The Psychologist February 2015

the

psychologist vol 28 no 2

february 2015 www.thepsychologist.org.uk

The surprising world of synaesthesia Jack Dutton investigates

letters 78 news 90 careers 148 looking back 166

how relationships help us to age well 110 does our unconscious rule? 114 interview: Robin Dunbar 126 viewpoints: ‘let down by psychology’ 128

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The surprising world of synaesthesia 106 Jack Dutton meets those with the condition and the researchers who study them. Might it have benefits, and could it even be taught?

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How relationships help us to age well 110 Laura Soulsby and Kate Bennett consider a rich evidence base 106

The unheard victims 118 Michelle Lowe and Bob Balfour look at service provision for male sexual abuse survivors New voices: Together against bullying 124 Suzy Clarkson with the latest in our series for budding writers

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110 Cover Moonlight sonata, visualised, by Andy Fillebrown (from tinyurl.com/moonsyn) © Copyright for all published material is held by the British Psychological Society unless specifically stated otherwise. As the Society is a party to the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) agreement, articles in The Psychologist may be copied by libraries and other organisations under the terms of their own CLA licences (www.cla.co.uk). Permission must be obtained from the British Psychological Society for any other use beyond fair dealing authorised by copyright legislation. For further information about copyright and obtaining permissions, e-mail permissions@bps.org.uk.

The publishers have endeavoured to trace the copyright holders of all illustrations. If we have unwittingly infringed copyright, we will be pleased, on being satisfied as to the owner’s title, to pay an appropriate fee.

Does our unconscious rule?

114 Magda Osman refocuses our view on the evidence

news 90 psychologists are honoured; fMRI guide for journalists; curbing exaggerated reporting; no torture without psychologists?; event reports; and more society 132 President’s column; Society awards; exploring the ‘always-on culture’; and more

The Psychologist is the monthly publication of The British Psychological Society. It provides a forum for communication, discussion and controversy among all members of the Society, and aims to fulfil the main object of the Royal Charter, ‘to promote the advancement and diffusion of a knowledge of psychology pure and applied’.

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

Journalist Ella Rhodes Editorial Assistant Debbie Gordon Research Digest Christian Jarrett (editor), Alex Fradera

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

the

psychologist vol 28 no 2

february 2015

the issue ...debates letters sex offending: don’t forget the victims; where are all the BAME psychologists?; student satisfaction; legal highs; mental illness debate continues; and more

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...digests empathy for patients; student research participants; being a worrier; and more, in the latest from our free Research Digest (see www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog) 100

...meets interview 126 ‘we are not islands, there is such a thing as society’: Robin Dunbar talks to Lance Workman about his attempts to see the big picture and find the big number viewpoints 128 ‘I felt let down by psychology’: we meet a brain injury survivor, researchers and a practitioner careers 148 we talk to Andy Cornes about his work with deaf people; and Rachel Mulholland writes about the highs and lows of being a lecturer; plus latest vacancies one on one with Migel Jayasinghe

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...reviews working memory and ageing; disobedient objects exhibition; Birdman; X + Y; The Small Big; mental health in the workplace; and much more 160

Synaesthesia, the topic of this month’s cover feature, can be thought of as a ‘union of the senses’.

Now I am the first to admit that it may be a tad self-aggrandising to describe what we are trying to do with The Psychologist and the Research Digest as a union of the senses, but I have an editorial to write so please bear with me…

Over the years we have developed the print version of The Psychologist to hopefully offer a more rewarding visual experience, and on our relaunched website at www.thepsychologist.bps.org.uk we have audio and video (stopping just short of smell-o-vision). Over on the hugely popular Research Digest blog (www.bps.org.uk/digest), our first ever podcast is imminent.

But more than that, we are trying to provide a union of ideas… a place where all corners of our wonderfully varied discipline can come together, and reach out beyond boundaries too (see p.128 for a good example).

If what we do is not to your taste, you can change that – see thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/contribute and get in touch. Am I making sense?

Dr Jon Sutton Managing Editor @psychmag

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...looks back Experiencing death to improve life 166 Jelena Martinovic on near-death experiences and psychology in the 1960s and 70s

The Psychologist and Digest Editorial Advisory Committee Catherine Loveday (Chair), Phil Banyard, Olivia Craig, Helen Galliard, Harriet Gross, Rowena Hill, Stephen McGlynn, Tony Wainwright, Peter Wright

Two years ago Go to www.thepsychologist.org.uk for our now complete archive, including Robert Sternberg on his scientific and personal quest for true love

read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk

Big picture centre-page pull-out inside the heart and mind of a city: the work of psychologist Colin Ellard

LETTERS

Don’t forget the child victims

contribute

I was pleased to read Ben Aaron MacLeod’s letter (‘Tackling child sexual abuse – a lesson from Germany?’, January 2015). Beyond the title, however, I was disappointed. The disappointment then developed into concern. The piece is a rudimentary (at best) comment on sexual offending.

As such it is rather misleading, both in terms of exploring

support for convicted and unconvicted offenders and in terms of the knowledge base we have of the psychology of these individuals.

It is concerning to read that the author considers the ‘main stumbling block for unconvicted and would-be offenders seeking psychological support lies in our mandatory reporting laws’.

We know that the majority of

THE PSYCHOLOGIST NEEDS YOU! Letters These pages are central to The Psychologist’s role as a forum for communication, discussion and controversy among all members of the Society, and we welcome your contributions.

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

Letters over 500 words are less likely to be published.

The editor reserves the right to edit or publish extracts from letters. Letters to the editor are not normally acknowledged, and space does not permit the publication of every letter received.

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have not done any real harm and anyway, the child wanted it… as many paedophiles are tempted to coat accounts of their actions with an innocuous ‘rosy glow’. A lack of accountability also suggests that should they offend again, they need not worry there would be legal consequences for them.

Third, it places the psychologists above the law; these clinicians become the prosecution service, judge and jury as they decide to keep the criminal outside the accountability that the criminal justice system is designed for.

Fourth, it means that treating psychologists do not have to confront the defensive outrage of their clients, and indeed may experience their gratitude at being ‘understood’ (as long as psychologists don’t think about the hidden, unhelped victim – the child).

People become psychologists for many reasons, including wishing to make the world a better place through compassion for those who struggle with poor mental health. It is therefore very easy for caring psychologists to fall into a ‘compassion

TIM SANDERS

The letter by Ben Aaron MacLeod (January 2015), in response to one from Alex Hossack in the October issue, ponders whether psychologists should be able to rescind their legal responsibility to report paedophiles who admit actual offences by maintaining their anonymity, because the author is concerned that compulsorily contacting the police makes treatment ‘almost impossible’. From my experience as a clinical psychologist, child sexual abuse survivor and prosecution witness at crown court trial resulting in the imprisonment of a paedophile, I believe there are issues that need to be considered carefully before embarking on this proposed course.

What would the consequences be if psychologists no longer had a statutory, legal duty to adhere to current safeguarding proceedings and could ignore the precept of ‘the child, first and foremost’?

First, it would mean that those child victims would remain hidden and untreated. There is overwhelming evidence of extremely serious psychological (and physical) suffering; for example, a report from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England (Horvath et al., 2014), describes how victims may remain chronically damaged with poor mental and physical health, lower occupational achievement and a life-long pattern of abusive relationships, although others do find their strength to develop constructive selfagency (Sanford, 1990).

Second, it could reinforce paedophile thinking that they

sexual abuse is perpetrated in secrecy with victims silenced sometimes for a lifetime. The

dynamics of abuse highlight the emotionally abusive and traumatising nature of the

…and much more We rely on your submissions throughout the publication, and in return we help you to get your message across to a large and diverse audience.

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vol 28 no 2

february 2015

letters

Where have all the BAME psychologists gone? trap’, whereby their empathy for the sex offender eclipses their awareness that responsibility and accountability includes wider societal and legal consequences. Furthermore, given that many paedophiles are experts at ‘grooming’ (i.e. the process where they deliberately befriend and establish an emotional connection to lower a child’s inhibitions), it is likely they will attempt to groom the therapist into minimising their awareness of the impact of abuse on children.

It seems to me that the struggle being explored by those clinicians who choose to work with paedophiles is a dilemma: should society lock them up and throw away the key, or should society feel compassion for what is regarded as an ‘illness’ and exempt them from the law. A further challenge for some psychologists is that they could be seduced into a parallel process in which being a therapist means they feel entitled to be above the law.

For many survivors, the uncomfortable struggle for accountability continues. In my experience, stepping into anger is essential in order to get it.

Name and address supplied References Horvath, M.A.H., Davidson, J.C., Grove-Hills, J. et al. (2014). ‘It’s a lonely journey’: A rapid evidence assessment on intrafamilial child sexual abuse. London: Office of the Children’s Commissioner.

Sanford, L. (1990). Strong at the broken places. London: Virago.

crime, perversion of attachment systems, denial, minimisation, intimidation, exploitation, etc. I would have welcomed a more reasoned approach acknowledging a spectrum of offending that includes organised, calculated abuse. Otherwise treatment options will perish under, for example, false compliance.

Victims of sexual abuse have been failed on a grand scale, hence the importance of mandatory reporting. To condense and reduce all individuals inclined to think or act abusively towards children as a ‘sexual underclass’ is of utmost concern. I would respectfully suggest that help-seeking individuals concerned about the risk they may pose to children are a very different class of individual to those that abuse and manipulate children, carers, police and other services. Being lumped together with the latter class of criminal and sometimes

psychopathic individuals is possibly the greater deterrent to seeking help.

To end I think the work of the Lucy Faithfull Foundation is groundbreaking.

Additionally the awareness raising campaign of NSPCC is, in my opinion, world-leading.

All individuals concerned about the risk they may pose to children should be supported to access help, including risk assessment.

Fundamentally, all individuals concerned about the safety of children should be supported to seek advice and report. To survive and recover, victims of sexual abuse, whether currently children or adults, should be supported, whatever their relationship with an abuser, class or circumstance.

Mandatory reporting is an attempt to respect that children are not an ‘underclass’ to be failed.

Dr Liz McGonagle Consultant Clinical Psychologist Northern Ireland

read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk

When the ethnic monitoring form for the BPS landed on my doormat I pondered… who will be bothered to complete this form?

For the last 10 years, I have been doing some ‘ethnic monitoring’ of my own, observing with curiosity when a black and minority ethnic (as we are now called) psychologist would appear as a main writer or in the ‘One on one’ feature of this magazine that is prepared for us as paying members.

A recent enquiry that I made to the BPS provided the statistics that BAME psychologists represented some 20 per cent of the paying members of the Society. If my memory serves me correctly, out of the 48 psychologists featured in the ‘One on one’ feature since 2011, 47 (98 per cent) of the psychologists featured have not been members of the BAME groups.

If the ‘One on one’ feature portrayed a representative sample of BAME psychologists, they would have featured a majority of 10 BAME psychologists in that four-year period. However, at the current rate we may see the feature of BAME psychologists creeping up to a whopping 4 per cent over the similar time period and would not reach the equivalent of 20 per cent BAME psychologists

being featured in ‘One on one’ for another 432 issues or about 40 years – nearly a whole career lifetime of the average psychologist. Will all newly qualified psychologists be on the verge of retirement before they see an equivalent number of BAME psychologists featured in our magazine?

I have had several e-mail discussions with The Psychologist about featuring a BAME psychologist even once every year in their ‘One on one’ feature, which would represent a relatively huge 8 per cent (a 400 per cent increase) of the psychologists whose good work is making a positive contribution to British society.

Whilst my main point is not that after 114 years of existence the BPS can easily import a quota system, (BAME psychologists need to be more proactive too!) I do wonder just why The Psychologist is so satisfied with these comparative statistics. And if not, then is complacency enough? Hotep!

Professor Jeune Guishard-Pine, OBE Harrow

Jon Sutton, Editor of The Psychologist, replies: As I had hoped to make clear during our correspondence on this issue over a number of years, Jeune, I am far from satisfied with the representation of BAME psychologists in our publication. I do question your sole focus on ‘One on one’, and some of the specific figures you have provided, but this is hardly the point.

There is definitely scope for more BAME psychologists to feature throughout our pages and in ‘One on one’. I spend a good chunk of my working life searching for potential authors to fill these pages month after month. But also (as you yourself know, Jeune), when I receive suggestions for or contact from suitable authors and interviewees, I tend to act on those. So the message, as ever, is to get in touch (jon.sutton@bps.org.uk) – as Jeune says, be more proactive! See https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/contribute for details.

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letters

False beliefs about false beliefs?

I was curious to apply the Smarties task with my two-year-old son (2 years 3 months). For those unfamiliar with the Smarties task, it goes like this: A Smarties tube is shown to a child, and the child is asked what is inside. After the child answers ‘Candies’, the experimenter shows what is inside: a pencil. Afterwards a child is asked ‘What did you think was inside before I showed you?’. My son answered ‘Candies’. Great right? Well, it wasn’t quite what I expected. The literature says children pass this task at around the age of three and a half to four years. A typical answer of a child his age would be that she/he thought a pencil was inside (i.e. a child cannot represent the mental state of false belief, but only the actual state).

I asked several friends of mine who have children younger than three years to

do this task with their youngsters.

Imagine my surprise when all friends reported outcomes like mine. Studies show us that 15-month-old-infants have implicit understanding of false beliefs, and other experimental methods confirm this.

It is thus unbelievable to me that it takes so long for children to be explicitly aware of false beliefs.

Psychologist have been aware for some time that the strange situation children are put in influences the answers they give, but the role of the experimenter (that is to say who puts them in the strange situation) has been neglected.

Rarely do studies report that the experimenter has been familiarised with the children by spending at least few days in the kindergarten with them. I wonder whether my two-year-old son would give the same answer if he is taken out of his

classroom and put in a different quiet room with an experimenter (which is usually done) to play a game (a story often told to children before conducting the experiment)? I am not suggesting that experiments as such should be abandoned, but that we are not getting the full picture of children’s development by adhering to controlled experiments that lack ecological validity.

Perhaps developmental psychologists should find a way to incorporate more research paradigms for a single problem, or modify the existing ones. Thus converging evidence might make the findings more trustworthy, or perhaps diverging evidence might point us in the right direction.

Thoughts welcome!

Ana Stojanov MPhil Skopje, Macedonia

Treatment lottery for problem gamblers I was interested to read the article in the October issue (‘New gambling research centre’) and a follow-up letter in the December issue by Dr Neil Smith and Dr Henrietta Bowden-Jones (‘Help for problem gamblers’).

I would like to raise two issues.

