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psychologist vol 23 no 5
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What makes a good politician? Jo Silvester talks selection and training on the eve of the Election
Incorporating Psychologist Appointments ÂŁ5 or free to members of The British Psychological Society
forum 362 news 372 careers 426 looking back 444
feeling like a fraud 380 can we salvage the concept of trauma? 386 the puzzle of blushing 390 methods: keeping it simple 398
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The British Psychological Society Contact The British Psychological Society St Andrews House 48 Princess Road East Leicester LE1 7DR tel 0116 254 9568 fax 0116 227 1314
Welcome to The Psychologist, the monthly publication of The British Psychological Society. It provides a forum for communication, discussion and controversy among all members of the Society, and aims to fulfil the main object of the Royal Charter, ‘to promote the advancement and diffusion of a knowledge of psychology pure and applied’. It is supported by www.thepsychologist.org.uk, where you can view this month’s issue, search the archive, listen, debate, contribute, subscribe, advertise, and more.
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Associate Editors Articles Vaughan Bell, Kate Cavanagh, Harriet Gross, Marc Jones, Rebecca Knibb, Charlie Lewis, Wendy Morgan, Tom Stafford, Miles Thomas, Monica Whitty, Barry Winter Conferences Sandie Cleland, Sarah Haywood International Nigel Foreman, Asifa Majid Interviews Nigel Hunt, Lance Workman History of Psychology Julie Perks
The Psychologist Policy Committee Paul Redford (Chair), Nik Chmiel, Olivia Craig, Helen Galliard, Jeremy Horwood, David Lavallee, Catherine Loveday, Stephen McGlynn, Sheelagh Strawbridge, Henck van Bilsen, Peter Wright, and Associate Editors
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forum electronic record keeping; educational training; discrimination; and more
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THE ISSUE
news and digest fingerprints; Royal Society funding report; Milgram replication; politics and progress; behavioural economics; and nuggets from the Research Digest
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media reflections on the recent ‘bullying helpline’ furore, from Cary Cooper
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With the General Election almost upon us, we catch up with Professor Jo Silvester to talk about her work in the selection and development of politicians. Professor Silvester is Director of the Organisational Psychology Research Group at City University London, and she has some timely insights into the similarities and differences between politics and other occupations. At a time when we are bombarded with declarations of competence by our prospective leaders, it is perhaps appropriate that we also feature the impostor phenomenon: the sense that many of us have that we are just ‘winging it’. The author of that piece, Dr Christian Jarrett, is certainly the real deal: he recently won ‘Best blog – Psychology’ in the international Research Blogging Awards for the Society’s Research Digest blog, and our congratulations go to him. Dr Jon Sutton (Managing Editor)
Feeling like a fraud Christian Jarrett examines the psychology of the impostor phenomenon
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Can we salvage the concept of psychological trauma? Richard J. McNally has some advice for those revising the diagnostic manuals
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The puzzle of blushing Ray Crozier on an elusive phenomenon with implications for understanding emotion, expression and social anxiety
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Methods: Keeping it simple Christopher Peterson and Nansook Park on the lasting impact of minimally sufficient research
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book reviews street prostitution; active listening; autism; history of neuroscience; selfawareness; and quantitative psychological research
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society 406 President’s column; Research Digest award; the work of the Society’s Policy Support Unit; new CRB check benefit for members; and more careers 426 a personal view on overthrowing collective impostor syndrome, from Sarah Dale; the light-bulb moment that led Jan Stannard into psychology; the latest jobs, and how to advertise looking back memories of working with the great Jean Piaget, from Joan Bliss
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one on one …with Sheila Payne
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read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk
What makes a good politician? Jo Silvester talks selection and performance, on the eve of the General Election 394
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Pushing the electronic sealed envelope We were delighted that our paper on electronic records in the NHS (available via www.bps.org.uk/dcppubs) has created sufficient interest to attract correspondence in The Psychologist (Forum, April 2010) The thrust of Rowena Mattan’s letter was that our paper seemed ‘to be saying that our best tactic is to adapt gracefully to this new reality’ (her words), based on our comment about the introduction of electronic record systems: ‘Are we too accepting of what is happening? On the contrary we think not… future generations may well ask what all the fuss was about.’ Mattan’s primary concerns relate to the impact of electronic records on confidentiality, that these systems may force record-keeping practice against the way psychotherapy works and that consequently, psychologists ‘should make a fuss’. To set the context, our paper was published (two years ago) so as to enable NHS clinical psychologists to be informed of developments in electronic record systems and to be prepared for the introduction of such systems in their services. Our basic position was, and remains, that such systems will be widely if not universally introduced in the NHS,
irrespective of the views of psychologists or psychotherapists, and that practitioners must engage constructively with managers and system developers to try and ensure that such systems neither distort clinical practice nor compromise the needs of patients. This will be particularly important if, as is happening, systems are ‘paperless’. To this end, our paper described briefly and referred to another (also available via www.bps.org.uk/dcppubs), which provides a systematic framework to enable psychologists and other professionals in mental health services to assess and evaluate the systems being introduced or already in use in their services. It is intended that the use of the assessment scheme will ensure that neither patient care nor professional practice is distorted as a consequence of the introduction of such systems. Further, the information it provides can be used both for staff education (about the features of good clinical systems) and, more importantly, to support constructive engagement with IT managers and system developers aimed at improving the clinical relevance of systems. The issue of confidentiality and effective controls for all sensitive patient materials, notes and
special documents such as completed psychological test forms – both particularly pertinent to psychological and mental health services – are salient and central in both publications. Indeed, it is remarkable that our concerns seem to have been missed by Mattan and, contrary to her reading, we do recommend ‘making a fuss’, albeit in the form of informed, consensual and constructive engagement. Mattan further criticises the paper by implying that we accept that all of the record will be shared. On the contrary, we propose the introduction of a mechanism, an electronic ‘sealed envelope’ as part of the record, originally suggested by the NHS for the Summary Care Record. This takes the form of a ‘sealed’ section that should be available in the Electronic Clinical Record, the detailed record of clinical care kept by those delivering services. Accompanying the ‘sealed’ system would be controlled-access protocols to ensure protection for information deemed sensitive by the client. Given that there are at least 14 references to the notion of ‘sealing’ in the document, we can’t understand how even a cursory reading of the document could fail to miss our concerns about, and
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Meaning of money
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Stephen Lea discusses the role of money in his interview (‘Scams, squirrels and drug money’, February 2010) saying that money is not just a tool – as ‘lots of psychological theories’ seem to suggest. Instead he suggests it is a drug, as ‘a lot of behaviours towards money…are odd in many ways’. If Professor Lea had broadened his research to include philosophy, which used to be until recently a
joint pursuit with psychology, he would have found a rich and fruitful source pertaining to the definition and meaning of money in society. Karl Marx, philosopher and economist in the 19th century, analysed the fascinating complexity of money, in greater detail than perhaps anyone else, in his ‘theory of labour’ (Economic and Philosophic
Manuscript of 1844). He explains that money derives only from human labour, it is
These pages are central to The Psychologist’s role as a forum for discussion and debate, and we welcome your contributions.
Send e-mails marked ‘Letter for publication’ to psychologist@bps.org.uk; or write to the Leicester office.
Letters over 500 words are less likely to be published. The editor reserves the right to edit or publish extracts from letters. Letters to the editor are not normally acknowledged, and space does
for most people the ‘alienated ability of mankind’. The profit derived by a company boss from the labour of its employees gives the former an unparalleled freedom: As Marx says: ‘Money can turn one thing into its opposite, if I am ugly, I can buy myself the most beautiful of women. Therefore I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness – its
not permit the publication of every letter received. However, see www.thepsychologist.org.uk to contribute to our discussion forum (members only).
