The Psychologist January 2012 by The Psychologist

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psychologist vol 25 no 1

january 2012

Psychology to the rescue Leading psychologists recount a time science was their saviour

Incorporating Psychologist Appointments £5 or free to members of The British Psychological Society

news 10 media 20 big picture centre ethics 52

praises – five a day for young children 32 doppelgängers 36 ‘see a psychologist? why?’ 40 feeding time 44

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The British Psychological Society Contact The British Psychological Society St Andrews House 48 Princess Road East Leicester LE1 7DR tel 0116 254 9568 fax 0116 227 1314

Welcome to The Psychologist, the monthly publication of The British Psychological Society. It provides a forum for communication, discussion and controversy among all members of the Society, and aims to fulfil the main object of the Royal Charter, ‘to promote the advancement and diffusion of a knowledge of psychology pure and applied’. It is supported by www.thepsychologist.org.uk, where you can view this month’s issue, search the archive, listen, debate, contribute, subscribe, advertise, and more.

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Associate Editors Articles Vaughan Bell, Kate Cavanagh, Harriet Gross, Marc Jones, Rebecca Knibb, Charlie Lewis, Wendy Morgan, Tom Stafford, Miles Thomas, Monica Whitty, Jill Wilkinson, Barry Winter Conferences Sarah Haywood, Alana James International Nigel Foreman, Asifa Majid Interviews Nigel Hunt, Lance Workman History of Psychology Julie Perks

The Psychologist and Digest Policy Committee David Lavallee (Chair), Phil Banyard, Nik Chmiel, Olivia Craig, Helen Galliard, Rowena Hill, Jeremy Horwood, Catherine Loveday, Peter Martin, Victoria Mason, Stephen McGlynn, Tony Wainwright, Peter Wright, and Associate Editors

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letters 2 strikes; secondary data; roots of horror; Tom Troscianko; riots; and much more

THE ISSUE

news and digest 10 questionable research practices; strike action; self-harm; educational psychology training; Daniel Kahneman speaks; nuggets from the Research Digest; and more

A new year and a new volume (this one being our 25th) always reminds me that The Psychologist must never stop evolving. A major project for 2012 is redeveloping www.thepsychologist.org.uk, and the print version will also see changes. This month, the ‘Media’ page (see p.20) expands to reflect the treasure trove of material on the web, and we start a new occasional ‘Ethics’ series encouraging debate on ethical dilemmas. In the coming issues, we hope to introduce new coverage of case studies, reflecting on interesting psychological phenomena from a variety of perspectives. Our cover feature, ‘Psychology to the rescue’, stemmed from a special feature on the Society’s Research Digest blog (www.researchdigest. org.uk/blog), celebrating 200 e-mail issues of the Digest. On p.24, Buss, Blackmore, Loftus, Langer, and others describe a time when knowledge came to their aid. There are more (including my own!) on the blog, where you can sign up for the fortnightly e-mail and find out why so many subscribers and blog visitors have appreciated the Digest since 2003. Dr Jon Sutton

CONNLAITH COWLEY

media 20 Francine Béar and Jennifer Wild on My Transsexual Summer, plus much more in our improved and expanded section

When psychology came to my rescue Christian Jarrett invited leading psychologists to share their stories

STANFORD VIRTUAL HUMAN INTERACTION LAB

BIG PICTURE

The abandoned soldier

Doppelgängers – a new form of self? Jeremy N. Bailenson on the effect of seeing the ‘self’ acting independently

‘See a psychologist? Why would I do that?’ Peter Daggett on resistance to therapy

Feeding time Sue N. Moore on adult–child feeding interactions

The life guide Jon Sutton interviews Lucy Yardley

A project by psychology student Mark Christmas, with sculptor James Napier. Photo by Michelle Bull. E-mail jon.sutton@bps.org.uk to feature in ‘Big picture’. Psychology undergraduate Mark Christmas is driven by an ambition: to raise awareness of ex-service people who suffer from combat-related trauma, and to get a permanent home for a statue representing this at the National Memorial Arboretum. Christmas has joined forces with sculptor James Napier to take the 1.5 metre high sculpture around the country. ‘We’re looking to engage with sufferers and practitioners,’ he says, ‘who will help to facilitate a rehabilitation concept model, which may offer new insight and substance to future research, with applied understanding.’

pull-out

Praises – five a day for young children Carole Sutton argues that a campaign is needed

ethics 52 the first of a new series inviting discussion and debate on a dilemma

careers and psychologist appointments Anne Scoular talks about her late-blossoming career in business coaching; the realities of a part-time PhD; the latest vacancies; and how to advertise

book reviews 56 minority influence; errors; 30-second psychology; and more

new voices in the latest of our series for budding writers, David Horrocks outlines his research with Premiership footballers, and its implications for the game

society 62 President’s column; Public Engagement and Professional Psychology Awards; picks from the Society’s journals; and more

looking back the ‘figure–ground’ distinction at 100, with Jörgen L. Pind

one on one …with Bruce Hood

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LETTERS

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An erosion of rights and patient care? The public sector strike on 30 November was supported by several major unions including UNITE, who had 75 per cent support for the strike from those who voted (31 per cent response rate). Professional bodies, such as the British Medical Association and Royal College of Nursing, also supported the strike, even if they did not ballot for action on this occasion. It isn’t possible to say exactly what numbers of psychologists voted for the strike, nor how many psychologists turned out on the Day of Action. But many did decide to support the strike because of an ongoing erosion of public services, and now major threats to the terms and conditions of staff. These threats will also jeopardise the future of psychology as a profession, and we already see that there are fewer training places available for people who want to train in applied psychology, reduction of NHS posts and a move to downgrade existing posts. Our profession cannot afford to ignore these threats if we believe psychology has a real contribution to make to Society.

As the economic downturn bites even harder, we are seeing cuts, closures of services and expanding workloads. This hurts local communities at a time when public services are even more important

as a safety net to catch those who will fall below the poverty line. Mental health needs increase during recession and the link between unemployment and suicide is well documented. The public sector is under attack and this will increase the gap between rich and poor. The proposals on cutting pensions are part of this wider picture – staff will work longer, for less, despite having saved throughout their working lives. They will also have to pay an additional ‘tax’ of just over 50 per cent of their current pension contributions, which will not be going to their pension fund but straight to the treasury towards the ‘debt’ (see Unite info at tinyurl.com/6ktg2jb). There is a bigger agenda to try to privatise public services – if staff are cheaper, then this is attractive to private companies. Again, this is a Khadj Rouf with her children and other protestors threat to applied psychologists, outside David Cameron’s constituency office and to psychology as a

contribute

Existing data – worth a second look?

Secondary data analysis refers to second-hand analysis of existing data sets; data collected by someone else for some other purpose (e.g. General Lifestyle Survey). Due to limited funding opportunities, many researchers are embracing the practice of secondary data analysis. For example, Emerson and Einfeld (2010) reanalysed the first two waves of data from the UK’s Millennium Cohort Study and the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children to explore

emotional and behavioural problems in disabled and nondisabled children. What is more, such practice is encouraged by journals, including the prestigious British Medical Journal, which promotes a culture of data sharing (see Groves, 2009). With the current caps on funding for primary research, it could be argued that there are palpable gains to be made by capitalising upon sources of existing data. Such data have already been collected, thereby negating the

expensive and timeconsuming collection methods associated with primary research (e.g. surveys, interviews or video footage). Exploiting secondary data sets could thus prove cost-effective for the lone investigator, small research team or those working on time-limited projects, such as student dissertations. In these times of austerity surely this can only be a good thing? Yet few researchers possess the complex skills needed to make effective use of

secondary data sets. Secondary sources can be difficult to locate and access particularly for those with limited research experience. What is more, analysts may not understand the data especially when key variables are missing or only come in aggregate form. The size of the data sets, as regards both the number of variables and respondents involved, can also be difficult to manage. There are further concerns that researchers may misuse secondary sources of data,

These pages are central to The Psychologist’s role as a forum for discussion and debate, and we welcome your contributions.

Send e-mails marked ‘Letter for publication’ to psychologist@bps.org.uk; or write to the Leicester office.

Letters over 500 words are less likely to be published. The editor reserves the right to edit or publish extracts from letters. Letters to the editor are not normally acknowledged, and space does

not permit the publication of every letter received. However, see www.thepsychologist.org.uk to contribute to our discussion forum (members only).

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Some important questions discipline. How will we continue to reach the public? We hope that the government will be prepared to rethink its proposals on public sector pensions. At a time when there are a million unemployed young people, it seems peculiar to ask older people to work for longer, and for many, they will claim a pension at the end of it that will not keep them above the poverty line. As it is now, half of women public service pensioners get less than £4000 per year. This is not the ‘gold plating’ caricature of certain sections of the media. What could the British Psychological Society do? Help raise awareness of what is happening to our profession and more widely to public services as part of our commitment to social justice. We should not be afraid to speak out at a time when patient care is under threat, and when the rights of the public sector workforce are being eroded.

Dr Khadj Rouf Consultant Clinical Psychologist Applied Psychologists Occupational Advisory Committee, Unite the Union

cherry-picking findings to support their arguments. Undoubtedly, the research question should dictate whether an analyst collects primary or secondary data, not concerns regarding budgets or analytical skills. However, given the current economic climate and widespread availability of data, I wonder whether researchers should exploit secondary sources, providing, of course, they have the necessary skills to do so. Primary data would then only be collected when the data set is unfeasible or lacks the methodological rigour needed to address the proposed problem. What do fellow psychologists think? Is it worth exploiting secondary sources for psychological

Susanne Vosmer’s thoughts about hypnosis not yet being part of mainstream psychology (Letters, December 2011) can be connected to the news piece in the same issue about Professor Happé (‘Will we ever understand autism?’), in particular that autism represents a different ‘cognitive style’. Now link this to the search by the Brain Mind Forum for the most important problems to be solved in neuroscience (also in Letters, December 2011). The science of the end of the 20th century was perhaps in the closing stages of the longstanding segmentation of everything, in the desperate hope that eventually truth would lie beneath. Hypnosis and autism offer challenges to a segmentation approach to human behaviour because they hint at the possibility that only an accurate, holistic view of how mind and brain operate will advance our knowledge. Sequential information processing systems, where input eventually leads to output, cannot resolve the logical conundrums of Where lies free will? Where lies the ‘decision’? Where is judgement formed? Does attention exist as a ‘willed’ event, or do decisions precede attention; does attention create cognitive style or does cognitive style create attention? So one of the most important questions for

research? And should we ensure our students have the necessary the skills to make effective use of such data?

Joanne Wilson School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work Queen’s University Belfast

References Emerson, E. & Einfeld, S. (2010). Emotional and behavioural difficulties in young children with and without developmental delay: A bi-national perspective. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 51(5), 583–593. Groves, T. (2009). Managing UK research data for future use. British Medical Journal, 338, b1252.

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psychology and neuroscience is centred on the very nature of the motivational algorithms, with the systems for attention and decision as interwoven event-laden but holistic emergent phenomena. The answers may well suggest that hypnosis is a very simple normal extension of attention, motivation and decision making and that autism, for some at least, is a cognitive style where these are simply operating with different weightings as they bring influence in different directions to those that occur for most of the time for most people. And this may explain why people, especially those who have to make big decisions affecting us all, sometimes slip from one pattern that has been successful to another that is pure disaster, or fail to change direction between the core activities when the context changes, so that successful attention weightings trip over to quite absurd patterns of decisions. I think those looking back from the 22nd century will see us starting on the foundations of a science of psychology, the next 90 years will be interesting indeed. For only now are we beginning to get a hint of the insight we need to create such a science, for most of the rest will be nothing but historical curiosity. Graham Rawlinson Chichester

NOTICEBOARD I We are carrying out research across England to find out what happens when therapy or counselling makes someone feel worse or ‘goes wrong’ in some way. This will help us to develop some practical ways to identify and prevent therapies from failing. We are seeking to interview 20 clients and 20 therapists who have experienced failed therapies to explore what they would have found helpful in preventing this occurring. If you have experienced therapy as a therapist or client, that you feel has ‘gone wrong’ or been harmful, we are keen to hear from you. To take part in the study, you will need to complete a questionnaire. After this, you may be asked to take part in an interview or focus group (although there is no obligation to do so). If you would like more information, you can visit our website: www.shef.ac.uk/scharr/sections/hsr/mh/mhresearch/adept Dr Rachel O’Hara Eleni Chambers School of Health and Related Research & Centre for Psychological Services Research University of Sheffield

