The Psychologist February 2014 by The Psychologist

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psychologist vol 27 no 2

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Improving aircraft safety Don Harris on how aviation psychology tackles human error

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

letters 62 news 70 careers 118 looking back 132

what intelligence tests miss 80 women – the stressed sex? 84 new voices: prisoners’ mental health 88 interview: Marinus van IJzendoorn 96

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Contact The British Psychological Society St Andrews House 48 Princess Road East Leicester LE1 7DR 0116 254 9568 mail@bps.org.uk www.bps.org.uk

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Improving aircraft safety 90 Don Harris discusses the role of human error in air accidents and how aviation psychology has contributed to making flying as safe as possible

January 2014 issue 47,806 dispatched Printed by Warners Midlands plc on 100 per cent recycled paper. Please re-use or recycle.

The stressed sex? Daniel Freeman and Jason Freeman consider men, women and mental health

New voices: Breaking free – prisoners and mental health Anna Roberts makes the case for improving mental health services in prisons TIM ANDERSON/SCIENCE MUSEUM GROUP

ISSN 0952-8229 Cover Pilots in cockpit of passenger airliner (thinkstockphotos.co.uk)

© Copyright for all published material is held by The British Psychological Society, unless specifically stated otherwise. Authors, illustrators and photographers may use their own material elsewhere after publication without permission. The Society asks that the following note be included in any such use: ‘First published in The Psychologist, vol. no. and date. Published by The British Psychological Society – see www.thepsychologist.org.uk.’ As the Society is a party to the Copyright Licensing Agency agreement, articles in The Psychologist may be photocopied by licensed institutional libraries for academic/teaching purposes. No permission is required. Permission is required and a reasonable fee charged for commercial use of articles by a third party: please apply in writing. The publishers have endeavoured to trace the copyright holders of all illustrations. If we have unwittingly infringed copyright, we will be pleased, on being satisfied as to the owner’s title, to pay an appropriate fee.

What intelligence tests miss Keith E. Stanovich and Richard F. West on why we need rationality quotient (RQ) tests as well as IQ tests

...reports news Science Museum ‘mind maps’; national honours in psychology; ‘isms’ in fashion; Psychology4Students; and much more society President’s column; Public Engagement award and grants; The Psychologist bath; and more

The Psychologist is 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’.

Managing Editor Jon Sutton Assistant Editor Peter Dillon-Hooper Production Mike Thompson

Staff journalist / Research Digest Christian Jarrett Editorial Assistant Debbie Gordon Occupational Digest Alex Fradera

Associate Editors Articles Michael Burnett, Paul Curran, Harriet Gross, Marc Jones, Rebecca Knibb, Charlie Lewis, Wendy Morgan, Paul Redford, Mark Wetherell, Jill Wilkinson Conferences Alana James History of Psychology Nathalie Chernoff Interviews Gail Kinman, Mark Sergeant Viewpoints Catherine Loveday International panel Vaughan Bell, Uta Frith, Alex Haslam, Elizabeth Loftus

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the issue ...debates 62

letters the decline of the NHS; waste in research; promoting psychology in public health; 1966 and all that; and more

...digests the difference between a happy and a meaningful life; childhood amnesia; the image problem of activists

...meets 96

interview Marinus van IJzendoorn talks to Jon Sutton about his work on differential susceptibility in child development careers Miles Thomas has taken a colourful route to educational psychologist and wine expert; Jackie Abell, Reader in Psychology at Coventry University and Director of Research for the African Lion and Environmental Research Trust, tells us about taking social psychology into the lion’s den

118

one on one with Terry Dovey, Senior Lecturer at Brunel University

136

...reviews the usual mix of books and other media reviews, including Sizwe Banzi is Dead, Tough Young Teachers, Living with Complicated Grief; and much more

126

...looks back

132

The possessions at Loudun Craig E. Stephenson looks at their significance in the history of the science of mind

The Psychologist and Digest Editorial Advisory Committee Chair (vacant), 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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Six years ago Go to www.thepsychologist.org.uk for our archive, including Barry Komisaruk’s article on orgasm (February 2008)

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Nervous flyers may find plenty to both comfort and concern them in this month’s cover feature. On p.90 Don Harris discusses the role of human factors in aviation psychology. Modern flight operations have outpaced science and regulations, Harris argues. Everchanging technical environments require an increasing appreciation of the human component, drawing in a range of fields to keep air travel out of the headlines. Stockholm – a thankfully uneventful flight away – was the venue for last year’s European Congress and my interview with Marinus van IJzendoorn (p.96). Some scientists take your breath away with the humanity behind their number crunching, and Marinus’ compassion was striking. A scientific tendency to neglect the environment leads children to suffer, he says. Genes and brain structures don’t raise a child: it takes a village. Elsewhere, there is the usual mix of news, views and reviews, including the latest entries in our popular ‘Looking back’, ‘New voices’ and ‘Big picture’ series. Dr Jon Sutton Managing Editor

Big picture centre-page pull-out a partnership between Plymouth University and Plymouth High School for Girls is ‘waking up a sleepy syllabus’

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The difference between a happy life and a meaningful one? For some it’s lying on a sun-drenched beach sipping sangria, for others it’s wallowing in a cosy cocoon munching on chocolate and playing video games. Many people will admit that these or other immediate indulgences are what makes them happy. And yet, even given the freedom and resources to live a life of hedonism, many of us find it’s not enough – we want to have meaning in our lives too. Unfortunately, what we mean by ‘meaning’ has largely been neglected by psychologists. But now Roy Baumeister and his colleagues have conducted an in-depth online survey with 397 adults (68 per cent female; average age 36) and a follow-up with 124 students (45 per cent female; average age 21). The researchers tapped the participants’ happiness levels, and their feelings of having a meaningful life, three times over a month. They also asked them a raft of other questions with the aim of identifying factors that were related to happiness but not meaningfulness, or vice versa. Although happiness and meaningfulness tend to go together (they correlated at .63 and .70 where 1 would be a perfect match), Baumeister’s team made some thoughtprovoking discoveries about ways they differ. People who rated their lives as easier, who had good health, enough money to buy what they wanted, were more short-term oriented, felt connected to others, and experienced low stress and worry, also tended to rate themselves as happier. Yet these same factors had either no association with meaningfulness or the opposite association. In contrast to the findings for happiness, people who described their lives as having more meaning tended to say: that they spent more time thinking about the past and future; that they had experienced more negative events in their lives; expected to do a lot of deep thinking; engaged in activities that were true to themselves; and they reported more stress, anxiety and worry. Some of the results were particularly telling. Being more of a taker was related to greater happiness but less meaningfulness, whereas being more of a giver was linked with less happiness but more meaningfulness. Related to In the Journal of Positive Psychology that, spending time with one’s children was linked with more meaningfulness but had no correlation with happiness. Arguing, if it was seen as reflecting oneself, was linked to less happiness but more meaningfulness. In fact, pursuing any activities that reflect the self was linked to more meaningfulness but not happiness. Feeling socially connected was linked with happiness and meaningfulness, but time spent with loved ones was only relevant to meaningfulness (perhaps, the researchers surmised, because ‘loved ones can be difficult at times’). Baumeister’s team concluded that the highly meaningful but relatively unhappy life has ‘received relatively little attention and even less respect’ to date. ‘But people who sacrifice their personal pleasures in order to participate constructively in society may make substantial contributions,’ they said. ‘Cultivating and encouraging such people despite their unhappiness could be a goal worthy of positive psychology.’ The researchers admitted their ‘tentative’ study has limitations – they were not able to explore the causal roots of happiness and meaningfulness, and by studying so many possible factors there was a significant risk of associations appearing purely by chance. We could also add that the findings are culturally specific to North America, and they are based on the participants' subjective interpretation of what happiness and meaningfulness mean. It also seemed a shame that there was no cross-reference to Daniel Kahneman's distinction between the ‘remembering self’ and the ‘experiencing self’. Nonetheless, this study certainly makes a useful starting point for discussion and future investigation. ‘This project was intended to generate ideas,’ the researchers said, ‘and future work would be desirable to verify and build on them.’

Childhood amnesia starts around age seven In Memory You could travel the world with an infant aged under three and it’s almost guaranteed that when they get older they won't remember a single boat trip, plane ride or sunset. This is thanks to a phenomenon, known as childhood or infantile amnesia, that means most of us lose all our earliest autobiographical memories. It’s a psychological conundrum because when they are three or younger, kids are able to discuss autobiographical events from their past. So it's not that memories from before age three never existed, it’s that they are subsequently forgotten. Most of the research in this area has involved adults and children reminiscing about their earliest memories. For a new study, Patricia Bauer and Marina Larkina have taken a different approach. They recorded mothers talking to their three-year-olds about six past events, such as zoo visits or first day at pre-school. The researchers then re-established contact with the same families at different points in the future. Some of the children were quizzed again by a researcher when aged five, others at age six or seven, eight or nine. This way the researchers were able to chart differences in amounts of forgetting through childhood. Bauer and Larkina uncovered a paradox – at ages five to seven, the children remembered over 60 per cent of the events they’d chatted about at age three. However, their recall for these events was

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Activists have an image problem In the European Journal of Social Psychology immature in the sense of containing few evaluative comments and few mentions of time and place. In contrast, children aged eight and nine recalled less than 40 per cent of the events they’d discussed at age three, but those memories they did recall were more adultlike in their content. Bauer and Larkina said this suggests that adult-like remembering and forgetting develops at around age seven or soon after. They also speculated that the immature form of recall seen at ages five to seven could actually contribute to the forgetting of autobiographical memories – a process known as ‘retrievalinduced forgetting’. Another important finding was that the style mothers used when chatting with their threeyear-olds was associated with the level of remembering by those children later on. Specifically, mothers who used more ‘deflections’, such as ‘Tell me more’ and ‘What happened?’ tended to have children who subsequently recalled more details of their earlier memories. The researchers said their work ‘provides compelling evidence that accounts of childhood amnesia that focus only on changes in remembering cannot explain the phenomenon. The complementary processes involved in forgetting are also part of the explanation.’ I For more on childhood memories, see the Psychologist archive piece by Wade and Laney at tinyurl.com/nrj2ale