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suggested solutions to, the issues raised by Mattan. We are concerned too that Mattan’s account of therapy professionals’ behaviour in the world of paper records (e.g. maintaining confidentiality unless there is a risk issue), ignores the current legal state of affairs. Within the NHS, every piece of paper, and indeed every thought it contains, are the property of the Secretary of State, and subject to potential access by NHS employees or a Court Order. Electronic records make this easier – one of the reasons for our papers and recommendations. Nevertheless, the issue of separate records for sensitive information, paper or electronic, is one that exercises practitioners, psychologists as managers and non-psychologist managers, as well as service clients. With paper records, it is easy to obfuscate. Electronic records have pushed the issues to the fore and these are now being actively addressed by psychology service managers and others in the Division of Clinical Psychology. Whether or not an accepted, imposed or even no solution emerges, remains to be seen. Michael Berger Department of Psychology Royal Holloway, University of London Adrian Skinner Department of Clinical Psychology North Yorkshire & York PCT
The ‘shoulder shrug’ of religion I would not dispute that ‘religion is a powerful human reality’ (Sara Savage, Careers, March 2010), but that does not necessarily make it a good thing. Racism is a powerful human reality too. Perhaps we need to confront the societal manifestations of our superstitious nature rather than finding ways to indulge them. The claims for good made by the religious are always immodest and unwarranted, the proper credit belonging to people. The innumerable harms including paedophile priests, 9/11, the spread of AIDS in Africa and stopping the eradication of polio to name but a few outweigh any conceivable advantage. Savage cites Piaget’s idea that the first way we know ourselves and the world is through our bodies; is it too much of
leap to suggest that we then experience it through our evolved minds? These are complete with many compromises not specifically aimed at ‘truth’ – we have developed tools to see further, that is what science is. We are orbiting one of 200 billion stars in our
galaxy. We have not evolved to comprehend such vast size, but with imagination we can. Religion represents the ultimate paucity of imagination and offers no predictive or useful
explanation of anything. At best it is a solipsistic shrug of the shoulders. We seem to be expected to be ‘sensitive’ and not point this out, allowing superstition and oppression to carry on almost unchecked. I hope that readers, trained as they are in critical thought, will not be fooled by attempts to allow explanations (which understandably seemed satisfactory in the Bronze Age) along with their institutions built by man to divide us and get in the way of our capacity for progress and wonder. I would go so far as to suggest that people connected with psychology should not encourage the recourse to magic and fantasy in some misguided attempt at ‘inclusiveness’. Niall Scott Stone Staffordshire
Hard-wired to see purpose in life deterrent power – is nullified by money.’ This makes apparent how deep and vital people’s feelings and motivations in relation to money – both for those who have it and for those who don’t – necessarily are. Strikes are a case in point. So is the whole history of labour struggles for an eighthour day, paid holidays, etc. Research into money without exploring what its origins are, namely human labour, is likely to remain shallow and vague. Those who study it ought not to forget the old masters who have done this over a century ago. Greta Sykes Institute of Education, London
I greeted Jesse Bering’s article on the ‘nonexistent purpose of people’ (April) with mixed views. On the positive side, he draws attention to the evidence that human minds are biased towards seeing purpose in their surroundings, and that this will lead to a natural tendency towards creationist ideas – that there must be a purposeful God creating the complex world we see before us. I believe it is important to be aware of this and work to address it, rather than to see it as a lack of reasoning or something that would simply be minimised by a scientific education. On the negative side, I was surprised that Dr Bering regards evolution by natural selection as purposeless. He seems to be looking for purpose outside the organism. But the sense of purpose is within the organism – its purpose across an evolutionary timescale is to survive and reproduce. This also applies to an individual organism, human or animal. They have their own intrinsic purposes – for example to keep safe; to keep satiated;
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to maintain proximity to conspecifics. There is no need to look to a creator, yet there is purposefulness within people. To many people the idea of ‘purpose’ indicates some kind of homunculus that is not explained. However this is also not the case. Purposeful cognitive systems can be modelled mathematically using networks of negative feedback loops, each with its own internal standard, or goal, that it seeks to achieve and maintain through the modification of behaviour. This is the essence of cybernetics, which is incorporated into contemporary control theories. Those interested in this blend of purposefulness and mechanism may wish to see demonstrations at www.pctweb.org. Taken together, it is not surprising if we are hard-wired to see purpose everywhere – it is part of life, and we don’t need a belief in a grand creator to appreciate it. Warren Mansell School of Psychological Sciences University of Manchester
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Training for educational psychologists in We write as first year trainee educational psychologists from a variety of programmes in England. At the time of writing, we are currently unsure of whether we will be employed this time next year.
NOTICEBOARD
I Wanted: Spare neuropsychological tests for psychologists in Colombia, Latin America. Do you have a past edition of a psychological test, maybe an orphaned stimulus booklet or manual, one that’s too worn out to be used regularly, or simply one that’s going spare? Our department could make use of them for training, evaluation and test development. Anything considered. Vaughan Bell Vaughan.Bell@kcl.ac.uk
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authorities, whilst others have no allegiance to any single authority. With the added pressure on councils to make budget cuts due to the current economic climate, our survey of principal educational psychologists indicates that the numbers of available trainee vacancies is likely to fall significantly from last year’s levels. This puts huge amounts of pressure on trainees in terms of job procurement and possibilities of relocation, not to mention the financial pressure/loss of working rights for those who are funded by a bursary versus a salaried position. We
Response from Harriet Martin, Chair of the Division of Educational Psychology (DECP): Currently all trainee educational psychologists (TEPs) receive a bursary during their first year of training. In their second and third years TEPs must apply to local authorities for positions. They are either employed and paid a salary or remain a full time student and receive a bursary. Fees for all three years are paid through the Children’s Workforce Development Council (CWDC), which has responsibility for administering the scheme and commissioning training places. Funds to pay for the first-year bursary and fees for all three years are raised by the CWDC through a voluntary subscription scheme. All local authorities are asked to pay a sum linked to the number of pupils in their schools. Local
authorities have become increasingly unable and/or unwilling to pay their subscriptions. In the current climate of growing financial austerity they are also less able to employ/provide a bursary placement for second and third year TEPs. The DECP, together with the other key organisations, the Association of Educational Psychologists (AEP) and the National Association of Principal Educational Psychologists (NAPEP), are all extremely concerned about the current situation. At a recent meeting of the three organisations, who meet regularly, we all agreed that educational psychology should become a fully doctorate profession and that the only viable, long-term solution to the funding difficulties is to establish a centralised system.
hope that there will be enough posts for all 120 or so Year 1 candidates nationally to continue their training. This is not the case for similar training courses; e.g. clinical psychology training, where the Strategic Health Authority funds trainees; or educational psychology training in Scotland, Wales TIM SANDERS
I Through my work with learningdisabled male offenders I have come to realise the significance of education and knowledge to selfesteem and motivation to change. A year ago I developed a literacy strategy to enhance the communication skills of the clients with whom I was working to improve access to and outcomes of therapy. Presently I am working jointly with a social anthropologist and consultant clinical psychologist to develop and teach an emotional literacy strategy for learning-disabled offenders that addresses the need to recognise, understand, communicate and predict the consequences of our own emotions and those of others. There is very little research and even less resource in this area that is appropriate for use with individuals with varied offending and psychiatric history; hence, I am interested in the work and views of other mental health professionals working with offenders in a similar way. Theresa Turner theresa_turner_uk@yahoo.com
Despite significant discussion before the restructuring of the educational psychology training scheme from a oneyear master’s course to a threeyear doctorate in 2006, there seems to be a widening gap between what was hoped for and what has been realised. By this we refer to the lack of planning, funding and the subsequent uncertainty in which we currently find ourselves. While we are in a position of excitement, enthusiasm and eagerness as we embark on the first stage of developing careers as educational psychologists, our position also creates uncertainty, stress and frustration. Most trainees must secure their own posts for Years 2 and 3 with local authorities, and it is clear that the national situation at present is patchy and incoherent to say the least – with some courses running consortia associated with local
The three organisations have also all repeatedly pointed out that the three-year doctorate is funded centrally in Wales and Northern Ireland and that clinical psychologists in training are funded centrally and employed by strategic health authorities. The CWDC recognises these difficulties and inequities. It convenes the National Forum for Educational Psychology Training, where all interested parties are represented, including TEPs and the BPS, and has recently managed a working party to look at sustainable funding solutions for educational psychology training. However despite reports from these groups, lobbying, in particular by the AEP, and continuing discussion, central government
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n England
FORUM THE REAL WORLD
TIM SANDERS
and Northern Ireland, which is funded centrally. As these groups are funded by a central government scheme, we ask why this is not the case for educational psychologists in England? As an ageing profession, 6 per cent of the workforce is due to retire in the next three years, therefore there will clearly be a huge demand for educational psychologists if local authorities are to fulfil their statutory duties and truly improve outcomes for children and the people who care for and educate them. The current situation leads us to believe that this is not understood by central government, and the lack of agreement between professional organisations does not support our plight. We propose a national scheme to fund educational psychology training in England, in which all government, either central or local, would subscribe to
a single funding system that would not only more positively support trainees, but would also benefit local authorities by ensuring a steady stream of well-trained educational psychologists for children’s services. Surely the current system is highly flawed and unsustainable. Without a shared future in which training courses, professional organisations, local authorities and central government understand that a review of current processes is needed urgently for effective educational psychology training in England to continue, the road ahead for those entering the profession may be too uncertain to even take the first steps.
(specifically the Department for Children, Schools and Families) is still maintaining that funding should come from individual local authorities rather than from a central pot. All organisations will continue to press for a national scheme in whatever ways they can, as they have done since the doctoral training was first conceived. The DECP recognises that with every passing year the situation becomes more difficult and that the stress placed on TEPs by the uncertainty is not acceptable. It is partly because principal educational psychologists have been trying very hard to ensure places for all TEPs that the situation has become inconsistent. The same sum will provide for two TEPs on bursaries compared to one salaried position. Working together regionally can cut the
number of applications and interviews TEPs may need to go through. None of these in themselves provide a longterm solution but are simply ways of trying to keep the current, inadequate system working so that we can continue to train educational psychologists for the benefit of children and their families. Despite everything, graduate psychologists still want to work as educational psychologists. The quality and enthusiasm of current trainees and those who have recently qualified are very great. Evidence that educational psychologists can and do make a difference is clear and growing. The DECP, together with other organisations, will continue to do their best to ensure a long-term, sustainable solution to the funding of training.