BIG PICTURE

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The sculpture depicts Lance Corporal Daniel Twiddy, who sustained facial wounds from shrapnel in a ‘friendly fire’ incident in Basra in 2003. Twiddy experienced subsequent trauma episodes. Napier says the sculpture symbolises the forgotten servicemen of recent conflicts, a soldier physically and mentally broken from the A project by psychology student Mark Christmas, with sculptor James Napier. effects of combat. Photo by Michelle Bull. E-mail jon.sutton@bps.org.uk to feature in ‘Big picture’. In addition to his studies, which follow 12 years spent in the British Army, Christmas has written poetry about servicemen and women who bear ‘an injury not on show’, who may be ‘psychologically Psychology undergraduate Mark Christmas is driven by an busted’ and have difficulties in building a ‘mental baulk’ ambition: to raise awareness of ex-service people who suffer against ‘some terrifyingly intrusive past’. He says: ‘The Army, from combat-related trauma, and to get a permanent home the Navy and the Royal Air Force are trained, in a Pavlovian for a statue representing this at the National Memorial way, to become “different”. The problem we have is, who Arboretum. Christmas has joined forces with sculptor James “trains” them to become civilians? Where does the domain Napier to take the 1.5 metre high sculpture around the of psychology take its own stance with regard to PTSD, its country. ‘We’re looking to engage with sufferers and causes and effects? I am looking to engage with the practitioners,’ he says, ‘who will help to facilitate a rehabilitation concept model, which may offer new insight and psychological community on this.’ substance to future research, with applied understanding.’ I For more information, see www.theabandonedsoldier.co.uk

The abandoned soldier

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NEWS

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Questionable research practices rife? Questionable research practices are rife among US psychologists, according to research obtained by The Psychologist. Leslie John at Harvard Business School and her colleagues George Lowenstein of Yale and Drazen Prelec of MIT surveyed nearly 6000 academic psychologists in the US. Based on anonymous replies from 2155 of them, it’s estimated that one in ten psychologists falsify data, and the majority are guilty of selectively reporting studies that ‘worked’ (67 per cent), failing to report all dependent measures (74 per cent), continuing to collect data to reach a significant result (71 per cent), reporting unexpected findings as expected (54 per cent), and excluding data posthoc (58 per cent). Admissions were higher among cognitive, neuroscience and social subdisciplines, and lower among clinical psychologists. The more questionable practices a psychologist admitted to, the more likely they were to claim such practices were defensible. However, 35 per cent of respondents said they doubted the integrity of their own research. Surveys of this kind have been published before but this is the first to incorporate an honesty incentive, which has led to far higher admission rates than previously identified. Participants were told, truthfully, that more money would be donated to charity by the researchers based on an estimate of their honesty. This estimate was computed by comparing the participants’ own confessions to questionable practices against the average rate of admission and participants’ estimates for how many colleagues indulge in such practices. In their report on the findings, to be published in the journal Psychological Science, John and her colleagues (psychologists by background) describe the methods they investigated as representing a large ‘grey zone’ of

acceptable practice. These practices ‘threaten research integrity and produce unrealistically elegant results that may be difficult to match without engaging in such practices oneself’, they concluded. ‘This can lead to a “race to the bottom”, with questionable research begetting even more questionable research.’ John told us that she has no data on UK research practices but has no reason to believe a survey here would produce different results. She told The

Psychologist she’d like to see bodies like the American Psychological Association and the British Psychological Society put their weight behind the reforms needed to reduce the use of questionable research practices. On the Society’s Research Digest blog, which was first to break details of the study, debate centred on the seriousness (or not) of the reported practices, and on whether they say more about the wider publishing culture as opposed to individual ethics. ‘Neuroskeptic’ thought that ‘many of the questionable practices are actually quite hard to avoid doing within The Psychological Science survey discussed here was the current academic detailed in public for the first time by the British publishing system’. He also Psychological Society Research Digest in December. queried ‘why this kind of For regular updates and to sign up to the e-mail, methodological self-criticism visit www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog and follow seems to be focused on @researchdigest on Twitter. psychology’, although it is arguably to the discipline’s

BREAKING NEWS

credit that it is. Others highlighted the reforms needed to address the issue: Alex Holcombe (University of Sydney) pointed to his psychfiledrawer.org, set up to act as a repository for failed replication attempts in experimental psychology, which should help counter the publishing bias towards positive results. The new survey results come hot on the heels of the unfolding investigation into the practices of the disgraced social psychologist Derek Stapel (see December news), and they make for worrying reading when considered alongside a paper ‘False-positive psychology’ published in Psychological Science in November (free PDF from tinyurl.com/canb33z). In that paper, Joseph Simmons at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and his colleagues used computer simulations and a real example experiment to show how the questionable research practices documented by John’s survey can greatly increase the risk of false-positive results (that is, finding significant effects where in fact there is no effect). For example, they succeeded in demonstrating the logically impossible finding that listening to children’s music can reduce participants’ actual chronological age. They obtained that result in a between-subjects design by: testing for numerous other outlandish dependent variables, any of which could have been chosen as the ‘finding’ if significant (including participants’ political orientation and how often they refer to the past as ‘the good old days’); by increasing the participant pool after failing to find a significant result with fewer participants; and by ensuring that father’s age was included as a covariate, ostensibly to control for variation in baseline age across the participants (removing father’s age as a covariate rendered the result non-significant). Each of these factors adds degrees of freedom to the statistical analyses, thus undermining the notion of a nominal false-positive rate of five per cent (i.e. p ≤ .05). However, the reporting rules of many journals wouldn’t require the researchers to disclose many of these manipulations, leading the significant

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1 IN 12 SELF-HARM

PUBLIC SECTOR STRIKE ACTION The public sector strike on 30 November was supported by several major unions, including the Association of Educational Psychologists (64 per cent support for strike action from a 30 per cent response rate) and UNITE (75 per cent support from a 31 per cent response rate). Dr Khadj Rouf, Consultant Clinical Psychologist and member of the Applied Psychologists Occupational Advisory Committee, Unite the Union, told The Psychologist: ‘We should not be afraid to speak out at a time when patient care is under threat, and when the rights of the public sector workforce are being eroded.’ How were services affected? Dr Rouf said: ‘As healthcare providers, we care about our patients and clients. There was crisis cover across health services on the day of the strike, so it was very similar to cover provided over Christmas. The action did not compromise patient care. Cuts to public services will have a far worse impact on services and patient care, and for more than one day.’ A member of the Leadership and Management Faculty of the Society’s Division of Clinical Psychology reported: ‘The general feeling was that not that many were striking and certainly some of the more junior (and often younger) were not always union members. Five out of 12 consultant clinical psychologists went on strike. Of the ones who were on strike, a couple said they felt that it was an important principle whether they would be protected from the changes or not.’ Susan van Scoyoc, Acting Chair of the Society’s Standing Committee for Psychologists in Health and Social Care, said: ‘SCPHSC, along with other parts of the Society, are aware of the changes taking place throughout the NHS and the public sector generally. We have expressed opinions on how these changes are likely to impact upon the users of such services and these can be seen in the Society responses to various government lead consultations (see www.bps.org.uk/consult). Individual members have differing views on how to respond to these changes but it is clear we all share one overriding concern – to provide the best quality of care to our clients now and in the future.’ I For more comment from Dr Rouf, see p.2.

finding to appear credible. Based on their demonstrations, Simmons and his colleagues call for the authors of psychology papers to conform to a set of new rules, to be policed by reviewers, including: I Decide the rule for data termination prior to beginning data collection and report this rule in the write-up. I List all dependent variables. I If analysis includes a covariate, report the results with and without the covariate.

Report all experimental conditions, including failed manipulations.

These requirements ‘pose minimal costs on authors, readers and reviewers,’ Simmons’ team conclude. ‘These solutions will not rid researchers of publication pressures, but they will limit what authors are able to justify as acceptable to others and to themselves. We should embrace these disclosure requirements as if the credibility of our profession depended on them. Because it does.’ CJ

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The first population-based study to assess the course of self-harm from adolescence to young adulthood has found that around one in 12 young people self-harm, with the balance skewed towards girls. Published in The Lancet (see tinyurl.com/cfo52y5), the cohort study was conducted between August 1992 and January 2008 in Victoria, Australia, with participants aged 14–15 at the outset. The researchers, led by Paula Moran (Institute of Psychiatry), chose this period from adolescence as one ‘characterised by major changes in health and a steep rise in deaths resulting from self-inflicted injuries’. Risks for self-harm increased substantially across puberty, ‘a process that seems to be independent of age’ according to the authors. Self-harm during adolescence was independently associated with the presence of depression and anxiety, antisocial behaviour, high-risk alcohol use, cannabis use, and cigarette smoking. Injury to the skin through cutting and burning was the commonest method of self-harm during adolescence, although by young adulthood no one form of self-harm predominated. There is some good news though: 90 per cent of people who self-harm as adolescents will naturally stop in adulthood. ‘Our findings suggest that most adolescent self-harming behaviour resolves spontaneously,’ the authors said. ‘However, young people who self-harm often have mental health problems that might not resolve without treatment, as evident in the strong relation detected between adolescent anxiety and depression and an increased risk of self-harm in young adulthood.’ Commenting on the age-related decline in self-harm in The Lancet (tinyurl.com/cesa42q), Keith Hawton (University of Oxford) and Rory O’Connor (University of Stirling) considered that as young people move from adolescence to young adulthood, the extent of exposure to peer self-harm might decrease. They also referred to a possibility not addressed by Moran and colleagues: the extent to which clinical interventions might have contributed to the reduction in self-harm. ‘The results of Moran and colleagues’ study will offer some reassurance to parents of adolescents who self-harm and to health and educational agencies,’ Hawton and O’Connor said. ‘Clinicians can offer encouragement to both young people who are self-harming and their families.’ JS

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The mystery of music The latest of the ‘Plug in your brain’ public lectures at the University of Westminster came in the form of a delightful neuroscience and music mashup. Neuropsychologist and life-long musician Dr Catherine Loveday collaborated with husband and guitarist Darren Loveday, pianist Anna Tilbrook and soprano Joanne McGahon. Together they moved and entertained the audience with their live performances, as Dr Loveday attempted to ‘unravel the mystery’ of music’s power. Music is ‘fundamental, universal and ubiquitous’, Loveday explained. We learn to appreciate music naturally, she said, and relics of bone flutes and other archaeological evidence show its influence through human history. As Tilbrook soothed sore minds with Chopin’s ‘Fantastie’ Impromptu, findings on the health benefits of music flowed onscreen, including its ability to: lower blood pressure; reduce pain in palliative care; improve sleep; alleviate allergies; boost immune function; and reduce depression. It’s not just humans that are affected by music. Dogs are calmed by classical

pieces, Loveday said, and they bark to rock songs. Unpublished research suggests slow music can boost the milk yield of cows. ‘And my favourite,’ Loveday said: ‘rats subjected to 24-hours of stressinducing rock music take longer to heal from their wounds.’ But what exactly is music? Essentially, Loveday said, it’s our ear-drums vibrating. It’s organised sound. Tilbrook played various versions of ‘Happy Birthday’ to demonstrate the effects of altering pitch, harmony, tempo, timbre, loudness and dissonance. There needs to be a regular rhythm so that we can predict what comes next and then ‘Bam!’ – it’s the meaningful violations to that pattern that can so move us. ‘It’s those little changes, those little violations of our expectations that make the heart flutter and cause us to respond,’ Loveday said. A 2004 study documented over 100 ways people described the way that music made them feel, from ecstatic to spiritual. Underlying these emotional responses to music are physical changes to the body and brain. Music affects our cortisol levels (a hormone involved in stress), SigA (an

antibody), our endogenous opiates, dopamine (a neurotransmitter implicated in the anticipation of reward) and oxytocin (nicknamed the ‘cuddle hormone’ because of its role in attachment and bonding). Music can also trigger a chill response; sometimes known as a frisson. ‘The chill response is something that I reckon every single person in this room has had,’ Loveday said. ‘It’s that shiver down the spine that you get when you listen to a particular moment in music, so you’re listening to it and it just moves you.’ The chill response has been studied extensively, not least because it’s easy to measure and observe. It’s associated with changes in skin conductance (because of sweat), heart rate, temperature, breathing and most people can describe and identify

Educational psychology training The future of educational psychology training in England has been secured, at least for the short term. After months of uncertainty, the Department for Education has earmarked £16 million for the duration of the current Spending Review, which runs until 2014/15. These funds will cover trainees’ first-year tuition fees and a bursary towards living expenses. Local authorities and other employers will be expected to fund bursaries and other costs for years two and three of the educational psychology doctorate. The announcement came as the government published its review into the training of educational psychology in England. It discusses

alternative training models for educational psychology, including the idea of a ‘Family psychologist’, which combines elements of educational and clinical psychology training, and the ‘Fast-track model’, which would reduce training to two years. However, the preferred option is for the existing three-year doctorate model to continue. The most significant development is the review’s call for the creation of a new national steering group to manage the relationship between training and placement providers. This will include overseeing an accreditation process for placement providers, which it’s hoped will provide quality and consistency for

trainees. The steering group would comprise: ‘local authority employers, the profession, training providers, placement providers, the Association of Educational Psychologists, the National Association of Principal Educational Psychologists, the Health Professions Council, the British Psychological Society and the Association of Child Psychologists in Private Practice’. In turn, the management of this steering group will be overseen first by the Children’s Workforce Development Council (CWDC) and then from April 2012 by the Teaching Agency. The new proposals follow a period of grave uncertainty for educational psychology, which sees about 120

students enter training each year at an annual cost of about £10,000 each. The recent model has been for local authorities to make voluntary contributions towards the costs of the 12 educational psychology training providers. However, the recession and other factors has led these contributions to all but dry up. The government has agreed to meet the shortfall for 2012/13, prior to funding all year one costs for the 2013 trainee cohort. Another issue raised by the review is the fact that there’s been no systematic evaluation since 1978 of the educational psychology workforce and the demands placed on it. ‘We believe there is a strong argument for