First, the issue of whether problem gambling should be treated via the NHS is not new and has been debated for many years (Griffiths, 2001, 2004) and over the last 20 years a number of NHS hospitals have housed dedicated treatment facilities for problem gamblers only for them to close due to lack of funding (e.g. NHS Sheffield in the 1990s).

I also authored the British Medical Association’s report on problem gambling in which I recommended that problem gamblers should be able to get treatment via the NHS (Griffiths, 2007).

Readers may be interested to know Dr Jane Rigbye and I sent letters to all healthcare Trusts in the UK requesting information about problem gambling service provision under the Freedom of Information Act (Rigbye & Griffiths, 2011). We reported that 97 per cent of the Trusts did not provide any service (specialist or otherwise) for treating those with gambling problems. Only one Trust offered dedicated specialist help for problem gambling.

However, we also found some evidence that problem gamblers

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may get treatment via the NHS if that person has other comorbid disorders as the primary referral problem.

Second, Smith and Bowden-Jones wrote that there were ‘greater numbers of gamblers developing problems in the UK’.

The latest 2014 study using combined data from both the Health Survey for England and the Scottish Health Survey (Wardle et al., 2014) showed the problem gambling level to be 0.5 per cent in the adult population. While this is still a significant problem, the level of problem gambling was substantially lower than the 2010 British Gambling Survey (0.9 per cent). There is actually no empirical data to show problem gambling has increased in Great Britain over the last four years.

Dr Mark Griffiths Professor of Gambling Studies Director, International Gaming Research Unit Nottingham Trent University References Griffiths, M.D. (2001). Gambling – An emerging area of concern for health psychologists. Journal of Health Psychology, 6, 477–479.

Griffiths, M.D. (2004). Betting your life on it: Problem gambling has clear health related consequences. British Medical Journal, 329, 1055–1056.

Griffiths, M.D. (2007). Gambling addiction and its treatment within the NHS. London: British Medical Association.

Rigbye, J. & Griffiths, M.D. (2011). Problem gambling treatment within the British NHS. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 9, 276–281.

Wardle, H., Seabury, C., Ahmed, H. et al. (2014). Gambling behaviour in England and Scotland: Findings from the Health Survey for England 2012 and Scottish Health Survey 2012. London: NatCen.

vol 28 no 2

february 2015

letters

New low for legal highs?

I write to you as the Service Manager for a supported housing project that helps ex-offenders resettle in the community after release from prison.

We are increasingly facing problems with so called ‘legal highs’ (or novel psychoactive substances), where scientists are tinkering with the chemical compounds of existing drugs, such as MDMA, so they are no longer the same controlled substance.

I can summarise my knowledge and experience in a few words: extremely potent, extremely cheap and extremely dangerous.

As we have experienced with alcohol, many individuals who have successfully battled addictions with illegal substances such as heroin or amphetamines are replacing them with these legal highs, two of the most prominent being ‘Posh’ and ‘Spice’ (no connection!). I am now witnessing individuals experiencing psychosis and symptoms we would have usually only seen after years of serious amphetamine abuse.

One substance named ‘Pandora’s Box’ (the packet gives a great visual image of the effects) seems to trigger psychosis, and it is terrifying to witness the effects – and working with this client group I don’t say that lightly.

In a bid to do some research, a colleague and I went into a ‘head shop’ to see what we could learn. We found: (1) the shop staff are very well primed not to talk to anyone about any of it – every question was answered ‘it’s not for human consumption’; (2) it is a bizarre experience to witness what is essentially drug dealing over the counter; and (3) for five minutes on a weekday afternoon we saw a huge amount of people buying packets of substances

they are willing to take with no idea what is in them.

One of the most alarming aspects of this new trend is the assumption by many individuals (including hardened drug takers) that because they are legal, these substances are safe. Drug services are not equipped to deal with this new wave of substances, and we are all, as far as I can tell, working blind.

All my colleagues and partners in drugs service are of the same opinion: we would much rather people continued to take illegal drugs as the damage seems to be considerably less and at least we know what we are dealing with.

The reason I write to The Psychologist (for the first time) is to plead for help. First, is there any research out there being conducted that may support those of us working with these NPSs? Second, I would like to hear from others experiencing similar issues and whether they have implemented any successful interventions.

One day, this may inform the debate around the legalisation of drugs and certainly could provide another aspect to the debate around research hallucinogens.

I believe we have a duty to understand as much as we can about this to ensure we have the interventions to deal with it… and quick, before one more needless death or incident that could have been prevented.

Lorna Mackay MBPsS Plymouth

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FORUM SURVIVAL GUIDE Universities have become obsessed with competition: it is no longer enough to do well; you have to demonstrate you are better than the rest. And to do that, you need some kind of metric.

Organisations have grown up to meet this need, and to produce league tables that compare institutions on a range of characteristics, including research excellence, reputation and teaching.

The National Student Survey has become established as a major component of this process. It has run annually across all publicly funded higher education institutions in the UK. It features prominently in student guides to the best universities, such as The Guardian’s (see tinyurl.com/ppr7uf5). There is no doubt that the survey has made universities more responsive to student views, and it is to be welcomed that reported student satisfaction levels have increased since the survey was introduced (see tinyurl.com/ns9rfma). Nevertheless, some, like Arti Agrawal (tinyurl.com/q5xsuqj), have expressed concerns about universities introducing quick fixes that may produce higher ratings in the short term, but lower academic quality overall: ‘With increased tuition fees, students are seen as customers who must be kept happy, and the NSS is now a customer satisfaction survey.’ We even have evidence that some universities have used student satisfaction as an index of the quality of the teaching staff (tinyurl.com/mqzcapl).

It is perhaps not surprising then that at the same time as we are told that students are getting happier and happier, academic staff seem to be growing ever more miserable. Now this could, of course, just be down to the fact that everyone likes a good moan.

But my impression from reading Times Higher Education and other outlets (e.g. tinyurl.com/cwrz5tc) is that there is more to it than that. The same pressures that lead managers to treat students as consumers have led them to treat academic staff as dispensable ‘human resources’. The view of universities as institutions in constant competition with one another has trickled down to the departmental level, destroying any sense of collegiality. In the long run, if teaching is done by a body of demoralised and ever-changing academics, this can only be bad for staff and students alike.

But this is only anecdote, and it would be good to have some data. Times Higher Education started a Best Workplace Survey last year, which has the potential to provide just that. However, findings such as 39 per cent of academics felt their health was negatively affected by their work, and one third felt their job was not secure were hard to interpret given the vagaries of sampling. Concerns about the low response rate and potential for bias meant that THE decided not to report results by institution. My guess is that if we had proper survey data, and if staff satisfaction were incorporated into ‘best university’ rankings, then rank orderings might change quite dramatically. Furthermore, institutions that sacked staff to improve rankings (see tinyurl.com/py2kxw2) might find their strategy backfiring.

The THE workplace survey for 2015 is now live (tinyurl.com/opha3bc). Take part: we need a solid basis for identifying those institutions that are genuinely at the top of the league, in terms of their treatment of staff, versus those who achieve a high status on other indicators while presiding over an anxious and demoralised staff.

Dorothy Bishop is Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology at the University of Oxford. This piece was written for the Council for the Defence of British Universities (see tinyurl.com/ppq8378). This column aims to prompt debate surrounding surviving and thriving in academia and research.

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letters

NOTICEBOARD With permission from Professor Martin Seligman, we have developed a dyslexia userfriendly web-based version of the Values in Actions (VIA) Strengths Survey. Individuals with dyslexia have access to a number of features which make the survey easier for them to complete. The VIA Strengths Survey enables individuals to identify their five signature strengths. Any individual can take the test free by going to www.desirabledyslexia.com. In addition to the VIA strengths survey there are number of other online resources.

This work forms part of PhD research which aims to develop a positive psychology interventions for dyslexia. For further details of this work, please email Chathurika Kannangara at csk1mpo@bolton.ac.uk.

Professor Jerome Carson Chathurika Kannangara University of Bolton Callan Institute, Saint John of God Hospitaller Ministries, and the University of Hertfordshire are looking for UK participants to complete a survey on ‘A Review Of Behaviour Practitioners in Post’ and invite you to take part in an anonymous 5- to 10-minute internet survey. For more information visit www.surveymonkey.com/s/UKBehaviour Gillian Martin Callan Institute Dublin I am a clinical psychologist involved in Humanitarian Work Psychology. I manage a research unit in Milan and I am looking for possible partnerships for collaborations. Feel free to contact me. Thank you.

Cristian Caruso cristiancaruso83@yahoo.it We are in the process of conducting an updated Cochrane Review into the effectiveness of reminiscence therapy in dementia. We are seeking information on any unpublished randomised controlled trials, or associated relevant studies that may have not been identified by the usual systematic search methods. If you are aware of any studies that would fit these criteria, please contact me.

Emma Farrell Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board emma.farrell@wales.nhs.uk 01745 443194

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Triangles and ladders – motivation and personal growth John Rowan’s letter (‘Away with the triangle!’, January 2015) commented on my article ‘Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – the sixth level’ (December 2014). He is correct in stating that Maslow never used the triangle method of illustration, which was actually devised by someone unknown. The reason I did not point this out myself was because I did not consider it relevant to the purpose of the article.

His next point is more interesting: ‘What is wrong with the triangle is that it suggests that there is an end-point to personal growth. …[and] this endpoint is not far away. …

Ken Wilber… made it clear that what Maslow was talking about, and describing in some detail as the level of selfactualisation, was a level of consciousness that Wilber calls the Centaur self…and which Wade…calls the Authentic self.’ On this basis he turns the triangle into a ladder and adds further levels of consciousness, the ladder having no end-point.

The problem with this

interpretation is that it involves category error.

If Maslow’s six levels represented levels of consciousness then Rowan’s comments would be valid. Unfortunately they do not, in spite of what Wilber is reported to have written. Instead they are categories of motivating needs which are associated with each of those same levels of consciousness.

Consequently a ladder of higher levels of consciousness cannot be attached to the top of the hierarchy of needs. They are chalk and cheese.

Maslow’s hierarchy deals with the current level of biological evolution reached by the human species and that is why it has an end-point. It has little to do with personal growth, however that is defined. This becomes clear if one considers the dark side of each of his levels. For example, ‘Physiological’ includes the drug addict’s need for the next fix, ‘Safety’ includes paranoia, ‘Belonging’ includes prejudice against those who do not belong, ‘Esteem’ includes achieving

self-esteem by putting others down, while ‘Intrinsic values’ includes the religious beliefs of terrorists.

Which brings us to the question of how to define personal growth. Rowan clearly defines it in terms of the ladder of states of consciousness. However, I have always understood it to mean an individual’s journey of achieving liberation from unconscious programmes which control us and that this is achieved through insights. In other words, Carl Jung’s individuation coupled with Zen-like selfexploration. The aim is stages of enlightenment and not higher states of consciousness although the latter may happen on the way. I wonder if these two perceptions of personal growth are reflected by those who practise concentrative meditation and those who practise mindfulness meditation.

Where we do agree is that there is no achievable end-point to personal growth.

Hazel Skelsey Guest Cambridge

vol 28 no 2

february 2015

letters

Mental illness – mired in controversy?

The debate between John Cromby and Vaughan Bell (‘Understandings of mental illness – mired in the past?’, January 2015) produced much consensus but three matters arising stand out: causation; the term ‘illness’; and the relationship between facts and values.

Cromby mentions Harré’s ‘enabling and causing’, but it is possible to use a single notion of ‘generative mechanisms’, where causes and meanings coexist in human action and where meanings can become causes. This assumes that we are reflective language-using agents, capable of reproducing or transforming the reality we inhabit, both individually and collectively. However, we are largely unaware of intimate subpersonal (biological) and distal (social) forces, over which we have little, or no, control (Archer, 2000). In other words, we are both determined and determining beings.

‘Illness’ was used differently by Cromby and Bell. In medicine, traditionally ‘disease’ refers to the objectively validated trans-patient features (‘signs’) of pathology, the expert knowledge of which guides good diagnosis and prognosis. For example, in any context a person with a valid diagnosis of ‘Type I diabetes’ will soon die unless the demonstrable failure of their pancreatic cells is compensated for by the injection of insulin. In contrast,

hallucinations and unusual ways of speaking are pathognomic in some social contexts but are evidence of extraordinary ability in others. Also, a person with a diagnosis of say ‘schizophrenia’ has a highly uncertain prognosis. The empirical and predictive validity of functional psychiatric diagnoses are both very poor.

‘Illness’ traditionally refers to the patient’s subjective experience of pathology, including reported ‘symptoms’ and their biographical impact, which can be highly variable. The rub in this debate is that ‘mental disorders’ were deemed to be so scientifically weak that they failed to appear in official medical nosologies until after the Second World War. Quite quickly the word ‘illness’ dominated (hence ‘mental illness’ not ‘mental disease’).

The word matters then in pointing up the particular scientific weakness of psychiatry, as a medical specialty, and the constant and inevitable contestation surrounding classification systems like ICD and DSM.

Having read the ‘Head to head’ debate in the January 2015 edition of The Psychologist, I was moved to respond. It seems important to begin by my sharing with the readership that I have spoken and written with John Cromby on a number of occasions. Of course this is not to say that we share the same positions on all topics and indeed we hold our differences.

Nevertheless in the service of transparency and in setting the context to what follows this prior relationship is important to acknowledge.

John opens by providing a succinct and coherent summary of contemporary understandings as they relate to human distress.

He notes, as have others before him, that despite a century of biological research we still have yet to identify the supposed biological causes of what are often labelled as ‘mental illnesses’.

Moreover a comprehensive genetic association study completed

by Hamilton (2008) found ‘nothing outside of what would be expected by chance’. The work of people such as Read and Gumley (2008) highlights how often the knowledge that the brain that has developed so as to respond to and be altered by the environment in which it develops, is woefully neglected by those researchers focused on ‘discovering’ biological causes.

Indeed it has been shown that the brain changes often described as being indicative of ‘schizophrenia’ are also identifiable in the brains of severely traumatised children (Read et al., 2014).

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Finally, Bell’s own unchecked assumptions from the naive realist tradition in science become evident, when presuming fact–value separation and when arguing that ‘ethics relates to how we apply knowledge not the knowledge itself’. But evidence does not emerge from an ethically neutral space of social, political and economic processes and interests, awaiting use by a grateful humanity. A relevant example here is the a priori ethical and political stance of Galtonian eugenics. Without that social movement, and the version of science it generated, British psychology would not be where it is today, so too with the current bio-reductionist legacy in ‘psychiatric genetics’, traceable to the Munich group in the 1930s (Pilgrim, 2015; Thomson, 1998). We reap what we sow.