Trevor Richards Norah Fry Research Centre University of Bristol and 80 other trainee EP signatories
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As we write this, the election has just been announced. As you read this, the result will be imminent. You will be enduring an endless stream of newsprint, of television debates, of opinion polls. Debate will soon turn to whether the media influenced our opinions significantly and whether the polls measured our opinions accurately. But perhaps these are the wrong questions to ask – a phenomenon that we cannot attribute to politicians and journalists without looking closer to home. Herbert Blumer famously complained that we human scientists concentrate so exclusively on the process of producing answers (hypothesis testing) that we almost entirely neglect the process of producing worthwhile questions (hypothesis generation). And, as the novelist Thomas Pynchon remarked in his Proverbs for Paranoids, if you get people asking the wrong questions, you don’t need to worry about the answers. To explain what we mean, consider the leadership debates. Like the election itself, these still lie in the future as we write. We can’t predict how the candidates will perform, but we can confidently predict that the key question that will dominate the press over the following days will be less about what Brown and Cameron said than about who came out on top. This is certainly true of the iconic Nixon–Kennedy debates. All we recall now is how Nixon looked shifty sweaty and swarthy, how Kennedy looked young, vigorous and open, and how Kennedy won the day – even though those who only heard the debate on radio as opposed to watching it on television adjudged Nixon the winner. The point here is that what concerns us in such debates is not so much what we thought ourselves. It is rather what we think that others thought of them (which is not always the same as what others did think of them). In asking ‘who won’ we are dealing with metaperceptions. And that matters, because in deciding what to think and – especially – what to do ourselves, we look to what other people, especially people like us, think and do. There is growing evidence, in a whole number of areas, that our sense of socially shared beliefs often impacts on people as much, if not more, than their own individual beliefs. Indeed, Julie Duck, Debbie Terry, Joanne Smith and Mike Hogg have shown us that individual attitudes only predict behaviour to the extent that one’s attitude reflects the perceived group norm. To give but one example, research conducted before the 2003 Gulf War showed that most Americans opposed armed intervention, but that most Americans believed that the majority supported armed intervention. It was the latter rather than the former which predicted their public actions. Clearly, Fox News and its like must take much of the blame (or, if you are George Bush/Dick Cheney/Donald Rumsfeld, the credit) for this. And there’s the rub. As recent research has established, mass media may not change a single person’s individual attitude but still have a massive impact on social affairs by changing our sense of what others think. This suggests that the question we ought to be asking after the election is not ‘did the media influence our opinions?’ but rather ‘did the media influence our sense of social norms?’. By the same token, we might move from asking ‘did the polls accurately measure our opinions?’ to ‘did the polls help form social norms?’. That way, we might get a better understanding of what will happen in the merry month of May. New questions for a new Britain. After all, this election is supposed to be all about change. Let us, as psychologists, take that personally. Steve Reicher is at the University of St Andrews. Alex Haslam is at the University of Exeter. Share your views on this and other ‘real world’ psychological issues – e-mail psychologist@bps.org.uk.
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‘This other Eden, demi-paradise’? My day job is in property and I am interested in the overlap with psychology. Each space we find our self in cannot be ignored, and where I live there seems to be an increasing lack of it. Developers in the UK have unique pressures. In each square kilometre an average of 246 human beings fight for space. In Australia the figure is 2.6. The European Commission has predicted that the population of the UK will grow from 61 million to 77 million in the next 50 years. What does all this do to us? We fight over extensions, blocking out light and views, and even our gardens and playing fields are seen as potential building plots.
Population density in England is already higher than any other country in Europe. It is highest in the South East, particularly areas in commuting distance of the capital. As we leave for the dreaded journey to work each morning, we fight for space on roads, trains, buses and in car parks. One of the biggest tests of our sanity has to be travelling on the claustrophobic London Underground, where our personal space is surrendered entirely. Conditions are dirty, smelly and crowded. Lighting is sterile and our ears are abused with all kinds of sounds. Phil Goodwin, Professor of Transport Policy, at the University of the West
of England, has said: ‘The flight or fight hormones are triggered, but we can’t do anything with them…so they burn up our insides.’ Suzy
prize crossword The winner will receive a £50 BPS Blackwell Book Token. If it’s you, perhaps you’ll spend it on something like this... Teaching Psychology in Higher Education, edited by Dominic Upton and Annie Trapp, uses the latest research in teaching and learning and draws upon the experiences and skills of key people in the field. The book presents effective, evidence-based practice and advice that will be invaluable for both experienced and new lecturers. Price £29.99 ISBN 978 1 4051 9459 2 Visit www.bpsblackwell.co.uk
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Send your entry (photocopies accepted) marked ‘prize crossword’, to the Leicester office (see inside front cover) deadline 7 june 2010. Winner of prize crossword no 50 Mary Cooper, Odcombe, Somerset no 50 solution Across 1 Methodologies, 8 Orals, 9 Van, 10 Atoll, 12 Soul-image, 13 Anima, 14 Stewart, 15 Suspect, 17 Impasto, 20 Ward off, 22 Noted, 24 Related to, 25 Lotto, 26 Noh, 27 Nonet, 28 Bob’s your uncle. Down 2 Erasure, 3 Hospitals, 4 Deviant, 5 Landers, 6 Ghana, 7 Emotive, 8 Obsessional, 11 Least-effort, 16 Serotonin, 18 Petitto, 19 Otranto, 20 Welcher, 21 Ordinal, 23 Drops
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Dittmar, a cognitive behavioural therapist and hypnotherapist, advises stressed clients to imagine they are enclosed in a blue egg with
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a flexible shell that cannot be broken as other commuters lean over, bump into and knock against them. Travelling to work by bus is often no better. Again space is at a premium. Commuting spaces are predominately designed for function, cramming in as many passengers as possible reigns over comfort or beauty. Windows are rarely clean enough to see out of and often steamed up by the breath of the cattle enclosed. If we choose to travel in our own vehicles, we sit, in traffic; occasionally opening our privacy glass to inhale fumes, view roadside litter or vent anger. Our highways are concrete-walled, fenced or landscaped to inhibit our view. Metal barriers border central reservations, bent by yesterday’s accidents,
reminding us of the horrors that can arise. European research on people who commute more than 45 minutes each way suggests they suffer more headaches, aches, pains and an increased susceptibility to flu viruses. Consciously we usually manage to keep a lid on our frustrations; but at a deeper level we are screaming. Indeed, writing in the New York Times recently (see http://bit.ly/cGkRLX), David Brooks summarised the state of happiness research by saying ‘The daily activity most injurious to happiness is commuting’. I would be interested to hear from anyone with similar interests or advice. Peter Sear Theydon Bois Epping peter@jamessear.co.uk
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Peers worried about almost certain stress (8) 5 Graduates depressed with founder of humanistic psychology (6) 10 Mental characters in lament, for example (7) 11 After time, angry reprimand makes one weepy (7) 12 Eiser accepts how, in Tyneside, to become president (10) 13 It’s instrumental in alumnus’ Old English (4) 14 We hear 19 in narrow passage (6) 17 Do a type of psychology (6) 19 51 close in one direction (6) 20 & 30 One spotted the old lines in explanation for sequence of events (6,6) 23 Instrument sounds lucrative! (4) 24 See marbles lost? Put back together (10) 28 Get last words muddled – the whole lot! (7) 29 Attach little weight on 1320 yards for one who made a shocking experiment? (7) 30 See 20 31 Without expurgation, brought together around chief journalist (8)
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Swiss psychologist making quiet appeal about maturity (6) One country missing from short tests (5) Loss making analyst mellow (9) Macho type in movies is horny male with bad smell (5) Retentive article on gangster (4) Cerebral hemisphere failed to pick up support at home (4,5) Footman in withdrawal kerfuffle? (6) Under strain when picking up sweets (8) Stress worked out with tie to melancholic state (9) Wrongful acts keep men in mental sufferings (8) Forced exercise on lines in short farce (9) 1 across shortly match predicament (6) Appeared to perceive European sea? (6) Transgression taking little time for cognitive psychologist (5) Be head before the head – on the head! (5) Quiet song or two (4)
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FORUM BEYOND BOUNDARIES In 1995, the traffic in Bogotá, Colombia, was so chaotic that drivers had long since given up obeying the rules of the road, resulting in a disorderly free-for-all that was a major impediment to the city’s economy. The recently elected mayor of the city, who came to prominence after dropping his trousers to silence a hall of rioting students, decided on a creative solution to this similarly vexing problem: a troop of mimes (example pictured above). Antana Mockus realised that the people of Bogotá were more concerned about social disapproval than traffic fines, and so hired mimes to playfully reproach drivers that crossed red lights, blocked junctions and ignored pedestrian crossings. One cannot police by mimes alone, and in a further measure to address driving behaviour, the mayor’s office brought in flashcards to allow social feedback. Each citizen was given a red card to signal to someone that their driving was poor and a white card to signal that the person who been particularly courteous or considerate. When I tell British people this story, they seem mildly amused by the mimes, but fall about laughing when I mention the card scheme. It was, however, a great success both in terms of reducing traffic violations and in changing the culture of Bogotá and was based on the best principles of social psychology. That is, we learn collegiate behaviour by social feedback and the best methods of social feedback are the ones that cause the least personal offence. The British are much more averse to this sort of overt social engineering (it seems to evoke the “Oh, come off it!” response identified by anthropologist Kate Fox) although subtler methods are now being raised in the run-up to the elections. In late January, behavioural economist Richard Thaler and Tory Shadow Chancellor George Osborne wrote an article for The Guardian, championing behavioural economics as a way of altering citizens’ behaviour without mandating change. The idea is to take advantage of people’s cognitive biases and social tendencies – for example, they cite the fact that people use less energy when they get feedback on how much they’re using in comparison to similar homes in the area. Whether this turns out to be an election gimmick to appeal to science literate voters or a genuine policy objective remains to be seen. Thaler was also involved in the Obama campaign who similarly touted behavioural economics as a policy measure, although the post-election reality has largely been business as usual. Vaughan Bell is a clinical psychologist working in an NHS neurorehabilitation service. Share your views on this and similar cross-cultural, interdisciplinary or otherwise ‘boundary related’ issues – e-mail psychologist@bps.org.uk.