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CONNLAITH COWLEY

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when it’s happened. The chill response has even been observed in chicks and Loveday took her place at the piano to play the

undertaking a robust workforce modelling exercise,’ the review says. To this end it recommends that the CWDC and then the Teaching Agency undertake regular surveys of the educational psychology workforce and the demands placed on it. The Children’s Minister Sarah Teather said that educational psychologists fulfil a valuable role in their work with children and families in schools, and as part of early intervention projects. ‘We want the most vulnerable children, and those who would benefit from extra support, to be able to access the expertise and support of educational psychologists,’ she said. ‘[The £16 million earmarked by the

piece that was found to ruffle their features: Pink Floyd’s ‘Post War Dream’. What happens in the brain when we’re listening to music? Virtually every part of the brain is affected from the cerebellum, involved in movement and rhythm, to the amygdala, associated with emotional learning. Musical enjoyment is correlated with activity in the caudate in the limbic system, which tracks musical anticipation. And peak musical pleasure is associated with nucleus accumbens activity. The fact that music and sex trigger activity in similar parts of the brain shows once again, Loveday said, that music is a

‘fundamental human activity’. Loveday next discussed why music has these effects on us. Some of if it is no doubt learned by association, she said. As Tilbrook demonstrated at the piano, the iconic two-note repeat from the movie Jaws still has the power to unnerve people. There’s also an element of mood contagion, including responding to the performer’s own emotion. Some of it is the cognitive effects of expectancy violation, discussed earlier. And finally, some of it is primal and innate. This was demonstrated with great power as Joanne McGahon took to the stage to sing ‘Vissi d’arte’ from Puccini’s Tosca, her surging, soaring voice seared with grief. The entranced audience were moved despite not being able to understand a word of the Italian. ‘Laughter, screaming and crying… it’s all basically a form of music and we’re innately primed by it,’ Loveday said. ‘So we’ve got these primal, direct effects, but then as we learn the language of music more, our appreciation deepens, we are able to use sounds in more complex ways and the more complex our emotional response becomes.’ CJ

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Department of Education] helps to secure the future training of educational psychologists and is part of the work we are doing on the SEN green paper.’

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Dr Jane Leadbetter, Chair of the Society’s Division of Educational and Child Psychology, told us that she welcomed the findings of the review, ‘which confirmed that

the current three-year training model, at doctoral level, is a success and is fit for purpose.’ She added: ‘It is reassuring that funds are being provided to sustain training over the next few years and that a seamless process whereby university time and time spent in educational psychology services will be set up and properly managed. Of concern is the ongoing cuts to local authority services around the country which is having a direct impact upon EP posts and the work that can be undertaken at preventative and systemic levels.’ CJ I The review Developing Sustainable Arrangements for the Initial Training of Educational Psychologists is at tinyurl.com/bpceg6c

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A journey in the fast and slow lanes Anyone with an interest in the foibles of human reasoning has been spoilt over the last decade. A succession of popular books from David Myers’ Intuition: Its Powers and Perils (2002) to Jonah Lehrer’s The Decisive Moment (2009) have documented the biases and heuristics that shape our attitudes and decisions. Every single one of these books cites the influential work of two psychologists – Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky – for which Kahneman was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2002 (Tverksy died in 1996 and was therefore ineligible for the prize). Now we get to hear from the pioneer himself: Professor Kahneman of Princeton University has finally published his own popular account of his field: Thinking, Fast and Slow (Allen Lane), described by the New York Times as ‘a lucid and profound vision of flawed human reason in a book full of intellectual surprises and self-help value’. In November, Kahneman promoted his book at the LSE, ‘in conversation’ with

Professor Lord Richard Layard, the architect of the government’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme. Layard began by asking what is meant by ‘thinking fast and thinking slow’. This is a reference to the idea that we have two forms of mental process, Kahneman said: System 1 and System 2 (these are metaphors, he further explained, rather than literal brain systems). System 1 operates all the time, and more often than not we’re guided by it – such as when we’re walking or driving and we don’t have to think consciously about what we’re doing. System 2 monitors and interprets System 1 and it comes into play when we think effortfully and consciously about a problem. Asked to solve ‘2 + 2’, System 1 would deal with it, producing the answer automatically and without effort. Challenged with ‘22 x 17’ and an answer probably won’t come to mind immediately – you have to reflect effortfully on how to solve the problem. ‘My standard example,’ Kahneman said, ‘is that if you have to stop doing [a

KAHNEMAN IN THE HOT-SEAT After his conversation with Lord Layard, Professor Kahneman took questions from the audience. Here’s a précis. Q: You’re pessimistic about the benefit of training against biases. Does CBT offer any hope? DK: Clearly System 1 can be modified – it updates its models. But you can’t stop System 1 constructing stories based on the limited information and skills at its disposal. Q: Are some people better decision makers than others? Can we identify them? DK: There are different domains of decision making, so you can be good at one but not the other. There isn’t a general decision-making trait. Having high IQ, having access to your own emotions are part of good decision making. It’s easier to identify bad decisions and bad decision makers than good decisions and decision makers. Q: Why the pessimism about the policy effects on well-being? DK: Well, a world without commuting would certainly be better. More time with family and loved ones makes people happier. So yes, government policy that helped with these things would improve the world in these fairly basic ways and I’d be supportive of that. But there will be trade-offs and I don’t know how they will pan out. Q: Where should the government intervene to protect us? DK: There must be limits to coercion – I don’t think we should ban eating French fries, for example. Anticipated regret is a possible criterion – preventing people from making the kinds of decisions that they’re likely to regret later on. There are issues about what kind of society you want to live in. Singapore is an interesting example. It interferes with people’s lives a lot, but there are costs. They’re not the champions of well-being. Q: Can you explain the reasoning behind the financial crisis? What about the minds of the decision makers in Europe right now? DK: This question is too hard for me. The contribution of psychology is limited. People who took out mortgages they couldn’t pay made a mistake. The sellers of those mortgages took advantage and this should have been prevented by regulation. As for the bankers – they were being rewarded for taking very large risks (and still are) and that situation is going to lead to risk taking. That’s not irrational, we should expect that.

mental task] when you make a left-turn into traffic, then it’s effortful.’ Kahneman said there’s much psychological insight to be gained by investigating what System 1 can and can’t do. ‘It can do wonderful things,’ he said, ‘but it has strange limitations.’ As an example of a useful System 1 skill, he said he was able to determine his wife’s mood from the first word she utters on the phone. On the other hand, System 1 produces mistakes when it doesn’t have a skilled answer. Here Kahneman gave the example of people’s judgements about the likely university grades of a woman who they’re told learned to read fluently at age four. An idea will come to their mind instantly (thanks to System 1) based on assumptions about the proportion of people who read at age four and how that correlates with later academic achievement. However, these implicit statistical assumptions are mistaken and neglect many other factors. Consequently, people’s predictions about the woman’s grades will tend to be far too extreme. Examples like this show how System 1 treats whatever information it has (the woman’s reading precocity in this case) as if that is all the information that matters. Another more striking example: Kahneman cited research from the 1990s that asked some people to say how much they’d be willing to pay for travel insurance against death by any means. Their answers were compared against a second group who were asked how much they’d be willing to pay for insurance specifically against death by terrorism. The terrorism group were willing to pay substantially more money! ‘This is absurd,’ Kahneman said. ‘The way System 1 deals with this question is that there’s something you know immediately – how afraid you are. And that’s it, you translate your answer from something System 1 produced, an evaluation based on fear and emotion.’ These insights beg the question, Layard said: should the government take our flawed thinking into account in the way that it formulates policy? Kahneman argued that indeed, the outdated economic idea that humans are perfectly rational has had some pernicious consequences for government policy, most of all the idea that people don’t need to be protected against their own mistakes. ‘People do need protection against their own mistakes,’ Kahneman said, ‘because they make highly

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FUNDING NEWS The British Educational Research Association invites applications for its Meeting of Minds Fellowships. The Fellowships support educational researchers who are establishing themselves in their research career but who have yet to become Principal Investigators. Funding provides support for mentoring with a more experienced colleague, usually from outside the applicant’s home institutions. Funding of between £300 and £600 is available for travel and subsistence. Closing date – 16 January. I www.bera.ac.uk/awards

predictable mistakes – including in savings and insurance. Furthermore, they need protection against predators because they will disclose all the relevant information only in small print. Rational agents might read the small print, but people don’t.’ What about implications for education, Layard asked. Can people be taught to counteract the flaws in human reasoning? Kahneman confessed that he is a pessimist in this regard, whereas he realises that Layard is an optimist. ‘I don’t think reading this book will help you,’ Kahneman admitted. ‘Writing it certainly hasn’t helped me!’ So, is there any hope? Kahneman said there was a benefit to be had in introducing a more sophisticated language of gossip. We’re all far more conscious of other people’s mistakes than our own, he explained, and by providing a more informed terminology for talking about people’s errors, our judgements and understanding will improve. ‘So there’s some hope,’ he said, ‘but not much.’ He added that institutions could improve themselves by avoiding known biases. Layard stepped in to give the example of interviews, which research shows are a highly ineffective selection tool, thanks in large part to the misleading power of first impressions and other prejudices. He said the LSE had done away with student interviews, but that an amazing amount

of time continued to be wasted on interviews at universities like Oxford and Cambridge. Layard moved the discussion onto well-being – a topic that Kahneman has focused on in recent years. In particular his research has shown how a distinction needs to be made between people’s overall satisfaction with life, and their (hedonic) moment-by-moment experience of happiness and misery. The two are not the same and don’t always correlate. Kahneman said that unlike Layard he was more concerned with reducing misery than promoting happiness (Layard demurred, saying this was his priority too) and he described the UK’s plans to measure citizens’ well-being as an ‘ambitious effort’. But he fears the levers of government policy probably won’t make much difference. ‘We’re at the beginning of our understanding of well-being,’ Kahneman said. ‘There are so many empirical questions that we don’t know.’ For example, there are no doubt medical consequences of well-being, he said, yet we don’t currently know whether life satisfaction or hedonic experience is the more important. ‘Having answers to these kinds of questions will help philosophers, policy makers… assign relevant weights to the different dimensions, but we’re really at the beginning of that journey.’ CJ

I Listen to the audio at tinyurl.com/cy5k4nf

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The Baily Thomas Charitable Fund is inviting applications for its research grants. The Fund supports research into severe learning disability, including autism. Funding is directed to the initiation of research to the point at which there is sufficient data to support an application to a major funding body. Grants are made to voluntary organisations that are registered charities or are associated with a registered charity, rather than to individuals. The next closing date for applications is 1 March 2012. I tinyurl.com/7c5k8m6 The University of Ghent offers Visiting Postdoctoral Fellowships for foreign researchers to be junior and senior postdoctoral fellows for between three and 12 months. Applications must be made via Scientific Research Networks at the University of Ghent and not directly. UGent has a Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences. I tinyurl.com/c8dvmvb

info

Professor Lord Richard Layard (left) and Professor Daniel Kahneman in conversation at the London School of Economics

The British Academy has launched the first round of its International Partnership and Mobility awards. The awards support the development of partnerships between the UK and others areas of the world. This round is focusing on supporting three-year and oneyear partnerships between UK scholars and scholars in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Middle East, South Asia and East Asia. One-year grants are suited to the initiation of new collaborative partnerships and three-year awards to supporting more extensive programmes of collaboration and exchange. Applicants must be of postdoctoral or equivalent status. Closing date for applications is 8 February 2012. I tinyurl.com/c2bl7ha

For more, see www.bps.org.uk/funds Funding bodies should e-mail news to Elizabeth Beech on elibee@bps.org.uk for possible inclusion