David Pilgrim University of Liverpool References Archer, M. (2000). Being human: The problem of human agency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pilgrim, D. (2015). Understanding mental health: A critical realist exploration. London: Routledge.

Thomson, M. (1998). The problem of mental deficiency: Eugenics, democracy, and social policy in Britain, c.1870– 1959. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Whilst John made reference throughout his responses to the literature, I was somewhat surprised that Vaughn Bell did not, particularly given the tone and strength of the language used in some of his counter assertions. Whilst he disputes how he perceives John Cromby to have spoken about illness, he offers no definition of his own. Comprehending the subtle and not so subtle distinctions between biology and neurology; causing and enabling; and correlation and causation appeared challenging from Vaughn Bell’s responses. The latter I would have assumed as being familiar to most people working in the field. Perhaps less surprising is the appearance of radicalism, which on closer scrutiny appears to reflect the maintenance of ‘business as usual’ (e.g. Boyle, 2013). Perhaps the general public are more radical than they are given credit for, as they are clearly able to understand how adversity in life can lead to experiences of mental distress.

I agree that ideological disputes hold the potential to be unconstructive. After all, ideological fixation on the part of this government has given rise to the current social and material environments that many of the public are trying and barely managing to survive in. We know that mental distress is consistently linked with markers of social and material inequality (see Wilkinson & Pickett, 2010; Stuckler & Basu, 2013). And we also know it is not only governments that wish to ignore

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inconvenient evidence. In view of the above, the writings of David Smail seem ever more apposite: ‘the aim of a social environmentalist psychology…: to help the person achieve “outsight” such that the causes of distress can be demystified and the extent of their own responsibility put into its proper perspective’ (David Smail, 2005).

Dr J. Soffe-Caswell North West Shropshire References Boyle, M. (2013) Persistence of medicalisation: Is the presentation of alternatives part of the problem? In S. Coles, S. Keenan & B. Diamond (Eds.) Madness contested: Power and practice. Ross-on-Wye: PCCS Books.

Hamilton, S. (2008). Schizophrenia candidate genes: Are we really coming up blank?

American Journal of Psychiatry, 165(4), 420–423.

Read, J., Fosse, R., Moskowitz, A. & Perry, B. (2014). The traumagenic neurodevelopmental model of psychosis revisited. Neuropsychiatry, 4(1), 65–79.

Read, J. & Gumley, A. (2008, March). Can attachment theory help explain the relationship between childhood adversity and psychosis? ATTACHMENT: New Directions in Psychotherapy and Relational Psychoanalysis, 2, 1–35.

Smail, D. (2005). Power, interest and psychology: Elements of a social materialist understanding of distress. Ross-on-Wye: PCCS Books.

Stuckler, D. & Basu, S. (2013). The body economic: Why austerity kills. London: Allen Lane.

Wilkinson, R. & Pickett, K. (2010). The spirit level: Why equality is better for everyone.

Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Assisted dying – a social psychological perspective We have read philosophical and religious perspectives on assisted dying (Letters, December 2014). May I put forward one from social psychology?

As social psychologists, we focus on the tensions that arise between individuals and society. The conceptual tool of social representations theory proposes the constructive way in which society creates its broad belief systems, emerging from interaction between individual attitudes and the visual and textual images circulating in society. Jovchelovitch (2007) talks about the social and symbolic status of knowledge and reflects on how different knowledge systems ‘enable, meet

and communicate in public spheres’.

So my concern is the understanding that the frail elderly, who may believe they have become a burden on society, will take from the view that assisted dying is acceptable.

Yes, the proposed Assisted Dying Bill is for those with less than six months to live; but once that first step has been taken, the notion of assisted dying circulating in society will of course influence people’s choice in the matter of their demise. Choice is contextual.

Of course we cannot fail to be moved by the plight of the high-profile right-todie campaigners but, in liberalising the

ANCIENT GREECE FOR EASING THE PASSAGE TO A PSYCHOLOGY DEGREE? Phil Banyard’s article ‘What is happening to A-level psychology?’ (December 2014) raises some important issues regarding the status of psychology for entry into higher education. Whilst it is technically correct that psychology does not feature in the Russell Group’s list of facilitating subjects, it is however somewhat reassuring to know that some Russell Group universities do value A-level Psychology. This is evident through looking at their 2015 entry requirements on their respective webpages.

I It is pleasing to see the University of Oxford state: ‘If you wish to study psychology on its own…it is highly recommended that applicants have studied one or more of the science subjects e.g. Biology, Chemistry, Physics or Psychology to A2 Level…’

I The University of Birmingham bases their typical offer on applicants ‘taking at least one of the following subjects: Biology/Human Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics/Statistics, Physics or

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Psychology’.

The University of Bristol states that applicants should have A-levels ‘including at least one science subject’ and that Psychology and can be included as a science subject.

King’s College London lists compulsory subjects with ‘at least one of Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics or Psychology’.

The University of Southampton has a slightly more generous offer for applicants ‘taking A-level Psychology, Mathematics or a Science subject’.

Contrary to Phil Banyard’s conclusion, it seems it could be argued that studying ancient Greek at A-level does not necessarily make you more likely to be accepted onto a psychology degree at a Russell Group University than if you study A-level Psychology.

Bhupinder Kuwar MBPsS Birmingham

law on assisted dying, are we in danger of what Reicher and Haslam (December 2014, p.827) refer to as ‘the privileging of the individual over the social’?

So, before we take the first step, could we not use the lens of social psychology to examine research from those countries where it is already legal into how attitudes about assisted dying have changed (or not) and affected behaviour (or not).

It also needs to be part of a much wider debate about death and dying and Atul Gawande’s powerful book Being Mortal is a welcome first step. For me it highlights the importance of a greater understanding of the role of palliative care, and the provision of greater resources for that branch of medicine.

That would overcome the issue raised by Louise Mullins (Letters, November, 2014) that some support assisted dying because of having seen a parent die slowly and painfully. That need not, and should not, be the case.

My father died at 102, blind and unable to carry out the activities of daily living without assistance. He knew how much it was costing to keep him safe and comfortable. He was a strong character and, without a doubt, had the possibility of shortening his life prematurely because he thought it would be easier for his carers, been available, he would have insisted on it. But his last years were full of love and fun for him and the rest of the family. How sad it would be if such experiences were denied to future generations because of a failure to think through the way that a change in the law might affect the social knowledge framing our attitudes about assisted dying.

Sue Guerrier PhD Bereavement volunteer Haslemere, Surrey Reference Jovchelovitch, S. (2007). Knowledge in context. London: Routledge.

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Issues from January I offer a couple of observations prompted by items in last month’s issue.

The Digest report on babies’ anxiety levels makes for interesting reading but ambiguous interpretation.

However, I feel that it is misleading to suggest that babies are insensitive to maternal anxiety. As a sixmonth-old infant I recall vividly lying awake in the same room as my mother, a dispositionally anxious person, who similarly lay awake throughout much of the night.

Such was the stressful effect of this upon my mother that she sought help from our GP, who suggested placing me in a separate room. His wisdom took immediate effect: we both

slept soundly for the first time!

What had been happening was that she had each been listening for signs of distress in the infant and her anxiety had been communicated to the infant by subtle sounds. The net result was that we were each keeping one another awake. Psychologists often underestimate young infants’ levels of social awareness.

The Jackson Brown and Gillard article on radical behaviourism defines it as ‘everything the organism does, which…includes private experiences like thoughts and emotions’. B.F. Skinner was once interviewed by the philosopher Bryan Magee in one of his television series. At one point, in an attempt to pin

Skinner down, Magee asked him if there were any thoughts going on in his head, to which Skinner replied ‘No’. I’ll never forget the expression on Magee’s face, but I’m sure that

Skinner would have been appalled at having ‘radical behaviourism’ considered as part of cognitive psychology.

Dr Allan Dodds Bramcote, Nottingham

Body weight and the credibility of psychologists A recent survey of over 2000 UK adults found that only 9 per cent would take advice on diet and exercise from an overweight GP (Royal Society for Public Health: see tinyurl.com/kuk3msb). Does weight similarly impact the credibility of psychologists?

A flippant response might be that this may only be an issue for the fat psychologists. However, while it may not be possible to know what percentage of psychologists are overweight, in England in 2012 it was estimated that 66.6 per cent of men and 57.2 per cent of women were overweight or obese (Health and Social Care Information Centre: see tinyurl.com/nse94pl). If in the UK being fat is now the norm, it is logical to consider that for psychologists too the issue of how their weight and body size is read by others may be becoming increasingly – ahem – weighty.

I wrote a paper on the topic of weight stigma in therapy for the December 2014 issue of the BACP magazine Therapy Today (www.therapytoday.net/ article/show/4603); like obesity, fat stigma is increasing globally, in fact research suggests that in the US it is increasing even faster than obesity, up from 7 per cent in 1996 to 12 per cent in 2006 (Andreyeva et al., 2008). The purpose of this letter is to ask what others think

about one of the issues I raised – What might fat stigma mean for overweight practitioners?

There is a small theoretical as well as case study literature which argues that the body shape/weight of a therapist does matter to clients (e.g. Gubb, 2013). There is also a tiny research base focused on the impact of therapist weight/shape on eating disorder clients which provides evidence that therapist weight/shape is important for clients.

Online discussion of one of these papers (see tinyurl.com/mdom6u7) provides further anecdotal evidence: ‘This was a major issue with all of my therapists and many times we (patients) spent time talking to each other about our therapists’ weight/size and feeling uncomfortable with their advice because of it.’

However, we do not properly know how a therapist being overweight impacts therapeutic interactions as research is lacking. One can, however, extrapolate from all the research on fat stigma that being a fat therapist is likely to evoke fat stigma in at least some clients, which in turn may impact therapeutic alliance, a robust predictor of client outcome.

Currently colleagues and I are analysing data from over 200 young adults (aged 16–24) who responded to a story completion task about a fat therapist. The

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study aim was to try and understand how a group that is particularly prone to body pressures might make sense of fatness in the counselling room. Preliminary findings are that many stories link therapist excess weight with emotional eating, which in turn is read as the therapist not coping with their life.

Fatness thus becomes a signifier of mental instability, which given the professional context is fatally discrediting. In the words of one participant: ‘How could that help me?’

Thoughts?

If you are a practitioner psychologist who has worked with fat clients, would you like to take part in a research project?

It is an online survey and totally anonymous, it will take only 10–20 minutes of your time. Find the study via www.open.ac.uk/research/main/people/nm 8578.

Naomi Moller The Open University References Andreyeva, T., Puhl, R.M. & Brownell, K.D. (2008).

Changes in perceived weight discrimination among Americans: 1995–1996 through 2004–2006. Obesity, 16, 1129–1134.

Gubb, K. (2013). Re-embodying the analyst. PsychoAnalytic Psychotherapy In South Africa, 21(1), 1–27.

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Understanding autism It was somewhat ironic (and, perhaps, a necessary curb on my ego) that the issue of The Psychologist that included a ‘One on one’ interview with me (December 2014) also included a letter from Graham Collins that questioned the fundamental premises on which my work in autism has been based. The question he implies is ‘What’s so special about autism?’, and that is the one I hoped that I had answered over a lifetime’s work; seemingly, not.

A letter is rather an inadequate vehicle for once more making my case, but let me address it in outline, at least. The context of Graham Collins’s letter was that of learning difficulties, and the claim made was that there was nothing unique either in characteristics or treatment/educational approaches that would distinguish those with learning difficulties from those with additional autism. Since only around a third of those with autism have additional general learning difficulties, it is not clear what that argument has to say about the majority of those with autism, but I want to address the fundamental point.

I would agree that people with autism do not have unique behaviours but rather

share human responses with all other groups of humans; the problem of diagnosis is the current reliance on behavioural characteristics. Diagnosticians have to make a clinical judgement, not relying just on behaviours, but on the psychological processes that underlie those behaviours. In other words, those behaviours have a different meaning when we interpret them through the ‘lens’ of understanding autism. Why is this important and different to all other conditions (and to the typically developing)?

It remains true (in spite of unresolved issues about fundamental biological differences) that the defining feature of autism is that those on the autism spectrum lack instinctive social understanding, not finding social signals salient, and thus having to learn cognitively (and so be taught explicitly) all the things that others (whether or not they have learning difficulties) just acquire naturally. Humans are social animals, born with a very underdeveloped brain. Most of brain development occurs after birth but, unless you have autism,

SKINNER’S SUPERSTITION Aleks Krotoski (‘One on one’, January 2015) recommends that we all read the book The Superstition of the Pigeon by B.F. Skinner: ‘a classic told delightfully’. A task which is made easier by this being not a book, but a five-page paper published in April 1948 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, entitled ‘Superstition in the pigeon’. [Editor’s note: It was entirely my mistake referring

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to it as a book.]

It is certainly well worth a read if only for his discussion, after showing how the pigeon’s ‘superstitious’ behaviour before feeding is produced and controlled in the ‘Skinner Box’, of the bowler who believes ‘his twisting and turning’ will influence ‘the course taken by the ball at the far end of the alley’.

Skinner notes that ‘the

behavior of the bowler may have no effect upon the ball, but the behavior of the ball has an effect upon the bowler’. Surprisingly, he does not here refer to the movement of the ball but rather to, its ‘behavior’, which seems to anthropomorphise the ball.

R.E. Rawles Honorary Research Fellow in Experimental Psychology University College London

the learning that determines that development is socially guided. Only in autism are infants left on their own to make sense of the world and to learn how to operate within it. It is not unsurprising if their understanding and ways of reacting are idiosyncratic. In that way, individuals on the spectrum are even more different to one another and do not share many (if any) ‘autistic’ behaviours.

This is important in practice, not just because it helps us understand why they behave as they do but because it prevents us from making incorrect and often damaging assumptions about their behaviour. Without understanding autism, professionals and parents naturally assume the social understanding that is there for all other groups. Behaviour that arises from naivety or confusion may then be interpreted as deliberate noncompliance or rudeness.

Understanding autism should also lead to the recognition that the educational curriculum cannot just be about accessing the same curriculum as others but also needs to include ‘therapeutic’ content, addressing the missing social and emotional understanding that others (including those with severe learning difficulty) just develop naturally. Individuals with autism will benefit from some of the same approaches that are used for other groups, but the way they are used may need to differ. Behavioural programmes, for example, may need to focus more on making goals explicit rather than on ‘breaking down’ skills into components; cognitive behavioural therapy may need to devote a lot more time than usual in helping the individual understand what emotions are and helping the development of self-reflection. Teaching communication to those on the spectrum needs to include teaching about communication itself – not just teaching the means for communication. Speech cannot be assumed to be underpinned by understanding of communication, as it can for all other groups.