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Child’s play! The developmental roots of ‘psychology is easy’ The widespread misconception that psychology is easy and mere common sense has its roots in the biased way that children work out whether a topic is challenging or not. Frank Keil and colleagues asked children aged between five and thirteen, and adults, to rate the difficulty of questions from physics (e.g. How does a spinning top stay upright?), chemistry, biology, psychology (e.g. Why is it hard to understand two people talking at once?) and economics. The questions had been carefully chosen from earlier pilot work in which they’d all been rated as equally difficult by adults. Consistent with the pilot work, the adults in the study proper rated the questions from the different disciplines as equally difficult. However, children from age 7 to 13 rated psychology as easier than the natural sciences – physics, chemistry and biology, which they rated as equally difficult. Young children can’t possibly have the depth of understanding to know which scientific questions are more difficult. Instead they must resort to some kind of mental short-cut to make their verdict. Keil’s team think that children’s feelings of control over their own psychological faculties – memories, emotions and so forth – and the superficial familiarity of those kinds of concepts, are likely to lead them to believe psychological concepts are easier to understand. A second study provided this account with some support. This time children and adults rated the difficulty of questions from within the various branches of psychology. Similar to the first study, the children, but not the adults, rated questions related to social psychology, personality and emotions as progressively easier, compared with questions related to cognition, perception and biological psychology, which they rated as progressively more difficult. So, when do these childish misconceptions leak through into adult judgements? For a third study, another batch of children and adults were again presented with the same questions from the different scientific disciplines, but this time they were asked to say whether they would be able to solve each question on their own (or require expert help) and to estimate The February issue of Journal of Experimental what proportion of the adult population would Psychology: General reports that children rate know the answers. questions from physics as harder than psychology This time the adults as well as the children tended to say they could solve more psychology questions on their own, compared with questions in the other sciences, and kids and adults estimated that more people knew the answers to the psychology questions. Remember these were psychology questions that adults had already rated as just as difficult and complex as questions in the other sciences. ‘Such biases [towards seeing psychology as easy] may be observed when tasks do not so directly ask about difficulty of understanding and instead use measures such as ease of learning on one’s own,’ the researchers said. Keil’s team said their findings have real-life implications, for example in the court-room. ‘If psychological phenomena are seen as usually quite easy to understand and largely self-evident and if such judgements are inaccurate and underestimate the need for experts,’ they warned, ‘cases might well be decided in ways that unfairly exclude valuable expert insights.’ In fact, the researchers pointed out that such situations have already occurred. In the US trial of former presidential assistant I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, for example, the judge disallowed the use of psychology experts on memory, on the basis that the jury could rely on their common sense understanding of memory. This is particularly ironic given that prior psychology research has shown that jurors and judges have a woefully poor understanding of how memory actually works.
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How to give advice In the May issue of Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes Information, information, information. That’s the message from one of the first studies to look at people’s preferences for different forms of advice. Reeshad Dalal and Silvia Bonaccio presented students with fictional decision-making scenarios, such as choosing which job to apply for. The students were offered various permutations of advice and asked to say how satisfied they’d be if a friend had given them that advice. The different kinds of advice were: which option to go for; which option not to go for; info on how to make the decision (e.g. use a points allocation system); information on one or more of the options; and sympathy about the difficulty of making a decision. Whilst all forms of advice were positively received, the students’ consistent preference was for information about one or more of the options. A second study spiced things up by introducing more varied decision-making scenarios: where to locate a new store; how to lay off excess staff; and how to invest some inheritance. A fresh batch of students were asked to imagine they’d solicited the advice from an expert, rather than a friend, to see if this made any difference to their responses. Information again came out as the most preferred form of advice. However, this time round, specific advice on which option to go for was also particularly well received,
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Scary messages can backfire especially in the investment scenario. The researchers said past research on advice giving has tended to focus purely on advice in the form of ‘I recommend option X’, so this study makes a novel contribution. ‘Across the situational and dispositional variables we examined, decision-makers appeared to want their advisors to provide information about the alternatives,’ the researchers said. Advice that says ‘go for option X’ can also be wellreceived but only in specific circumstances, such as when advice has been explicitly solicited from an expert. When it comes to lessons for real life, Dalal and Bonaccio said more research was needed to see how their results generalise, but in the meantime they advised: ‘Individuals who are advising decision-makers should at the very least be careful to provide information along with their recommendations.
In the February issue of the Journal of Research in Personality Using scare tactics for anti drink-driving and other health issues makes intuitive sense. The campaigners want to grab your attention and demonstrate the seriousness of the consequences if their message is not heeded. However, a new study makes the surprising finding that for a portion of the population, scare tactics can backfire, actually undermining a message’s efficacy. Steffen Nestler and Boris Egloff had 297 participants, 229 of them female, average age 35, read one of two versions of a fictional news report from a professional medical journal. The report referred to a study showing links between caffeine consumption and a fictional gastro-intestinal disease ‘Xyelinenteritis’. One version was extra-scary, highlighting a link between Xyelinenteritis and
cancer and saying that the participant’s age group was particularly vulnerable. The other version was lower-key and lacked these two details. Both versions of the article concluded by recommending that readers reduce their caffeine consumption. Before gauging the participants’ reaction to the article and its advice, the researchers tested them on a measure of ‘cognitive avoidance’. People who score highly on this personality dimension respond to threats with avoidance tactics such as distracting themselves, denying the threat or persuading themselves that they aren’t vulnerable.
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. We are delighted to announce that www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog has just been voted ‘Best blog – Psychology’ in the international Research Blogging Awards 2010. See www.tinyurl.com/digestwin and p.407 for 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 key finding is that participants who scored high on cognitive avoidance actually rated the threat from Xyelinenteritis as less severe after reading the scary version of the report compared with the low-key version. Moreover, after reading the scary version, they were less impressed by the advice to reduce caffeine consumption and less likely to say that they planned to reduce their caffeine intake. On the other hand, highly cognitive avoidant participants were more responsive to the low-key report than were the low cognitive avoidant participants. In other words, for people who are cognitively avoidant, scary health messages can actually backfire. ‘Practically, our results suggest that instead of giving all individuals the same threat communications, messages should be given that are concordant with their individual characteristics,’ Nestler and Egloff said. ‘Thus, the present findings are in line with the growing literature on tailoring intentions to individual characteristics, and they highlight the role of individual differences when scary messages are used.’