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For students, North and South We hear from the Society’s Psychology4Students days in Preston (reported by Catherine Loveday, University of Westminster) and Watford (reported by Jon Sutton, Editor) The University of Central Lancashire was this year’s enthusiastic host to the Society’s ‘Psychology4Students’ North lectures. With 350 students attending, the event was once again a sell-out and there was a palpable buzz of excitement in the hall as Society President Carole Allan introduced Mark Wetherell (Northumbria University) to open with his talk on stress and how it affects us. ‘I want you to think about a time when you’ve experienced an acutely stressful event,’ said Wetherell. ‘How do you feel?’ A steady flow of responses came flooding back, illustrating the brain’s fast adrenalin-mediated stress mechanism. A similar question about longer-term periods of stress enabled Wetherell to explain the slower, cortisol-activated stress response, which switches off the longterm processes so that resources can be directed to deal with immediate threat. However, if those stresses don’t go away, he explained, the long-term processes remain switched off, leading to a whole host of negative consequences including ill-health, insomnia and fertility problems. Wetherell went on to give a very clear explanation of the dynamics of cortisol and showed data from a range of his experiments, including some work with Ecstasy users that showed how regular chronic use of the drug causes major disruption to cortisol regulation and stress responses. The ecstasy studies certainly intrigued the students but, judging by the reaction of the crowd, Wetherell’s trump card was showing photos of his young son on each of the first six days of his life, alongside graphs of Wetherell’s own cortisol profiles. ‘What a geek!’ he said of himself, ‘but what a perfect illustration that having a baby messes with male hormones too!’ Next up was Charlie Frowd (University of Central Lancashire) to talk about his award-winning work with the police force, developing a new system for constructing the face of a criminal. He asked the crowd to try and guess the identity of a range of well-known faces, constructed using old photo-fits and the more modern E-FIT system. Frowd’s experiments show that recognition of faces from these constructed images is shockingly poor though, under 20 per cent. In an attempt to improve on these approaches, Frowd and his colleagues

have developed a new system, based on the principle that face recognition is far better than recall. His new ‘Evo-FIT’ system provides an array of faces from which the witness selects the face most like the one they remember seeing. This selection is used to produce a new array and through an iterative process a best likeness is produced. Frowd concluded with impressive statistics that the new system has so far had an arrest rate around 40 per cent and helped to catch some very notorious local criminals. The morning session was brought to an end by my own lecture, ‘Lost in Music’ (see p.12), stepping in as a last-minute replacement. The afternoon started with Deborah Riby (Newcastle University) providing insight into the way in which children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) and Williams syndrome (WS) look at and process faces. Children with ASD are known to have significant difficulties with social communication, Riby explained, whereas children with WS are known to be very socially driven and highly empathic.

Riby and her colleagues have been able to show that these two groups of children process faces very differently. Those with ASD have a greatly reduced face gaze compared to typical children, whereas children with WS spend far longer fixated on the face, in particular the eyes, and fail to look at other nonfacial clues or to look away when thinking, as typical children do. This may be why WS children, despite being very sociable, still have significant problems with peer relations. This research, explained Riby, provides huge insight into the exciting and growing field of social neuroscience. The day ended with another much appreciated replacement, Dave Shaw from Lancaster University, reprising last year’s talk (see February 2011) on the importance of psychology in sport. Opening the ‘Psychology4Students’ South event in Watford was Paul Gardner (University of St Andrews), with a rousing rendition of Lonestar’s ‘Amazed’. Quoting the author Tom Sharpe – ‘mother nature has the propensity to make men

Peter Lovatt presented research on how dance affects our thinking, health and hormones

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temporarily insane simply in order to propagate the species’ – Gardner pondered whether love is just a physiological state that leads us to pass on our genes. Citing evidence from Israeli kibbutzim and Chinese sim pua marriage in support of Westermarck’s hypothesis of incest avoidance, along with the classic Dutton and Aron ‘wobbly bridge’ study of arousal and attraction, Gardner made a convincing case that imprinted rules and biology are what passes as ‘love’. We ‘read’ immunocompetence from hormonedependent features such as strong cheekbones (testosterone) and full lips (oestrogen). Using computer software to ‘masculinise’ a face enhances attractiveness, but only when women are ovulating: at other times, such faces are rated as colder, less cooperative and worse parents. Such visual and even olfactory cues are all subconsciously driving us towards a devoted spouse and quality children. Gardner, a former coal-miner who left school at 16, did admit that biology might not have all the answers to the ‘problem of qualia’ – why do people sacrifice themselves for their loved one, or marry an infertile person? But he ended with some biologically based advice on getting a girl for the assembled students – take her skydiving, don’t wash, and practice looking symmetrical. Next up Alison Lee (Bath Spa University) repeated her talk from last year’s Nottingham lectures (see January 2011) on the value of a case study approach. Lee works with people who are experiencing problems with vision as an effect of Parkinson’s disease, including a 72year-old man sent to her with an unconscious 14° lean to the right, which nearly had him toppling over! Lee’s work on visuospatial neglect and (in particular) left-side onset Parkinson’s helped to get him walking upright again, and the insights are being used in physiotherapy to help such patients stop falling. Illustrating another major strand in psychology, the comparative approach, Katie Slocombe (University of York) made chimpanzee communication thoroughly entertaining with an impressive repertoire of ‘pant hoots’ and ‘rough grunts’. Humans are the only ones with full-blown language, but what about the various elements you need to make up language? How far up the evolutionary tree do they go? Describing her research in Edinburgh Zoo and the Budongo forest of Uganda (see

tinyurl.com/cl5djcu), Slocombe demonstrated the first evidence of referential communication in great ape species, suggesting it evolved a long time ago. Her new study aims to tease out the intention behind chimp communication by using a fake snake with chimps either alone, at the front or at the back of a group. If a ‘snake!’ call is an emotional outcry, it should occur in all three situations; if it’s to recruit assistance, they should call when at the back or front of a group; if they’re doing it to inform and warn others, they should call only when in front. The afternoon saw a change of tack with business psychologist Rob Yeung addressing what makes some individuals soar while others struggle? Yeung recounted how a major breakthrough came at around the time of the Second World War, when psychologist John Flanagan started to ask people to describe a time they were successful, rather than asking them why they think they are successful. Using this ‘critical incident technique’, Yeung has been interviewing business people and entrepreneurs to try to understand what helps some people to become wealthy in business. He talked about two ‘capabilities’ – ‘Awe’ and ‘Cherishing’ – that seem to be important. Presenting evidence that people who had lived and worked abroad for six months are more successful and creative, he advised the audience that ‘creativity comes from a sense of awe about the world’. Ending on an almost indescribable high was Peter Lovatt from the University of Hertfordshire. ‘Dr Dance’ said he didn’t learn to read until he was 22, and discovered dancing as another form of language. Aspects of dancing helped unblock his thought processes and overcome literacy, and after a spell of professional dancing he ended up studying the psychology of the performing arts. Lovatt presented research on how dance affects our thinking, health and hormones. Did you know, for example, that structured dancing leads to improved convergent problem solving (where there’s a single answer, such as 5 x 13), and improvised dancing is better for divergent thinking? Or that women in their fertile stage isolate their hips more when they dance? Interesting stuff, but it was the mass dance-along that Lovatt – and the day – will be remembered for. ‘Any questions?’, Lovatt asked the exhausted audience at the end. ‘Can we do it again?’ asked one, leading hundreds of students to invade the stage and tweet rapturous appreciation. ‘Best day ever!’ said one.

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CHRISTMAS LECTURES The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures return to BBC Four once again this Christmas with experimental psychologist Professor Bruce Hood delivering a demonstration packed three-part series called Meet Your Brain. Writing on Twitter, @profbrucehood commented: ‘The Ri Christmas Lectures this year will be really ambitious if only coz human volunteers are not as predictable as materials.’ The series will be broadcast on BBC Four at 8pm on 27, 28 and 29 December. I For a ‘One on one’ with Professor Hood, see p.92.

HELP INSPIRE YOUNG PEOPLE A volunteering service Inspiring the Future has opened for registrations from employers and employees in all sectors and professions. It is a free matching service for volunteers willing to do short informal ‘career insight’ talks to help young people understand the world of work and about training routes, job and careers options. Employees (from CEOs to apprentices) visit a local school or college for half an hour simply to talk about the job they do and the route they took. No CRB check is needed as teachers will always be present. Inspiring the Future is run by the independent charity Education and Employers Taskforce. The government and education and employer representative bodies are supporting the initiative; and the civil service has registered to enable its staff around England to volunteer in schools. PDH I For more information or to register to take part, go to www.inspiringthefuture.org

STUDENT WRITING UK final-year undergraduates studying any subject have until midnight on 12 January 2012 to write 800 words on ‘Does the future of Britain lie with the right-hand side of the brain?’ for the inaugural London Library Student Prize. The author of the winning entry will enjoy a prize of £5000, a year’s membership of the London Library, a year’s subscription to The Times, see their work published in The Times and The London Library Magazine, and experience a mini-internship with Times journalists. Three runners-up will also win £1000 each and the membership and subscription prizes. The prize shortlist will be announced in April 2012 and the winner in June. CJ I See www.londonlibrarystudentprize.com for more information

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How walking through a doorway increases forgetting Like information in a book, unfolding events are stored in human memory in successive chapters or episodes. One consequence is that information in the current episode is easier to recall than information in a previous episode. An obvious question then is how the mind divides experience up into these discrete episodes? A new study led by Gabriel Radvansky shows that the simple act of walking through a doorway creates a new memory episode, thereby making it more difficult to recall information pertaining to an experience in the room that’s just been left behind. Dozens of participants used computer keys to navigate through a virtual-reality environment presented on a TV screen. The virtual world contained 55 rooms, some large, some small. Small rooms contained one table; large rooms contained two at each end. When participants first encountered a table, there was an object on it that they picked up (once carried, objects could no longer be seen). At the next table, they deposited the object they were carrying at one end and picked up a new object at the other. And on the participants went. Frequent tests of memory came either on entering a new room through an open doorway, or after crossing halfway through a large room. An object was named onscreen and the participants had to recall whether it was either the object they were currently carrying or the one they’d just set down. The key finding is that memory performance was poorer after travelling through an open doorway, compared with covering the same distance within the same room. ‘Walking through doorways serves as an event boundary, thereby initiating the updating of one’s event model [i.e. the creation of a new episode in memory],’ the researchers said. But what if this result was only found because of the simplistic virtual-reality environment? In a second study, Radvansky and his collaborators created a real-life network of rooms with tables and objects. Participants passed through this real environment picking up and depositing objects as they went, and again their memory was tested occasionally for what they were carrying (hidden from view in a box) or had most recently deposited. The effect of doorways was replicated. Participants were more likely to make memory errors after they’d passed through a doorway than after they’d travelled the same distance in a single room. In the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Another interpretation of the findings is that they have Psychology nothing to do with the boundary effect of a doorway, but more to do with the memory enhancing effect of context (the basic idea being that we find it easier to recall memories in the context that we first stored them). By this account, memory is superior when participants remain in the same room because that room is the same place that their memory for the objects was first encoded. Radvansky and his team tested this possibility with a virtual reality study in which memory was probed after passing through a doorway into a second room, passing through two doorways into a third unfamiliar room, or through two doorways back to the original room – the one where they’d first encountered the relevant objects. Performance was no better when back in the original room compared with being tested in the second room, thus undermining the idea that this is all about context effects on memory. Performance was worst of all when in the third, unfamiliar room, supporting the account based on new memory episodes being created on entering each new area. These findings show how a physical feature of the environment can trigger a new memory episode. They concur with a study published earlier this year which focused on episode markers in memories for stories. Presented with a passage of narrative text, participants later found it more difficult to remember which sentence followed a target sentence, if the two were separated by an implied temporal boundary, such as ‘a while later…’. It’s as if information within a temporal episode was somehow bound together, whereas a memory divide was placed between information spanning two episodes.

‘Most people with a mental disor In the Journal of Positive Psychology It’s easy for us to slip into allor-nothing mindsets. An example would be: a person has some psychological problems so their life must be miserable. But that’s a mistaken assumption. So argue a team of Dutch positive psychologists, who’ve studied more than 7000 people over a three-year period. Yes, those participants with a psychological disorder were less happy than those without, but the majority (68.4 per cent) of the mentally troubled said they ‘often felt happy’ during the preceding four weeks (this compares with 89.1 per cent of those without a psychological problem). ‘The possibility of coexisting happiness and mental disorders is of clinical relevance,’ write Ad Bergsma and his team, based at Erasmus University and the Netherlands Institute of Mental Health and Addiction. ‘A narrow focus on what goes wrong in the lives of the client and forgetting what goes well, may limit therapeutic results.’ The researchers recruited their sample, representative of the general population, from across the country. Trained interviewers questioned volunteers in person or over the telephone to establish signs of psychological disorder in the past month, with 16.5 per cent of the sample being judged to have a disorder based on psychiatric diagnostic criteria. Happiness was measured with a single question about frequency of happy moods over the preceding four weeks, on a scale from ‘never’ to ‘always’.

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disorder are happy’

Children’s moral judgments about environmental harm In the December issue of the Journal of Environmental Psychology

Relying on people’s reports of their own happiness, using this one question, is an obvious weakness of the study. Not surprisingly, among those with a psychological problem, happiness was lowest in those with anxiety and depression (although still a significant minority of these people reported frequent happy moods). By contrast, happiness was highest in those with an alcohol abuse disorder, being nearly as frequent as in the healthy participants. There weren’t enough cases of eating disorders and psychosis to examine these conditions separately. By following up their sample over time, the researchers established that more happiness at the study start was associated with better outcomes later on, in terms of recovery from mental disorder. Further analysis suggested this was because higher happiness was a proxy for having fewer mental disorders, being younger, and having better ‘emotional role functioning’ (as indicated by managing to spend time on work and other activities). The fact that happiness was associated with later outcomes provides some support for the validity of the way that happiness was measured. ‘Our knowledge of mental disorders is incomplete if we only look at the negative side of the spectrum,’ the researchers said. ‘This study aims to broaden the view on positive functioning and human strengths in the context of mental disorders.’