Working effectively with those on the autism spectrum, and supporting their development, depends on understanding.

The biggest myth of all, and the most damaging, is that one can simply train skills, without that understanding. Maybe I need another lifetime to get the message across.

Professor Rita Jordan Emeritus Professor in Autism Studies University of Birmingham

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letters

obituary

Alan Raymond Reynolds (1955–2014) Throughout his career, Alan demonstrated an extraordinary capacity as a psychologist, leader, colleague and friend. He trained to become an educational psychologist at the University of Sheffield and joined the Bradford Psychological Service. He immediately began to have the significant impact on the work of the service and to develop the supportive relationships with colleagues which were to be the hallmark of his career as he moved to work in Hull, Leeds, Lincolnshire, Birmingham, North Lincolnshire and finally returning to Sheffield.

Alan was totally professional, always working in a thorough and considered way, and, although undoubtedly very able, was also extremely modest about his achievements and his managerial skills. His thoughtful, wise and steady approach was an inspiration to all. His work was often at the cutting edge of educational psychology and had a significant impact on the work of EP services and practitioners up and down the country. For example, he applied his deep knowledge of psychology to learning and developed groundbreaking work with teachers modelling metacognition for more effective learning in schools.

He applied a systemic approach to change and service organisation coupled with a sheer determination to ensure that everyone delivered his or her best. He generously shared his knowledge and enthusiasm with trainee psychologists within his service but also through his contribution to EP training. Alan worked with the University of Nottingham from the late 1990s until the middle of the last decade.

A skilled communicator, his work was characterised by a deep sense of what it was to be a psychologist. Astute and reflective, he brought insight and a wry humour. He was the person to turn to in times of complexity, where clarity or just straight talking was needed; for students and colleagues alike he was humane and supportive, able to see a vision beyond the detail.

Alan played key roles in the BPS Division of Education and Child Psychology, becoming Chair of both the Committee and Training Committee, once again showing enthusiastic and committed leadership and extending his influence on the national scene.

Alan was universally liked and respected by all who had the privilege to work with him over the years. Few have had the impact and influence that Alan has had on the way that colleagues work and see the world. Wherever he went, Alan inspired loyalty, admiration, trust and love. He will leave a considerable legacy. His gentleness, intellect, compassion and integrity as well as his ability to simplify the most complex notion so that it could be understood by anybody was simultaneously humbling and hugely inspiring. Not only has the profession lost a truly great psychologist, but also a truly great force for good. He will be so sadly missed, as a dear colleague and friend, by so many people across the profession.

Charmian Hobbs with the support of many colleagues Chair Elect, Divisional of Educational and Child Psychology

The only series of books to be approved by the British Psychological Society. Visit our website to find books for the practitioner, the academic, the instructor and the student, including:

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NEWS

Psychologists honoured Three psychologists have been included in the New Year Honours list. They were recognised for their work in higher education, helping people with intellectual disabilities and services to music education. They told us about their plans for the future.

Professor Paul Webley, director of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, was awarded a CBE for services to higher education. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Economic Psychology and former President of the International Association for Research in Economic Psychology. His research has examined the contribution that psychology can make to our understanding of problems that have traditionally been seen as the concern solely of economics.

Professor Webley said it was a great honour to be recognised, that research and teaching were the foundation of society Professor Paul and he could not Webley, CBE imagine a more fulfilling profession. He added: ‘Through my work at SOAS especially I am glad to have been able to support powerful scholarship and to ensure that specialist knowledge and understanding remains

her work was also featured accessible to generations in Nature. of students around the Professor Burns said she world.’ felt particularly honoured He told The as she knew many others Psychologist that his had contributed to the hard plans for the future were work that had gone into the to continue his efforts to achievements that had been ensure that SOAS was recognised. She added that pre-eminent and to work it was a very emotional hard to combat the moment to see 120 athletes eurocentrism of many with intellectual disabilities disciplines, including walk into the stadium at the psychology.

London Paralympics Professor Jan Burns, opening ceremony and know head of the School of that they would be viewed by Psychology, Politics and Professor Jan Burns, others with and without Sociology at Canterbury MBE disabilities for what they Christ Church excelled at, rather than their disabilities.

University, was awarded an MBE for ‘To be a part of making that happen by services to people with an intellectual using my expertise as a psychologist has disability. Her research interests include been truly inspiring and really brought gender and sexuality, the quality of life home to me how psychology can be for people with intellectual disabilities applied to impact in such a variety of and professional issues associated with settings. Our work continues, and we clinical psychology. As head of eligibility are looking at how to increase the at INAS (the international federation for number of athletes with intellectual para-athletes with an intellectual disabilities competing on the disability), Professor Burns played a key international stage, compete again in role in the re-establishment of events for the Rio Games, and gain entry into the people with intellectual disabilities at Winter Paralympics,’ she added. the London 2012 Paralympics (see Susan Hallam, Professor of Education tinyurl.com/ly9ob5v). and Music Psychology at the Institute of She received a BPS Public Education, University of London, Engagement Grant to enable her received an MBE for services to music to develop web-based and physical education. Professor Hallam is a member resources that explain why people with of the editorial boards of the journal learning disabilities have been included Psychology of Music and the Journal of in the Paralympics and how the systems the Institute for Educational Research. of general eligibility and sport-specific Her research interests include classification work for this group, and

For the benefit of the poor John Oates, BPS member and Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education & Language Studies at The Open University, has been awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of Hungary for his tireless efforts for the benefit of poor and disadvantaged children, particularly in Roma communities.

John’s efforts on his main project, Sure Start (Biztos Kezdet), were recognised by the President of Hungary, who wrote: ‘The President of Hungary awards John Oates with the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of Hungary for playing a central role in developing the programme in Hungary, as well as for his efforts to further improve

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the educational programme for children living in the Roma community.’

Through his connections with Sure Start and early years policy in England, John facilitated the adoption, translation and adaptation of the English materials, methods and structures for the Biztos Kezdet gyerekhaz, the children’s centres, of which there are now more than 100 across the poorest parts of Hungary. He continued to play a key role in developing the programme, organising study visits to England for practitioners and planners of Biztos Kezdet, to meet with experts in early intervention and to spend time in English Sure Start Children’s Centres, and

leading study workshops and training in Hungary for mentors, trainers and practitioners. His documentary films have been shown widely in Hungary and England, influencing the public and policy makers to think more deeply about the difficulties faced by those in poverty.

Professor Oates told us: ‘My research and scholarship in child development has shown me how important it is to make use of our new knowledge about the effects of poverty and other risk factors and how they can be overcome. I am glad I have had the opportunities to put this knowledge into practice to help children in England and in Hungary.’

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february 2015

disaffection from school, learning and understanding, ability grouping, music psychology and music education (see tinyurl.com/lt65qvg).

Professor Hallam said: ‘Although I have now retired from full-time work I am continuing with my research. During January a report entitled “The impact of actively making music on the intellectual, social and personal development of children and young people: A research synthesis” is due to be published Professor Susan which I hope will Hallam, MBE provide those engaged in music education with a review which they can use to advocate for the continuation of music education in these times of ongoing austerity. I am also continuing my research on learning in music with a particular focus on musical practice and motivation.’

Among others honoured were Dr Anna van der Gaag, Chair of the Health and Care Professions Council, who received a CBE for services to health and care, and Dr Hilary Cass, President of the Royal College of Paediatric and Child Health, who received an OBE for services to child health. ER

CORRECTION In the November issue, our item ‘Students and their struggles with stats’ failed to identify Professor Andy Field (University of Sussex) as the author of the report in question: Skills in Mathematics and Statistics in Psychology and Tackling Transitions.

This omission, combined with the seeking of comment from Dr John Reidy, gave the impression that the report was by Dr Reidy.

We apologise to all concerned.

To read the full Higher Education Academy report, please see www.heacademy.ac.uk/node/9841

PAUL BOX. REPORTDIGITAL.CO.UK

news

After Winterbourne A clinical psychologist has supported recommendations made by a report into the treatment of people with learning disabilities and autism, released in the wake of the Winterbourne View scandal. The NHS England report suggests using £30 million in fines from banks to help move people with such difficulties into the community.

Following the revelation of abuse at the Winterbourne House unit, a pledge was made to enable people with learning disabilities and/or autism who were inappropriately placed in hospital to move to community-based support. This was not met by the target date of June 2014, so a report was commissioned, written by a team led by the chief executive of the charity leaders’ organisation ACEVO Sir Stephen Bubb.

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Among many other recommendations the report suggests drawing up a charter of rights for people with learning disabilities and/or autism.

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by Sir re an Step d Comm hen Bubb ission – 20 ing 14

Dr Julian Morris, a consultant clinical psychologist speaking on behalf of the British Psychological Society’s Division of Clinical Psychology, said their Faculty for People with Intellectual Disabilities supported the recommendations of the report and continued to

stress the importance of the provision of evidencebased psychological therapies for all people with a learning disability and/or autism. He added: ‘This is a key component in ensuring that there are appropriate community-based services to both support the timely discharge of people currently in inpatient settings and prevent the need for admission in the first place. For people who engage in behaviours that challenge services, this means the provision of approaches that reduce the need for restrictive interventions, such as Positive Behavioural Support, which are outlined in the Department of Health’s “Positive and Safe” initiative.’ ER I To read the full report

by NHS England visit tinyurl.com/n63rgvs

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Research quality on the up The results of the 2014 Research Excellence Framework were published in December (see www.ref.ac.uk), showing that the quality of submitted research outputs has improved significantly since the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise. Thirty per cent of all submissions were ‘world leading’ (4*), and 46 per cent ‘internationally excellent’ (3*).

Research in all units of assessment (UoAs) has led to a range of social, economic and cultural impacts. These include diverse impacts on the economy, society, culture, public policy and services, health, the environment and quality of life both within the UK and internationally.

The research ratings will determine the allocation of the £2bn public funding made available to universities each year.

Madeleine Atkins, chief executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England, told BBC News that the exercise showed that ‘UK universities are in the top rank of an internationally competitive research community’.

A substantially higher proportion of early career researchers and staff with individual circumstances (such as maternity leave or part time working) were submitted than in the 2008.

Provisional analysis of average quality profiles for the UoAs to which psychology submissions have been returned reveals the percentage of research in each that is ‘world leading’ or

TOP JOURNAL ARTICLES BY ALTERNATIVE METRICS A controversial study by social networking site Facebook, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was the most shared academic research last year. Statistics, released by Altmetric, revealed it ranked first out of 24,752 articles from 2014.

In 2012 the site manipulated more than 600,000 users’ news feeds over a week to assess whether being shown fewer positive or negative stories from friends would affect the emotions of individuals (see tinyurl.com/l8e48ye). The research caused a massive stir upon its release with many users saying they felt their privacy had been invaded. Interestingly, the article was most shared on Twitter, with more than 3700 tweets mentioning the research and only 371 mentions on Facebook itself, although the statistics were limited to public mentions of the research – private wall posts were not counted.

Second place on the Altmetric Top 100 list went to a paper in the Journal of Ethology titled ‘Variation in melanism and female preference in proximate but ecologically distinct environments’. This seemingly unassuming paper became infamous due to an author’s comment that had been left in the text, which read: ‘Should we cite the crappy Gabor paper here?’ This perhaps calls into question the utility of this form of ranking: what we are looking at here is not quality or influence, but a raw measure of notoriety.

Third place went to a study published in Nature suggesting that artificial sweeteners could induce glucose intolerance, and fourth was a breakthrough in stem-cell research also published in Nature. In fifth place was an Ig Nobel Prize award winner published in Frontiers in Zoology, which revealed that defecating dogs were sensitive to variations in the Earth’s magnetic field. ER

‘internationally excellent’: UoA 4 (Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience) – 38 per cent 4* and 40 per cent 3* UoA 3 (Allied Health Professions) – 31 per cent 4* and 50 per cent 3* UoA 19 (Business and Management Studies) – 26 per cent 4* and 43 per cent 3* UoA 22 (Social Work and Social Policy) – 27 per cent 4* and 42 per cent 3* UoA 23 (Sociology) – 27 per cent 4* and 45 per cent 3* UoA 25 (Education) – 30 per cent 4* and 36 per cent 3* UoA 28 (Modern Language and Linguistics) – 30 per cent 4* and 42 per cent 3* UoA 36 (Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, Library and Information Management) – 29 per cent 4* and 38 per cent 3* The UoA reports, which will allow further assessment of the submissions from Psychology, were due to be released in January.

fMRI guide for journalists Cambridge University cognitive neuroscientist Dr Jon Simons has created an fMRI guide for journalists to use in reporting results from imaging papers. The guide, he said on his blog, aims to provide enough information to allow journalists to read and report on such papers with an appropriate amount of informed scepticism.

Among the pointers Simons outlines are the problems with reverse inference, where a paper links activity in one region with a single mental function. Many brain regions are involved in many psychological processes and it is rare that one-to-one mapping between activity in a brain region and a single mental state is possible. Simons also points out that if a ‘Region of Interest’ approach has been used, the particular regions studied should be selected independently of the analysis and based on the results of previous studies or a different scan in the same experiment.

Simons said the impetus for the guide came from a number of science writers, such as Ed Yong and Carl Zimmer, who mentioned that journalists might find it useful if some brief guidance existed on how to approach writing about brain imaging research. He added: ‘The blobs on brains that result from methods such as fMRI look attractive, but the science that underlies them is complex and technically challenging. We wanted to write a guide that might be helpful for those who may not consider themselves fMRI experts, but want to report fMRI journal articles accurately in the media.

‘Hopefully the pointers we provide about common problems to look out for will also be useful to press officers and scientists themselves in helping to craft press releases that reliably describe fMRI findings, resisting hype and mentioning appropriate limitations and caveats. Aiming for accuracy at all stages of the reporting process is, I believe, important for improving the public understanding of science.’ ER I For the full guide visit tinyurl.com/k7he237

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Curbing exaggerated reporting A new paper has revealed that many of the exaggerations and distortions contained in mainstream media reports of scientific findings often come from university press releases themselves, rather than directly from science journalists. The article, published in the BMJ, looked at 462 press releases from 20 leading universities in the UK alongside the original peer-reviewed research papers and resulting news stories.

The authors, led by Professor Petroc Sumner (Cardiff University), used the following outcome measures; whether any of the stories, press releases or papers advised readers to change their behaviour, contained causal statements drawn from correlational research, and inference to humans from animal research beyond that stated in the associated academic papers.

