this action.

Given that idea, to me Aesthesia is a good secular replacement word of Spiritual. 

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Symbolix Identity

So people rioted in Belfast over a decision to only fly the Union Jack over the city hall except on important days (like er, like the Duchess of Cambridge's birthday!).


Check out the pictures. Most colorful, if you like orange.

Now I would have thought that that reaction was fairly obvious but, that is a qualitative statement from having lived in Belfast and experienced some of the culture.

Is it possible we could have quantitatively predicted this result? I reckon so, and I'm gonna show you the numbers...


Do you have a flag?


So, there was a report done for the OFMDFM. You can try and read it here, though you might bleed from your eyes :-)

The kind folk at IEL let me have the original report data in the form of an ipseus file. There are 115 responses from across the community spectrum. The details of the make up are in that report.

I was interested in seeing if the flag thing jumped out of the results. Or better yet, could it have been predicted. Luckily there was a construct in the instrument used that directly references the issue.

Construct 9 opposed '...like flags and murals that reflect my traditions' against '...all flags etc should be removed'.

So my initial thinking was this construct should be fairly divisive and along traditional culture boundaries. First, I looked at the complete set of responses as one big group.

Below, the table of Construct results show an almost equal split between folks that believe flags are good (#57) and flags are bad (#58). Good and Bad should probably be surrounded in quotes there. From a group perspective 'flags are bad' comes out as 'good'!


'Structural Pressure' is kinda like a measure of conviction. A high positive value suggest a black and white view of a construct. A high negative value suggests that the individual/group say one thing but judge things in the opposite way; they don't walk the talk as it were.

A value around zero means that either the construct is irrelevant for making judgement (i.e. not significant) or that it depends on the situation (i.e. ask me at one time I'll say one construct pole is the positive one, ask me another time and the opposite pole could be the positive one). For a group, when there is a split in the group count favouring each pole, such conflicted constructs tend to mean that there are individuals that strongly favour one pole and others that strongly favour the other.


Ruling out the Rioters


So around the flag question we have two subgroups that we should look at in more detail. In ipseus you can set up some rules to automatically split up the full group of 115 individuals.

Here is the rule set I created to split up the group based on the flag question:

01
[FlagConstruct] 9
02
[@Flags] (-1 = Polarity( Rule( "FlagConstruct" ) )) AND StructuralPressure( "Secondary" ) < StructuralPressure( Rule( "FlagConstruct" ) ))
03
[@NoFlags] (1 = Polarity( Rule( "FlagConstruct" ) )) AND StructuralPressure( "Secondary" ) < StructuralPressure( Rule( "FlagConstruct" ) ))

When you create rules you can give them a name (just put some text inside [] at the start). If the rule name starts with an @ it means that you want that rule to become a criteria.

The “Flags” rule says that I want anyone that has endorsed the left pole of the construct (i.e. polarity equals -1) and they have some level of conviction behind that endorsement (structural pressure is positive and relatively large).



So I now want to create two sets of subgroups. One set splits folks up based on their view of the flags issue. Another breaks up the full group along the line of their traditional cultures (PUL - Protestant Unionist Loyalist or CNR - Catholic Nationalist Republican).
As I said, my initial thinking was that only the PUL folk would care about flags. However, that is a stupid bias based on the news images on the telly only showing Union Jacks (sometimes upside down!). In truth the flags thing, or cultural symbols to be more generic, should be important to some degree to both sides of the political spectrum.


For Flapping Flags?


So the next step was to intersect the Flags/NoFlags subgroups with the PUL/CNR subgroups. Running my 'Flags' and 'Traditions' rule had created new sets in he 'Criteria' section.



We can see that there are 31 individuals that like flags with some conviction, while the majority, 52, would prefer to ditch the symbolism. When we intersect the two criteria of interest we should see the flags question fairly split across the communities. And lookie here:



[NoFlags][All CNRs]   
   30
[NoFlags][All PULs]    
   22
[Flags][All CNRs]
   11
[Flags][All PULs]
   20

So, these numbers do suggest that the whole flag thing is a little more of a PUL issue than a CNR issue. Lets find out why.


Flag waving Prods


Now we have those subgroups we should look at the ipseus profile for each subgroup separately. The immediate one of interest is our rioting friends; the pro-flag PULs.



In order to see the make up of this subgroup I'm jumping to the Construct Summary section and looking for a stable pattern i.e. a good bunch of core/secondary convictions with a smattering of conflicted ones. Holy kak! The flag waving PULs are anything but. We actually get the opposite.


Our flag construct (#9) is only one of two core constructs. The second core construct (#16 local parades important) being very much related to that issue. A third related construct (#8 trouble at parades ok) also stands out. Everything else is is slipping into the conflicted, or don't know which way to swing, zone! In simple terms this pattern suggests that the subgroup has no identity other than the symbols they use to identify themselves; Flags, Parades with a little bit of religion slipping in there at the edge. Now, here is the crux of my argument thus far; if you have a significant minority of people with no cultural identity other than a few symbols, and you remove one of symbols, what the hell do you expect to happen!