When you picture a feminist or an environmental campaigner, what kind of a person do you think of? If you’re like the US and Canadian participants in this new paper, then you’ll have in mind an eccentric, militant, unhygienic person. Nadia Bashir and her colleagues say this commonly held stereotype of an activist is partly responsible for the sluggishness of social change. Large sections of the public agree with activists’ messages, but are put off by not wanting to affiliate themselves with the kind of person they think makes an activist. Bashir’s team conducted five proper studies in all, and three pilot investigations. The pilot work involved Canadian students, and US participants recruited online, and was used to establish the characteristics – militant, eccentric, etc. – that people tend to associate with a ‘typical’ feminist or environmentalist. For one of the main studies, undergrads read about either a ‘typical’ feminist, who took part in rallies, or an ‘atypical’ feminist, who used less abrasive techniques, such as holding social events to raise money for feminist causes. Next, all the students read the same article, ostensibly written by the aforementioned feminists, about the unfair obstacles that women continue to face. Finally, the students declared their intentions to adopt pro-feminist behaviours, such as getting involved in pro-women’s rights initiatives. The students who read about a ‘typical’ feminist tended

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to assume she had more negative stereotypical traits, such as being militant and eccentric. What’s more, after reading her article, these same students tended to report fewer intentions to engage in profeminist behaviours themselves, as compared with students who’d encountered the ‘atypical’ feminist and her article. These two things were linked – mediation analysis suggested students who encountered the ‘typical’ feminist and her article had lower pro-feminist intentions because they saw the feminist as having stereotypical activist traits. The gist of these findings was replicated in another study with a sample of 140 US participants recruited online, and with the focus on an environmentalist rather than a feminist. This study also showed that participants were less inspired by the arguments

of a more typical militant environmentalist, not just because of seeing him as having more negative stereotypical traits, but also because of not wanting to affiliate with him. Past research on people’s advocacy for social change has tended to focus on their beliefs about the issue at hand, or on the personality characteristics of people who tend to favour social change or oppose it. This study is novel in that it focuses instead on people’s perceptions of those who campaign for social change. The findings have obvious reallife implications for activists. ‘Seemingly zealous dedication to a social cause may backfire and elicit unfavourable reactions from others,’ the researchers said. ‘[T]he very individuals who are most actively engaged in promoting social change may inadvertently alienate members of the public and reduce prochange motivation.’

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

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The stressed sex? Daniel Freeman and Jason Freeman consider men, women and mental health

Why might men and women differ in overall rates of mental health problems in the current environment?

resources

What could be done to change gender imbalances in mental health problems?

Freeman, D. & Freeman, J. (2013). The stressed sex: Uncovering the truth about men, women, and mental health. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bebbington, P., Cooper, C., Minot, S. et al. (2009). Suicide attempts, gender, and sexual abuse. American Journal of Psychiatry, 166, 1135–1140. Davis, M., Matthews, K. & Twamley, E. (1999). Is life more difficult on Mars or Venus? A meta-analytic review of sex differences in major and minor life events. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 21, 83–97. Freeman, D. & Freeman, J. (2013). The

ver recent years a lively debate has been taking place regarding psychological differences between the sexes. However, conspicuous by its absence has been any discussion of differences in mental health between men and women. Who is more likely to develop mental health problems: men or women? The conventional view, illustrated by the World Health Organization, is that ‘Overall rates of psychiatric disorder are almost identical for men and women’ (WHO, 2012). Feminist critics, however, consider that women are more likely than men to be diagnosed with a psychological problem, though they see it principally as the result of women’s rational behaviour being mistakenly stigmatised as mental illness (Showalter, 1987). And yet, among the mainstream of mental health professionals, psychologists and psychiatrists the question of gender differences receives surprisingly little attention. There’s a marked reluctance to look at the bigger picture: to do, as the phrase has it, the maths. If women truly are more vulnerable to psychological problems at present, that’s a major public health issue – one that should inform treatment, guide research and perhaps necessitate social change.

references

questions

‘Women become insane’, opined the Victorian psychiatrist G. Fielding Blandford, ‘during pregnancy, after parturition, during lactation; at the age when the catamenia [periods] first appear and when they disappear…’ Today, the idea that one sex may be more prone to mental illness than the other has become taboo. But what does the evidence really tell us?

What do the data tell us? What’s the best way to discover how common psychological disorders are in men and women? The answer is to look to the results of epidemiological surveys. In The Stressed Sex (Freeman & Freeman,

stressed sex: Uncovering the truth about men, women, and mental health. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jacobi, F., Wittchen, H., Holting, C. et al. (2004). Prevalence, co-morbidity and correlates of mental disorders in the general population. Psychological Medicine, 34, 597–611. Judge, T. & Cable, D. (2011). When it comes to pay, do the thin win? The effect of weight on pay for men and

2013) we looked for studies that fitted the following criteria: I National validity – Studies had to present data on a nationally representative sample of the adult population. Surveys that covered just a particular region or city, or that didn’t use bona fide sampling techniques, failed to make the cut. I Variety of disorders – Studies needed to include at the very least drug-related disorders, alcohol problems, depression and anxiety disorders (these being the archetypal ‘gendered’ disorders: the latter two are typically regarded as more common in women and the former as more prevalent in men). In fact, studies that cover this bare minimum of disorders also tend to include many more conditions. I Established techniques – Studies had to have used established, reliable and valid psychiatric interviews assessing recent problems – by which we mean that the assessments can be trusted to produce the sort of conclusions that a clinician might arrive at were they to assess the participant in person based on DSM or ICD criteria. In practice, these requirements limited us to surveys carried out since the 1980s. I Sex-specific information – To be included, studies had to give separate figures for men and women. Obviously, deducing anything about gender and mental health without this key information would be impossible. We found 12 national surveys that meet these criteria (see box opposite). Per our inclusion criteria, each provides information on rates of anxiety, depression and substance-related disorders. But arguably just as significant are the disorders they exclude. For instance, precisely none of the surveys reported on the prevalence of sleep or sexual disorders. Yet research suggests that both these types of problem are more common in women than men. Historical artefact though it may be, the absence of these very widespread conditions from

women. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96, 95–112. Kessler, R., McGonagle, K., Zhao, S. et al. (1994). Lifetime and 12-month prevalence of DSM-III-R psychiatric disorders in the United States. Archives of General Psychiatry, 51, 8–19. Kessler, R., Chiu, W., Demler, O. & Walters, E. (2005). Prevalence, severity, and comorbidity of 12-month DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity

Survey Replication. Archives of General Psychiatry, 62, 617–627. McManus, S., Meltzer, H., Brugha, T. et al. (2009). Adult psychiatric morbidity in England, 2007: Results of a household survey. National Centre for Social Research. Meltzer, H., Gill, B., Petticrew, M. & Hinds, K. (1995). The prevalence of psychiatric morbidity among adults living in private households. Report 1. OPCS

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the surveys leaves a hole in the overall data on gender and mental health. One of the most striking results to emerge from the surveys is much more indicative of similarity between the sexes than difference. Again and again, these studies show a worryingly high rate of psychological problems across the population as a whole: that is, for both men and women. In the UK and US around one in four people meet the diagnostic criteria for a psychological disorder in the previous 12 months. These kinds of figures have become commonplace in the news in recent years, but they still shock. Yet if overall rates of psychological problems are alarmingly high in the population in general, our surveys agree that the sexes differ in the type of problem they’re likely to develop. Every one of the 12 studies reports that women are more likely than men to suffer from anxiety and depression. Men, on the other hand, have a greater propensity for abuse of, and dependence on, alcohol and illegal substances. When it comes to other disorders, the surveys vary in their coverage. But it seems clear that women are more likely to develop borderline personality disorder and eating disorders, while rates of conduct disorder and anti-social personality disorder tend to be higher in men. Perhaps surprisingly, there aren’t large differences between adult men and women in rates of ADHD. Psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia appear to be fairly evenly distributed between the sexes. But here’s the big question: What do the studies tell us about overall rates of psychological problems in men and women? Are women more at risk – or is it men? Alternatively, is the World Health Organization correct when it states that rates are identical? The results are clear. Eight of the 12 surveys indicate that rates of psychological disorder are significantly higher among women than men. But it is not just about quantity. Let’s look at the most

Surveys of Psychiatric Morbidity in Great Britain. London: HMSO. Oakley Browne, M., Wells, E., Scott, M. & McGee, M. (2006). Lifetime prevalence and projected lifetime risk of DSM-IV disorders in Te Rau Hinengaro. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 40, 865–874. Pierce, K. & Kirkpatrick, D. (1992). Do men lie on fear surveys? Behaviour

National surveys Twelve epidemiological surveys of mental health met the inclusion criteria for Freeman and Freeman (2013): UK OPCS Survey of Psychiatric Morbidity 1993 (N = 10,000) Psychiatric Morbidity Among Adults Living in Private Households 2000 (N = 8800) Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey 2007 (N = 7461) Other European countries Mental Health Supplement of the German National Health Interview and Examination Survey (N = 4181) Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study (NEMESIS) (N = 7076) USA National Comorbidity Survey (NCS) (N = 8098) National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R) (N = 9282) Australia and New Zealand Australian National Mental Health Survey 1997 (N= 10,641) National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing 2007 (N = 8841) New Zealand Mental Health Survey 2003 (N = 12,992) Other countries Chile Psychiatric Prevalence Study (N = 2978) South African Stress and Health Study (N = 4351)

comprehensive in terms of disorders assessed: the Mental Health Supplement of the German National Health Interview and Examination Survey. Carried out between 1997 and 1999, the German study gathered data on more than 60 of the disorders listed in DSM-IV, including anxiety, depression, substance-related disorders (alcohol and illicit drugs), somatoform disorders, eating disorders, pain disorder and psychosis (Jacobi et al., 2004). It is the survey best placed to provide an answer to our question. One in four of the men interviewed (25 per cent) had experienced at least one of the disorders in the previous 12 months. This in itself is an eye-opening statistic, but it’s

Research and Therapy, 30, 415–418. Seedat, S., Scott, K., Angermeyer, M. et al. (2009). Cross-national associations between gender and mental disorders in the WHO World Mental Health Surveys. Archives of General Psychiatry, 66, 785–795. Showalter, E. (1987). The female malady. London: Virago. Slade, T., Johnston, A., Oakley Browne, M. et al. (2009). 2007 National Survey