Among the press releases they found 40 per cent contained exaggerated advice, 33 per cent contained exaggerated causal claims and 36 per cent contained exaggerated inference to humans from animal research.

When the press releases contained this exaggeration, it was reflected in the news stories 58 per cent, 81 per cent and 86 per cent respectively; while if the press releases contained no exaggeration, 17 per cent 18 per cent and 10 per cent of the news stories added in each of the three exaggerations respectively. This research sparked much debate with many specialist science news journalists pointing out that reporters are responsible for fact-checking even if press releases do contain exaggerated claims.

Ed Yong, a science writer who has a blog with National Geographic, said on Twitter: ‘Blame is not a zero-sum game.

If exaggerations or inaccuracies end up in science/health reporting, then the journalist should always take 100% of the blame, even if the errors originated with

scientists or press releases. Errors can arise anywhere, they are meant to end with us.’

Science journalist and research fellow Ben Goldacre wrote an accompanying article about the prevention of bad reporting on health research. He discussed the quantitative research already done on the misrepresentation of medical research in mainstream media. He pointed to the HealthNewsReview website in the United States, which gives an ongoing critical appraisal media coverage of treatments and tests. He said: ‘A published summary of its first 500 appraisals found that most news articles failed to satisfactorily discuss the quality of the evidence or to quantify the absolute magnitude of benefits and harms… In terms of story selection, evidence suggests that the media are more inclined to report exceptional causes of death; that bad news generates more coverage than good news and that observational studies are more likely to be covered than trials (perhaps because observational research more often reflects the kinds of lifestyle choices that patients can make themselves).’

Goldacre suggests that press releases should have named authors, including both the press officers involved and the academics from the original paper, adding: ‘This would create professional reputational consequences for misrepresenting scientific findings in a press release, which would parallel the risks around misrepresenting science in an academic paper.’

He also suggests that in terms of transparency, press releases are often more impactful than the research paper itself, but are often only sent privately to journalists and are rarely linked from academic papers. He said that releases should be treated as a part of the scientific publication, being linked to the paper,

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referenced from the academic paper that is being promoted, and presented in full view of peers.

He makes the final point that feedback in these cases would require a simple extension of current norms in academia.

He said: ‘Researchers who exaggerate in an academic paper are publicly corrected – and held to account – in commentaries and letters to the publishing journal, through the process of post-publication peer review. This could be extended. Press releases are a key part of the publication of the science: journals should reflect this and publish commentary and letters about misrepresentations in the press release, just as they publish commentary on the academic paper itself. Collectively this would produce an information trail and accountability among peers and the public.’

The authors point out in their discussion that the result of their research shouldn’t be seen to be shifting blame from journalists onto non-journalists working in higher education press offices.

They point out that most press releases are written collaboratively by scientists and press officers and therefore much of the responsibility for exaggeration should lie with scientific authors in these cases.

They continue: ‘At the other end of the chain, journalists have a continuing responsibility to cross check their sources even if their working conditions make that increasingly difficult. The blame – if it can be meaningfully apportioned – lies mainly with the increasing culture of university competition and self promotion, interacting with the increasing pressures on journalists to do more with less time.’

The authors conclude that the academic community can make a large difference to the quality of health-related news stories and that appropriate claims are a good starting point. ER

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Enlightening and practical Ella Rhodes reports from the Fourth International Congress of Coaching Psychology, 11–12 December 2014, London The Fourth International Congress of Coaching Psychology, organised by the BPS Special Group in Coaching Psychology, drew in an enthusiastic audience from 23 different countries to scores of inspirational talks and practical workshops. The diverse range of topics across 10 streams and two days comprehensively covered many areas of the discipline, including sports coaching, psychometric testing and even the taboo.

One highlight from the first day of the conference, in the ‘taboo’ stream, was Dr Henry Ford, speaking about his work teaching mindfulness to executives in the City. Ford has worked for 25 years coaching and mentoring on Wall Street and in the City, within investment and commercial banking and private equity.

He spoke about his practice of yoga and vegetarianism, an unusual and taboo lifestyle choice in the executive world.

Ford said that following the credit crunch he was given the chance to formalise his coaching and bring the benefits of mindfulness to people in London. He outlined some of the research into the benefits of mindfulness and the biology and neuroscience behind the human stress response. The problems his City clients suffer are mainly issues with work–life balance and stress, and Ford gave some examples of the kinds of techniques he teaches: as well as ‘mindful minutes’ he asks clients to sit in front of their e-mail and scan the names in their inboxes, being aware of the physical effect that each name has on them.

Whistleblower Helen Stratton appeared in a moving conversation with Neil Tomalin, discussing the difficulties employees face when confronted with situations that go against their personal values. Dr Stratton worked at Bristol Royal Infirmary counselling parents of babies and children who faced heart surgery. She found out that the death rates of these young patients were higher at Bristol than elsewhere in the UK. She and her colleague, anaesthetist Dr Stephen Bolsin, compiled an audit of success rates, which eventually led to one of the biggest surgical scandals in the history of the NHS. Subsequently James Wisheart, the surgeon at the centre of the scandal, was struck off along with hospital manager Dr John Roylance.

When asked why some people do not speak out, Stratton replied: ‘My father was

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a barrister, and we were brought up arguing that black was white.’ When asked what she had learned she said that she was aware that people could not leave their jobs because of every ethical dilemma they face: however, she could not ignore her own values.

Margaret Heffernan, an entrepreneur, chief executive, producer and author, gave the first keynote speech of the congress, about wilful blindness. She began by mentioning the scandal at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust and the Rotherham Child Abuse revelations that came out earlier in the year, alongside various other failures by large industry and groups. She said: ‘With all of these institutional failures, what has really struck me is the problems that beset these organisations are not taking place in private but they’re happening in large, public places.’ Heffernan said the idea of wilful blindness came to her when she was writing a radio play about the collapse of Enron, and she realised that many problems within companies are being actively ignored until it is too late.

She added: ‘What’s really interested me is that it’s not just about private denial but about organisational blindness.’

Heffernan then asked what physical things could explain why we miss pitfalls or wrongdoing in organisations. She outlined the case of Warren Briggs, who worked at a refinery in BP. He was working one day in 2005 for the 30th day in a row, on 12-hour shifts, in a control room in front of 24 screens. On this occasion an alarm began sounding but Mr Briggs was unable to stop it and consequently there was an explosion that killed 15 people, injuring 100. Heffernan said the site where Mr Briggs worked was known to be dangerous, with a high mortality rate, Mr Briggs himself was hugely sleep-deprived, and with more to focus on than human attention can handle. Heffernan concluded her talk by saying that in a crisis many businesses ‘double down’ and reinforce their existing biases (such as top executives being white British), therefore maintaining the status quo… they would do well to be more open to questions and creative conflict.

Day two of the congress saw several interesting talks on the international picture of coaching. Speaking about the emergence of the discipline in Japan was Dr Etsuyo Nishigaki (Kansai Medical

University). She said in 1999 motor manufacturer Nissan began to reform the company by introducing coaching as a management technique. In the present day there are now 40 coaching training schools in Japan, with many dealing with communication skills as their main concern.

Nishigaki’s research has looked into the reality of coaches in the country; with colleagues she surveyed 478 Japanese and Chinese coaches and found that, of these, 20 per cent had never had any formal coach training. Evidence-based coaching had not yet been fully introduced in Japan, with many coaching textbooks and works coming in from other countries (the first Japanese-language coaching psychology book was due to be published next year). Nishigaki concluded with cultural issues surrounding coaching in the country, such as an emphasis on seniority: there may be issues with a young person coaching an older client.

Director of the Cambridge University Psychometrics Centre John Rust, gave the second, thought-provoking keynote speech of the congress, on the psychometric testing of digital footprints using social media. Professor Rust began by outlining the history of testing and the pitfalls of each type of test. For example, the introduction of examinations led to discrimination, IQ or mental tests led to scientific racism, and the use of social networks has the downfall of mirroring Big Brother.

Rust went on to outline some of the work done with social media data. He said that our online digital footprint can be used to track human behaviour, in the likes we make on Facebook, the links we click on and even the words in our status updates and tweets. Psychologists now have many millions of data points to use.

Rust outlined the use of data from a Facebook app that went viral in 2007, a personality test that collected data from six million people over two years. One of his own studies looked into 700,000 people who had carried out these tests and found a correlation between personality traits and likes on Facebook.

Rust said they were looking at whether a personality could be predicted from these likes and found that some traits could be predicted with 95 per cent accuracy.

He also showed some more recent work looking at whether the words used

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in Facebook status updates could predict introversion and extraversion, and said there was a great degree of similarity between people with those shared personality traits. Rust said that this sort of data is not only useful in marketing but can also help predict whether people are at risk of depression or dangerous behaviours such as terrorism or cyber crime. He said that much of this information could be useful in the context of coaching, both aiding people to overcome addictive behaviours, identifying those at risk of mental health problems, as well as helping people to manage their own online presence and digital footprint.

As well as the many enlightening

talks taking place at this year’s congress, there were also practical workshops held to give coaches new ideas for their own practices. Among them was Almuth McDowell (City University London and Birkbeck University of London) who presented her methods using a feed forward interview with a microintervention to increase psychological capital. In this approach clients are asked to tell the coach a positive story from their life in much detail, focusing on the event, the people involved and the feelings associated with it and then combining these positive feelings with future plans to build on their psychological capital – increasing selfefficacy, optimism, hope and resiliency.

Dr McDowall said following the use of this positive story it is then possible to use a micro-intervention, where a client is asked to think about a goal they wish to achieve and visualise it. Subsequently they are asked to physically draw different pathways to achieving this goal, noting down any obstacles they may encounter along the way.

I The Special Group in Coaching Psychology has a number of upcoming workshops next year with discounted rates for group members; these include Dr Sue Roffey’s positive psychology and authentic well-being on 30 March, and essential neurolinguistic skills for coaching psychologists with Dr Rene Bosman on 27 May

A SYNAESTHETIC DINING EXPERIENCE For people who do not have synaesthesia it is difficult to imagine a world where sound has colour, colour has flavour, or numbers are unique personalities you know well. But this month sees the launch of a series of educational and multisensory dining events organised with the help of psychologists and experts in the field.

Synaesthesia by Kitchen Theory is an event that will incorporate sensory audiovisual aids and the collaboration of knowledge from academia with an experimental seven-course modernist meal cooked by Michelin restaurant experienced chefs. Each event caters for 14 and offers an insight into the world of synaesthesia. Kitchen Theory has worked with Professor Charles Spence and his team at the Crossmodal Research Laboratory at Oxford University, as well as Sean Day (President of the American Synesthesia Association) and Richard E. Cytowic, neurologist and author of Wednesday is Indigo Blue, to understand the condition.

Jozef Youssef, Founder and Chef Patron, gave us an example of the approach. ‘We knew we wanted an amuse bouche which highlights our individual associations between colour and flavour, both universal and cultural. Ours consists of four bite-size elements each of which will represent one of the four most

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recognised and familiar tastes; sweet, sour, salty, bitter. Each element will be coloured differently to correlate with that taste’s associated colour, based on research by the Crossmodal Lab. A video, featuring Professor Spence, will introduce diners to the topic of the senses and synaesthesia, and the guests will be asked to arrange the four elements in front of them according to what they perceive as being sweet, sour, salty, bitter, based only on sight.

Then it’s time to put their perceptions to the test – for some this will be a straightforward experience, some may find a few elements surprising, for others perhaps incongruent.’

The dinners will be hosted at Maida Hill Place in London, Thursday to Saturday every fortnight from 12 February. The sevencourse dinner costs £56 per head or £32 for a three-course lunch with an amuse bouche. Kitchen Theory’s 2015 residency will also include cooking classes, talks and private events. For further information, go to tinyurl.com/nuzb2d5.

I For more on synaesthesia, see Digest p.101 and Jack Dutton’s article on p.106. For more on the work of Professor Charles Spence and the Crossmodal Research Laboratory, see https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/down-culinary-rabbit-hole

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Psychology4Graduates 2014 Ella Rhodes went to hear about career opportunities at this BPS event in London More than 600 psychology graduates and students gathered at Kensington Town Hall in December to hear from academics and psychologists about the massive range of career options available to them. The event included several presentations and panel discussions from people who have pursued varied careers, from forensic psychology to becoming psychological well-being practitioners.

First to give a presentation on her career path was Dr Estelle Moore, a forensic psychologist who works at Broadmoor Hospital. She said that enthusiasm was enormously important and gave a list of people who had inspired her along her career path, including Peter Fonagy, Claudia Herbert and James Blair. Moore also said that working alongside psychiatrists, both at Broadmoor and the Bethlem Royal, had taught her many important things.

She also highlighted several of the points that help in becoming a forensic psychologist: ‘Psychology in forensic terms will always be about sharing and collaborating with nurse therapists and occupational therapy teams. It helps if you understand people over a long period of time, understand their psychosocial environment. You should also be challenging stigma all the time and including people in their own recovery.’

Counselling psychologist Kevin Wright was next to speak about his career.

Dr Wright said he started off as a social worker and as a result became interested in family therapy. After completing a master’s in psychotherapy, he began his career working for businesses in London and now works screening patients who are waiting for psychological therapy as well as in private practice. Ingrid Collins, an educational psychologist who now has her own private practice, said she first trained as a teacher but went on to have an extensive career in educational psychology, Collins concluded: ‘Educational psychology is an area of the profession you can always find something

new, intriguing and relevant to learn about.’

Dr Carolyn Mair was next to speak briefly about her fascinating career path, which now sees her leading the only course in the world that looks into the role of psychology in fashion (see our ‘Big Picture’, September 2013). Mair’s first role was as a graphic designer and she came to psychology in her late 30s, completing a degree in psychology and computing at Bournemouth and later an MSc at Portsmouth. Her new course at the London School of Fashion looks at how

psychology impacts the fashion industry and the people who buy into the industry.

Moira Lafferty, University of Chester, was the last speaker before lunch, telling the gathered audience about her work as a sports psychologist. Dr Lafferty gave the graduates some sound advice: ‘If you don’t know what you want to do, keep your options open. One of the best bits of advice I was given was to never turn an opportunity down. If you’re engaging in psychology and have a go, you never have to do that thing again but you’ll learn from it.’