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case, the ‘aftershock media quake’ was much more positively focused, with the media becoming interested in some of the critical issues of bullying, like ‘was a helpline needed in the field’, ‘what is the extent of the problem of bullying in the workplace’, ‘how do we make sure that this issue is dealt with by senior management’, etc. On this occasion, Cary L. Cooper gives some personal reflections therefore, the media moved from the political to the substantive issues, which was more in my comfort zone. I guess I have learned a number of things from this episode. First, if one is n February a story broke in the engaged in working with the media to cooperate as much as possible with mainstream media about the allegation highlight psychological or socially their requests. that several people from 10 Downing relevant issues, you have to be prepared The reason I resigned was quite Street had called a bullying helpline for for negative as well as positive publicity, simple: there is a fundamental and advice. This revelation appeared only a and potentially for its political fallout as explicit undertaking that a helpline is few weeks after a political journalist had well. Second, if you are a ‘media visible’ confidential, and nothing said during published a book alleging that there was academic or practising psychologist, you such a call should ever be revealed, either a more than robust management style also have to be prepared, about the present in No. 10 – followed by the from time to time, to cope individual, the Labour leadership strongly denying these with negative personal employer or allegations. The head of the bullying attributions of your about anybody helpline then revealed to the media that motives: for example, that else. This was an a number of people working in No. 10 you are saying that to get issue of principle, had called the confidential service, personal exposure or and not a seeking support and advice. Although she celebrity status, or you are politically did not reveal the names of the alleged using your science for motivated act. callers, she did reveal the employer, in political ends. On the day this case No. 10 itself. This is the downside the story broke, As one of the Patrons of this bullying of any media exposure. I was lucky to helpline, I was contacted by the media However, I believe it is have the total about it. The minute I heard what had important for the academic support of the happened on the Sunday night from a community to press office at my BBC correspondent, I contacted the communicate our science university, who director of the helpline to find out what or practitioner-orientated took me in hand she had told the media. She told me that experiences to a wider and managed the Cary L. Cooper CBE is Professor of Organizational Psychology and she had told them that the helpline had public, highlighting its interviews, received a number of calls from people relevance to everyday life. which carried on Health at Lancaster University working in No. 10, emphasising however It is also important for throughout the that no names of the actual callers were psychologists who give back to the day, until some other story overtook it. revealed. Because of the breach of community by supporting relevant Although I normally can deal with the confidentiality by naming the employer of charities, to ensure that the bond of trust media on topics in my area of expertise, the callers, I resigned immediately. Other with clients, patients and others is not I found this experience much more Patrons took a similar decision later in breached, and that confidentiality is stressful because of the political as the day. maintained at all costs. Henry David opposed to the academic context of the The Press Association picked up Thoreau wrote in 1853: ‘how prompt we story. When a political issue is involved, on the story which triggered a media are to satisfy the hunger and thirst of our the news media first report the bare onslaught, with the main TV news bodies; how slow to satisfy the hunger headline facts, but then tend to develop networks, radio stations, online news and thirst of our souls’. This is one of the or broaden it in very different ways, agencies and newspapers calling me over challenges of psychologists today, to help nuancing its political implications for a ten-hour period! Although I was not a and support people to satisfy the hunger example. As it happened, the story did Trustee and had no legal responsibility for and thirst of their collective souls. But we not die on that day but was re-invigorated the helpline, I felt I had a duty to explain can only do this if we can maintain their two days later when the helpline was my actions to the media, so I tried to trust. suspended. However, in this particular
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FEATURE
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Feeling like a fraud
Psychologists are particularly prone, according to Susan Pinker in her book The Sexual Paradox. She cites a 1984 study by Margaret Gibbs and colleagues of randomly selected American psychologists that found 69 per cent of them felt like impostors.
Christian Jarrett examines the psychology of the impostor phenomenon
The phenomenon
r James Barry had a remarkable career. A pioneering military surgeon of the British army, he was stationed all over the world, including Saint Helena, where he attended briefly to Napoleon Bonaparte, and the Crimea, where he encountered Florence
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Dr James Barry (left) with her servant and her dog Psyche
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Burton, S. (2000). Impostors: Six kinds of liar. London: Viking. Clance, P.R. (1985). The impostor phenomenon. Atlanta: Peachtree. Clance, P.R., Dingman, D., Reviere, S.L. & Stober, D.R. (1995). Impostor phenomenon in an interpersonal/ social context: Origins and treatment. Women and Therapy, 16, 79–96. Clance, P.R. & Imes, S. (1978). The impostor phenomenon in high
Nightingale. It was only when Barry died that her womanhood was revealed. Barry had lived as an impostor – a woman masquerading as a man – probably as a way to follow a career closed to women. As Nightingale observed in Cassandra: ‘A woman cannot live in the light of intellect. Society forbids it.’ Fast forward 100 years to the 1970s and it was no longer so unusual for professional positions to be filled by women. Social progress, perhaps, but the weight of so many years of sexual discrimination wasn’t easy to shrug off. Writing at the time, two clinical psychologists – Dr Pauline Clance and Dr Suzanne Imes – described interviews they’d conducted with 150 highly successful women who ‘despite their earned degrees, scholastic honours, high achievement...praise and professional recognition’ reported feeling no internal sense of success and considered themselves to be impostors. Clance and Imes christened this complex the ‘impostor phenomenon’ (IP). Although not recognised as a formal psychiatric condition, the impostor idea has inspired numerous studies and, judging by its repeated appearance in the careers pages of prestigious publications, it continues to resonate powerfully. In 2009 Nature ran a career piece about the phenomenon, citing the example of two leading female scientists who still fear being found out. It followed a similar Science career article from 2008 entitled ‘No, you’re not an impostor’.
achieving women: Dynamics and therapeutic intervention. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 15, 241–247. Cowman, S.E. & Ferrari, J.R. (2002). ‘Am I for real?’ Predicting impostor tendencies from self-handicapping and affective components. Social Behaviour and Personality, 30, 119–125. Horner, M.S. (1968). Sex differences in
According to Clance and Imes’ seminal paper, there are three defining features of impostorism. The first is a feeling that other people have an inflated perception of your abilities. Second is a fear that your true abilities will be found out, and third is a persistent tendency to attribute successes to external factors, such as luck or disproportionate effort. The condition is particularly likely to strike when a person starts a new job or takes on new responsibilities. Ironically, the feeling that one is a fraud can inspire greater effort and conscientiousness thus leading to more success and promotion, thereby triggering another round of impostor feelings. Impostorism is related to and overlaps with several other manifestations of selfdoubt including self-handicapping, in which an individual sabotages their own performance so as to provide a readymade excuse for failure; and defensive pessimism, which involves taking extensive measures to try to avoid expected failure. In a survey of over 400 people, Shaun Cowman and Joseph Ferrari found that those who selfhandicapped were also more likely to score high on a measure of the impostor phenomenon (see ‘Measuring impostorism’).
The background Clance and Imes’s seminal paper appeared at the tail end of an era of United States social history recognised as the second wave of feminism. The so-called ‘Horner effect’, referring to women’s apparent fear of success, had been introduced a decade earlier in an article for Psychology Today magazine. Matina Horner described how,
achievement motivation and performance in competitive and noncompetitive situations. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan. Horner, M.S. (1969). Fail: Bright women. Psychology Today, 62, 36–38. Kaplan, K. (2009). Unmasking the impostor. Nature, 459, 468–469. Laursen, L. (2008). No, you’re not an impostor. Science, 15 February
[http://bit.ly/3YeYE7]. Leary, M.R., Orlando, A.E. & Funk, W.W. (2000). The impostor phenomenon: Self-perceptions, reflected appraisals, and interpersonal strategies. Journal of Personality, 68, 725–756. McElwee, R.O. & Yurak, T.J. (2007). Feeling versus acting like an impostor: Real feelings of fraudulence or self-presentation? Individual Differences Research, 5,
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as part of her doctoral research, she’d asked male and female participants to write a story in response to the cue ‘John (or Anne) finds herself at the top of her medical school class’. Horner reported higher rates of negative imagery in the stories written by women about Anne’s success when compared with men’s stories about John’s success, and she concluded that this was evidence that women feared success. It was around the time that Clance was working as lecturer and clinician at Oberlin College in Ohio, the first coeducational college in the United States, when she realised the feelings of impostorism she’d experienced as a student were common among her female students at Oberlin. ‘I was very interested in and active in the Feminist movement at that time,’ says Clance. ‘At Oberlin I helped put on a conference on “brave new women” and there was a consciousness about the second-class citizenship of women, even at Oberlin. There were very few women faculty professors.’ ‘I noticed that my students were full of doubt about their abilities and worried about continuing their successes,’ she says. ‘For example, saying “I am afraid” and “this time I will blow the exam”, yet when I asked them, they had never blown an exam. In fact, their SAT scores and grades were excellent. One of them said to me, “I feel like an impostor here with all these bright people”.’ Clance compared observations with her colleague Suzanne Imes and the pair went on to interview dozens of women, professionals as well as students, about their experiences of the impostor phenomenon. These were women who
201–220. McElwee, R.O. & Yurak, T.J. (in press). The phenomenology of the impostor phenomenon. Individual Differences Research. Oleson, K.C., Poehlmann, K.M., Yost, J.H., et al (2000). Subjective overachievement: Individual differences in self-doubt and concern with performance. Journal of Personality, 68, 491–524.