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dwarfed by the figure for women, which came in at a staggering 37 per cent. So the study that seems best equipped to answer our question produces an unequivocal result. The US National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R) (Kessler et al, 2005) covered a smaller range of problems, but told a similar – albeit less dramatic – tale to the German study. Focusing on anxiety, depression, so-called impulse control problems such as ADHD and conduct disorder, and substance-related disorders (alcohol, drugs and nicotine), the NCS-R reported that 34.7 per cent of women had met the DSM-IV criteria during the previous year, as compared to 29.9 per

of Mental Health and Wellbeing. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 43, 594–605. Spataro, J., Mullen, P., Burgess, P. et al. (2004). Impact of child sexual abuse on mental health. British Journal of Psychiatry, 184, 416–421. Vicente, B., Kohn, R., Rioseco, P. et al. (2006). Lifetime and 12-month prevalence of DSM-III-R disorders in the Chile Psychiatric Prevalence

Study. American Journal of Psychiatry, 163, 1362–1370. Wichstrøm, L. (1999). The emergence of gender difference in depressed mood during adolescence. Developmental Psychology, 35, 232–245. World Health Organization (2012). Gender disparities and mental health: The facts. Retrieved 4 September 2012 from www.who.int/mental_health/ prevention/genderwomen/en

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cent of men. The forerunner of the NCS-R, and 2007 UK surveys (Meltzer et al., 1995; the National Comorbidity Survey (NCS) McManus et al., 2009) also indicate that (Kessler et al, 1994), was carried out in women are more prone to psychological the early 1990s and therefore based its problems than men, but in both cases this assessments on the earlier psychiatric is a finding that required a little spadework handbook, 1987’s DSM-III-R. The NCS by us to unearth. The 1993 OPCS Survey collected statistics on the prevalence of of Psychiatric Morbidity, for example, disorders including anxiety, depression, doesn’t actually provide a figure for total substance use, anti-social personality prevalence by gender. But when we disorder and psychosis. What it found was analysed the original data, we found that that 12-month rates were higher in women 21.7 per cent of women had experienced than men (31 per cent versus 28 per cent). anxiety, depression, psychosis, alcohol Travel several thousand miles south dependence or drug dependence in the from the US to Chile and the picture that previous 12 months. The figure for men emerges is essentially the same, with 25 was 19.5 per cent: not a massive difference per cent of women and 19 per cent of men for sure, but it turned out to be a having experienced a psychological statistically significant one nevertheless. disorder in the previous 12 months (Like the Australian survey, the OPCS (Vicente et al, 2006). The Chilean survey study used the criteria set out in ICD-10.) was conducted in the 1990s and, like the But the UK surveys also provide a US NCS, used the criteria set out in DSMuseful reminder of the need to scrutinise III-R. As usual, the disorders assessed vary the detail for oneself. For instance, the a little from the other surveys; in this case, APMS asks participants about their alcohol participants were quizzed about their use over the previous six months, and experience of anxiety, depression, their consumption of drugs over the substance use (including nicotine), previous year. However, it employed antisocial personality disorder, psychosis, a very different time frame for anxiety somatoform disorders and eating disorders. and depression, focusing on how people Across the Pacific, the Australian had been feeling during the previous National Survey of Mental Health and seven days. And what might seem like just Wellbeing (Slade et al., 2009) assessed a methodological quirk turns out to have the prevalence of anxiety, depression a direct bearing on the question of gender and problems with alcohol and mental and illicit substances, using health. Alcohol the rules set out in the 10th and drug “women experience edition of the International problems, after something like 20–40 per Classification of Diseases and all, are more cent more mental ill health Health Related Problems usually seen in than men” (ICD). Once again, women men. Anxiety and were significantly more depression, on the likely than men to have other hand, tend to experienced a disorder in the previous year affect a greater number of women. Were – 22.3 per cent compared to 17.6 per cent. anxiety and depression to be tracked over The New Zealand Mental Health Survey a longer period, we can be pretty sure not is entitled ‘Te Rau Hinengaro’ (the Maori only that the figures for prevalence of these term for ‘the many minds’, a reference to disorders given in the APMS would be the huge variety of psychological states significantly higher, but that the scales we all experience in our lives) (Oakley of mental illness would tip further in the Browne et al., 2006). Te Rau Hinengaro direction of women. collected data on rates of anxiety disorders, The data indicate that women mood disorders such as depression, experience something like 20–40 per alcohol and drug problems, and eating cent more mental ill health than men. disorders. What it found was that women And remember that the surveys don’t were not simply more vulnerable to cover common conditions such as sleep psychological disorders: their symptoms and sexual problems, both of which are were often more disruptive and distressing much more prevalent among women. than those of men with the same problem. We urgently require a more comprehensive In the 12 months leading up to the survey, study to substantiate what we think seems nearly one in four women (24 per cent) to be occurring. In our view, though, the met the DSM-IV criteria for at least one current survey data indicate that gender of the disorders; for men the figure was is an important factor in a significant significantly lower – albeit still high – at proportion of mental disorders as they 17 per cent. Severe problems were likely are currently defined and classified. to affect 5.4 per cent of women and 3.9 As we’ve seen, not all of the surveys per cent of men. come to the same conclusion. But that’s And what about the UK? The 1993 to be expected given the size of the

difference, the range of conditions covered in the survey and differences in methodology of surveys. Another way to obtain a more reliable picture of the situation is to survey larger numbers of people, or to combine the results of several studies. As it happens, the World Health Organization is running just such a project right now. There is an interesting analysis from surveys conducted in 15 countries, drawn from both the developed and developing worlds, and including more than 70,000 people. Among the 15 studies were some that we included in our selected dozen surveys but also others we excluded, either because they didn’t cover the full range of substance problems, or weren’t fully national in scope, or didn’t report a figure for total rates of disorder by gender. The study looked at the lifetime risk of developing one of the 18 disorders, which is a less reliable assessment. Nevertheless the picture is a familiar one. Across all age groups, women had a greater chance of developing a disorder than men (Seedat et al., 2009).

Are differences due to underreporting? But could it be that these differences aren’t real at all? Perhaps all they show is that women are more willing to recognise and report symptoms. Or that they have better memories for psychological problems. Maybe men are reluctant to admit that something might be wrong. We’re reminded of an interview with the rock band Pink Floyd at the height of their success in the 1970s. By this point, relationships within the all-male group were reputed to have become somewhat strained. ‘Are there some difficult moments?’, asked guitarist David Gilmour rhetorically, ‘Yes.’ ‘How do you get around them?’ said the journalist. ‘We pretend they’re not there,’ responded bassist Roger Waters. ‘We certainly don’t face up to them in an adult way, if that’s what you mean.’ There’s undoubtedly some truth to this argument. We can never, after all, know exactly how many men are not reporting psychological problems (nor, for that matter, how many women are keeping difficulties to themselves). Very few scientific studies have attempted to measure men’s reluctance to admit to ‘unmasculine’ feelings or experiences. In fact, we’ve come across just one. It was small, involving 23 women and 17 men (Pierce & Kirkpatrick, 1992). They were asked how much they feared a number of objects and situations, including rats, mice and rollercoaster rides. A month later, the participants were asked to retake the

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survey. But this time there was a standards identified in a recent crucial difference. The students were study by Judge and Cable (2011) informed that before filling in of employees in Germany and the questionnaire they the US. They showed that, as were going to see thin men get a video of these heavier, their objects and earnings situations. During increase. Women the video, it was – and especially explained, their thin women – heart rate would be actually earn less monitored, allowing when they put on the researchers to weight. Indeed Judge determine just how scared and Cable calculate that the students really were. As it ‘a woman who is average happened, only one sex had weight earns $389,300 less been underplaying their across a 25-year career than fears. On the second a woman who is 25 lbs below occasion, the men average weight’. For men, on scored significantly the other hand, being very thin higher for fear than is no way to secure that they had before, while promotion: ‘a man who is 25 lbs the women’s ratings below average weight is predicted remained unchanged. to earn $210,925 less across a 25Yet although this year career than a man who is of experiment provides some average weight.’ evidence that men really do play Indeed there’s evidence that down their anxieties, it also found the demands of the female role that women experienced more can have a negative effect on Do women experience women’s happiness from an fear than men, even after the higher levels of temptation to underreport early age. Lars Wichstrøm, stress because of the problems had been removed. a psychologist at the demands of their And, importantly, there Norwegian University of social role? are a range of social and Science and Technology, psychological factors that collected data on a especially impact on women that should representative sample of more than 12,000 lead us to expect differences in overall Norwegian young people, aged 12 to 20. rates of mental health problems. The most Among the 12-year-olds, there was no obvious example is childhood sexual difference in rates of depression between abuse. There’s very strong evidence linking boys and girls. But over the next couple of childhood sexual abuse to later mental years, girls overtook boys. Why was this? health problems (e.g. Spataro et al., 2004). Wichstrøm (1999) found that the gender difference could be And sexual abuse largely affects girls, explained, in part, by increased typically during early adolescence (e.g. developmental changes for girls – Bebbington et al., 2009). Chronic strain is pubertal development, dissatisfaction also likely to be an issue. A meta-analysis with weight and attainment of a of 119 studies covering more than 80,000 mature female body, and increased people found that women reported greater importance of feminine sex role exposure to stress than men, and especially identification. in adolescence (Davis et al., 1999). Although the issue of under- and overThere are of course pressures on men reporting again rears its head here, it’s too. Categorising mental health troubles certainly plausible that women experience as essentially a female problem would be higher levels of stress because of the wildly inaccurate. Men are more likely to demands of their social role. Increasingly, kill themselves. But women are actually women are expected to function as carer, more likely to have suicidal thoughts and homemaker and breadwinner – all while being perfectly shaped and impeccably dressed. Given that domestic work is Daniel Freeman undervalued, and considering that women is Professor of Clinical tend to be paid less, find it harder to Psychology in the advance in a career, have to juggle Department of Psychiatry at multiple roles, and are bombarded with the University of Oxford images of apparent female ‘perfection’, it daniel.freeman@ would be surprising if there weren’t some psych.ox.ac.uk emotional cost. Think about the differing

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to try to kill themselves (e.g. Bebbington et al, 2009). The discrepancy in completed suicide rates is because men use methods more likely to lead to death, such as firearms or hanging, than women, who more often overdose. The reason for the differing methods is difficult to determine, with key factors hypothesised including level of intent, concerns about facial disfigurement, access to weapons and gendered differences in cultural scripts for suicide. We think that in tackling the question of imbalance in rates of mental health problems, we may actually shine a light on the causes of psychological problems in general. There’s much uncertainty about these causes; but following the thread of gender may both lead us to other factors and help us understand how these factors interact to produce disorder.