Following the lunch break clinical psychologist Dr Abigael San gave a presentation about the role of clinical psychologists and her own career. She said that before graduation from her

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psychology degree she had already gained much experience in a clinical setting, which would be a useful thing for the gathered students and graduates to consider. Dr David Dean, a neuropsychologist, then explained his work with patients who have suffered brain injury or stroke. He said: ‘I can’t imagine how devastating it must be to have a head injury, psychology is vital in helping people to rebuild their lives using some therapies such as mindfulness and CBT.’ Dean said he started off with a psychology degree and had two years’ work experience working with older adults and in a psychiatric day unit then underwent his clinical psychology training.

Health and education psychologist Dr Sheena Ashford said after studying psychology and economics at university she realised both had very different models of human behaviour and that the economics view of humans was too simplistic. She said her interest in well-being and education drew her initially into research for 10 years, then into educational psychology. Philip Wilson, an occupational psychologist working for the Civil Service, explained that much of occupational psychology work is around development and assessment using psychometric tests. He said that when compared with educational or clinical psychology, occupational psychology could offer a slightly more varied career path.

Finally Tafara Kunorubwe spoke about his role as a psychological wellbeing practitioner (PWP), providing lowintensity interventions based on CBT as part of the government’s IAPT programme. Kunorubwe began his career with an interest in mental health nursing and substance misuse. He said: ‘As a PWP you can still have specialist interests, such as using CBT for insomnia or CBT for carers of people with dementia.’ He also said there was a lot of further training and development available for people working as PWPs.

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No torture without psychologists?

Two psychologists played a central role in the brutal torture of people captured after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, holding a multimillion dollar contract with the Central Intelligence Agency. Details emerged in December in the 500-page Senate Intelligence Committee report into the use of so-called ‘enhanced’ interrogation techniques on detainees.

In the report, the psychologists are referred to by the pseudonyms Grayson Swigert and Hammond Dunbar, but multiple media outlets have identified them as Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen.

As well as developing techniques for interrogations, the pair were also involved with carrying them out, using techniques including waterboarding, sleep deprivation and painful stress positions.

In 2005 Mitchell and Jessen formed a company, Mitchell and Jessen Associates, for the sole purpose of conducting their work with the CIA. Shortly after, the agency outsourced almost all aspects of the programme. In 2006, the report said, the value of the CIA’s base contract with this company was more than $180 million, and the psychologists received $81 million prior to the contract’s end in 2009.

Helplessly ineffective It is also revealed in the report that neither Mitchell nor Jessen had any particular knowledge of al-Qa’ida and counterterrorism, or any relevant cultural or linguistic specialism. Despite this, Mitchell and Jessen ‘carried out inherently governmental functions, such as acting as liaison between the CIA and foreign intelligence services, assessing the

effectiveness of the interrogation program, and participating in the interrogation of detainees held in foreign government custody’.

Their interrogation techniques were based on Martin Seligman’s theory of learned helplessness. Seligman is reportedly ‘grieved and horrified’ that his work was cited to justify the abusive interrogations. ‘My impression is that they misread the theory,’ said Dr Charles A. Morgan III, a psychiatrist at the University of New Haven who has met Mitchell and Jessen. Speaking to the New York Times, he added: ‘They’re not really scientists.’

Psychologist Dr Vaughan Bell, writing on the Mind Hacks blog, said the use of the theory in developing interrogation techniques was inherently flawed: ‘Mitchell and Jessen wanted to induce this [learned helplessness] state in detainees, thinking that it would make them more likely to co-operate. This, to be frank, is just bizarre. The theory predicts the opposite would happen and this is, rather grimly, exactly what occurred.’ Detainee Abu Zubaydah, the report notes, became ‘completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth’ after repeated waterboarding. Ramzi bin alShibh started to exhibit ‘visions, paranoia, insomnia, and attempts at self-harm’.

Laurence Alison, Director of the Centre for Critical and Major Incident Psychology at the University of Liverpool, told The Conversation that the use of building rapport, non-judgemental acceptance and empathy were far more useful in gleaning intelligence in interrogations. Speaking of his own research, he added: ‘Interrogators who resisted the (perhaps natural) urge to

SENATE REPORT AND FURTHER READING Senate Intelligence Committee report tinyurl.com/p2nkf98 British Psychological Society statement tinyurl.com/lfmtwgv American Psychological Association statement tinyurl.com/lue6wbk New York Times coverage tinyurl.com/pu4whbf tinyurl.com/lm4xypt NBC News

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tinyurl.com/oucdghm Seligman comments tinyurl.com/lm4xypt Mind Hacks tinyurl.com/pz4c443 The Conversation tinyurl.com/mgbnnrc Martin Robbins in The Guardian tinyurl.com/oy2ebe4 Steven Reisner in Slate tinyurl.com/mphczpf A history of war and

psychology tinyurl.com/mxfthh2 That CIA methods were pointless is no shock tinyurl.com/md283xm More on learned helplessness tinyurl.com/owohphr James Mitchell responds tinyurl.com/popjlkx tinyurl.com/qghj9fx tinyurl.com/k8rf57k tinyurl.com/n2t7ves

try and change or challenge the detainee’s behaviours and beliefs engaged more with their suspects and got more information from them.’

The committee’s report concludes that the torture used did not extract any lifesaving intelligence. In many cases, it says, detainees gave no information or fabricated information. In another galling revelation the report states that CIA officers repeatedly raised concerns over the effectiveness of the methods being used.

In order to justify the torture, the CIA often gave out misleading information, citing counterterrorism success as justification for the use of torture. However, in its review the committee found that in some cases there was no relationship between the success of a counterterrorism operation and information gained from torture.

In The Guardian Martin Robbins called for the psychologists involved to be ‘banished from the scientific community’.

He outlined the history of torture and why, in popular culture, a belief that torture works is often perpetuated. He wrote: ‘Only 22% of people in a YouGov poll last April were completely opposed to the use of torture, and support generally trended upwards through the Bush years and beyond. The philosophical argument against torture was lost sometime in the Old Testament, and there’s no sign of things turning around any time soon.’

Indeed, a recent study covered by our Research Digest blog (see tinyurl.com/pcee3gz) suggested that people often endorse the use of torture on the basis of retribution, rather than as a cool utilitarian judgement aimed at extracting information.

Sickening and morally reprehensible The American Psychological Association released a statement in response to the report, referring to the torture techniques used by the CIA as ‘sickening and morally reprehensible’. It also pointed out that neither Mitchell nor Jessen were members of the APA, and confirmed it is looking into allegations made by New York Times reporter and author James Risen that the APA colluded with the Bush administration to support enhanced interrogation techniques.

This is a central point for critics of the APA: writing for Slate, psychologist Steven Reisner detailed why he believed ‘there would have been no torture without the

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FUNDING NEWS The Economic and Social Research Council provides studentships for 600 new postgraduate students every year who are studying at one of 21 Doctoral Training Centres across the country.

Applicants must have qualifications or experience equivalent to a first or upper second class degree from a UK academic research organisation. For the full award you should have been ‘ordinarily resident’ in the UK for the previous three years; for the fees only award you would have been ‘ordinarily resident’ in an EU member state, also for three years. Applications should be made directly to the DTC at which you wish to study.

I tinyurl.com/muzkrkt

‘…major national organizations of physicians, psychiatrists, and nurses determined that their ethical obligations prohibited their members from participating in these interrogations’

proponents for the involvement of psychologists in interrogations are trying to limit the damage done to the profession by emphasising the role that these two psychologists played – but it wasn’t just two psychologists, Mitchell and Jessen were like patient zero of a virus that infected the entire interrogation system.’

The Experimental Psychology Society invites applications for its Grindley Grants for Conference Attendance.

Grants are for a maximum of £500 and finance travel to any academic conference relevant to the applicant’s work that falls within the domain of EPS interests. Preference will be given to attendance at meetings of the EPS. Applicants should be registered for a postgraduate research degree or postdoctoral workers who are within two years of having received their doctorate.

Applications from non-EPS members must be sponsored by a member.

I tinyurl.com/kpxs3qw

Response The report has drawn responses from James Mitchell himself, who told Reuters the report was ‘a bunch of hooey’ and a ‘partisan pile of bull----’, adding: ‘If they were truly interested in getting the truth out, they would release me from [the nondisclosure agreement].’ ‘I’m in a box – I’m caught in some Kafka novel,’ he told another source. Mitchell also told the Associated Press: ‘What I would love the American people to know is that the way the Senate Democrats on that committee described the credentials and background of the two psychologists is just factually, demonstrably incorrect.’ He added: ‘It’s a lot more humane, even if you are going to subject them to harsh techniques, to question them while they are still alive, than it is to kill them and their children and their neighbours with a drone.’

The British Psychological Society also released a statement, noting the Senate’s conclusion that the interrogation methods used were ‘excessive and brutal’. The Society took the opportunity to ‘condemn and repudiate these practices; to reiterate our long-standing and principled stance in these matters; to repeat the overriding ethical responsibility of all psychologists and other healthcare professionals to protect and defend fundamental human rights; and furthermore to note the extensive psychological research concluding that torture and coercive interrogation is ineffective, especially in comparison to rapport-based approaches’. ER

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The Leverhulme Trust invites applications for its Early Career Fellowships. The scheme enables early-career researchers to undertake a significant piece of work. Applicants must have a track record of research, but should not have held an established academic appointment. Fellowships are normally tenable for three years on a full-time basis and will cover fellows’ total salary up to a maximum of £24,000 per year. Fellowships can be held at universities or other institutions of higher education in the UK. The closing date for applications is 5 March 2015.

I tinyurl.com/qg7snv3

info

psychologists’. According to Reisner, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel had determined that the presence of psychologists and physicians, monitoring the state and condition of the prisoner being tortured, afforded protection for the CIA leadership and the Bush administration from liability and potential prosecution for the torture. Later, the OLC applied the same rules to the Defense Department’s ‘enhanced interrogation program’. But Reisner argues that ‘for psychologists to be able to do the Bush administration’s bidding and oversee the torture of detainees, they required not only indemnification for legal liability (Mitchell and Jessen were promised a $5 million legal defense fund by the CIA), but they also required indemnification from another source’. He continues: ‘…major national organizations of physicians, psychiatrists, and nurses determined that their ethical obligations prohibited their members from participating in these interrogations, so what was the American Psychological Association doing?’

Reisner answers his own question in the form of allegations made in James Risen’s book Pay Any Price, that ‘senior staff members of the American Psychological Association, the world’s largest association of psychologists, colluded with national security psychologists from the CIA, the Pentagon, and the White House to adapt APA ethics policy to suit the needs of the psychologist-interrogators’.

Others argue that psychologists were so central to the torture that the buck can’t stop with Mitchell and Jessen. Dan Aalbers, Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Sierra Nevada College, told us: ‘The very presence of a psychologist at black site meant that any interrogation was ipso facto not torture.

Every psychologist at GITMO and the black sites was therefore complicit in acts of torture – even those who only did good.

And we don’t know of any psychologist who only did good. This is important because

For BPS awards and grant schemes, see www.bps.org.uk/awards&grants Funding bodies should e-mail news to Emma Smith on emma.smith@bps.org.uk for possible inclusion

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Biological explanations lead to less empathy for patients The idea that mental illness is related to brain abnormalities or other biological factors is popular among some patients; they say it demystifies their experiences and lends legitimacy to their symptoms. However, studies show that biological explanations can increase mental health stigma, encouraging the public perception that people with mental illness are essentially different, and that their problems are permanent. Now Matthew Lebowitz and Woo-young Ahn have published new evidence that suggests biological explanations of mental illness reduce the empathy that mental health professionals feel towards patients.

Over two hundred psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers were presented with vignettes of patients with conditions such as social phobia, depression or schizophrenia. Crucially, some of these vignettes were accompanied by purely biological explanations focused on factors like genes and brain chemistry, while other vignettes were accompanied by psychosocial explanations, such as a history of bullying or bereavement. Next, the mental health professionals reported their feelings by scoring how far a range of adjectives – such as ‘sympathetic’, ‘troubled’ and ‘warm’ – fitted their current state.

Vignettes accompanied by biological explanation provoked lower feelings of empathy from the clinicians, and this was true regardless of their specific profession. Both biological and psychosocial explanations triggered similar levels of distress, so the reduced empathy associated with biological explanation was not simply due to psychosocial explanations being more upsetting. The mental health professionals rated the biological explanations less clinically useful; biological explanation also prompted them to have less faith in psychotherapy and more confidence in drug treatments.

Similar results were found in a follow-up study in which clinicians and social workers were presented with vignettes and explanations that reflected a combination of psychosocial and biological factors, but with one approach more dominant than the other. The idea was that this would better reflect real life. In this In Proceedings of the National Academy of case, explanations dominated by biological factors Sciences prompted lower empathy from clinicians.

Lebowitz and Ahn suggest biological explanations provoke reduced empathy because they have a dehumanising effect (implying patients are ‘systems of interacting mechanisms’) and give the impression that problems are permanent. With biological approaches to mental illness gaining prominence in psychology and psychiatry these are potentially worrying results. A silver lining is that both medically trained and non-medical clinicians and social workers in the study saw biological explanations as less clinically useful than psychosocial explanations.

A weakness of the research is the lack of a baseline no-explanation control condition – this means we can’t know for sure if psychosocial explanations increased empathy or if biological explanations reduced it. Also, as the researchers admitted, the vignettes and explanations were greatly simplified. Nonetheless, the findings may still give reason for concern. Lebowitz and Ahn suggest reductions in empathy may be avoided if clinicians understand that ‘even when biology plays an important etiological role, it is constantly interacting with other factors, and biological “abnormalities” do not create strict distinctions between members of society with and without mental disorders.’ CJ

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One in ten student research participants don’t make an effort In The Clinical Neuropsychologist It’s near the end of your university semester, you’re tired and now you’ve got to sit through 90 minutes of monotonous psychology tests to fulfil the requirements for your course. This is a familiar situation for psychology undergraduates, many of whom form the sample pools for thousands of psychology studies.

Concerns have been raised before that psychology findings are being skewed by the (lack of) effort students put into their performance as research participants. Last year, for example, researchers found that students who volunteer near the end of term perform worse on psychology tests than those who volunteer earlier.

Now Jonathan DeRight and Randall Jorgensen at Syracuse University have investigated student effort in 90 minutes of computerised neuropsychology tests designed to measure attention, memory, verbal ability and more. The session, which took place either during a morning or afternoon late in the

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After this training regime, people saw letters of the alphabet as being alive with colour In Scientific Reports

spring semester, involved the students taking the same broad battery of tests twice, with a short gap in between. The students received course credits for their time.

To test whether the students were making a proper effort, the researchers embedded several measures – for example, performing worse than chance on a multiple-choice style verbal memory challenge was taken as a sign of low effort; so was performing more slowly on an easier version of a mental control task than on the more difficult version.