Young children in northeastern USA see harms against the environment as morally worse than bad manners. And asked to explain this judgement, many of them referred to the moral standing of nature itself – displaying so-called ‘biocentric’ reasoning. This precocity marks a change from similar research conducted in the 1990s, leading the authors of the new study, Karen Hussar and Jared Horvath, to speculate about ‘the possible effects of the increased focus on environmental initiatives during the last decade … Although typically thought to emerge in later adolescence, a willingness to grant nature respect based on its own unique right-to-existence was present in our young participants.’ Hussar and Horvath presented 61 children (aged 6 to 10 years) with 12 story cards: three portrayed a moral transgression against another person (e.g. stealing money from a classmate); three portrayed bad manners (e.g. eating salad with one’s fingers); three portrayed a mundane personal choice (e.g. colouring a drawing with purple crayon); and three portrayed an environmentally harmful action (e.g. failing to recycle; damaging a tree). For each card, the children were asked to say if the act was OK, a little bad or very bad, and to explain their reasoning. The children rated moral transgressions against other people as the worst of all, followed by harms against the environment, and then bad manners. Mundane personal

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choices were judged largely as ‘OK’. There were no differences with age. Asked to justify their judgements about environmental harm, 74 per cent of the explanations given referred to ‘biocentric’ reasons (e.g. ‘A tree is a living thing and, it’s like, breaking off your arm – someone else’s arm or something’); 26 per cent invoked anthropocentric reasons (e.g. ‘Because without trees we wouldn’t have oxygen’). The ratio of these categories of explanation didn’t vary by age, but did vary by gender, with girls more likely to offer biocentric reasons. This fits with a wider, but still inconclusive, literature suggesting that women tend to base their moral judgements on issues of care, whereas men tend to base their moral judgements on issues of justice. Hussar and Horvath said it was revealing that environmental harms were placed midway between harms against other

people and bad manners. ‘This environmental domain [of moral harm] implies a sophisticated comprehension by young children such that consideration is afforded to environmental life over social order, but, at the same time, consideration is afforded to human life over environmental life.’ In contrast with the present findings, research conducted in the 90s found that young children tended to offer anthropocentric reasons for the immorality of environmental harm, only invoking biocentric reasons more frequently in late childhood or adolescence. ‘The participants in the current study are constructing morally-based views about nature and humans’ place within it from a very young age,’ the researchers said. ‘This moral stance was succinctly articulated by one of our participants: “Even if there’s no rules you should respect…(and) be good to the environment.”.’

The material in this section is taken from the Society’s Research Digest blog at www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog, and is written by its editor Dr Christian Jarrett. Visit the blog for full coverage including references and links, additional current reports, an archive, comment and more. Subscribe by RSS or e-mail at www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog Become a fan at www.facebook.com/researchdigest Follow the Digest editor at www.twitter.com/researchdigest

MEDIA

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Settling into gender Francine Béar and Jennifer Wild on My Transsexual Summer or most of us, waking up in the F morning is linked to thoughts about what to eat for breakfast or how to

people who struggle with their biological gender transform it through surgery, hormones, clothing style or a postpone getting up. Few of us open our combination of all three. But questions eyes then question how to dramatically still remain. Whilst the viewer learns change our body so it more closely about the psychological struggles reflects our sense of transgender people gender. face, the programme Throughout presents only November, Channel 4 medical procedures brought us a fascinating as a means of five-part documentary intervention. We have series about transgender yet to hear about the identity: that sense of psychological support being more similar than that’s available and different to the opposite how it may work to sex. The documentary help people accept features seven people their biological whose gender identity gender or their is a mismatch to their decision to change it. biological sex. Every few Thousands of Gender – spanning a continuum weeks, they spend a people in the UK rather than a dichotomy weekend together to experience share their experiences of transgenderism, and living life as their preferred gender. Charing Cross Hospital performs four My Transsexual Summer gives an ingender reassignment surgeries per week. depth and excellent perspective on the But is surgery the solution for people who difficulties and rewards that arise when struggle with their gender identity? Donna and Drew, two male-to-female transsexuals featured in the programme, are content with looking and dressing like women, taking hormones to support their looks, but wish to keep the parts of their bodies that make them male. Donna says The nocebo effect: Wellcome Trust science about being transgender, ‘It’s more about writing prize essay http://t.co/HcKceYKq a journey to find yourself than it is to find Letter from Scott Lilienfeld on the trend for a good surgeon.’ renaming psychology departments as The programme reveals the extent ‘Department of Psychological and Brain to which our psychological well-being is Sciences’ http://t.co/2n0c2AWD linked to accepting our gender identity, What makes musical memories special? and how for most people, the match http://t.co/T9RSyZa3 between our biological sex and our The Science of Sarcasm? Yeah, Right psychological gender is a good fit. http://t.co/UbGpADOk We accept our gender identity without Cognitive enhancers, with Barbara Sahakian awareness or question: we take it for comment http://t.co/qmHRv8UN granted. Sarah, one of the male-to-female

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MEDIA PRIME CUTS

The Media page is coordinated by the Society’s Media and Press Committee, with the aim of

promoting and discussing psychology in the media. If you would like to contribute, please contact the ‘Media’

page coordinating editor, Ceri Parsons (Chair, Media and Press Committee), on c.parsons@staffs.ac.uk

transsexuals in the documentary, reveals the psychological problems that can occur when psychological gender does not match a person’s biological sex. She has recently begun her transition to living as a woman, and talks about her episodes of depression and how she has self-harmed to deal with painful emotions linked to rejection. We learn of the terror all seven individuals felt when they disclosed true identity to family and friends and how rejection, isolation, and depression are common consequences. The programme gives space for the featured individuals to express their thoughts about gender identity, and in so doing, gives space for the viewer to challenge convention that it’s about being biologically male or female. We learn that gender identity, like many psychological constructs, exists on a continuum. Male and female sit at either end with variations of the two existing in-between. By getting up close and personal, the programme encourages us to let go of our attachment to separating gender into two constructs and to consider transgender as an identity that sits on the gender identity continuum. Perhaps psychological support could start with helping individuals to accept where they are on the continuum and supporting any choice for surgery. In terms of surgery, the series does an excellent job of covering what’s involved and its controversial components. Gender reassignment surgery costs the NHS approximately £40,000. With cutbacks to health care, even more people are criticising the decision to fund these socalled ‘cosmetic’ procedures out of a grant that must also pay for other life-saving procedures. But the surgeon interviewed in the documentary makes it clear: not only are there significant improvements to psychological well-being after reassignment surgery, but the improvements in quality of life can last for 40 years or more, much longer than what we would see following surgery for cancer or other illnesses, he says. Finding foot on the gender identity continuum is certainly a long journey when there’s a mismatch between biological and psychological sex. Channel 4 has done an excellent job in revealing the struggles that dominate when there’s a poor fit, what’s involved medically on the journey to make a better fit, and importantly, the need to see gender as spanning a continuum rather than a dichotomy. Only in seeing this, will we have a chance to transform the stigma, misunderstanding, and mockery that transgender individuals face when they take steps to be who they really are.

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january 2012

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media

Lazy pursuit of the sexy?

MEDIA CURIOSITY

From the Sacramento Bee Has psychology become ‘addicted to Sabrina Golonka, tweeting and (http://t.co/dOrnvhGG) surprising, counterintuitive findings that blogging as @psychscientists (see ‘Sacramento State professor George Parrott catch the news media’s eye’? That’s the http://t.co/iNwVCIk9), argued that walked out of his Psychology 101 lab class charge levelled by Eric-Jan Wagenmakers, ‘psychology has gotten lazy; when you Thursday morning because his students an associate professor of psychology at the can’t come up with a simple solution to didn’t bring any snacks… The professor said University of Amsterdam, who claims that your complex problem, you suggest a students are told of the requirement to the trend is warping the field. complex solution that fills all those pesky bring snacks on the first day of class… The Wagenmakers was quoted in a piece gaps, and never notice the gaps were a bit handout offers suggestions and pictures of by Christopher Shea, writing for The weird to begin with’. Psychologists’ which snacks are preferred. Chronicle of Higher Education aversion to ruling things out means The professor said the snack obligation (http://t.co/10CNgTph) on the ‘psychology becomes is his way of encouraging students to work fraud case surrounding Dutch a mere collection of collectively. Parrott doesn’t regret his researcher Diederik A. Stapel. empirical results, with decision to walk out. “I can understand the ‘The field of social nothing tying them immediate frustration,” he said. “I’m psychology has become very together’. According to sympathetic, but I’m absolutely comfortable competitive,’ Wagenmakers Wilson and Golonka, with the conclusion. The ethos I’m trying to said, ‘and high-impact ‘This fragmentation means promote is incredibly important. It may not publications are only possible psychology is doing be appreciated, and that’s even more for results that are really nothing but running in unfortunate. It speaks to their lack of surprising. Unfortunately, most empirical circles: there’s understanding of higher education.”‘ For the surprising hypotheses are nothing resembling outcome, see tinyurl.com/cwueeqg JS wrong.’ Shea asks the question, progress. All you get are ‘Is a desire to get picked up by individuals with their own the Freakonomics blog, or the collection of hunches Professor Eliot R. dozens of similar outlets for running their own Smith with numbers that they can literally prove funky findings, really driving experiments on their anything’. Turning the weapons of work in psychology labs?’ own little experimental statistical analysis against their own side, The journal editors Shea spoke to are phenomena. Psychology needs to pick Simmons’ team managed to prove sceptical. ‘Eliot R. Smith, new editor of a side, suck it up and get on with something demonstrably false. ‘Our goal the Journal of Personality and Social some normal science for a change.’ as scientists is not to publish as many Psychology, says the talk about Other media (e.g. The National Post: articles as we can, but to discover and psychologists pursuing “sexy” findings is see http://t.co/QsnuMrIi) picked up on disseminate truth,’ they write. ‘We should way overblown. “Go through five issues of an article on ‘false positive psychology’ embrace these [proposed rules about mainstream psychological journals,” says in Psychological Science by Joseph P. disclosing research methods] as if the Mr Smith, a social psychologist at Indiana Simmons and colleagues (see p.10), credibility of our profession depended on University at Bloomington. “You’ll see to argue that ‘modern academic them. Because it does.’ JS maybe five articles out of 50 that are big psychologists have so much flexibility counterintuitive findings that your grandmother would be interested in.”‘ Robert V. Kail, editor of Psychological Science, told Shea he’s never heard of the likelihood of press attention being used as a world’s greatest living The Guardian also hosted Daniel Kahneman’s promotion reason to publish a researcher’s psychologist?’ ‘No psychologist a video (http://t.co/NTJM4UEC) of his new book, Thinking, Fast work. Rather, he says, he asks or neuroscientist alive today and an editorial ‘in praise of’ and Slow, led to a rash of his reviewers: ‘If you are a would argue that Kahneman’s Kahneman. ‘Appealingly,’ the effusive coverage in November. psychologist in a specialty area, work isn’t elegant, fascinating editorial concluded, ‘the pair It is well worth checking out is this the kind of result that is so and important,’ wrote Margaret The Guardian interview with him tended to base their stimulating or controversial or Heffernan, ‘But the truth is that exploration of human foibles (http://t.co/WRjWqp1t), thought-provoking that you’d want we have the good fortune to on their own errors: their faulty particularly for his recollection to run down the hall and tell your live at a time when many of the memories and dodgy mental of collaborating with Tversky. colleagues in another subfield, giants of psychology (of which shortcuts. Fallibility often ‘Psychologists really aim to be “This is what people in my field Kahneman certainly is one) are begins at home – a lesson scientists, white-coat stuff, are doing, and it’s really cool”? ‘To alive and productive, doing more economists might learn.’ with elaborate statistics, me that’s not “sexy”. It’s the most elegant and thoughtful work There’s also a Google talk running experiments,’ interesting science that we’re with immediate and lasting at http://ow.ly/7I9DL. It was all Kahneman says. ‘The idea that doing.’ relevance to how we live our a bit much for some, with the you can ask one question and it Psychology got a rough time lives. That body of thought goes Huffington Post (see makes the point… well, that of it elsewhere on the web in well beyond marveling at our http://t.co/qVK6piBj) asking wasn’t how psychology was November. Leeds-based own stupidity.’ JS ‘Is Daniel Kahneman really the done at the time.’ psychologists Andrew Wilson and

WORLD’S GREATEST LIVING PSYCHOLOGIST?