A crucial piece of the puzzle If these statistics prove to be anywhere near correct, we have a problem that demands urgent action. Of course, in this controversial area it may be that we will be accused of labelling women as somehow innately ‘mad’ or ‘crazy’. This kind of language isn’t helpful. Indeed it’s based on a fundamental misunderstanding of mental illness. And it stigmatises everyday problems experienced by millions of people, male and female alike. These are problems that are usually neither innate nor inevitable, difficulties that wouldn’t occur if it weren’t for the contribution of social pressures. Whether or not women truly are more susceptible to psychological disorders in the current environment – and we certainly need more sophisticated epidemiological surveys to be sure – we gain nothing by simply assuming there’s no case to answer. Difference need not be a pejorative concept. Given the extent of the burden on society and individuals alike, understanding what causes mental health problems, and thus being better placed to prevent and treat them, should need no justification. But our ability to do that is going to be hampered if we assume that gender is, at most, merely a marginal issue. In fact, it may often be a crucial element of the puzzle. Without gender, perhaps, the pieces simply won’t link up. Jason Freeman is a writer and editor

ARTICLE

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Improving aircraft safety Don Harris discusses the role of human error in air accidents and how aviation psychology has contributed to making flying as safe as possible

questions

1754 people were killed on British roads in 2012. In the corresponding period 306 people worldwide died as a result of accidents to commercial jet transport aircraft. Aviation has developed a remarkable safety record and human factors has been at the forefront. The safety principles developed in the aviation industry are now being adapted and adopted in a range of new application areas, which also seem to be showing similar safety benefits. However, the nature of all modern organisations, including airlines, has changed considerably in the last decade; safety management systems, within which aviation psychology makes a significant contribution, need to evolve to keep pace.

How far can safety lessons learned in aviation be transferred to other application areas? What organisational factors might be a bar to successful implementation of these principles?

resources

European Association for Aviation Psychology: www.eaap.net Harris, D. (2011). Human performance on the flight deck. Aldershot: Ashgate.

references

Can all organisations afford to adopt the safety approach used in aviation? Could less affluent industries adopt/adapt the principles but at reduced cost?

Ashford, R. (1999). Study of fatal approach and landing accidents worldwide, 1980-96. Flight Safety Digest (November 1998–February 1999). Alexandria, VA: Flight Safety Foundation. Boeing Commercial Airplanes (2013). Statistical summary of commercial jet airplane accidents (worldwide operations 1959– 2012). Seattle, WA: Author.

t 23:42 (EST) on 29 December 1972, an Eastern Airlines Lockheed L1011 (Tristar) crashed into the Florida Everglades. The aircraft had only a minor technical failure (a blown bulb on the landing gear status display) but crashed because no one was actually flying it. All the crew were ‘head down’ trying to fix the problem. Circling near Miami airport at 2000 feet, and despite an alarm sounding, none of them noticed that the autopilot had disconnected causing the aircraft to enter a gentle descent. The accident report concluded that ‘the probable cause of this accident was the failure of the flightcrew to monitor the flight instruments during the final four minutes of flight, and to detect an unexpected descent soon enough to prevent impact with the ground. Preoccupation with a malfunction of the nose landing gear position indicating system distracted the crew’s attention from the instruments and allowed the descent to go unnoticed’ (National Transportation Safety Board, 1973). Other accidents around this

Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses pour la Sécurité de l’Aviation Civile (1992). Rapport de la commission d’enquête sur l’accident survenu le 20 janvier 1992 près du Mont Sainte-Odile (Bas Rhin) à l’Airbus A 320 immatriculé FGGED exploité par la compagnie Air Inter (F-ED920120). Le Bourget: Author. Chapanis, A. (1999). The Chapanis Chronicles: 50 years of human factors

time highlighted instances of the captain doing all the work while other crew were almost unoccupied; dominant personalities suppressing teamwork and error checking; or simply poor crew cooperation, coordination and/or leadership.

The human factor During the last 50 years the accident rate in commercial jet aircraft (excluding those manufactured in USSR and former Soviet states) has declined sharply from approximately 5.0, to just 0.35 per million departures (Boeing Commercial Airplanes, 2013). As reliability and structural integrity has improved, the number of accidents resulting from engineering failures has reduced dramatically. Human error is now the principal threat to flight safety: it is estimated that up to 75 per cent of all

research, education, and design. Santa Barbara, CA: Aegean Publishing. Civil Aviation Authority (2006). Crew resource management (CRM) training. London: Author. Civil Aviation Authority (2013). Global fatal accident review 2002– 2011 (CAP 1036). London: Author. Craik, K.J.W. & Vince, M.A. (1945). A note on the design and manipulation of instrument-knobs. Applied

Psychology Laboratory, Cambridge University Report. Cambridge University. Dekker, S.W.A. (2001a). Follow the procedure or survive. Human Factors and Aerospace Safety 1, 381–385. Dekker, S.W.A. (2001b). The re-invention of human error. Human Factors and Aerospace Safety, 1, 247–266. Drew, G.C. (1940). An experimental study of mental fatigue. British Flying.

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aircraft accidents now have a major human factors component (Civil Aviation Authority, 2013). The main focus of aviation psychology is to reduce human error throughout the system from the flight deck to the ground staff. But ‘human error’ is merely the beginning of an explanation. In the same way that aircraft accidents seldom have a solitary cause, human mistakes also rarely have a single underlying contributory factor. Error is the product of design, procedures, training and/or the environment, including the organisational environment (see Dekker, 2001b). As we shall see, it is an oversimplification to suggest that any accident is caused by ‘human error’ or ‘system failure’ alone. The vastly increased use of aircraft during the Second World War was a major impetus for serious coordinated work on aviation safety. Analysis of US Army Air

Personnel Research Committee Memorandum No. 227. London: British Air Ministry, Flying Personnel Research Committee. Grether, W.F. (1949). The design of longscale indicators for speed and accuracy of quantitative reading. Journal of Applied Psychology, 33, 363–372. Harris, D. (2006). The influence of human factors on operational efficiency.

Corps pilot losses had shown them to be equally distributed between three principal causes: about one third of pilots were lost in training crashes; one third in operational accidents; and surprisingly only one third were lost in combat (Office of Statistical Control, 1945). This suggested there were safety deficiencies inherent throughout the whole system of training and operation. Early aviation psychology in the US focused on human engineering issues in aircraft design. Reviewing his work at the Aero Medical Laboratory in the early 1940s, the human factors pioneer Alphonse Chapanis (1999) described how, after landing certain types of aircraft, stressed and fatigued pilots occasionally retracted the undercarriage instead of the flaps. Chapanis observed that in aircraft where this occurred the controls for the undercarriage and flaps were identical in shape and located next to each other. The remedy he proposed was simple: physically separate the controls and make their shape analogous to the function they are controlling e.g. a wheel shape for the undercarriage or an aerofoil shape for the flaps. Another US researcher Walter Grether described the difficulties pilots had reading the early three-pointer altimeter (see Figure 1). Experiments found this instrument took over 7 seconds to interpret and produced 11 per cent of errors of 1000 feet or more (Grether, 1949). Most human performance research in the UK during this time was conducted at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Applied Psychology Unit in Cambridge. Here fundamental work was undertaken on issues such as the direction of the motion relationships between controls and displays (Craik & Vince, 1945); the effects of prolonged periods of vigilance on performance, especially in radar operators (Mackworth, 1948); and pilot fatigue (Drew, 1940). Even this early work demonstrated that ‘pilot error’ was not a sufficient explanation for the causes of many accidents. Pilots often fell into a trap left

Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, 78(1), 20–25. Harris, D. (2011). Human performance on the flight deck. Aldershot: Ashgate. Harris, D. & Li, W-C. (2011). An extension of the human factors analysis and classification system (HFACS) for use in open systems. Theoretical Issues in Ergonomic Science, 12(2), 108–128. Harris, D. & Stanton, N.A. (2010). Aviation as a system of systems. Ergonomics

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Figure 1: Original, difficult-to-read threepointer altimeter

for them by the cockpit interfaces – what became known as ‘design induced’ error.

Crew resource management During the 1970s CFIT (Controlled Flight Into Terrain) accidents, such as the one described at the beginning of this article, began to dominate safety thinking in commercial aviation. CFIT accidents involve an airworthy aircraft under control crashing into terrain. These invariably involve human error in some way. Accidents of this type resulted in many airlines instigating crew resource management (CRM) programmes that optimise use of all the human resources on board the aircraft – not just the crew on the flight deck. CRM training is now mandatory for all commercial flight crew. Reading through the Civil Aviation Authority’s syllabus requirements for CRM (CAA, 2006) – including company safety culture, workload management, decision making, leadership and team behaviour – is like reading through the British Psychological Society’s syllabus for occupational psychology. In fact, the

53(2), 145–148. Haynes, A.B., Weiser, T.G., Berry, W.R. et al. (2009). A surgical safety checklist to reduce morbidity and mortality in a global population. New England Journal of Medicine, 360, 491–499. Helmreich, R.L. (1994). The anatomy of a system accident: The crash of Avianca Flight 052. International Journal of Aviation Psychology, 4, 265–284.

International Civil Aviation Organization (2009). Safety management manual (2nd edn). ICAO Doc 9859. Montreal: Author. Mackworth, N.H. (1948). The breakdown of vigilance during prolonged visual search. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1, 6–21. Maier, M.W. (1998). Architecting principles for system of systems. Systems Engineering, 1, 267–284.