Among the 77 healthy student participants who took part (average age 19; 36 women), the researchers identified 12 per cent who failed at least one of the embedded measures of effort during the first battery of neuropsychology tests; 11 per cent also failed one or more measures during the second battery. The vast majority of those who showed low effort had participated in the morning. In fact, focusing only on the morning participants, one in four displayed low effort.

Unsurprisingly, low effort also went hand in hand with poorer performance on the neuropsychology tests, especially one of the longest and most dull cognitive tests

(the ‘continuous performance task’), and especially during the second battery. A consistent exception was a particularly complex version of a test of mental self-control (the Stroop task) – perhaps because the challenge of the task provoked more concentration, even from students who were mostly not trying hard.

The estimate from this study of the fraction of student research participants not making an effort are consistent with some prior studies, but not others (the latter research found less evidence of poor effort).

Clearly more research is needed. DeRight and Jorgensen concluded that ‘healthy nonclinical samples cannot necessarily be assumed to have put forth adequate effort or valid responding’. They added: ‘Assessing for effort in this population is imperative, especially when the study is designed to provide meaningful results to be used in clinical practice.’ This last, important point is a reference to the fact that results from students are often used to establish estimates of ‘normal’ performance on neuropsychology tests, for comparison when investigating patients with brain damage or other problems. CJ

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A training regime at the University of Sussex has successfully conditioned 14 people with no prior experience of synaesthesia – crossing of the senses (see also p.95 and p.106) – to experience coloured phenomena when seeing letters.

The regime took place over nine weeks, a half-hour session every workday together with extra homework. Again and again, the trainees were encouraged to treat the letter ‘r’ as red, or ‘e’ as green, with a similar process repeated on 13 letters in all. This was tested every session using tasks such as viewing a sequence of letters and selecting all the associated colours, or completing a timed reading task where letters were omitted and replaced with squares of the relevant colours (see picture right).

Tasks became progressively harder, and the group were financially incentivised to outperform their previous scores. No previous intervention has been as extensive as this one, as Daniel Bor and colleagues were seeking to go beyond learned colour-letter associations to try and produce a genuine subjective experience of synesthesia.

After the training, the group became better at those ‘Stroop’ test trials where the trained colour of a presented letter matched the ink colour it was written in, and the task was to name the ink colour as fast as possible. This suggests that the training had gone deep enough to help them make rapid, nonreflective decisions.

The majority of participants also reported gaining a subjective experience of synaesthesia. By their own accounts, nine definitely experienced a coloured effect when seeing trained letters, which was mostly characterised as seeing the colour ‘in front of my mind’s eye’ (only two participants definitely didn’t have this experience). Naturally occurring synaesthetic effects

can be stronger than this, with colours seen floating on the surface of the letter or number, but the reported experiences are nonetheless impressive.

In addition, participants got smarter, scoring an equivalent of 12 IQ points higher on a standard intelligence test administered pre- and posttraining. We should make no firm conclusions from this, as the causal mechanism may be other aspects of the training process not directly related to synesthesia, such as the heavy load on working memory. Even so, achieving a 12-point increase

in a normal- to high-functioning group is not something routinely delivered by psychology interventions.

Three months later, did the synaesthesia stick? Not so much. The effect on the Stroop task was maintained, suggesting learned associations were going strong, but participants reported a weakening or total dissipation of the coloured experience itself.

Nevertheless, this work questions whether synaesthesia is limited to a rare and genetically distinct group, and shows how learning and experience are likely to play an important part too. We already know that young synaesthetes experience a strengthening of their colour linkings during early school years. Perhaps early pairings – seen on coloured alphabet jigsaws or fridge magnets – provide the associations that some people develop into an ever-present feature of their world. AF

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A child’s popularity is related to where the teacher seats them in the classroom In the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology Teacher training doesn’t usually include a module on how to arrange the seating of pupils.

Perhaps it should – a new study by psychologists finds that where children are placed in the classroom is associated with how well-liked they are by their classmates.

Yvonne van den Berg and Antonius Cillessen studied 34 classrooms at 27 elementary schools in the Netherlands. The 336 participating pupils had an average age of 11, and 47 per cent of them were boys. In all classrooms, it was the school policy that the teachers dictated who sat where; seating arrangements were in groups or rows, or a mixture. Every pupil was asked to say how much they liked each of their classmates, and to rate their classmates’ popularity. They gave these ratings twice: four to six weeks

into the first semester (August/September time), and then again at the beginning of the school’s second semester during the following spring.

A key finding was that children who were seated in the first semester near the boundaries of their classroom tended to be less liked by their peers at that time, and also six months later, as compared with children sitting nearer the centre of the class. Another related result was that children tended to rate those located nearer to them as more likeable and more popular (this helps explain the first result – children seated centrally tend to have more classmates closer to them). Meanwhile, children who were only (re)positioned at the boundaries of the class in the second semester did not receive lower likeability ratings at that

time, presumably because their reputation had already been established by then.

Why should seating position have these associations with children’s perceptions of their peers? The researchers think two psychological mechanisms are pertinent. Social psychology research on race relations and prejudice finds that the more we interact with other people, the more positive our views of them tend to be. School pupils naturally interact and socialise more with the children located near to them, and so this interaction could encourage more positive perceptions.

There is also a psychological phenomenon known as the ‘mere exposure effect’, which describes how familiarity with something or someone breeds more positive feelings towards them.

Van den Berg and Cillessen also conducted a second study with 158 more schoolchildren, in which they asked them to rate each other’s popularity, and also to say where they would position themselves and their classmates if they could choose.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, children said they’d like to sit nearer to their peers who were more liked and more popular. The researchers said this provided an insight into what’s known as the ‘cycle of popularity’ – wellliked and popular children typically attract more social interactions with others, this then reinforces the popular perception that others have of them via the mechanisms mentioned earlier.

There are plenty of unknowns in this research.

For example, we don’t know the reasoning behind the teachers’

Is being a worrier a sign of intelligence?

In Personality and Individual Differences We usually see worry as a bad thing. It feels unpleasant, like a snake coiling in the pit of your stomach. And worriers are often considered weak links in a team – negative influences who lack confidence. But of course, anxiety has a useful function. It’s about anticipating and preparing for threats, and learning from past mistakes.

Increasingly, psychologists are recognising the strengths of anxious people. For example, there’s research showing that people more prone to anxiety are quicker to detect threats and better at lie detection. Now Alexander Penney and his colleagues have conducted a survey of over 100 students and they report that a tendency to worry goes hand in hand with higher intelligence.

Participants completed various measures, including one to distinguish trait anxiety from in-the-moment state anxiety. The key finding was that after controlling for the influence of test anxiety and current mood, the students who reported a general habit of worrying more (e.g. they agreed with statements like ‘I am always worrying 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 and contributor Dr Alex Fradera. Visit the blog for full coverage including references and links, additional current reports, an archive, comment and more.

Subscribe to the fortnightly e-mail, friend, follow and more via www.bps.org.uk/digest

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about something’) and/or ruminating more (e.g. they said they tended to think about their sadness, or think ‘What am doing to deserve this?’) also tended to score higher on the test of verbal intelligence, taken from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale.

To take one specific statistical example, verbal intelligence correlated positively with worry proneness with a statistically significant value of 0.19 (after controlling for test anxiety and mood).

Together with the measures of rumination, mood and test anxiety, verbal intelligence explained an estimated 46 per cent of the variance in worry.

Another result from the survey, not so promising for worriers, was that a tendency to dwell on past social events was negatively correlated with non-verbal intelligence (that is, those students who dwelt more on past events scored lower on non-verbal IQ).

Seeking to explain these two different and seemingly contradictory correlations, the researchers surmised that: ‘[M]ore verbally intelligent individuals are able to consider past and future events in greater detail, leading to more intense rumination and worry. Individuals with high non-verbal intelligence may be stronger at processing the non-verbal signals they interact with in the moment, leading to a decreased need to re-process past social encounters.’

Of course we must be careful not to over-interpret these preliminary results – it was a small, non-clinical sample after all, so it’s not clear how the findings would generalise to people with more extreme anxiety. However it’s notable that a small 2012 study found a correlation between worry and intelligence in a sample diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder. Penney and his colleagues concluded that ‘a worrying and ruminating mind is a more verbally intelligent mind; a socially ruminative mind, however, might be less able to process non-verbal information’. CJ

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DIGEST DIGESTED decisions of where they chose to place their pupils in their class.

Perhaps they placed more popular pupils more centrally?

In fact, there are reasons to think this unlikely – past research has found teacher and pupil ratings of pupils’ social relationships are only weakly related.

Despite the unknowns, the van den Berg and Cillessen said their results provided evidence for what’s been termed the ‘invisible hand of the teacher’ – the understudied ways that teacher decisions influence the

ecology of the classroom.

‘Classroom seating arrangements may be hugely influential in children’s exposure to and interactions with other peers and, thus, in determining children’s social relationships with one another,’ the researchers concluded. They also highlighted that this new research builds on another recent study they conducted, which found that placing children closer to each other in the classroom improved pupils’ liking of each other and reduced problem behaviours in class. CJ

LINK FEAST Why We Love the Pain of Spicy Food The fascinating psychology of why humans enjoy painfully spicy food.

‘For some reason apparently unrelated to survival, humans condition themselves to make an aversion gratifying,’ writes John McQuaid. tinyurl.com/mk3r35m Can Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Really Change Our Brains?

Claudia Hammond takes readers on an interactive tour of CBT, including research that found brain changes associated with the therapy. tinyurl.com/qj2ox5q All You Need to Know About the ‘Learning Styles’ Myth, in Two Minutes Over at the Brain Watch blog, Digest editor Christian Jarrett examines the mistaken idea that people learn better when they are taught via their preferred style. tinyurl.com/k47weeb 9 Things I Wish People Understood About Anxiety Kady Morrison, writing at Vox, was diagnosed with anxiety disorder five years ago. tinyurl.com/nsx6rwz Journalists’ Guide to fMRI Papers What does fMRI really measure, plus many more questions answered by cognitive neuroscientist Jon Simons and friends. tinyurl.com/k7he237 Serial: Your Memory Can Play Tricks On You – Here’s How ‘... at times we cannot even trust our own memory, let alone that of others,’ writes Catherine Loveday at The Conversation. tinyurl.com/lbyhnm7

read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk

Full reports are available at www.bps.org.uk/digest When bosses break the rules, it’s not only their own reputation that suffers. Presented with hypothetical scenarios, participants assumed bad bosses’ companies were dishonest, and that their junior staff were too. The effect also applied in science and medical contexts. Social Psychological and Personality Science In-depth interviews with 10 British first-time fathers suggested that feelings of separation and helplessness are common. The men said that with their biased focus on the mother and pregnancy, antenatal classes were fuelling these feelings. The researchers called for classes to be tailored towards fathers’ needs.

Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology A lost ability to enjoy pleasures in life – anhedonia – may be an important, previously unrecognised part of the withdrawal process after stopping smoking. Among over a thousand people on a cessation programme, those who experienced more quitting-related anhedonia were more likely to relapse. Journal of Abnormal Psychology Drawing key concepts alongside more passive studying may help people better learn new scientific knowledge. Looking at relevant pictures drawn by someone else did not have the same benefit.

Contemporary Educational Psychology There are fears that playing violent video games increases bad behaviour in the real world. However a new study found that such games can increase players’ real-world feelings of guilt and concerns about fairness, thus showing the potential of the medium as a form of civic development.

Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking Rapport-building interrogation is more effective than torture. That’s according to interviews with 34 interrogators and 30 international detainees most of whom had been held on suspicion of terrorism.

Confessions were four times more likely when interrogators struck a neutral and respectful stance, according to the participants’ recollections. Applied Cognitive Psychology Men and women are affected differently by superstitious beliefs.

Female students suffered a drop in confidence when allocated an unlucky seat. Their male peers weren’t bothered by unlucky seats, but they enjoyed a confidence boost when given a lucky seat. Journal of Economic Psychology

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FEATURE

to explain why he was experiencing those feelings.

Although there were other instances of synaesthesia recorded later in the 19th century, academic interest waned with the rise of behaviourism in the 1930s. The theory of behaviourism postulates that all behaviour is explained by conditioning or Jack Dutton meets those with the condition and the researchers who study them. experiences in one’s immediate Might it have benefits, and could it even be taught? environment. Researchers began to focus more on external influences, as it was widely assumed that internal feelings and thoughts were not measurable.

Synaesthesia wasn’t more widely and Lady Gaga all claim to have it. recognised as a condition until the 1980s. s a boy growing up in London, Authors and artists including Nabokov American neurologist Richard E. Cytowic James Wannerton would travel and Van Gogh are also said to have attended a dinner party where he saw by the underground to school. experienced forms of synaesthesia. someone cooking a chicken sauce. The He could taste his way along the route.

But it’s not just famous musicians and chef tasted the sauce and said that it ‘Piccadilly Circus tasted of the peanuts artists who experience synaesthesia. One tasted ‘wrong’ and that it ‘needed more and goo you get inside a Picnic bar. example is JB, a teenager from New York points’ on it. Cytowic questioned the chef Bond Street tasted of a tangy aerosol spray. who has synaesthesia and eidetic memory. and found out that the chef experienced I liked Tottenham Court Road; it tasted of When JB was three years of age, he was shapes on his hand whenever he tasted breakfast. The word “Tottenham” tasted able to recall the script of the movie Shrek food. Cytowic was intrigued by this, and of sausage, the “Court” tasted of egg and word for word. JB’s mother started researching the “Road” tasted of toast,’ he tells me. tells me she didn’t realise he the phenomenon James experiences a rare type of had synaesthesia until he we now know as synaesthesia, a condition in which “I’d listen to music and reported seeing numbers in synaesthesia. sensory input from one cognitive stream be hypnotised by the blue. Is JB’s profound At about the gives rise to sensory input from another colours I’d see” memory merely incidental, same time in the unstimulated cognitive stream (Cytowic, or is it potentially linked to UK, psychologist 1989). The word comes from the Greek his synaesthesia? And, if that Professor Simon for ‘joint sensation’ – as opposed to the is the case, could having Baron-Cohen came more familiar term anaesthesia, which is decent memory be one of the advantages across an interview of a painter called Greek for ‘no sensation’. Synaesthesia is of the condition? Are there other benefits Elizabeth Pulford. Pulford (EP) said she involuntary, the different associations and to having synaesthesia? Before answering experienced words and music in colour senses generally remain stable over time, these questions, we must offer some and asked whether anyone was interested and associations are often unique to the context into how this fascinating in studying her. Baron-Cohen got in individual. It is thought to affect at least phenomenon was first recognised as a touch and went on to write several papers 4.4 per cent of the general population psychological condition. on EP (e.g. Baron-Cohen et al., 1987), (Simner et al., 2006). identifying a synaesthesia that was both There are over 60 known types of genuine and stable. In 1995 Baron-Cohen synaesthesia. James’s lexical-gustatory and his colleagues then proved that form leads words to be experienced as A brief history synaesthesia was a real neurological strong tastes. One of the most common The first scientific reports on synaesthesia condition using fMRI scans on six types is grapheme-colour synaesthesia, emerged in 1812 (Jewanski et al., 2009). synaesthetes and six non-synaesthetes which is when letters and numbers are German physician Georg Sachs described (controls). The scans showed brain tinged with colour. Letters can represent his own feelings of synaesthesia in a activity in the part of the brain associated different tones of colour, as can whole dissertation on his and his sister’s albinism. with vision when sound occurred, even words. Chromaesthesia is another Two pages of the thesis described some of when the participants were blindfolded. common form, and involves the his feelings of synaesthesia; he claimed to This only occurred in the brains of the association of sound with colour – experience coloured words, sequences and synaesthetes, and not the controls musicians Pharrell Williams, Mary J. Blige music. Regrettably, Sachs did not attempt

The surprising world of synaesthesia

references

A

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Baron-Cohen, S., Wyke, M. & Binnie, C. (1987). Hearing words and seeing colours: An experimental investigation of a case of synaesthesia. Perception, 16, 761–767.