Measuring impostorism The Clance Impostor Phenomenon Scale (CIPS) was published in Pauline Clance’s book in 1985 and continues to be the scale of choice for many researchers investigating IP. The scale consists of 20 items, scored from one to five (from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’), and factor analyses suggest that it comprises three subscales: Fake, Discount and Luck, which tap into the different components of IP. The Fake subscale (e.g. ‘I’m afraid people important to me may find out that I am not as capable as they think I am’) measures feelings of incompetence and belief in other people’s inflated perceptions. The Discount subscale (e.g. ‘If I receive a great deal of praise and recognition for something I’ve accomplished, I tend to discount the importance of what I have done’) measures the tendency to ignore objective evidence and praise for one’s ability. And finally, the Luck subscale (e.g. ‘At times, I feel my success has been due to some kind of luck’) measures the tendency to externalise the reasons for one’s success, in terms of luck or circumstance. Other measures of impostorism have also been developed. Mark Leary and colleagues, who presented evidence in 2000 that IP is a self-presentational strategy, formulated their own seven-item scale focused on the fraudulent component of IP. Example items include ‘I tend to feel like a phony’ and ‘Sometimes I am afraid that I will be discovered for who I really am’.
had achieved success but found it uncomfortable, fearing that they’d arrived there by mistake or through luck. ‘At first we wrote the article thinking it was mainly women who were affected by IP, because at that time, although I was seeing equal numbers of men and women in the counselling centre, it was women who would bring this issue up far more,’ says Clance. ‘However, later on when I started talking widely about IP, the male faculty would often say they’d experienced it, and yet I don’t think it was affecting them as much.’ Today the condition has lost many of its feminist undertones and subsequent research has suggested that men can be as prone or even more prone to impostor
Pinker, S. (2008). The sexual paradox. New York: Scribner. Sonnak, C. & Towell, T. (2001). The impostor phenomenon in British university students: Relationships between self-esteem, mental health, parental rearing style and socioeconomic status. Personality and Individual Differences, 31, 863–874. Swann, W.B., Stein-Seroussi, A. & Giesler, R.B. (1992). Why people self-verify.
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feelings as women. In a 1985 survey of academics, for example, Mary Topping and Ellen Kimmel reported higher scores of impostorism among male staff compared with females. ‘I’ve certainly seen men who have experienced IP,’ Clance says. ‘For example, I saw a man in the corporate world who’d come in for relationship problems, but what came out was that he had a tremendous fear of failure in almost every area; a tremendous fear of somehow not looking or being competent. He wanted to be totally liked, even by the cab driver.’ Although the social climate has evolved since the early accounts of the impostor phenomenon, Dr Valerie Young, another self-confessed sufferer of the
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62, 392–401. Topping, M.E. & Kimmel, E.B. (1985). The impostor phenomenon: Feeling phony. Academic Psychology Bulletin, 7, 213–226. Want, J. & Kleitman, S. (2006). Imposter phenomenon and self-handicapping: Links with parenting styles and selfconfidence. Personality and Individual Differences, 40, 961–971.
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phenomenon, says IP remains as relevant as ever. She’s the founder of www.impostorsyndrome.com and runs workshops on impostorism in the United States for major organisations like Boeing and Harvard University. ‘Yes, things have changed for younger women, but there are at least 10 other groups that are particularly susceptible to these feelings,’ she says. ‘While an undergraduate majoring in English literature or art may not feel like a fraud, once she (or he) gets to graduate school these feelings can emerge due to the culture. Similarly, attending school or working in another country, being a firstgeneration professional, or being one of the first or the few in a field are all experiences that do not change with the era.’
Possible causes In the mid-1990s Clance and her colleagues argued that the impostor Higher scores on an impostor scale were associated with reports of an overprotective father phenomenon can be fostered in a child by parents who selectively value certain aspects of that child, such as her attractiveness and sociability, whilst traits be missing in people with IP? warm and responsive parent would undervaluing others, such as her However, the mystery weakened when foster an experience-rich environment intelligence. The idea is that the child they showed that people with the that encourages self-exploration, where raised this way builds a self-concept impostor phenomenon could, in effect, parental feedback (either positive or around the characteristics valued by her merely be pretending to be impostors. negative) would be interpreted as being parents and later resists attributing her An initial experiment showed that helpful and non-threatening for the successes to virtues (such as high although high scorers on an impostor formation of healthy self-beliefs. In intelligence) that don’t fit with this scale rated themselves poorly (as you’d contrast, an overprotective parent limits parentally defined self-concept. Clance’s expect) on factors like intelligence and the types of experiences that their child team further argued that, for women, appearance, they also said they thought is allowed to engage in, as well as societal expectations about gender roles other people would rate them equally encourages their child to reflect on them can exacerbate the situation. By this poorly. This appears to undermine one in a less positive way. In other words, the account, a woman might see her career of the cardinal tenets of the impostor child of an overprotective and critical success as a consequence not of her complex – the fraudulent aspect – which parent may attribute his or her success intellect but of her ability to charm, so refers to the impostor’s belief that other to parental involvement or chance, rather as to conform to her self-concept and to people rate their abilities too highly. than to their own achievements resulting be consistent with cultural norms Two subsequent experiments also from their own talents and efforts.’ surrounding femininity. seemed to further undermine the These ideas have found support in impostor phenomenon, at least as Feigning fraudulence recent research findings. In a survey of identified using questionnaires. Leary’s Whilst the onward march of the impostor British university students, for example, team found that high scorers on phenomenon shows no signs of stopping, Carina Sonnak and Tony Towell found impostorism behaved as you’d expect two little-known articles published in the that students who said their parents were when they thought their opinions were last decade have challenged key aspects of more controlling and protective also public, but behaved rather differently the impostor construct. They suggest the tended to score higher on a measure of when they thought their opinions were complex may be construed more impostorism. Similarly, a 2006 survey in private. For example, asked in public, accurately as a presentational strategy – a Australia by Julie Want and Sabina high scorers on an impostorism scale way for a person to downplay expectations Kleitman of a broad range of predicted that they would do poorly on and feign modesty. professionals, from doctors to small a fictional psychology test invented by The first of these articles was business owners, found that higher scores the researchers, but when asked in published by Mark Leary and colleagues on an impostor scale were associated with private, their performance expectations at Wake Forest University in 2000. They reports of an overprotective father – an matched those of participants who scored saw the impostor phenomenon as association that was offset if the father low in impostorism. something of an enigma: most of us have was also seen as providing emotional Rory McElwee and Tricia Yurak at inflated views of our own abilities and warmth. Rowan University built on these findings like to create the best possible impression, ‘We can only speculate at this stage,’ with a study of their own published in so why should these ubiquitous human says Kleitman, ‘but it’s probable that a 2007. They replicated Leary’s finding that
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the majority of impostors (defined by their high score on an impostor scale) thought other people would rate them as lowly as they rated themselves. By splitting their sample, McElwee and Yurak further showed that the few ‘true’ impostors (who did predict others would rate them too high) and the remaining ‘strategic’ impostors were equally concerned with self-presentation. ‘If true impostors did not use self-presentational strategies as much as strategic impostors did, this would have be consistent with the notion that true impostors are more reliably expressing their actual feelings,’ McElwee explains. ‘As the results showed, however, true versus strategic impostors did not reliably differ on self-presentation strategies.’
A state rather than a trait?
McElwee agrees that there’s little doubt some people do sometimes feel like a fraud. Her specific concerns are with what the impostor scales are really measuring and with the idea that the impostor phenomenon is a trait, when in reality it might be better construed as a state. ‘I think they [the impostor scales] are measuring a combination of low selfesteem, negative affect, and a desire to lower others’ expectations for the self,’ she says. ‘I do not think they validly measure actual impostor feelings, or at least they do not measure such feelings purely enough to be of any use for identifying socalled impostors – and that is the case not only because of the scale but also because I think the whole concept of this as a personality variable is flawed.’
What does impostorism feel like? Common sense suggests that believing other people hold positive beliefs about you ought to be a rewarding feeling. But there’s a body of research on self-verification, much of it conducted by William Swann, that shows it is more important to people to feel they have been accurately perceived than to be perceived positively. This is consonant with a recent investigation into what it feels like to have impostor feelings – to feel as though another person has an inflated view of your abilities. Rory McElwee and Tricia Yurak asked 122 student participants to recall a time in their past when they’d been in a situation in which they believed another person had an exaggerated view of their abilities. In their descriptions of these situations, the students listed a combined total of 46 affective responses, 41 of which were negative, including feeling anxious, embarrassed, under pressure and worried about failure. Moreover, all the students reported wanting to correct the misapprehension, 24 per cent of them ‘quite a lot’ or ‘extremely’. Students who scored higher on impostor phenomenon scales tended to report finding the remembered situation more distressing and to feel more distressed by recalling it, and they also tended to express a stronger desire to correct the misapprehension. ‘Intuition might suggest that being viewed positively by others would always be desirable and satisfying,’ McElwee and Yurak write. ‘However, our data showed instead that negative affect is a common reaction to feeling one’s abilities are being overestimated.’