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practice of aviation psychology is essentially a specialist application of occupational psychology. The widespread uptake of CRM programmes produced a culture change in aviation. Early CRM approaches were predicated on avoiding error and focused on improving management style and interpersonal skills on the flight deck. Emphasis was placed upon improving communication, attitudes and leadership to enhance teamwork. The syllabus for second-generation CRM training built upon these concepts but included stress management, human error, decision making and group dynamics. Furthermore, CRM programmes began to train the whole aircraft crew together to encourage teamwork. Eventually CRM concepts permeated into airline organisations as a whole and included further issues such as safety and national culture (aviation is a truly international industry). The real change in safety culture, however, occurred when CRM training per se actually started to disappear as its concepts were absorbed into all aspects of training and the development of procedures (see Helmreich, 1994; Pariés & Amalberti, 1995). Within aviation, CRM is now a ‘way of life’. CRM programmes instigated an organisational culture change and have resulted in significant safety gains. Its concepts form a key part of any airlinewide safety management programme. The modern view of CRM regards humans as fundamentally fallible, especially under stress, and considers error as part of the human condition: it is pervasive. Emphasis is not simply on attempting to eliminate error but on utilising the error management troika: avoid errors; trap errors already made; and/or mitigate the consequences of these errors. CRM concepts are now being adapted extensively for use in a wide range of other safety-critical domains outside the aerospace industry, such as patient safety (particularly surgery); rail safety; at nuclear sites and in the offshore oil and gas industry. These aviation-inspired practices

Musson, D. (2009). Putting behavioural markers to work: Developing and evaluating safety training in healthcare settings. In R. Flin & L. Mitchell (Eds.) Safer surgery: Analysing behaviour in the operating theatre (pp.423–435). Aldershot: Ashgate. National Transportation Safety Board (1973). Aircraft accident report, Eastern Air Lines, Inc. Miami, Florida,

(often referred to as NOTECHS – nontechnical skills) have had to be adapted to suit the environment and cultures of these new application domains. While the basic syllabus components have remained the same (e.g. team cooperation, leadership and managerial skills, situation awareness and decision making: van Avermaete, 1998) the manner in which they have been instantiated has been adapted to their new application areas. For example in surgical applications, teams are much bigger with a great deal more specialisation; furthermore, members of the team may change half way through lengthy operations or to accommodate new specialities. As Musson (2009) points out, unlike on the flight deck, in the operating theatre there are also subcultures at work (surgeons; anaesthetists; perfusionists; nurses) that can lead to interprofession frictions.

Flying by the book The omission of critical actions or undertaking the wrong action has been observed to be the primary factor in many accidents. Nearly one quarter of fatal approach-and-landing accidents involved such an event (Ashford, 1999). On the flight deck, to help reduce the likelihood of error, all aircraft are operated in a highly proceduralised manner. Standard operating procedures (SOPs) and checklists dominate daily life. Aircraft are flown on a ‘monitor and cross-monitor’ and ‘challenge and response’ basis. One pilot reads out checklist items and monitors the other pilot as they complete the task. But this approach is not confined to the flight deck. Aircraft are handed over from dispatchers to pilots using highly structured checklists; and checklists are used to transfer critical information between outgoing and incoming shifts in the maintenance hangar to make sure nothing is omitted. Handovers in an air traffic control centre are undertaken in a similar way using acronyms such as ‘PRAWNS’ (Voller et al., 2005): Pressure

December 29, 1972, L-1011, N310EA: Report Number: NTSB-AAR-73- 14. Washington, DC: Author. Office of Statistical Control (1945). Army Air Forces statistical digest – World War II. Available from the Air Force Historical Research Agency (www.usaaf.net/digest). Pariés, J. & Amalberti, R. (1995). Recent trends in aviation safety: From individuals to organisational

(barometric); Runways in use; Airports and Airways; Weather briefing; Nonstandard procedures in use and priority information; and Strips (aircraft movements). In this way no vital information is omitted – everything is coordinated. Nevertheless, accidents still happen as a result of not completing the required procedures. This may be for a variety of reasons, such as distractions on the flight deck; interruptions; abnormally high workload; incorrect management of

resources management training. Risøe National Laboratory Systems Analysis Department Technical Report, Series 1 (pp.216–228). Roskilde, Denmark: Risøe National Laboratory. Reason, J.T. (1997). Managing the risks of organizational accidents. Aldershot: Ashgate. van Avermaete, J.A.G. (1998). NOTECHS: Non-technical skill evaluation in JARFCL. NLR-TP-98518. Amsterdam:

National Aerospace Laboratory. Voller, L., Glasgow, L., Heath, N. et al. (2005). Development and implementation of a position handover checklist and best practice process for air traffic controllers. In B. Kirwan, M. Rodgers & D. Shaefer (Eds.) Human factors impacts in air traffic management (pp.25–42). Aldershot: Ashgate. Walker, I.A., Reshanwalla, S. & Wilson,

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The manifold roots of error The crash of Air Inter Flight 148, an Airbus A320, at Mont Sainte-Odile, near Strasbourg in 1992 was at least partly attributed to an error prompted by the design of a certain aspect of the flight deck (Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses pour la Sécurité de l’Aviation Civile, 1992). The primary cause of the accident was that the crew selected the wrong mode on the flight management and guidance system – ‘vertical speed’ mode instead of ‘flight path angle’ mode. During the approach they entered ‘33’ in the autoflight system, intending a 3.3° descent angle (corresponding to about 800 feet per minute) but because the aircraft was in the wrong mode this input triggered a descent rate of 3300 feet per minute. Crucially, the read-outs for both vertical speed and flight path angle were made on the same shared digital display, the only distinction being the incorporation of a decimal place when in ‘flight path angle’ mode. The aircraft subsequently flew into a ridge at approximately 2700 feet, around eight miles short of the airport. But this is not the whole story. There were other human factors at play in the run-up to the accident. The crew had difficulty in establishing their exact position as a result of incorrect information from air traffic control. This caused high workload on the flight deck as they tried to re-align the aircraft prior to commencing the final stages of the approach. The high rate of descent should still have been detected by the crew, but was missed because the CRM on the flight deck was poor, and in particular there was a significant lack of checks and cross-checks on the aircraft’s position. There was only minimal communication recorded between crew members. Adding to the problems, the accident occurred at night and in poor weather (low cloud and light snow). Finally, it had also been decided by the airline not to equip the aircraft with a ground proximity warning system, which would have alerted the crew prior to impact with the terrain. Air Inter operated in several mountainous areas, and it was felt that such systems gave too many nuisance warnings. In short, no one human error or problem caused this accident, but a single appropriate intervention on the part of the flight crew (or air traffic control) might have avoided it. This is the nature of safety management. Install multiple barriers to stop or trap error: you only need one of them to hold.

priorities (poor CRM); poor checklist design or simply complacency. However, checklists and SOPs have been a further factor in the reduction of error. In surgical settings such standardised processes or checklists were not commonplace until relatively recently, either in the operating theatre or when handing over patients to the post-operative care team. Implementation of the World Health Organization’s Surgical Safety Checklist has promoted better team

I.H. (2012). Surgical safety checklists: Do they improve outcomes? British Journal of Anaesthesia, 109(1), 47–54.

communication and dynamics (i.e. essential parts of good CRM) with consequent improvements in patient safety in terms of perioperative morbidity and mortality. The Safer Surgery Saves Lives group investigated the impact of the WHO checklist in eight hospitals worldwide before and after its implementation. The overall death rate was reduced from 1.5 per cent to 0.8 per cent and inpatient complications dropped from 11 per cent to 7 per cent (Haynes et al., 2009). Nevertheless, the introduction of such checklists was not straightforward. The surgical environment required an approach with more flexibility than that found on the flight deck (Walker et al., 2012). Although every flight is different, there is more variation in operations. Interestingly, this reaction against over-proceduralisation (and toward increased flexibility) in surgery is now reflected in the teachings of some airline training captains. An emerging mantra seems to be that checklists are check lists, not do lists. Emphasis is being placed once again on judgement and

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decision making rather than slavish application of procedures that cannot specify every circumstance and hence guarantee safety (see Dekker, 2001a).

Modern safety challenges An airline’s SMS (safety management system) provides the framework to integrate the majority of the work undertaken by human factors specialists in the aviation industry. An effective airline SMS is mandated under international law. The International Civil Aviation Organization’s approach to safety management is based around Jim Reason’s ‘Emmental (or Swiss) cheese’ model of accident causation (see Figure 2), which describes the contributions of organisational and psychological factors – including stress, poor training and poor scheduling – to the accident process (ICAO, 2009; Reason, 1997). Although there is increasing recognition of the importance of the human component in aviation safety,

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further work is required. The science base and regulations still lag behind changes in the nature of modern flight operations. For example, Reason’s model implicitly assumes a ‘semi-closed’ organisational system, typical of the nature of major organisations during the 1980s (when the model was developed). However, with the advent of low-cost operators the nature of the airline business has changed dramatically. Modern airlines are far more ‘open’ systems, with more outsourcing and subcontracting of functions. For example, they operate into a wide range of airports (none of which they own), and maintenance is often provided by third parties. Some low-cost carriers may not even own their aircraft, or employ their own ground and check-in personnel. In extreme cases, they don’t even employ their own pilots! And, as ever, there is the possibility of misinformation crossing organisational boundaries through air traffic management and control being Figure 2: The ‘Emmental (or Swiss) cheese’ model of accident causation (Reason, 1997) provided by the various national authorities of the countries into which airlines fly (or overfly). operational efficiency are regarded as Airline operations have also become the victims of the accident. Preventing equally acceptable objectives as safety. more integrated. For example, the turnaccidents like these is a challenge. Safety In mainstream occupational psychology around process on the gate includes airport management now has to extend beyond improving business efficiency is an operator, airline, air traffic control, ground the immediate organisation. acceptable objective for research and handling, catering, fuelling, cleaning As commercial aviation is a ‘system-ofconsultancy. However, 99 per cent of contractors and a Central Flow systems’, aviation psychology must aviation psychology seems to be aimed at Management Unit, to name but a few. respond with a similar systemic approach. improving safety. The subdiscipline can Commercial air transport as a whole is There needs to be greater integration make significant contributions to actually a ‘system of between the various improving the ‘bottom line’ in airlines but systems’ (Harris & subdisciplines – is rarely used to do so. Aviation psychology Stanton, 2010). Maier selection, training, “with the advent of lowtends to confine (and define) itself almost (1998) characterised a equipment design and cost operators the nature solely within the remit of improving safety. ‘system of systems’ as organisational pressures of the airline business has So, despite the advances it has possessing five basic do not exist in isolation. changed dramatically” contributed to safety, aviation psychology traits: operational They combine to needs to avoid its natural inclination to independence of contribute to accidents so define itself solely within this province. elements; managerial they should be tackled in an While increasing levels of specialisation independence of elements; evolutionary integrated manner (Harris, 2011). in areas such as human-centred design, development; possessing emergent selection, training and error have served behaviour; and having a geographical Beyond safety to develop the science base, this distribution of elements. In the context of Despite the net safety gains aviation fragmentation has impeded a coherent, aviation, aircraft operations, maintenance psychology has contributed, in some eyes systemic application of psychology in and air traffic management/control all have it has become almost as a ‘hygiene factor’: commercial aviation. The field has come of distinct operational independence and consuming money without ‘adding value’. age, but it must coalesce for the maximum managerial independence (they are offered There are opportunities for aviation benefit from an integrated, long-term by independent companies or national psychology to make a positive impact on approach to be realised. The opportunity providers). While they are bound by a set the financial bottom line of airlines, but now exists to capitalise on the progress of common operating principles and to truly enhance operating efficiency the made by this relatively new subdiscipline international regulations, there are now human part of any system cannot be of psychology. many more inter-organisational boundaries examined in isolation from all the other that information and resources must cross components – a wider, socio-technical compared to 30 years ago. Accidents in Don Harris perspective must be adopted (Harris, civil aviation are now often characterised Human Systems Integration 2006). By taking an integrated, long-term by errors promulgating across Group, Faculty of approach to tracking human-related costs organisational (and system) boundaries Engineering and and safety issues, significant wide-ranging (Harris & Li, 2011). This can be seen in Computing, Coventry benefits will accrue. the Air Inter A320 accident described in University First, though, a change of attitude is the box on p.93. Furthermore, the person don.harris@coventry.ac.uk required – one in which cost savings and making the final error may not be one of