Turning the tables


I want to now do two other things. First I want to flip the table and see if we would get the same reaction if it was an Irish Tricolor taken down from the roof of Belfast city hall by contrasting the flag waving PULs with the flag waving CNRs. Second I want to suggest a different policy that could be followed without undermining core struts to folks identity. So, here is the same Construct Summary screen for the flag waving CNRs:


Overall this CNR subgroup has a more stable profile. Few core convictions to be true, but less conflicted ones as well. While the 'flag' symbolism is still important, the parades issue (#8) is deemed not worth the hassle in opposition to their PUL brethren. From this I would predict that, while there would be deep upset over taken down their flag, there wouldn't be such a violent reaction. Construct #20 “...living peacefully by knowing and respecting each other” has some conviction behind it after all!


You didn't want to do that...


So the numbers support the notion, predictably, that dropping the Union Jack from the top of Belfast city hall was a bit of a stupid idea.


What about another option like flying a less prominent Irish flag along side it while educating everyone what the 'gold' in the green, white and gold stands for? There is contention in that idea and you would have to watch that the conviction around construct #15 “...CNRs gaining advantage” stays conflicted for both groups.

Trying to change ideas held with strong convictions just doesn't work without pain. So for a better way forward we need to focus on constructs that are conflicted for both groups, preferable ones that both groups agree on which pole is positive and which negative.

For example, taking construct #2 “...police better than paramilitaries” and construct #21 “...Irish sports, language and arts should be enjoyed by all sections of the community” together then the PSNI should be ramming “culture” down everyone's throats until both sides are sick of it and move on!
To be less flippant, this could mean police enforcement of flying both flags, police enforcing parades only with both sides of the community or having joint Gardai/PSNI rugby/GAA matches.


Monday, December 10, 2012

ipseus software


Folks, the software dedicated to the approach I talk about on this blog can be downloaded from http://www.ipseus.com/software/ipseus.zip

This zip file contains the ISA instrument editing, data collection and analysis package called ipseus. Use the ipseus.msi file to install the software.

The zip also contains a small standalone data collection module called participate. Simply copy the 'participate' directory wherever you need it, for example, onto a USB stick.

There is also an experimental instrument display that completely randomizes the instrument when people sit it. You can enable this randomization by creating a simple text file called settings.ini into your 'participate' directory. 

The settings.ini file should contain the following text:

[RespondLayoutControl]
RandomSeed=1
[RespondLayoutControl.End]

If you want to enable the same randomization inside of the ipseus program as well, also copy your settings.ini file into the ipseus installation directory (usually 'C:\Program Files\Identity Exploration\ipseus').

Please be aware that this is a local setting only. If you need multiple people collecting data you will have to make sure that everyone makes this local change. Alternatively package everything up with your own tailored version of participate for data collection. Future versions of ipseus will allows these options to be stored with the instrument [See Addendum below], or be on-line eventually.

If you are having a workshop with Professor Peter Weinreich, then he likes to use different settings that the default ones. You can change settings from the 'Options > Settings' menu. Peter's settings are shown below:

 Inline images 1

I'll add more posts on instrument creation, collection and analysis in time.

Feel free to post questions or email identityexploration [at] gmail [dot] com

----------------------------
[ADDENDUM]

So there is a new version of the software with an extra tab in the Instrument screen now to save your settings with the data. Check it out!

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Perceived security and security perception

I have just read a chapter on the use of Bayesian theory to direct Russian artillery bombardment, to decrypt the Enigma messages and to search for German submarines, all during World War 2.

I have also just finished reading a few chapters on the ridiculous security theatre that goes on in airports these days, which I get to act in a lot when travelling with work.

I wonder if there is a connection between the finding of u-boats in the Atlantic with finding terrorist cells? Would some form of bayesian process help analyse all the data, rather than continuing to waste time having everyone drinking all their water and remove belts & shoes.

This is all going down at PZ Myers' and Sam Harris' blogs.

I see it like this...

If 10 minutes, on average, have been added for everyone in an airport security queue, and 630 millions folk go through US airports each year, then that's an extra ~12000 man/years added to standing in a queue. Given an average for a persons life span of about 80 years, that's roughly 150 people 'die' from standing in pointless airport security queues each year.

It's been over a decade since 9/11 so that's 1500 people 'dead' over this time. Let's double that number to roughly cover the rest of the world. So 3000 people have 'died' because of extended, pointless security theatre.

I find that as terrible as 3000 people dying suddenly in one act of terrorism.



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Friday, May 4, 2012

Identification Conflict

Check out this article from the Guardian

So what is the underlying psychological process going on here from the perspective of ISA and how could be picked it apart with a ipseus instrument.

There are two aspects at work. First, how do you evaluate someone, including yourself? Do you evaluate positively or negatively? Second, how much do you see of yourself in the other person?

You can share attributes that you deem negative with someone else, even though you evaluate the other positively. This is part of an identification conflict.

What's going on in that ad though is the other type of identification conflict. They are trying to link a shared attribute that would generally be deemed positive with someone who would generally be evaluated negatively.

To resolve the identification conflict you can either change your mind on which side of the fence you deem positive, which is unlikely if that attribute spectrum is backed with a strong conviction.

Alternatively, you can accept that the world is not black & white, that there is some bad in good people & some good in bad people, and not let silly emotional advertising like this have any effect.

I should invoke Godwin's rule now and mention Hitler and atheism in the same sentence now, but I won't :-)



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