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FEATURE

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When psychology came to my rescue To mark the 200th e-mail issue of the Society’s Research Digest service, its editor Christian Jarrett invited leading psychologists to share their stories

Derogation of competitors Once I attended a large party with a date. We separated and each began talking to different people. I was introduced to a stunningly attractive woman, and it was instant sexual chemistry. As we continued our animated conversation, an older woman approached, looked at the two of us, and said, ‘You are such a perfectly matched couple.’ I insisted that were not a couple at all, and in fact had just met. She refused to believe me. I saw my date approaching just in time to overhear the older woman’s comments. My date said that she was ready to leave the party. As we left, she casually mentioned, ‘Did you notice that her thighs were heavy?’ Well, I hadn’t. But

I was in the midst of writing up a publication on ‘derogation of competitors’, the ways in which people use verbal tactics to denigrate same-sex rivals to make them less desirable. The research gave me insight into the tactical arsenal people use to compete for mates – not just tactics of attraction, but also disparagement of rivals. Men worldwide place a premium on physical appearance in mates. And my research showed that women, far more than men, are especially observant about the most minor physical imperfections in other women, and in mate competition point them out in subtle and not-sosubtle ways. What is strange is why verbal input

would have any influence at all on a man’s perceptions of a woman’s attractiveness. A woman’s attractiveness should be something that men can gauge perfectly well with their own eyes. But in fact verbal input matters. The next time I ran into the attractive woman, I found myself looking at her thighs. And indeed, they were a tad heavy. She still looked good, but my perceptions of her attractiveness lowered a bit. I think there are two reasons for this. One is that pointed-out imperfections amplify their perceptual salience in men’s minds, making them loom larger. The second is that men have evolved to desire attractive women not merely because cues to attractiveness signal fertility. Men also want attractive mates because they raise their social status. So other people’s perceptions of a mate’s attractiveness are important. Perhaps none of this puts men and women in an admirable light in the mating arena. Derogation reveals one of the dark sides of mate competition, and men may seem superficial for putting such importance on attractiveness. But armed with research findings on derogation of competitors, I was able to understand more deeply the psychology of mate competition that goes on all around us.

Coping with demented parents

I David M. Buss is Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas

When my mother began a vendetta against next door’s dustbins and conceived a hatred of seagulls, we thought it was just Mum at her worst and even found it quite funny, but when she began getting lost and demanding to move to a cottage in the middle of a field, we realised she had no idea she needed looking after. A few awful years later and she was hurling abuse, and furniture, at my poor dear father, who had no idea what day it was, let alone why she was attacking him. Stories from Paul Broks and Oliver Sacks came to mind, and the psychology of illusions and the mystery of consciousness. Above all, knowing about the brain came to my rescue. With every step of their awful journey I was reminded that we are all no more and no less than brains functioning in bodies in a world full of other such creatures. No one is a spirit or soul. The self is not some entity; some inner spark of selfhood that gets born and lives a life until death. A self is just one of the brain’s many constructions – ephemeral and fleeting, here for a while, then gone, ever springing up again in a slightly new guise. And in the case of dementia ever less coherently. I learned about myself as I learned to let them go.

I Sue Blackmore is a psychologist and writer researching consciousness, memes, and anomalous experiences, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Plymouth

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when psychology came to my rescue

My confession

My inner CBT therapist Imagine you are about to give the ‘best-(wo)man’s’ speech at your friend's wedding: vast audience, huge hall, microphone, lights, wine, flowers, expectant faces... but words fail you. Worse than that, I was consumed with an overwhelming feeling of nausea. I’d just found out I was pregnant and not told the world yet. I could see myself about to vomit at the photographer and over the bridal couple… looming panic. ‘I’ve given hundreds of speeches, it’ll be fine.’ But reassuring words alone didn't help. More nausea. ‘OK! Stop the internal focus’ – my inner CBT therapist suddenly kicked in. ‘This isn’t real – this is just an image of vomiting.’ The inspirational CBT work on mental imagery and social anxiety (David Clark, Ann Hackmann, Colette Hirsch and others) zoomed in. ‘Focus outwards! Look at the audience.’ OK, deploy ‘cognitive science’ – ‘external perception will compete for resources with internal images. Focus on the flowers.’ Oh, and a bit of image restructuring – ‘Mentally photoshop that

Forming a synergistic team

Here’s a confession. I’ve been a professional psychologist for 30 years, clinician and academic, but I can’t think of a single instance when I’ve made personal use of my psychological expertise. Even in the darkest times, especially in the darkest times, I never turn to scientific psychology for illumination. I write these words within a few days of the first anniversary of my wife’s death, so there have been some very dark days of late. All through, my knowledge of clinical psychology has seemed irrelevant, or if not irrelevant then certainly peripheral to my deepest needs and concerns. This, I know, will sound smug, or disingenuous, or wilfully contrarian. But it’s true. I am by natural inclination a Stoic. I don’t mean in the loose sense of ‘grimly determined’ or ‘long-suffering‘, and especially not ‘stiff upper-lipped’. I mean Stoic in the tradition of that broad church of Greek and Roman philosophers – Epictetus and Seneca among them – for whom the question ‘How best to live?’ was the most important of all. Their collective wisdom boils down to this: negative emotions are a bad thing; banish them through thought and deed. These are the roots of CBT, of course, the difference being that the Stoics offer an overarching philosophy of life, not just a bag of psychological tricks. There’s a world of difference.

I Paul Broks is a neuropsychologist based at Plymouth University

image of myself, I’m not looking nauseous at all, just moved by emotion at the happy couple.’ Here we go… External reality started to win. I was smiling and dinner was staying down. ‘Good evening everyone…’

For many years I have hired research assistants. In the past, without realising it, I always was looking for someone like me, with the same strengths, mode of communication and the like. This tendency continued even after I arrived at my theory of multiple intelligences. But about 15 years ago, I realised that it was pointless to try to duplicate myself – one of me sufficed. Now, drawing on the practical implications of ‘multiple intelligences theory’ I think much more about individuals' different strengths and profiles and how to put together an effective and synergistic team. That said, I still depend on complete trustworthiness and sense of responsibility – those remain nonnegotiable.

I Howard Gardner is Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard University

I Emily Holmes is Professor in Clinical Psychology and Wellcome Trust Clinical Fellow at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford

Seeing what we want to believe I sometimes find myself investigating ostensibly paranormal phenomena in the role of ‘rent-asceptic’. I was recently invited to investigate apparently ghostly goings-on in a house in Leicester for ITV’s This Morning. Don, a paranormal investigator, claimed that he could communicate with the spirits involved. The Sun newspaper had posted on its website a recording of Don apparently coaxing spirits into lowering the room temperature. As Don politely asked the spirits to

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lower the temperature, the digital display of his handheld thermometer appeared to show that the spirits were obliging. Armed with my knowledge of unconscious muscular activity and a tip-off from an exghost-hunter, I was able to quickly solve this apparent mystery. The tip-off was that the investigator was misusing his equipment. He thought he was measuring ambient temperature but he was actually measuring the temperature of whatever the handheld device was pointing at – in this case, the wall. Heat rises, so the top of the wall was warmer than the bottom, as I was able to personally confirm. By unwittingly changing the angle of the device, thanks to unconscious muscular activity, Don was unintentionally producing the evidence of ‘paranormal activity’ that he was so keen to find! I Chris French is Professor of Psychology and Head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London

(Anti)complementarity It was a gray fall day in Duluth, and icy wind whipped off of Lake Michigan, funneling down the road my fiancée and

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when psychology came to my rescue

I trundled along. Ahead on the sidewalk, a large dark figure appeared, angrily stalking towards us. Thoughts of escape evaporated as the absence of side streets or other exits became apparent. I recall the looming local’s intensifying scowl and the smell of alcohol on his breath just before he rammed into my shoulder, knocking me back several steps. For a split-second, instinctual questions hung in the air – should we fight or flee? Then, I did something unexpected. Stepping forward expansively, I smiled and boomed ‘How’s it going? – it’s been a long time!’ The would-be assailant rocked back on one foot, his face registering confusion (or even the hint of a grin?). He paused – long enough for me to spot an open pharmacy two doors down on the left. Edging past, I grabbed my partner and hustled towards the lighted store. ‘Wish there was time to talk, but we’ve got to go!’ Once inside, we heaved a sigh of relief. Only upon reflection could I consciously piece together what had happened. Before taking the mantle of countercultural psychedelic guru, Tim Leary actually did research. Based on hours of recordings of group therapy, he came up with the notion of an interpersonal circle defined by independent dimensions of affiliation and dominance. His successors showed that people prefer interactions that are dimensionally complementary: whereas affiliation similarly begets affiliation,

dominance complementarily begets submission. By corollary, people are confused by anticomplementary responses. In my case, responding in an outgoing way to a hostile opening was anticomplementary (i.e. a dominant affiliative response to dominant nonaffiliation). My assailant lacked an obvious script for dealing with this anticomplementarity, and I benefited from his momentary confusion. On that freezing day in Duluth, anticomplementarity literally saved my hide. I Brian Knutson is an associate professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Stanford University

Prestige-enhancing memory distortions I’m a psychologist and I do experiments. Well, actually, these days I help design experiments with graduate students, and the actual experimentation is carried out by a mini-army of student researchers. Typically, if a publication results from these efforts, the graduate student most involved in the project becomes first author, and I typically occupy the last spot in the author line. Others whose contributions warrant it are given intermediate spots. A near-crisis emerged some years back when two graduate students (I’ll call them Mary and Jim) were each insisting that they deserved

Nerdy but nice I was a high-school nerd. Worse yet, a girl nerd. I did learn quickly to hide my A grades and not talk too much in class. At the high-school reunion, my classmates thought it was obvious I would become a professor (they could have saved me much agony, had they only told me sooner!). As a student at Harvard, I learned to tell strangers that I went to school ‘outside Boston’. Then I had a respite from having to hide my academic self, as my first jobs did not excite much public envy. Moving to Princeton changed all that (now I work ‘outside New York’), so maybe it’s not surprising that I came to work on how status divides us. Now, our lab’s research brings home the idea that status/competence is only one of two universal social dimensions, but that interdependence/ warmth is the other. It’s OK to be respected or even enviable for status Susan Fiske as high school senior (in an aspirational, you-can-do-it-too way), if you also communicate that you also appreciate the cooperative side of the relationship. If I am on your side, and we are in this together, then my success is good for our tribe.

I Susan T. Fiske is Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology at Princeton

to be first author. They both had worthy reasons (albeit different ones, of course) for why they were deserving of the coveted first position. I was wracked with indecision about how to resolve this dilemma. Someone was going to be unhappy and stew over the injustice of my decision. I could see no good way out of this dilemma. Over the next few days I spoke to Mary and Jim privately. One thing I told them about was the psychological research on prestige-enhancing memory distortions. People remember their grades as better than they were. People remember that they voted in elections that they did not vote in. People remember that their children walked and talked at an earlier age than they really did. These are some prime examples of how we distort our memories in ways that allow us to feel better about ourselves, and perhaps allow us to live a happier life. But another finding is that people overestimate their personal contribution to a joint effort. If you ask people who have contributed to joint effort to provide a percentage that is their contribution, the total might add to l50 per cent. Recognising this human tendency allows one to adjust the estimate of one’s own contribution and feel less frustrated with our partners (whether these are life partners contributing to the housework, or work partners contributing to a research effort, or any collection of two or more who work for a common goal). I talked with Mary and Jim, individually, about this phenomenon. Within a few days, I heard back from the students. Mary came in to my office first and said that she had decided that Jim could be first author. I felt some relief. Then, the next day, Jim came in and said that he had decided that Mary could be first author. At this point, I actually started to cry. It brought to mind the O. Henry sentimental story about a married couple enduring severe economic difficulties that made it hard for them to buy Christmas gifts for one another. She sold her beautiful hair to by a chain for his prized watch. Not knowing this, he sold his watch to by combs for her lovely hair. These mutually sacrificial gifts were compared to the Magi of biblical times – wonderfully wise men who brought gifts to a new-born King. Mary and Jim were my Magi. I Elizabeth F. Loftus is Distinguished Professor of Social Ecology, and Professor of Law, and Cognitive Science at University of California, Irvine

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january 2012

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An insurance policy The truth is that I don’t know yet whether psychology has come to my rescue, or at least to what extent, but I think I have been encouraged by my experiences to take out something of an insurance policy. On a train journey home a few months ago, after a conversation with a particularly wonderful memory patient, I was reflecting on the massive impact that amnesia has. I know that I am a psychologist, a musician, a mother, etc., but what I had come to appreciate is that it is not enough to just know this; all the personal specific memories of becoming and being these things are absolutely central to my sense of who I am. Similarly, the relationships I have with my family, friends and colleagues depend crucially on my memories of shared time with those people. It’s tough to watch the struggle people face when these memories are torn from them, but through my research I have learned that even in the most severe cases of memory loss it is often possible to trigger some episodic remembering. Experience and a growing body of evidence, suggests that this is most likely when an individual is cued by something that has been recorded in some way by themselves: a personal diary entry, a photo that they took, even a trivial piece of memorabilia. Even when these things are not powerful enough to provoke a memory, the fact that they were recorded