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INTERVIEW

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‘Children suffer… that’s what drives me’ Marinus van IJzendoorn met Jon Sutton at the European Congress of Psychology and talked about his research on differential susceptibility in child development

e’re here in Stockholm, where W I think the popular idea of dandelion children – those with ‘resilient’ genes who will do well in most conditions – actually originated. The idea of dandelions and orchids originates from Tom Boyce, he used the metaphor. He might be a little distressed because it’s taken too literally. I agree – these may not be two classes, but a continuum of more or less openness to the environment. Tell me how you came to it scientifically. We were the first to do genetic research on the idea of differential susceptibility. The idea was already around on a theoretical level, for quite some time, and in fact was most active in the mid-1990s. The first studies were by Boyce and then Jay Belsky, but then it seemed to slow down a lot. We were entering into the field of genetics from the perspective of attachment theory, which is I think quite logical because attachment theory is based on evolutionary theory – it’s the first evolutionary theory applied to human development besides Charles Darwin himself. John Bowlby was the first evolutionary psychologist you might say, it’s now a very popular concept but he was the first to apply evolutionary thinking in a systematic way to human development. So my colleague Marian BakermansKranenburg and I went into this area of genetic research after having done twin studies, and we found – by accident, in a way – this interaction between DRD4, a dopamine-related gene, and sensitivity to environmental influences on children, developing differentially positively or negatively. That got us on the way in a series of studies on differential susceptibility. Am I right in thinking that two psychologists at King’s College London, Caspi and Moffit, had raw data and graphs in their 2002 and 2003 papers

pointing to this idea, but it didn’t really get a foothold? Well, their wonderful research prepared the way for gene by environment interaction research more broadly. But their study is really firmly grounded in the tradition of diathesis-stress and cumulative risk.

attachment here today. It’s quite a short talk, so I decided to talk about some of our recent research on attachment, especially how adult attachment representations are related to responses to infant crying and infant laughter, and how that might be influenced by oxytocin. We are doing a series of studies with oxytocin sniffs. We’re interested in how people with a certain attachment style end up being harsh to their crying child, or remain calm and sensitive. Oxytocin might be one of the key issues in the chain from cognitive representations to behaviour. The idea being that it’s a kind of chemical spotlight, it makes social cues more salient? Oxytocin is a hormone and neurotransmitter that is still not really determined in terms of its function. It’s being considered the ‘love hormone’, or the ‘cuddle chemical’, but again that’s a one-sided view. What we are finding is that it lowers the activity of fear centres, such as the amygdala, and elevates the activity of reward centres, such as the orbito-frontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex. But it is not effective in all people – we find that those with negative attachment experiences are less open to the effects of oxytocin. How that comes about, that’s one of the big puzzles we are working on now.

So in people who did not face severe or repeated stress, the risk alleles in question actually heightened resistance to stress and depression. Carriers of risk alleles were more prone to develop, for example, anti-social behaviour or depression having grown up in a bad environment with lots of maltreatment experience. But the other side of the equation, the bright side, Caspi and Moffit didn’t touch on. So absolutely groundbreaking A researcher once did studies, because for the adult attachment the first time in the “there is a gap between interview on me, and human development brain and behaviour, which said I was the most area they opened up is very intriguing” dismissively attached the way of thinking person they had met! in terms of measured What would you predict for gene by observed my reaction to oxytocin, and to my poor environment interaction, but differential crying children? susceptibility is a two-sided Amazingly unscientific! The interview phenomenon – the same risk alleles is not meant to conduct individual would also create more options to learn diagnoses, errors of measurement simply from a positive environment. That’s quite forbid it. Well, what I’m going to present unique to the idea of differential is that without oxytocin, insecurely susceptibility and to the research that we attached adults feel firstly more irritated did in Leiden. by infant crying behaviour. Secondly we And it was about that time that positive have a hand-grip measure, we teach the psychology was coming to the fore, so participants to exert full force and then you were surfing the zeitgeist of we teach them to go for half-strength. looking on the bright side! They manage to do that. And then we It might be that it’s not by accident – have them listen to cry sounds. Insecurely about that time more people started to attached individuals exert excessive force do research on the positive side of more often than the securely attached development, but again one-sided studies, parents, when listening to this aversive of positive development in positive crying. environments. But it is the power of the So that’s not necessarily expressing idea of differential susceptibility, that it anger, it could be discomfort, that they covers both streams of research. find that more aversive. So tell me how you’re linking it with Yes, and what in practice the response

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would be. It could be an alarm signal that A lot of your research is still very is more pronounced, it might also trigger hands on with children and parents harsh parenting. Crying behaviour is and behaviour, it’s important not to primordial attachment behaviour, it’s one take it that level of abstraction too far. These are absolutely fantastic times to of the first behaviours that an infant can study parenting, with big advances in show to display discomfort, distress, genetics, in brain research, in hormonal stress… it’s a proximity seeking behaviour, which John Bowlby wrote about quite extensively. But it’s also a trigger for harsh parenting and child abuse, an epidemiological study showed that aversion to crying in the first half year is the stimulus for about 6 per cent of young mothers to slap the child, to smother the child, to really go into the direction of child abuse. You might imagine that it’s a powerful trigger, because persistent crying is really a nuisance, that’s for sure, for any person, but some people might have a lower threshold to react in a harsh way. What we see in the scanner is that listening to cry sounds compared to control sounds elevates the level of amygdala activation, because it’s aversive, and oxytocin lowers that level of activation. What we hoped to find was that it’s a mediating mechanism between attachment representation Professor Marinus van IJzendoorn, Centre for Child and to those feelings of irritation Family Studies, Leiden University, The Netherlands and excessive force on the hand grip. We didn’t find that, VANIJZEN@FSW.leidenuniv.nl so there is a gap between brain and behaviour, which is very intriguing. research. It all creates lots of opportunities So it’s not as simple as intervening on to look at the mechanisms, the processes that pathway with a sniff of oxytocin of how exactly parents are influencing when your baby starts crying. children in their development, but we Exactly. We can’t really connect the three should refrain from using those types of parts of the equation to each other… devices for their own sake, because it’s that’s not unique to our lab, in the fMRI fancy, because it’s creating these nice area the dominant paradigm is looking at pictures. It’s always a means to a goal and the brain as a dependent variable, so what that goal is to understand better what happens in the brain is the end product of happens between parents and children a series of stimuli. For me this is totally and to know more about how to intervene unimportant, because what happens in families with an environment that is between your ears, no child or infant will not so great for the child to grow up in. ever see. What’s important is how specific In terms of creating positive brain activity is expressed in behaviour. environments, what do you think we I’m interested in parenting, in child can learn from the Scandinavians, behaviour, I would like to know how given that we’re here in Sweden? In brain activation affects parenting style and the UK I think people look to here for how it’s made visible to the child, shaping an example of how it should be done; the course of development. That’s really whereas in the UK some people say a big puzzle still, and not even addressed ‘we go out to work and get paid badly in a lot of the neuroscientific studies on so that we can pay other people badly parenting.

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to look after our children badly’. In Scandinavia the parents really seem to have the choice to be at home, both parents, to care for their infant in the first year of life. In the UK and other countries, maternity and particularly paternity leave is very brief, so people are obliged to have other forms of care. From the perspective of attachment theory there’s a misunderstanding around the concept of monotropy. There’s lots of evidence that children are able to grow up in a network of attachment relationships. Sarah Hrdy has written about the survival value of alloparenting. It takes more than one person simply to collect all the food needed to have a child growing up to a reproductive age. You need a village to raise a child. So nothing against more caretakers in the environment of the child. The point is that in the first year of life, children are easily overwhelmed by all kinds of stimuli, they need more structure than older children. They are dependent on the moderation of stress by persons in the environment that they can rely upon. Attachment figures are in fact external stress moderators for infants in the first year of life. Now if you put them into group care, that’s really quite some stressful experience. Some children won’t be bothered at all, depending on their temperament, but others will be. If parents don’t have the choice of staying at home, I think that’s bad, that’s not enough options for parents of susceptible children who might need to be at home. The ‘orchids’? Maybe, yes. So that’s what I find distressing in the US, the UK, in Holland, that parents don’t have the freedom to choose. The second issue is of course quality of care. You can have bad care in both family and daycare environments with detrimental effects on the most susceptible children. In Scandinavian countries they seem to have strong regulations, and monitoring of them, to keep quality of care high. That’s a lesson we should learn. Young children are worth this investment, according to economists like Heckman. You’ve researched a huge range of topics, from the aftermath of genocide through sleeping children to adoption. What’s the common thread, what values drive you in that work? The most important perspective is the influence of the environment, parenting and the family context on child

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development. You know of course the book by Judith Harris, that parents are not important at all because it’s all genes which drives development? There’s now a very popular book in Holland by Dick Swaab called We Are Our Brains. So in the past 20 years we witness a very strong main current that defines child development as a kind of autonomic process driven by genes and brain structures, with only marginal influence for the environment – prenatally, maybe, but whether after birth the work is really done, that’s what I doubt.

reading

That recovery, that resilience, brings us back to the positive and negative effects of the environment… it’s not too late to intervene. Differential susceptibility theory makes clear that some children are quite robust, it doesn’t matter too much what environment they’re raised in as long as it meets minimum standards. That’s quite hopeful because there’s quite a few ‘just

Bakermans-Kranenburg, M.J. & Van IJzendoorn, M.H. (2011). Differential susceptibility to rearing environment depending on dopamine-related genes. Development and Psychopathology, 23, 39–52. Bakermans-Kranenburg, M.J. & Van IJzendoorn, M.H. (2013). Sniffing around oxytocin. Translational Psychiatry, 3 e258. doi:10.1038/tp.2013.34 Van IJzendoorn, M.H. & Bakermans-Kranenburg, M.J. (2012). Differential susceptibility experiments: Going beyond correlational evidence. Developmental Psychology, 48, 769–774.