So do these new findings mean there is no such thing as an impostor phenomenon? Valerie Young doesn’t think so. She’s always believed that there are two sides to the impostor story. ‘There is a little voice in all of us that, however small and weak, believes we are smart, that we can do it,’ she says. ‘It’s just that when we know that Helping people with our work – and therefore “we” – will be impostorism judged, we start to second guess ourselves State or trait, and whether and our louder and more insistent there is a self-presentational impostor voice drowns out any semblance component to impostorism or of self-assurance. “Maybe I’m really not not, all the experts appear to that smart… maybe I really won’t do that agree that people do well.” Whether it’s a face-saving strategy or sometimes experience second guessing, I’ve worked with enough irrational feelings of people who are truly suffering from the incompetence, and that this is impostor syndrome to know they are not an unpleasant state, which in just “pretending” to feel like frauds.’ the worst situations can lead Clance agrees. ‘People with IP do to lost opportunities. So what is the latest want to be smart, to look smart, and they advice on how to overcome these feelings? sometimes feel as if they are,’ she says. ‘It’s Young’s top three tips for helping not that the impostor feelings are there all other people with IP are: ‘normalise the the time. In terms of self-presentation, the feeling – there are ten biggest disagreement perfectly good reasons I have [with these new why someone should findings] is that I don’t “just finding out that the feel like a fraud,’ she think they’re probably phenomenon exists and says; ‘help clients looking at the understand their continuum of feelings. In that other people have attitudes toward/ my work, if people score these fears, is beneficial” definitions of above 60, then they’re competence and failure, having the kind of and help them to shift feelings that can interfere these; and explore other reasons they with them, for example, taking a might be ambivalent about success – what promotion or going after something that often feels like fear and self-doubt is in they have the skill set to do, but they’re fact, an awareness of the other side of afraid they can’t.’ success.’ ‘The other thing,’ Clance adds, ‘is that Clance says that for some people, these self-presentation papers don’t look just finding out that the phenomenon at whether their participants really are exists and that other people have these successful. In all my early work, we used fears, is beneficial. ‘Reading about it, outside criteria to be sure that the person hearing about it, talking about, especially was really able and competent.’
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at workshops with other people experiencing IP, helps them begin to identify the symptoms.’ Clance adds that in her self-help book, published in the 1980s, she talks about beginning to notice what happens when you receive praise; the way that people with high IP tend to compare their weaknesses with other people’s strengths, and how they’ll look at things they’ve had difficulty with, compare with other people and assume that they’ve done it with ease, when really they can’t know that – the other person might be struggling just as much as them or more. ‘Anyone who’d like to use my material to run a workshop, I’m happy for them to do that. I want them to work with it,’ she says, her passion for IP still evident three decades after that influential paper. I Dr Christian Jarrett is The Psychologist’s staff journalist chrber@bps.org.uk
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What makes a good politician? Jo Silvester talks to Jon Sutton on the eve of the General Election
ou’ve conducted a lot of research Y into the selection process for MPs, and helped ensure that major political parties are putting the right mix in front of the public at the polling stations. Do you have faith in the system now? There’s still a long way to go. I think we’ve made a good start in beginning to look more systematically at the qualities required by MPs, and by helping to create robust, objective and transparent selection processes. But a bigger question is what do we mean by the ‘right mix’? Are we interested in who the politicians are or what they bring to the role? Does it matter whether they come from particular groups or are we more interested in whether they are capable of performing the role well? And what do we mean by being an ‘effective MP? You can see that there are quite a few interesting challenges. Psychologists have ignored the work of politicians, so we are only at the beginning of being able to answer some of these questions.
whether I would be able to help identify ways to increase the number of women and minority candidates being selected. The letter changed my whole research focus – I’ve spent the last 10 years studying politicians at local and national level, the work that they do, and the qualities they need to be effective. Most of this has also involved explaining and demonstrating what organisational psychologists can offer. Politicians and government personnel don’t naturally turn to psychologists –
It wasn’t until 1867 that men who didn’t own land could become MPs, and Professor Jo Silvester, Professor of Organisational even modern political Psychology, Director, Centre for Performance at Work parties rarely change their selection processes. City University London. Jo.silvester.1@city.ac.uk www.city.ac.uk/performanceatwork Why do you think they started to turn to psychologists such as yourself? they simply don’t know what we can offer. I got involved in politics by accident. The real privilege has been to work with I presented a paper on selection and politicians from all parties, understand diversity at the BPS Centenary Conference core needs and use psychological in 2001, which was reported in the knowledge to design practical solutions. national media. Christina Dykes, who In doing so it has been possible to show was the Director of Candidates and that psychological approaches are useful. Development at the Conservative Party, For example, I wrote a report for the read about this and wrote to me asking Department of Communities and Local
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Government about how local councillors can be supported in their roles, drawing on existing research and practice on learning and development and work design. We created development centres for senior politicians based on psychological principles of assessment, and I’ve spent the past four years running 360° feedback for politicians from all three main parties. This has allowed us to map the main development needs for politicians and develop an understanding of how political leadership differs from leadership in other contexts (Silvester & Dykes, 2008). It’s true that political parties rarely change their selection processes – but in the case of the Conservative Party, and later the Liberal Democrat Party, there was a perceived need and a desire to draw on best practice from other sectors. Political parties are slow to change – and working to adapt selection practices takes a long time because it is necessary to involve a whole range of stakeholders, including the Parliamentary party, the voluntary side, party agents, campaign teams, and prospective Parliamentary candidates. This is quite different from other types of organisations where decisions can be made by a small group of people. Organisational psychologists are experts at designing selection systems and understanding all types of work. Although very little attention has been paid to political ‘jobs’, there was no reason not to apply similar practices to political roles. So do psychologists know what makes a good MP? As far as I’m aware there are only a handful of organisational psychologists who are studying this, and we are really only beginning to develop the understanding that will allow us to answer this question fully. Compared with the many thousands of papers about business leadership, political leadership has been largely ignored. In fact there are only three published papers on individual differences and political performance. Yet, implicit in the design of any selection process is the assumption that you are identifying those individuals with the best capability of performing the role. This means understanding both what the role entails (responsibilities and tasks) and what individual qualities are required to perform it well. When I first met with the Conservatives I remember asking what they were looking for – what was their vision of a good and poor MP? It quickly became clear that this was not something that had been addressed – in fact the question seems to be missing
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from academic research too. As a result I went through a process of capturing shared beliefs about good and poor political performance by interviewing individuals from all stakeholder groups in order to create a competency framework and behavioural indicators that could be used as selection criteria. This also meant presenting the results plus findings from a review of the old system to a senior party committee. I then got the go-ahead to develop an assessment centre, which involved different exercises relating to the various aspects of the MP role, and to train MPs and members of the voluntary party to act as assessors. I’ve recently gone through a similar process for the Liberal Democrat Party. This also involved creating a competency framework, so it was possible to look at the similarities and differences in shared beliefs about good and poor political performance. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are a lot of overlaps across parties [see box]. It is after all the same role. But it is worth emphasising that for each of the six competencies there are a further five positive and five negative behavioural indicators that describe behaviour associated with good and poor performance as an MP. Although these indicators have not been published yet they do reveal subtle differences between political parties. For example, as the smaller of the three main political parties,
Values determine where individuals invest effort, and the challenge for any selection process is how to incorporate the assessment of values in addition to knowledge, skills or abilities. It’s also interesting to note that a recent study we conducted with 200 politicians before the expenses scandal found that politicians share a view that integrity is the most important factor in political leadership (Silvester, Randall & Wyatt, in prep). This begs the question, why is integrity so difficult? Is it something to do with the politicians themselves, or the political system they find themselves in? Once again there are interesting parallels with what has been happening in the business world.
the Liberal Democrats need to attract more candidates who are able and motivated to develop seats in marginal constituencies. Both parties identified communication and intellectual skills as core aspects of the role and these were the two competencies that predicted electoral swing and percentage votes. However, the most important distinguishing factor between the political parties relate to values.