Storytelling

ONE ON

when psychology came to my rescue

…w ith B ruce Hoo d

Pro fe and ssor in Dire ctor the Sch of th ool e Bri of Ex stol perim Cog nitiv ental P One e De sych velo o I ha inspir pme logy at Rich d the p ation nt C the ri entr Univ a to d rd Gre vileg ersit e e ro g to p y of Thu kn by ory

Over the past five years, I have spent an increasing amount of my time talking to the general public. In Bris of c rsday a his off well. I ow of h tol u doing so, I have learned to change the way I o ic enq umans nco ffee, d fternoo e every sed is rr n som uiries in makes as v igible cussion for a cu pu ery prob e of th to ho scienti communicate by relying much more on the vitie supp nning and his p . beca lems toe most w we ti fic o s c imm and h rtive of Richard d pro use ou solve ifficu k One e tist. ense jo lped m my sho cesses ser psyc . Just lt More hope H e y presentation of ideas, the audience reaction, timing and e knew at bein to com uld not em effhologic posi psyc for the a We plexity undere ortless al ful a lways all the g a boa tions o hologis futu h rdro n f po ts in goo need to of wh stimate, we ir t lin ecdote ad and context. Content is vital but it is the way that you ra tion om to wer in k s. thered comm get so at’s goin the ality tem th ic sc to a b He w doin unic me re g on of d per th e ienc ygon as ecis g ou ators ally . e. e era One ion- e r fie out say things that makes all the difference. As a social hat th ld I am ing just y I ic ts s ou thin u g e tt Twit . erl et o h lfish ould rek all very ter and y fascin ut of T animal, we are highly attuned to each other and I find most powe believ ated b witter ns w Gene b ad y and ly con rful me e that y ost as in hum trivia, cerned chanis it is a audiences respond better when you think beyond the stud fluenti m b a e brain an bra ut the with g . It’s thin nt that l imp . Twit in is a n the ossip k hum ing as a cele ression ter giv gossip content of what you are saying and think about it as an. normbrities of inti es the ing wou mee ally h that on macy w infla t, and ave th e wou ith ologld telling a story. The human brain is always seeking y imp ted se also cree chanc ld not stra ortanc nse of se ates an e to cien lfstructure and meaning. Psychology reminds us that tw ngers e wh c ofte e ty eets. T respo en othe n nd pe r h se. pola s of disis can c to you it is the ultimate storyteller. Professional speakers grou risatio tortion reate twr c topic ps coa n of op : incre o ty emo , and lesce a inions asing On ro c w ti ons onta h u have known this for years and the best ones are rec gi nd a en naturally and often intuitively skilled. Whether they are aware of exactly what they are doing or not, the best practices tap into well-established principles of social psychology that I now recognise when I get up and talk to a room full of strangers. People want to like you. People want to believe what you are saying. People want that emotional experience. Even when you have read the book or know the story well, audiences still want to hear it said. That’s why there will always be the live performance and public lecture. Bru ce H Bru ood

I Bruce Hood is Director of the Bristol Cognitive Development Centre in the Experimental Psychology Department at the University of Bristol. See p.92 for a ‘One on one’.

by that individual means that they are far more valuable to them as a record of the past than anything anyone else could tell them. So I have begun in my own way to

Combating ageism Among other things, I’ve researched and written about ageing for the past 30 years. My belief is that much of what we attribute to the ageing process can be prevented or reversed and that a major culprit in unsuccessful ageing is our condescending attitude toward older adults. Of course we mean no harm – especially when we're dealing with beloved family members – but harm we do. They are probably the ones we hurt the most, in fact. Ageism is so deeply ingrained in our beliefs that we think we are simply responding to real, age-related incompetence. Instead, we are letting our mindless expectations create the very incompetence we perceive. At age 89 my father’s memory was fragile – he was showing his years. One day we were playing cards and I began to think that I should let him win. I soon realised that, if I saw someone else behaving that way, I’d tell her to stop being so condescending. I might even explain how negative prophecies come to be fulfilled, and I’d go on to explain that much of what we take to be memory loss has other explanations. For instance, as our values change with age, we often don’t care about certain things to the degree we used to, and we therefore don't pay much attention to them any more. The ‘memory problems’ of the elderly are often simply due to the fact that they haven’t noted something that they find rather uninteresting. And then, while I was weighing whether to treat him as a child because part of me still felt that he would enjoy winning, he put his cards down and declared that he had gin.

I Ellen Langer is a Professor of Psychology at Harvard

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preserve significant moments in my life. I don’t have time to keep a regular diary but I have a book in which I make ad-hoc entries and I also archive little bits of correspondence. I have a little scrapbook for tickets or programmes from concerts and events, a box to put little bits of memorabilia in and of course the usual selection of photos and videos. This is all done on a fairly modest scale and maybe many other people already do this but I certainly didn’t and I have begun to feel a sense of security knowing that on whatever scale my memory might one day fail me, I will still have the means to try and piece together an autobiography that comes from me and belongs to me. I Catherine Loveday is a Principal Lecturer in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Westminster

Understanding love I have always solved my problems through psychology, but usually by creating my own theories rather than by using other people's theories. I was at a point in my life once in which I was in an intimate relationship that seemed not to be working as I once had hoped it would; but I could not quite figure out why. I did some reading on the psychology of love but the

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when psychology came to my rescue

reading I did somehow did not adequately address the problems I was having. It was at this point that I started to think about the psychology of love. Exactly what is love and what are the elements that lead to success or failure? The result of my deliberations, building on work of others such as Ellen Berscheid, Elaine Hatfield, Zick Rubin, and George Levinger, was the triangular theory of love. According to this theory, love has three components – intimacy, passion and commitment – and different combinations of the components yield different kinds of love. Intimacy alone is liking; passion alone is infatuated love; commitment alone is empty love; intimacy plus passion is romantic love; intimacy plus commitment is companionate love; passion plus commitment is fatuous love; and intimacy, passion, and commitment together constitute consummate or complete love. My colleagues and I later created scales to measure the components of love and published data showing the construct validity of the measurements. The theory, addressed to my own relationship, left me with a clear sense of what was not working. The relationship eventually ended. At this point in my life, I am fortunate to have the best marriage (to Karin Sternberg) one could possibly hope for, and after a long search, have found the consummate love I long sought. I Robert J. Sternberg is Provost and Senior Vice President and Professor of Psychology at Oklahoma State University

For more contributions, including from Simon Baron-Cohen, Vaughan Bell, Scott Lilienfield, David Myers, Tom Stafford, and Psychologist editor Jon Sutton, see the Digest blog at tinyurl.com/psychtorescue. You can also follow the Research Digest on Twitter (@researchdigest) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/ researchdigest). If you’re not already signed up to the free fortnightly e-mail, why not take the opportunity to do that too? Who knows when the knowledge you gain will come in handy… To share your own ‘Psychology to the rescue’ story, e-mail psychologist@bps.org.uk for inclusion in our ‘Letters’ pages.

The Zeigarnik effect The Zeigarnik effect recently came to my rescue when my family and I were moving into a new house. After several weeks of packing nearly identical boxes, we realised we packed several important items and needed to find them prior to the moving company arriving. Surprisingly, we were able to identify all the boxes with relative ease and find the items without a detailed inventory. Bluma Zeigarnik was a Russian psychologist who first identified the tendency to remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed or uninterrupted ones in the late 1920s. Zeigarnik made her discovery after her doctoral supervisor, Gestalt psychologist Kurt Lewin, noticed that waiters and waitresses at a local café remembered orders only as long as the order was in the process of being served. The custom at the café was that orders were not written down but rather waiters and waitresses kept them in their head and added additional items to them as they were ordered until the bill was paid. The researchers’ subsequent experimental work showed the phenomenon has widespread validity, and it became known as the Zeigarnik effect. The Zeigarnik effect has applications in advertising, teaching, software design and media production (e.g. long-running soap operas, cliffhanging dramas).

I David Lavallee recently moved to Scotland to become Professor and Head of the School of Sport at the University of Stirling

A ‘good enough’ child-rearing environment In today’s world, young parents, like myself, are constantly bombarded with information about the ‘right way’ to enrich our children’s lives. Books and TV programmes marketing the latest, typically entirely unproven ‘right way’ have high visibility and prey on people’s anxieties about providing the best for their children. This is where good psychology research has come to my rescue. I have been confidently uncompelled to buy various DVDs and books claiming to enhance my child’s abilities and development. On the other hand, psychology research has furnished me with good evidence that in a ‘good enough’ environment (loosely consisting of ‘love, feed, clothe, be reasonably consistent and provide opportunities’; i.e. common sense backed up by data), my children are likely to thrive according to their individual abilities and characteristics.

I Essi Viding is Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at UCL

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Blogging on brain and behaviour

Awards A wards 2010 20 010

Winner! W Wi inner! nner!

The British Psychological Society’s free Research Digest service: blog, email, Twitter and Facebook ‘An amazingly useful and interesting resource’ Ben Goldacre, The Guardian

www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk

ETHICS

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‘Can you help me get to Dignitas?’ The first of a new series inviting discussion and debate on an ethical dilemma

The dilemma

comment

Have your say on this dilemma by sending your letter for publication to psychologist@bps.org.uk or discussing it at www.psychforum.org.uk.

resources

You are working with a client, Marina, who has heard about Dignitas, the Swiss assisted dying organisation, via a BBC programme (The Report: tinyurl.com/cnr8exs). Marina is in her late 40s and has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease. She has a long-standing anxiety about travelling and would like help from you in managing this so that she can travel to Switzerland and end her life. Marina retains full capacity, and as far as you can tell is not suffering from any diagnosable mental illness apart from anxiety and moderate depression. She insists that you do not disclose any of this to her GP, family or other service workers.

www.bps.org.uk/ethics BBC Radio 4’s Moral Maze: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qk11 BBC Radio 4’s Inside the Ethics Committee: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007xbtd Director of Public Prosecution’s policy for prosecutors on encouraging or assisting suicide: tinyurl.com/y7jvl3d

nterest in ethical challenges has become rather fashionable in recent times. November saw live coverage of the Levenson Inquiry into the ethics of the press, and of the trial of Michael Jackson’s doctor Conrad Murray. BBC4 has run a series of programmes with Professor Michael Sandel on moral philosopy, and BBC radio shows such as The Moral Maze and Inside the Ethics Committee also draw good audiences. For practising psychologists the change in the regulatory landscape, with the introduction of the Health Professions Council, developing effective skills in ethical reasoning and action has become increasingly necessary. As some people have found to their cost, speaking out about unethical practice can be a troubling experience (see www.medicalharm.org), but it is a professional responsibility which we cannot and should not duck. This new occasional section of The Psychologist will present an ethical dilemma alongside invited commentaries. The aim is to provide some talking points about the issue, which are primarily informed by psychological research. Rather than simply referring readers to the Code of Ethics and Conduct, we hope the commentaries will pick up on the way psychology can help understand why such dilemmas are hard to deal with. Our first dilemma is fictional, but drawn from a number of different clinical experiences. We hope that future dilemmas will represent and unite all corners of the discipline: do get in touch if you have an idea for a scenario. We welcome feedback on this idea as we look to develop it further, including making use of The Psychologist website to present and encourage a wider range of views. Tony Wainwright Chair of the BPS Ethics Committee

Ethically and legally appropriate? The dilemma in this case is whether it is ethically or legally appropriate for you to give this woman treatment that will facilitate her travelling to Dignitas to seek

assisted suicide. Looking first at the legal position in the UK, committing suicide is no longer unlawful, but under the Suicide Act of 1961 encouraging or assisting suicide is a serious criminal offence, punishable by up to 14 years in prison. In 2009 Debbie Purdy succeeded in her House of Lords appeal, forcing the Director of Public Prosecutions to clarify whether someone who assists suicide, for example, by accompanying a loved one to Switzerland, is committing an offence under UK law. The DPP’s guidance (see tinyurl.com/y7jvl3d) sets out factors for and against prosecution. Whereas the guidance provides some comfort for relatives supporting a loved one seeking assisted suicide, it specifically states a prosecution is more likely to be required if a person is acting in their capacity as a medical doctor or other health professional. Thus, providing the patient with this support in your professional capacity is highly risky. You might argue that you are merely treating the patient for anxiety regarding travel, which might be considered minimal in terms of assistance, but is this disingenuous, given that she has confided in you why she wants to overcome her fear of travelling. An additional factor tending in favour of prosecution is where the patient lacks capacity under the Mental Capacity Act 2008. Although we are told that the patient retains capacity, the combination of early onset Alzheimer’s, together with her anxiety and depression, at the very least raises “psychology can help concerns as to understand why her capacity, such dilemmas are which might add hard to deal with” to a decision to prosecute. Ethically, your involvement in this case is likely to be influenced by your own personal views about the morality of assisted death. You may feel that assisted suicide is the ultimate beneficent act which respects a patient’s autonomy. Alternatively, you may feel that assisting suicide constitutes the ultimate harming of a patient. Most probably, you may have considerable sympathy for your patient’s plight, whilst rightly having professional and personal moral concerns about doing what she asks of you. As a reflective practitioner, you will consider all the factors for and against complying with her request, in order to arrive at the most ethically acceptable course of action (which might, in the circumstances, be the ‘least worst’ option). You will also be mindful to take into account the BPS’s Code of Ethics