JIM WEST/REPORTDIGITAL.CO.UK

So you’re driven to counter that at a personal level as well as a scientific level? Neglect of the environment is a big misunderstanding and, in the end children suffer… That’s what drives me. If you follow it through, with the brain as ultimate cause of any developmental process, you can’t even criticise that children grow up in an orphanage environment. We did studies in orphanages in different parts of the world, and what we see is that for every single month they stay in that environment there is a bigger lag in their development of weight, height and head circumference compared to their peers growing up in families. Cognitive development goes into the range of mental retardation. If they are adopted, you see a tremendous catchup in cognitive development, IQ recovers to a normal level, a difference of 15–20 IQ points. This would be hard to explain on the basis of genes and brains being the causal drivers of development.

taking you next? There’s distressingly little experimental research done on gene by environment interactions. We were the first to do a gene by environment experiment – changing the environment and seeing how that interacts with genes. It’s so much more powerful statistically. We have to work on better assessments of the environment, better assessments of genotype (for example genetic pathways), but also better designs to be able to really test and examine differential susceptibility and gene by environment interplay in general. So what we would like to do are large-scale experimental studies in which we have a closer look at the mechanism itself. We plan to use fMRI as a pre- and post-test assessment, to see if differences in brain activation mediate the effects of our intervention on the behaviour of parents and children. It is trying to get a more detailed and mechanistic view of how interventions work more effectively in certain subgroups of participants who are more open to the environment. I think we’re going to continue our work with the oxytocin sniffs, because it’s intriguing how it is moderated by childhood experiences. It’s still shown in only three or four experimental studies. This is shaky in terms of the Potential is going to be wasted if we feel it’s assessment of childhood experiences, only genes and brains that create development so the first step will be to see how it is moderated by adult attachment representations, but it would be great if we could also include it in longitudinal part of those who study the environment. studies where we may observe negative You need a concept like differential childhood experiences moderating the susceptibility to study, in detail, the effects of oxytocin. interactions between the two facets.

good enough’ environments around. But there are also a lot of children who are very open to environmental pressures, these orchid children, who would really flourish in a better environment. That potential is going to be wasted if we feel it’s only genes and brains that create development. It’s a waste of talent, a waste of potential, if we are seduced by a deterministic view of child development. Genes are important, but it’s the interplay with the environment, and too often that’s lip service – on the part of those who study the genes, and on the

Have you had your own behavioural genes assayed, or would you not think that’s important because it all depends on the interplay anyway? These concepts, genes and environment, they all work on the level of samples, they don’t work on the level of the individual. It’s a misunderstanding if you feel one might predict the individual course of life on the basis of candidate genes, one gene in more than 20,000, without any insight into the environment… but even if you had exact information about the environment past and present, I still think on the individual level prediction would be quite disappointing. Looking to your own future, can you predict where this research path is

Is there a lot of funding in that area? We just received a seven million euro grant from the national science foundation to conduct experimental studies on differential susceptibility. But the pharmaceutical industry is not really interested in our oxytocin research. I just read Ben Goldacre’s Bad Pharma and felt lucky that industry does not see any profit in oxytocin. Maybe this is the reason why published results of oxytocin studies are diverging and sometimes disappointing. Our recent meta-analysis in Translational Psychiatry shows the problems of clinical applications of oxytocin. I love to do independent research because it is difficult enough without a big company looking over your shoulder and having an interest in the outcome.

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Annual Conference 2014 The keynote speakers for the conference are: Professor Sir Simon Wessely best known for his work on unexplained symptoms, syndromes and military health

Ben Shephard a military and medical historian, author and documentary maker

Susan van Scoyoc a psychologist specialising in psychotherapy, has worked within the legal system for over a decade

Professor Marinus van IJzendoorn recipient of awards for his research on attachment and emotion regulation across the life-span

Professor John Aggleton uses anatomical, behavioural and clinical methods to understand how brain regions interact

Registration is open – earlybird rates are available until 27 March Our programme timetable is now available to download

7-9 May 2014 International Convention Centre, Birmingham

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CAREERS

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A good nose for learning Ian Florance interviews Miles Thomas about his varied career and what brought him to educational psychology

contacted Miles Thomas about an interview when I stumbled over his website www.winepsych.com. How did he get involved in thinking about the links between psychology and wine? ‘It’s all the Psychologist Editor’s fault! When I was on the Psychologist Policy Committee, Jon Sutton’s excellent advice was to write about what you’re interested in. Hence my 2008 Psychologist piece ‘On vines and minds’. It has led to some really wonderful opportunities, but I have to make sure I don’t get too distracted from my professional role as an educational psychologist.’ I reassured Miles that I wanted to concentrate more on his role as Academic

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and Professional Tutor on the professional doctorate for trainee educational psychologists at the Stratford campus of the University of East London (UEL) and his work as an educational psychologist in a London borough. We begin with some background. ‘I was born in West Germany but moved to London when I was one, and then to Brighton. I think family experiences strongly affect psychologists’ thinking and approach; having three younger brothers and sisters when I was in my twenties certainly influenced my interest in child development. Books were also important. My first degree was in English and American literature. I was fascinated by post-war US writers like Saul Bellow and John Updike, among others. A major theme of their work is unpacking the psychology of masculinity. Poets like Lowell, Plath and Hughes also reflected intellectuals’ continued interest in reflection and analysis. I wrote my dissertation on humour in the work of Martin Amis. My work now is underpinned by a belief that it is healthy to have fun and that humour is a very useful defence mechanism when things get tough.There is also a very clear link between my love of stories and my increasing interest in narrative therapy and narrative analysis in my work. I guess for me, it all comes down to useful questions and useful stories – the ones we tell ourselves and others.’ Miles took a year out during his degree, working in Brighton then on a farm in Southern Ontario. ‘Those were

my Ken Kesey years! I lived with Native Americans and learnt a lot about myself, and culture, in what was a slightly lawless environment. But I went back to finish my degree and did a number of holiday jobs like picking strawberries and working on building sites.’ After his degree Miles went to Madrid, learnt the Berlitz language teaching method and then taught English in Seville. ‘I loved teaching, and that experience led directly to my role at the university today. I had a lot of free time. The Seville school was over-staffed for a start-up, so I had time to see the local football team, Real Betis, and to go to festivals. I boxed and climbed with Spanish friends and did my best to learn the language and explore the country. I would have liked to stay there but had to move to London to earn some money.’ Miles got a job as a typesetter in a City print organisation, printing Japanese bond offers. By the end of the time in that job he was running a desktop publishing part of the company producing various trade titles. Throughout our conversation, Miles evinced huge energy and curiosity. I suggested that the repetitive and structured jobs he took, like tobacco and strawberry picking and typesetting, might have served as a balance to his inquisitive and action-oriented nature. ‘One summer I had a job cleaning bricks and I got immense satisfaction at seeing the required pile of very clean bricks at the end of the day. So, maybe there is some link there – the need to balance enthusiasm with structure…’

‘We forget how resilient people are’ The other thing that struck me is that Miles had, so far, not mentioned an attempt to train in psychology in a conventional way. ‘During my job in typesetting I got more and more interested in what motivated people. Various personal events led me to start seeking a vocation and, psychologically, to own myself. With hindsight I think

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I was, for various reasons, living a damage narrative and needed to outgrow that. I think our society has lived in misery too long, forgetting how resilient human beings are. I think that’s a very positive message for psychologists.’ Miles was able to work part-time in print and publishing and completed a postgraduate conversion course in psychology at London Guildhall University. ‘Anyway, as I mentioned earlier I’d loved teaching so my next move was to take a PGCE at Bath, where I was hugely influenced by Jack Whitehead’s view on action research. Then I taught at a South London school for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties. Most had been excluded from schools and experienced a range of extreme social challenges. Many were emotionally resilient despite this and were doing their best to get by.’ What caused him to train in educational psychology? ‘The educational psychologist at the school I worked in, used to come into work on a motorbike which looked pretty cool. But what really impressed me was a conversation I had with him about a pupil with whom I’d had a good relationship which seemed to have decayed. The more I talked with Shane about this the more I realised he was using a psychological framework to analyse the situation, and that fascinated me. I later came to understand that he was using a solution-focused approach. This has become key to my own research and practice.’ Later, Miles started asking me questions then stopped and said, ‘Sorry, I think another reason I and other people take up psychology is that we’re naturally nosey. I love questions!’

‘I believe in inclusion’ ‘So, I decided I wanted to apply for a master’s in educational psychology, which was the professional training route at that time. The four courses in London were at University College, the Institute of Education, the Tavistock Clinic and the University of East London. They all had different approaches to the subject from very scientific and analytic to very classroom-based. I chose UEL because it seemed to take a very socially committed and pragmatic view of the subject. It seemed to me to be about making a difference. That appealed to me. I am pragmatic in tutoring students. I want them to own their own practice and be the best psychologists they can be. We concentrate on strengths rather than deficits, on the students’ own interests rather than some predetermined criteria.