Conservatives Competencies and Example Indicators
Liberal Democrat Competencies and Example Indicators
Communication Skills (e.g. Articulate and fluent when addressing an audience, able to think on feet)
Communication Skills (e.g. Communicates clearly, passionately and with conviction when using different forms of media)
Intellectual Skills (e.g. Quickly processes, understands and learns large amounts of information)
Strategic Thinking and Judgement (e.g. Understands the strategic relevance of information, and makes links between national- and local-level issues)
Relating to People (e.g. Approachable, inspires confidence and trust in others)
Representing People (e.g. Demonstrates tolerance in actively representing people of all backgrounds, ages, ethnicity and interests)
Leading and Motivating (e.g. Communicates a clear vision and persuades others to follow them)
Leadership (e.g. Builds trust, confidence and enthusiasm among supporters)
Resilience and Drive (e.g. Demonstrates stamina and persistence in overcoming resistance)
Resilience (e.g. Has the courage to make and defend unpopular decisions)
Conviction (e.g. Seeks opportunities to present views and persuades others to adopt their ideas)
Values in Action (e.g. Promotes beliefs and key messages through their own actions)
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Do you think psychologists can help put the integrity and trust back into politics? A better understanding of political work would certainly help. But the trust literature tells us that, in broad terms, we trust others if we perceive them to have our interests at heart and are competent to deliver. It would do no harm to build a greater awareness and understanding of what competence means in politics. In fact, Sharon Loivette has been conducting her PhD with me on politician behaviours associated with trust in local leadership, so we’re gathering the evidence. A related issue is the ‘cult of personality’. Has it taken over politics, or is there still room for competencies and skills? There’s a natural tendency for the media to focus on perceived personality because this is a way of describing and labelling individuals. There’s also a Darwinian culture in politics that assumes ‘the best will succeed’ – politicians will do well because of who they are and their innate qualities rather than the support or opportunities they are given. As such, little or no training is provided to MPs and learning takes place by observing others. We have an ESRC project at the moment that is looking at how politicians learn, and the role of mentoring. Clearly politicians require skills, but the reasons why politicians don’t engage in training and development are fascinating in their own right. The key question is how do we support learning and development in a way that recognises the legitimacy of politicians as elected representatives. I suppose it’s more than just the perceived personality – so much of the pre-election banter seems to focus on the physical qualities of a politician,
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such as looks, posture, voice, smile. Is this something psychology can illuminate and combat, or an inevitable factor in any selection process? A fascination with physical appearance is probably inevitable in politics, and increasingly so given the growing use of media. But selection processes that focus on behavioural evidence from different exercises and ratings from independent assessors can minimise the impact of such factors. In reality, the focus is on whether an individual presents as competent. That said, one of the MP competencies, communication skills, includes indicators concerned with whether or not an individual presents as approachable and can deliver their message in a way that is convincing Many politicians say that the election is the only appraisal they need and persuasive. We know from psychological research that this can performance in the Conservative of what political roles really involve, and depend on factors such as an individual’s assessment centre and the electoral this means that politicians have to be looks, voice and smile. So it is difficult to performance of those individuals selected more open about what they do. draw a simple conclusion about this. as candidates to fight the 2005 general You’ve asked the politicians about the Why do you think women are still election (Silvester & Dykes, 2007). necessary skills – how close do you underrepresented in politics? Are Critical thinking skills, and to a lesser think their perceptions are to what they as good as the men? extent communication skills, were both A key driver for developing the political success really is? positively and significantly associated In terms of actual evidence – we found Conservative selection process was to with percentage swing (the degree to a significant relationship between address the underrepresentation of which voting in a particular association women and minorities. We focused on moved towards the party) and the approvals process (which determines percentage votes received. This is the whether an individual can become an first empirical evidence that individual approved prospective parliamentary differences impact on political candidate and is therefore eligible to performance. Of course electoral apply to local associations), because the performance is only one small part of Conservative Party constitution makes it being an effective MP . ‘Although the 2010 general election will see very difficult for the central party to have many new MPs enter Parliament, they usually And do you think the competencies any influence over local party selection receive little support to help them make this that the politicians identify as decisions. We also argued that as women transition. With the exception of a two-day desirable match up with what the perform as well as men when assessed induction programme run by the House, new public really want? using objective criteria and trained MPs must navigate their way around by This is a good question – I think it is assessors, there was no reason why themselves and work out how things are done. vital that political parties have a vision women should not be approved in equal In recent Parliaments, the first challenge has of what they consider to be excellence numbers to men. In fact we tested this by been to persuade a returning MP to share their in political leadership. But they also comparing the performance ratings across desk until new roles and offices are allocated. need to be transparent about this, exercises and competencies for men and New MPs must then set up offices in Parliament because it enables the public to make women in the assessment centre and and in their constituency. more informed decisions. Of course found absolutely no differences. The transition into Parliament is not like members of the public may have very However, only 20 per cent of the the transition of employees into other business different perceptions of what is applicants going through the assessment environments. A new Parliament means an required – and there may be many centre were women, which means that if entirely new organisation, with new people and conflicting views across different men and women were performing equally, responsibilities, and an environment sectors of the public. Transparency only 20 per cent of approved prospective characterised by ambiguity and change. means that debate and discussing can parliamentary candidates would be Although MPs have a tremendous opportunity happen. women too. This illustrates the complex to shape their own roles, in the current political In all honesty, I think most people nature of factors that influence diversity. set-up they also have very little support and have very little idea of what politicians We have no evidence that women guidance to help them make the most of this do – this was certainly true in my case perform differently in politics, but there independence. This is clearly something that before I began this work. I now realise are clearly many different reasons why it needs to change if politicians are to become that political roles are very complex is harder for women to gain entry to effective political leaders more quickly.’ and demanding. There is an urgent political roles and progress once in need to build wider public awareness position. For example, even once selected
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Funnily enough though, people still seem to abhor ‘career politicians’. Robert Louis Stevenson once said: ‘Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.’ So what role can psychology realistically play in actually developing the skills you have identified? The idea of a ‘career politician’ conjures up an impression of someone with little experience outside politics, who is interested in climbing the ‘greasy pole’ of power for their own interests rather than the interests of others. Psychology can play an important role in unpacking and questioning some of the assumptions made about career politicians. For example, using modern definitions from career research it is clear that all politicians have careers (Arnold, 2009). It is therefore probably not the idea of career per se that is the problem. The two assumed characteristics of career politicians that people most dislike are that they put self needs before those of others and, because they only have experience of working in and around Westminster they don’t understand what the real world is like, or the needs of different sections of society. There is certainly evidence that the number of MPs with a Westminster background is increasing, but little is known about whether they perform any less well in government or for their constituents. I recently completed a review of the likely development needs of new MPs. One clear finding was that new MPs who have prior experience of Parliament will have a significant advantage over others, because they know how things work, where to go for support and, importantly, who the key power-brokers are. Therefore the existence of ‘career politicians’ does have implications for how political parties identify and utilise new political talent. Is politics just another job, and
therefore one that occupational psychologists can easily study? There are similarities with other types of work that allow us to draw comparisons. For example in the management literature there is growing recognition that business leaders require ‘political’ skills – influencing, networking, an understanding of power relations and mediation are all skills that politicians are expert at. But there are also important differences. Politicians are democratically elected, this provides them with a democratic legitimacy that makes it very difficult to simply set objectives or tell them that they need to engage in certain types of work or development. In other types of organisations there is normally a hierarchy, where individuals perform certain tasks, and their performance is assessed by senior personnel according to whether it meets job and organisational objectives. Human resource functions are political systems because they exist to enforce the power of management to set and review performance objectives. Politicians have no managers – they are elected to represent and take decisions on behalf of their constituents. We may not always like the decisions they make, but we respect their right to make them. This also means that there is no single performance measure. As politicians have to mediate between multiple conflicting views about what is right, there will always be different views about their performance. More importantly, however, there is a risk that introducing standard HR practices without recognising the political role they play could undermine the need for politicians to act independently and make unpopular decisions. This is why many politicians say that the election is the only appraisal they need. That said, we’re working on ways to provide information to politicians that can help them to develop and respond to public perceptions about how they are performing. One way is through anonymous feedback from different groups including political colleagues, officers and government officials and members of the public. Isn’t this all a bit depressing? Don’t you think there’s a risk that selection and feedback leads to homogenised, identikit politicians? Where does it leave the ‘one off’ characters like Michael Foot? I don’t think people realise that selection is already an important aspect of becoming a politician – at least outside the US, where it depends on how much
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money individuals can raise to support their campaigns. In most Western countries political parties act as gatekeepers in identifying the individuals they consider have the ability and values necessary to be an MP for their party – but the public still have the right to choose between candidates from different parties. Joni Lovenduski has described party selection processes as the ‘secret garden’ of politics because before now little has been know about how decisions have been made and by whom. Increasing transparency helps parties become more accountable both to their own members and the public. In your experience and bearing in mind your research, who have you considered ‘the ultimate politician’ and why? I’m not sure I could identify an ‘ultimate politician’ – they are all so different, and it just goes to show that there are many different ways to be successful in politics. What I do know is that I’ve learned an immense amount from the politicians I’ve worked with, much of this has made me question why psychologists take so little account of the political nature of work. Ultimate politicians aren’t afraid to recognise and deal with the demands of conflicted and complex environments, they inspire others to do better and strive for excellence themselves. What they do need to do better, however, is to build a far better public understanding of what politicians do, what realistically could be improved, and practical ways in which this might be achieved. Are you a political being yourself? Will you be glued to Peter Snow’s swingometer on the night? I never was, but the more you get to know the individuals involved, the more interesting it becomes.
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as a candidate becoming an MP can take many years of campaigning in a constituency whilst holding down another job, possibly in a different part of the country. Similarly, whilst men also have family responsibilities, women generally take on a disproportionately large share of these. This means that women are less likely to have the capacity to devote time and effort to campaigning. The idea of balancing the needs of a young family with three or four days working unsociable hours in Westminster and a further two to three days work in their constituency can also deter women from applying.
Arnold, J.M. (2009). Applying organisational career theory to political careers. Political careers seminar. City University London. Silvester, J. (2008). The good, the bad, and the ugly: Politics and politicians at work. In G.P. Hodgkinson and J.K. Ford (Eds.) International review of industrial and organizational psychology, Vol. 23 (pp.107–148). Chichester: Wiley. Silvester, J. & Dykes, C. (2007). Selecting political candidates: A longitudinal study of assessment centre performance and electoral success in the 2005 UK General Election. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 80, 11–25. Silvester, J. & Dykes, C. (2008). Recruiting politicians. In Local government leadership: Creating political value (pp.38-43). London: IDeA. http://bit.ly/aTPFYc
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