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ethics

(www.bps.org.uk/ethics). As a responsible clinician, you would doubtless want to benefit your patient, although this does not mean acceding to any and every patient request, particularly where the request clashes with your own values, or the request is to do something unlawful. You may wish to consider other ways that could benefit your patient in the difficult situation she finds herself in, for example by treating the depression (which may or may not be related to her diagnosis) or by signposting her to avenues of support. There is an additional ethical concern around the patient’s insistence that you do not disclose her request to her GP, family or other service workers. Ordinarily, you should not breach the confidences of an apparently competent adult patient. However, given that her mental capacity is in question, and she is evincing a desire to self-harm, you may feel justified in seeking to persuade her to share her plans with others, or, ultimately, in breaching her confidentiality if you feel this to be required in her best interests. It would certainly be harder to respect her wish for you to keep this information from her GP and other health professionals if you were providing therapy in primary care and working as part of a multidisciplinary team. Ultimately, you must take responsibility for weighing up these various factors to arrive at a justifiable course of action. But for the reasons I have set out, acceding to this patient’s request would expose you professionally and legally, and you would be well advised to seek advice from your professional body and professional indemnity insurers and to look for other ways to benefit this patient. Julie Stone Associate Lecturer Peninsula Medical School

A bit of a tightrope As in any situation, the key here is to begin with developing a good therapeutic rapport and establishing a good assessment. An initial session might talk about the role of a psychologist and when one does or doesn’t reveal information to others, and, in setting the scene, to talk about the unhelpfulness of having secrets. As part of the discussion one would have to highlight the role of both clinical and managerial supervision and one’s

responsibilities both to the client, oneself, the profession and the organisation for which one works. A clear message at this point would need to be that the legal position is clear – as a psychologist one is not allowed to aid and abet (assisted) suicide. To my mind however, that does not exclude taking time with someone to help them work through the information they might need to make a clear decision about their future – however unwise. I would want to gather enough information about the person, her childhood and upbringing, her health beliefs and her beliefs about mortality,

spirituality, self-efficacy and agency. It would also be useful to explore family belief re illness, mental illness and mortality. The referral does not say whether this person is working, financially stable or whether she has a partner and children to relate to. More detailed information about who had provided the Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis, where and how would be helpful to explore with her. It would also be helpful to explore the onset and duration of the anxiety and depression and what had been tried to this point. Further information would be required about the history of the travel phobia. The initial ethical questions for me would be around: I whether you would get yourself into a therapeutic bind by agreeing to keep a secret; I whether you would encourage by thought, word or deed someone to actively take their own life when there might be other possible outcomes; I whether you would be able to stand

read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk

aside from your own wishes and spiritual beliefs about your own end of life; and whether age was an issue here.

Helpful literature might include that on attachment, loss and bereavement, oncology, dementia and palliative care models in both. It would also be helpful to stand back and think about social construct theory and social learning theory. If one was able to ‘hold’ the client to come back for further sessions, I would want to explore their thoughts and feelings about the Dignitas programme and why it felt the right thing for them at that point. I might point out that Dignitas says that many people say they would like to use them and some visit initially for the assessment but a relatively small proportion carry things through to assisted death. I would want to explore where they were in the ‘adjustment to diagnosis’ position and ask whether they had made a will, had enacted power of attorney, had an advanced directive – and what that would contain. That might enable a discussion about their fears and anxieties over having a progressive illness and death. Some factual information about the course of the disease and possible causes of death (which might not be Alzheimer’s disease, as stroke, coronary heart disease and cancer are the three main causes of death). I would take time to explain the steps involved in a psychological intervention for travel phobia and the collaboration and timescale required. By this point one might be in a position to make a tentative formulation. In the meantime, both in and out of session there would be work to do on ‘holding’ one’s own anxiety and that of others, once one had shared information with the referrer, the team or one’s supervisor, to enable the creation of a safe therapy plan. Continued work in session might use ‘empty chair’ techniques to work through potential conversations with GP, partner, parents, siblings, children, friends to clarify the decision in the client’s mind – and to take that further to discuss who else ideally might be involved in contributing to the decision – both in the session and outside of it. In the interests of the therapeutic relationship it might be important to voice the fact that you and the client might be

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coming into sessions with differing aims. Her stated aim – to become confident enough to travel to Dignitas – might be different from her underlying aim. The rapport-building and informationgathering approach I have suggested might be a way as therapist one would try to establish and voice the underlying aim, whilst encouraging the client to have a more open debate with those around her about her stated aim. In a similar clinical situation with an older adult client with a progressive neurological condition, her ‘secret’ was not in fact secret. Family and medical staff had sensed, inferred, or been told her wishes: the issue was to encourage her to voice and share them, before developing a robust care plan to make her fears about the later stages of care explicit. From a clinical point of view, as a relatively experienced practitioner, I felt able to ‘hold’ the issues (with multi-disciplinary team, GP and supervisor support) in a way a more junior colleague might not. The GP initially consulted their professional body but then helped to discuss advanced directives and

ethical reasoning is to maintain detachment from one’s own thoughts and beliefs about ‘right and wrong’, or one’s own preferences in a non-judgemental way whilst the possibilities are explored in a safe environment. The ethical motivation is to enable someone to make a good death in a planned, reasoned way, not based on fear of the unknown. The ethical implementation may be to work within the law and one’s professional code of practice, but to create a space to rehearse the arguments, look at the implications for the client and their significant others, before finally deciding whether in fact the referral was about travel phobia at all. Cath Burley Chartered Psychologist and Chair of Psychology Specialists Working with Older People

STEFFEN SCHMIDT/AP/PRESS ASSOCIATION IMAGES

and delaying their planned death to a point (potentially) where they are no longer judged competent? What is the relationship between your implicit values and your overt behaviour? Your primary duty is to the person sitting in front of you and to their view of their world. Presumably you would wish them to have a happier, more fulfilled or more effective life. But you also have duties to range of other entities; for example to society as a whole and to your profession. Would you be acting in such a way to bring the profession into disrepute? Would you be acting beyond the ‘community sanction’ that society grants psychologists to allow their profession to practise within a particular domain? Might this action call into question the role of psychologists? And, further, on the societal level is what you are doing actually illegal? Are you prepared to face complaints to the BPS Values and beliefs and HPC, with all that they entail? Are The first issue here is simply a moral one you prepared to go on trial and perhaps about the way in which you view life and be gaoled because of your involvement? who that life belongs to. For some In comparison with a death these may members of some religions life is actually seem slight matters but they are important. God’s, and so interfering with that is On the other hand, you may feel that wrong. Some psychologists may the person’s life is their own to do with as therefore have to say as matter of they wish. They are not harming anyone personal conscience that they cannot (physically) by their action, and you as assist the individual to commit a psychologist may be in a position to help suicide, no matter how removed or them make peace with loved ones before how medicalised. their death to start to One would hope address psychological that the BPS and issues. You may argue HPC would that the culmination of a “By acting you are making understand that good life is a good death, an implicit judgement position (provided and that if someone dying about the world” onward referral and of cancer decided to continuity of care, refuse treatment and and so on, were accepted only pain relief then addressed). Conversely one might that might be a ‘good’ outcome for them, argue that psychologists should be and that this is an analogous case (with non-judgemental and so work with some differences in agency). Against that people whose views they disagree you might consider that agency is actually with, or even find personally crucial here – by acting you are making an abhorrent, in the ‘cab rank’ principle implicit judgement about the world, and that lawyers mention. Against that, the world changes as a result of your one might argue that as it is the action. By what right do you change the person of the psychologist that makes world? the intervention effective (e.g. therapeutic In this case, codes of ethics and alliance) a less than fully committed conduct can only help so far. It is a matter psychologist would not be effective. But of professional and personal judgement, that is another debate. of considering whether this would be The next – and seemingly less a good act and whether you could do it. complex – issue is that of competence. Is It would involve looking at all the angles, the psychologist competent to undertake of discussion and coming to a decision. the work? If this person does have It would crucially depend on your values agoraphobia does the psychologist know and beliefs and the relationship with your what to do? Do you have a duty to work client. It will be difficult. As the BPS code with your client to examine all angles and states, ‘thinking is not optional’. establish whether they have thought Richard Kwiatkowski through all possibilities and consequences, Senior Lecturer in Organizational or by doing this are you putting obstacles Psychology in their way, not respecting their wishes, Cranfield University

Final destination? One of the properties in Switzerland used by Dignitas

was very supportive of the client’s needs. It was, however, a bit of a tightrope. In addressing this dilemma, you may find it helpful to draw on James Rest’s 1982 four-component model (see tinyurl.com/chmshgx), which refers to ethical sensitivity, ethical reasoning, ethical motivation and ethical implementation. The ethical sensitivity here is not to shrink from facing difficult issues with the client and helping them explore them fully. The

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18–20 April Grand Connaught Rooms London

Networking and social opportunities for all delegates

Early-bird registration rates available until 29 February

Wine Reception Awards Dinner London Bus Tour …and lots more!

Book online!

Our full programme timetable can be viewed online

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

ONE ON ONE

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shift is towards more applied work. Psychology and especially theoretical work seems to be falling in between the cracks.

…with Bruce Hood Professor in the School of Experimental Psychology at the University of Bristol and Director of the Bristol Cognitive Development Centre

One book that you think all psychologists should read I think The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins was probably the most influential book I read as a student that really shaped my thinking as a psychologist and a human.

Bruce Hood Bruce.Hood@bristol.ac.uk

makers who can sometimes lead the rest of us into ruin. One challenge you think psychology faces Psychological research used to straddle topics of interest covered by the different research councils but as budgets have been cut, the

The 2011 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, on BBC Four on 27, 28, 29 December (and iPlayer). ‘The three lectures cover “What’s inside your head?”, “Who is in control?” and “Are you thinking what I am thinking?” My book, The Self Illusion, follows in the spring.’

Articles on willpower, language, face recognition, the psychology of birth, and much more... I Send your comments about The Psychologist to the editor, Dr Jon Sutton, on jon.sutton@bps.org.uk, +44 116 252 9573 or to the Leicester office address I To advertise Display: ben.nelmes@redactive.co.uk, +44 (0)20 7880 6244 Jobs and www.psychapp.co.uk: giorgio.romano@redactive.co.uk, +44 (0)20 7880 7556

One reason we believe the unbelievable Because it is an inevitable byproduct of a brain that tries to make sense of the world around it. One nugget of advice for aspiring psychologists Write every day. Keep writing and you will get better at it. It is just like any other skill and writing is the key to communication. It forces you to be more coherent and relevant.

coming soon

One thing I get out of Twitter I am utterly fascinated by Twitter and believe that it is a very powerful mechanism. It’s mostly concerned with gossip and trivia, but then the human brain is a gossiping brain. Twitter gives the impression of intimacy with celebrities that one would not normally have the chance to meet, and also creates an inflated sense of selfimportance when other strangers respond to your tweets. This can create two types of distortion: increasing polarisation of opinions when groups coalesce around a topic, and contagious emotions.

One hope for the future More psychologists in positions of power in the boardroom to temper the irrationality of decision

resource

One thing that you would change about psychology Many people consider psychology to be a soft science partly because the media often portrays it as common sense. This really annoys me. Understanding the complexity

of humans makes scientific inquiries into how we tick some of the most difficult problems to solve. Just because our psychological processes seem effortless, we should not underestimate the complexity of what’s going on. We need to get some really good communicators out there doing our field justice.

contribute

One inspiration I had the privilege to know Richard Gregory well. I used to drop by his office every Thursday afternoon for a cup of coffee, discussion and his incorrigible punning. Richard was very supportive of my activities and helped me to take immense joy at being a scientist. He knew all the greats and always had wonderful anecdotes. He was my direct link to a bygone era of romantic science.

One regret Never acquiring a second language. I always feel incredibly inadequate when I hear colleagues conversing in another language. I have tried but, regrettably, I think my window of plasticity has shut down firmly in that domain.

One cultural recommendation A much under-rated 2006 film, The Prestige with Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale who play two rival Victorian magicians. The reason I love it is because it addresses the philosophical problem of identity and duplication. One psychological superpower Mindreading of course! But there again, maybe it is better not to know. More answers online at www.thepsychologist.org.uk

Think you can do better? Want to see your area of psychology represented more? See the inside front cover for how you can contribute and reach 48,000 colleagues into the bargain, or just e-mail your suggestions to jon.sutton@bps.org.uk

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