We’re not creating a specific type of psychologist but a diverse range of psychologists that reflect diversity in society. Evidence-based practice is central to this. Good psychologists evaluate the effectiveness of what they do; they know what they’re doing and what the rationale for doing it is. There’s another aspect of this approach to teaching and tutoring. Just as we need to be aware of and address power imbalances between psychologists and their clients, we have to address the same thing between students and academic staff. I am interested in problem-based learning where the tutor is a facilitator in the learning process. My fellowship of the Higher Education Academy was a direct result of developing this innovative approach to learning on our programme.’ Miles is not only a tutor but a practising educational psychologist with responsibility for a small patch of schools. ‘I see children every week, working in one primary and two secondary schools. A number of beliefs inform what I do. I think part of my role is to be hopeful for kids, especially the most disadvantaged. I also believe in inclusion, that local schools should strive to effectively meet the needs of all the children in their community. It’s all about school ethos. I’m not the sort of psychologist who exclusively searches for the cause of a condition inside a person. Environmental and social factors have to be taken into account. I try to be mindful about the way in which disability is constructed. Our society has a strange fixation with making people disabled rather than removing barriers that disable them or changing the social conditions which maintain “illness”. The debates around the new DSM are well overdue and could really herald more progressive and empowering ways of working with clients.’ I tell Miles that when I worked for a major test publishing company in the early 1980s, educational psychologists’ jobs seemed to be narrowing to becoming the gatekeepers for educational provision and budgets. They tested children and statemented them. Many found this a terrible diminution of their role. ‘Yes, in that model money was attached to a particular child, a move which was often justified by the identification of a particular “condition”. The authority I work in convinced some parents to give up statements so that the school could use resources more flexibly. It was a brave experiment, but this year new legislation will redefine the statutory process. Hopefully this will empower parents and schools, but it still looks like a

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predominantly deficit model. Local authorities, along with the welfare state and unions are being dismantled and the nature of our work is inevitably changing. This provides threats and opportunities with more psychological services having to tout for work. But I think there are reasons for optimism about educational psychology. We’re trying to produce psychologists who can find employment and funding in many new places. There are more opportunities now to offer training and therapy in a school context – mindfulness and positive psychology are just two examples of movements which have influenced schools and which psychologists can introduce to both pupils and staff. Schools are commissioning much more directly.’ Are there other issues, more generally, that you feel about the practice and teaching of psychology? ‘At UEL we cross-pollinate amongst the applied professional psychology doctorates. We are grouped together and we teach on each other’s courses. We see ourselves as practising applied psychologists who are helping others to start practising in ethical and evidence-informed ways. Our clinical and counselling colleagues also recognise the limitations of deficit models, and we draw upon similar theoretical and conceptual frameworks. That model, reducing the barriers and divisions which are historically based on the buildings in which psychologists practice, is something the profession as a whole could learn from.’

I just can’t resist asking… And how, briefly, did Miles get interested in the psychology of wine? ‘It started when we used to go to South of France a lot and when I go somewhere I like to immerse myself in the local culture. We toured vineyards and met incredibly passionate winemakers. I became fascinated with the way in which context can influence our enjoyment of wine. I also bought a house in east London because I wanted my kids to have more space and to make my commute shorter. It had a cellar and it seemed silly not to use it for something a bit more fun than coal…’ At which point I’ll draw a veil over whether we explored the cellar and sampled its contents or not… I Miles Thomas’s book Wine and Psychology: How We Think About the Wine We Drink is due to be published by Wiley-Blackwell in 2014. Ian Florance’s ebook, A Glass Rope, is available now.

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Social psychology in the lion’s den Jackie Abell is Reader in Psychology at Coventry University and Director of Research for the African Lion and Environmental Research Trust, based in Livingstone, Zambia f you visit the savannahs of Africa you expect to see lions. However, the chances of doing so are rapidly diminishing. In 1975 there were around 200,000 lions roaming around Africa. In 2012, that number was estimated to be around 32,000. Other reports suggest this figure may be as low as 16,000 (tinyurl.com/b98f9g7). The African lion (Panthera leo) is currently classified as ‘vulnerable’ on the IUCN Red List. If this trend continues, the lion will be extinct within the next 40 years, which will have fundamental consequences for Africa’s ecosystem. In response, a range of conservation initiatives are under way to conserve and restore wild lion populations. Conservationists don’t necessarily agree on how to do it, but they do agree that we need to act fast to protect this globally iconic and important African predator before it disappears. Conserving the African lion could be regarded as a problem for the biologists

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and the environmentalists to solve. However, if we consider why numbers of wild lion populations are declining, we begin to see why social psychology and other disciplines should get involved. The human population of sub-Saharan Africa has seen a rapid increase from 229 million in 1960, to 863 million in 2010. It is anticipated that it will reach 1.75 billion by 2050. Consequently the African lion finds itself living cheek by jowl with its human neighbours. Its habitat has decreased and fragmented, and its prey base diminished. The subsequent intensification of human–wildlife conflict, as man and lion compete for space and resources, has led to the swift decline of this species. Yet, here’s the rub. Conservationists are asking some of the poorest communities in the world, who rely on subsistence farming and their livestock, to tolerate living alongside those lions that remain, and to help increase lion populations. How

sympathetic would you be to a species which threatens your family and your livelihood? Where money is scarce, conserving a dangerous predator is not going to be high on the political and cultural agenda. Unless people benefit from living next door to lions, they will not conserve them. So, conservation of a species is not simply about the animal we’re trying to protect, but is also a social, cultural, economic and political issue. Now we begin to see why psychologists and social scientists are needed to offer their skills and knowledge if we want the lion to continue its reign. So how did I get into this? Well, yes I’ve seen The Lion King and the opening song gave me goose-bumps (is it just me?), but it was more than that which brought me to Africa. I’d always wanted to work with big cats, but I didn’t recall ever being taught about conservation or cats in my psychology training. I’d been taught the works of Henri Tajfel rather

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than George Schaller. As well as frantically catching up on my reading of Schaller’s 1972 book Serengeti Lion, I also read two things which prompted me to think about how social psychology might be useful for conservation generally and of the African lion particularly. The first was a 2009 American Psychologist paper by Alan Kazdin on psychological science’s contribution to a sustainable environment, in which he asked psychologists why they were so reluctant to contribute to resolving one of the biggest problems of all – environmental degradation and the loss of biodiversity. As he rightly points out, this is a truly multidisciplinary issue. I thought he had an important point, and one that spoke directly to my subdiscipline of social psychology. Social psychologists are perfectly positioned to apply their knowledge and methods to better understand the human factors that facilitate and hinder protection of the environment and biodiversity. Social psychology finds itself under increasing pressure to apply its methods and knowledge to the real world. What bigger real-world issue is there than the environment and the protection of biodiversity? The second was the 2009 book Conservation Psychology by Susan Clayton and Gene Myers. The authors propose that if we want people to do anything about the environment and biodiversity we need to ensure they give a damn. Giving a damn is what social psychology is about. It’s what makes us social. Whether it’s helping one another, measuring and changing attitudes and behaviours, assessing and combating prejudices, understanding human social cognition, the role of identity, or even trying to reduce conflict and aggression, social psychologists have occupied themselves with the conditions under which we will give a damn and how that impacts upon society. We have developed an array of scientifically rigorous techniques to investigate such complex social phenomena. In conservation, we can examine the conditions under which we will give a damn about a species other than our own. And so in 2010 I began my journey and volunteered for ALERT, a conservation charity that adopts a responsible development approach to protect and restore African wild lion populations, to find out for myself how I could contribute. In 2013 I was offered the position of Director of Research. ALERT is involved in multidisciplinary research that includes animal behaviour, changing attitudes towards predators, education and

awareness, facilitating communities in finding more sustainable ways of living, helping local people find non-lethal solutions to problems with predators, empowerment of women, and the provision of adequate health care. My role is to ensure this research is carried out with scientific and ethical rigour and to analyse, scrutinise and publicise our findings. Most importantly of all, our research must be working for the benefit of people and wildlife in Africa. The responsibility and scale is substantial, but so are the rewards. There is no such thing as a typical day for me. I could be writing a survey or interview schedule to assess the attitudes of a community or Park operatives towards lions, helping conservationists to design a pilot study to implement nonlethal methods to prevent human–wildlife conflict, or analysing field data to see whether a pride of lions is able to hunt adequately to sustain themselves without human intervention and is sufficiently well-bonded. I’ve recently been applying social network analysis (widely used in the social sciences to examine human relationships) to understand associations and cohesion within a lion pride. Some lions are more socially connected than others, which is crucial for bondedness and cooperation within a pride. On the other hand, I may be in meetings with lion experts to discuss conservation strategies for lions, tracking wild lions that are causing problems for local people, contributing to the organisation

Local people of Livingstone join in the World Lion Day parade, 10 August 2013

of a lion awareness initiative for local schoolchildren, or helping a field biologist work out incentives to discourage farmers from grazing their livestock inside a national park that contains predators. What I have realised is the value of quantitative and qualitative research methods training we receive as social psychologists, as well as our knowledge about human behaviour. To put the principles of Leon Festinger’s cognitive

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dissonance theory into practice or to see and understand how availability heuristics, confirmation biases and false consensus can operate as an obstacle to conservation, is not only useful but is a constant reminder that social psychology is based in the real world. Effective conservation demands community cooperation. A community must feel part of a conservation effort, and it must work for them. Positive attitudes and behaviour towards conservation can occur within a community when the benefits received are appropriate for them. Gordon Allport famously stated that attitudes are the most indispensable concept in social psychology. In conservation, they are crucial. There are challenges of course. As with all science, people have different ideas about how things should be done. Conservation is no exception. However, that debate should always drive things forward not backwards. There are other challenges too. Working in a foreign country with unfamiliar cultural traditions is a steep learning curve. Luckily I am surrounded by local people who can advise and steer me in the right direction. Working with local people who have local knowledge is crucial if you want to be able to work effectively here. In parts of Africa, administration and bureaucracy can feel painfully slow and inefficient at times. Technological resources can be difficult to get hold of. But for all that, Africa is a beautiful continent with incredible people and wildlife, and I love it. I have aspirations for the African lion and my discipline. For the African lion, I want to see its numbers restored. I want this magnificent animal to roam free from persecution across Africa, as nature intended. Conservation is controversial. When it’s the lion, it’s doubly controversial. The lion is a global symbol, so emotions can run high when dealing with such an iconic animal. For social psychology, I want the discipline to become a little less anthropocentric. I’m not asking that we all march into conservation (although it would be fantastic if some did) but that we focus more on the relationships we have with other living things. The social world is bigger than ourselves. We have much to contribute to the fight against environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity, and we have much to offer conservation efforts. I also hope that social psychology is recognised for the valuable discipline it is, and is allowed to roam free and do what it does best: understand the complex social world we live in.

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