Colizoli, O., Murre, J.M.J. & Rouw, R. (2014). Training synesthetic lettercolor associations by reading in color.

Journal of Visualized Experiments, 84, e50893. doi:10.3791/50893 Cytowic, R.E. (1989). Synaesthesia: A union

of the senses. Berlin: Springer.

Cytowic R.E., Eagleman D.M. & Nabokov D. (2009). Wednesday is indigo blue: Discovering the brain of synesthesia.

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Goodale, M.A. & Milner, A.D. (1992).

Separate visual pathways for perception and action. Trends in Neuroscience, 15, 20–25.

Jewanski, J., Day, S.A. & Ward, J. (2009).

A colorful albino: The first

documented case of synaesthesia, by Georg Tobias Ludwig Sachs in 1812'.

Journal of the History of the Neurosciences,18(3), 293–303 Kay, C.L., Carmichael, D.A., Ruffell, H.E. & Simner, J. (2014). Colour fluctuations in grapheme-colour synaesthesia: The effect of clinical and non-clinical mood changes.

British Journal of Psychology [Advance online publication].

doi:10.1111/bjop.12102 Paulesu, E., Harrison, J.E., Baron-Cohen, S. et al. (1995). The physiology of coloured hearing: A PET activation study of colour-word synaesthesia.

Brain, 118, 661–676, Rothen, N. & Meier, B. (2014). Acquiring synaesthesia: Insights from training studies. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, 109.

Simner, J., Mulvenna, C., Sagiv, N. et al.

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(Paulesu et al., 1995). These findings encouraged other members of the scientific community, particularly neuroscientists, to focus their research on synaesthesia.

Synaesthesia and touch As fascinating a condition as it is, synaesthesia can be a hindrance to the individual.

Carolyn Hart, who works as a massage therapist at Twitter’s main headquarters in San Francisco, has a rare type known as mirror-touch synaesthesia. Someone with mirror-touch synaesthesia involuntarily feels the same sensation another person feels.

Carolyn tells me about her experiences: ‘My earliest memory of it was when I was James Wannerton can taste his way along the London Underground about three years old. We had a dog that broke her leg in there was no visible bleeding, but front of me. I remember that at the the 20-year history of the business. Her when she saw that the man’s leg was at moment I saw that fracture I felt pain. synaesthesia has allowed her to perceive an impossible angle, it triggered her It’s been with me as long as I remember.’ sense in ways many of her peers cannot. synaesthesia. She experienced a shooting, Carolyn’s pain is experienced It also helps her memorise her electrical pain, from the back of her hips instantaneously, before she has time to appointments with clients. ‘In my head, all the way down to the front of her legs think. It doesn’t matter how she feels I can pull up my entire calendar for and through the back of her arms. about the person or animal in pain – months into the future. I don’t need to Although Carolyn’s synaesthesia can she has to see the image or object before write down my appointments. They are sometimes be a problem, it also can be of she feels a tactile sense. ‘Sometimes, when colour-coded in three-dimensional space,’ great help – especially with her job. ‘When I am engrossed in a movie or watching an she says. Although synaesthesia can make I touch people, I tend to feel it in my own athletic event, I will involuntarily move some mundane tasks difficult, what if we body where I’m working on them. It’s very my body in ways I see the people on the were to focus on the potential benefits pleasant; it’s almost like I’m massaging screen moving. I don’t watch a lot of and use them to enhance day-to-day life? myself. It’s not quite as intense as my sense action movies because they are too of pain,’ she says. ‘My fatigue while I’m synaesthetically stimulating for me. Often working gets mitigated by the fact I feel I’ll really tense my muscles because I feel Synaesthesia and memory really good physically when I’m massaging. like I’m running along with the actor who In the same way as JB’s, Carolyn’s There’s a pleasurable component to my is running from the bad guy.’ remarkable memory is unlikely to be work that is beyond simple job Carolyn tells me she saw an article incidental. One of the leading experts in satisfaction. I find my work interesting; in Time magazine recently about the synaesthesia and memory is Dr Nicolas I enjoy the personal interaction.’ downing of the MH17 plane. ‘There Rothen, who is based at the University Carolyn’s mirror-touch synaesthesia was an image of a person strapped to an of Sussex (where he has worked with allows her to easily palpate her patient’s airline seat in the middle of a wheat field Professor Jamie Ward, who wrote a ‘State injuries and knots. She recently left a job where the body landed. The body was of the art’ piece on synaesthesia for this she was at for eight years where she was intact and there was no bleeding, cut, publication in 2003: see the most requested massage therapist in or rupture’. At first, Hart didn’t react, as tinyurl.com/jamieward). Rothen has written papers on a wide range of different topics around synaesthesia, including how it is linked to artistry and to higher cognitive functions.

(2006). Synaesthesia: The Ward, J., Thompson-Lake, D., Ely, R. & In his review paper, Rothen has had prevalence of atypical cross-modal Kaminski, F. (2008). Synaesthesia, to study the parts of the brain associated experiences. Perception, 35(8), creativity and art: What is the link? with vision. The ‘Two Streams’ hypothesis 1024–1033.

British Journal of Psychology, 99, proposes that the visual system is made Stroop, J.R. (1935). Studies of 127–141. interference in serial verbal Witthoft N. & Winawer J. (2013). up of the dorsal pathway and the ventral reactions. Journal of Experimental Learning, memory, and synesthesia. pathway. The dorsal pathway is involved Psychology, 18, 643–662.

Psychological Science, 24, 258–265. in guidance, actions and where objects Ward, J. (2013). State of the art: are in space while the ventral stream is Synaesthesia. The Psychologist, associated with object recognition 16(4), 196–199.

(Goodale & Milner, 1992).

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Nicolas discusses some of the trends he has found in his experiments. ‘As a group, synaesthetes tend to perform better on memory tasks than nonsynaesthetes. More so on tasks involving colour, abstract patterns or words, but not as much on things like spatial location,’ he says. ‘For example, in graphemecolour synaesthesia, there is an increased sensitivity in the ventral-visual pathway.’

That leads to a performance advantage in certain types of memory tasks. ‘That’s the reason why synaesthetes often have an advantage in tasks involving high spatial frequency information, such as words, colour and abstract patterns but not for spatial information, location and sound – those are functions that are mainly located in the dorsal path.’

enhance how well people learn to read and compose music.

Daniel has recently got into modern dance music. ‘With classical music I experience many different colours, but as house music is more repetitive, I often see one solid colour appear throughout the tracks. There’s one track I like at the moment by Koan Sound, which starts as an intense yellow and by the end of the song turns into a cascade of blue. The harp sound coming in at the end makes it a dark blue.

‘Part of my listening experience is seeing what colours the musical notes

evoke. It’s positive, as I get really into it and it’s part of my performance,’ he says.

‘When I’m composing, in my head I can imagine what colours I would see if I was to play it. Composing is months of work condensed into four minutes of playing time. While I’m writing I imagine the colours I see – and when I finally hear it I am amazed.’

Teaching synaesthesia It is clear that McBride’s synaesthetic associations help him with his music, but where do his associations come from?

In music Some of the memory benefits of synaesthesia can be transferred into creative disciplines. Daniel McBride is a second-year student at the Royal College of Music in London and experiences synaesthesia. After starting piano lessons aged 16, he learned very quickly, and within only seven months, he was performing professionally. ‘I’d never write down any of the songs I’d play. I could memorise everything from the colours and patterns I’d see when playing them,’ he says.

‘Being at college introduced me to a lot of music, some of which used nontraditional triads. Sometimes I’d listen to music and be hypnotised by the colours I’d see,’ he says. In college Daniel is often given music projects to work on – it’s the style in which he plays them that is influenced by his synaesthesia. ‘I clearly see a change in colour when I hear one note and hear it rise slowly in pitch.

Because of that, I really like listening to Middle Eastern music. That stimulates me the most.’

Studies that have looked into synaesthesia and creativity have found promising results. For example, one study took a sample of 82 synaesthetes and got them to answer creativity questionnaires and say how much time they engaged in art. There was a significant tendency for synaesthetes to spend more time engaging in creative disciplines, relative to nonsynaesthetes. Different degrees of creativity were also linked to the type of synaesthesia experienced (Ward et al.

2008). For example, people who had chromaesthesia were more likely to play musical instruments than other synaesthetes. These findings imply that if scientists are able to figure out a way to teach people chromaesthesia, it may

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Barbara Ryan mixing ‘Taste of November’ synaesthetic cocktails to accompany an installation at the Gooden Gallery, London 2010

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A study by Witthoft and Winawer (2013) may help answer this question. They tested 11 colour-grapheme synaesthetes and found they had surprisingly similar colourgrapheme pairings (graphemes are the smallest unit of a written word that has meaning). But, with synaesthesia being thought to be predominantly a hereditary condition, why was this the case? The researchers pointed to a surprising answer: the colours they saw matched those of a well-known set of Fisher-Price magnets, which 10 of the 11 participants recalled owning when they were younger. This suggested that environmental associations learnt in childhood had a strong effect on synaesthetic symptoms.

If synaesthesia is partly determined by your perceptual environment, could it be possible to teach certain aspects of the condition? In her lab at the University of East London, research fellow Dr Clare Jonas trains non-synaesthetes for a week to help them associate letters with colours.

She does this by continuously exposing a person to a letter associated with a particular colour. After training them, she gives them word lists containing achromatic (colourless) words, words with colours congruent to the colours they learned, and words with colours incongruent with the colours they learned.

Jonas often finds that the nonsynaesthetes start to behave in a way synaesthetes do – they are often more likely to remember congruent and achromatic words, but find it difficult to remember incongruent words, relative to non-synaesthetes who hadn’t been trained.

These outcomes suggest that certain aspects of synaesthesia could be taught.

Nicolas Rothen’s work also supports this theory – he reviewed all of the research in the area and found that some aspects of synaesthesia were transferrable to nonsynaesthetes (Rothen & Meier, 2014).

However, a lot of the effects depended on the intensity and duration of the training and the intrinsic motivation of the participant to take part in the experiment.

If aspects of synaesthesia can be taught, does this mean there is potential to augment memory in non-synaesthetes by teaching them synaesthesia? ‘At the moment we know that synaethesia has benefits for memory in young adults, but we don’t know whether it has a protective effect on memory as we get older,’ Jonas says. ‘Memory declining later in synaesthetes would be an obvious prediction. If that is the case, synaethesia training could be used to either protect or improve the memory of older people.’

Jonas’s method of teaching synaesthesia isn’t the only method that might work.

Olympia Colizoli, an Assistant Professor in

Brain and Cognition at the University synaesthesia and memory. ‘I actually think of Amsterdam, adopts a more passive that synaesthetic techniques could be used approach when training her nonto help with disorders like dyslexia. I think synaesthetes. She has them read books synaesthetic techniques can be used as with repeating differently coloured letters a learning aid in some cases. A friend of to prime them into future synaesthetic mine is dyslexic and has trouble with associations. In one of her experiments, certain letters, so I asked him what letters she coloured the letters a, e, s and t in the he had problems with. I then asked him book, but left the other letters in black. what kind of associations he had with After training, she those letters. Initially, flashed letters of the he didn’t think he had alphabet quickly and any, but I told him to “…some believe that asked participants to take his time and think identify the letter’s about it. I then synaesthetic matching colour. In the formatted the text so interventions can help test Cozoli purposely that the letters he had treat mental health showed some of the trouble with were now disorders” coloured letters in a in colour, and straight different colour to what away he could read it in they were in the book. a way he couldn’t before.

She found that it took people who had They became recognisable. Recognition been trained (or taught aspects of is a lot quicker with synaesthesia, as you synaesthesia) longer to identify those have more than one mode of stimulation colours than those who hadn’t been taught coming in.’

– they experienced interference in reaction Synaesthesia doesn’t just have time known as the Stroop effect (Stroop, potential benefits for memory and 1935). This would have occurred because creativity – some believe that synaesthetic of the involuntary associations noninterventions can help treat mental health synaesthetes formed after being trained. disorders. Ian Jordan, from Ayr, Scotland, The results showed that this method of describes himself as ‘an optician with training is successful, at least in the short a difference’. He employs synaesthetic term (Colizoli et al., 2014). methods to try to reduce the effects of Other, more recent research suggests different multisensory disorders, such that taught synaesthesia can have longas autism, dyslexia and ADHD. ‘We use lasting effects. A paper published by and monitor synaesthesia in a lot of Rothen and his colleagues found that noninterventions,’ he says. ‘Sensory synaesthetes were able to learn processing disorders are often synaesthetic characteristics that remained synonymous with synaesthesia. We present when they left the lab. Results think that tinnitus in some ways is such as these, along with other those of a synaesthetic condition. If you change other training studies, imply that the visual input significantly, you can synaesthesia isn’t just a hereditary tune the sound out in the hearing for condition, but is shaped by exposure to around 60 per cent of people. It’s a certain environmental factors during our synaesthetic effect that probably hasn’t early development. Other research been recognised as one.’ supports the environmental theory too, ‘Professionals need to be more aware finding that coloured synaesthetic of synaesthesia,’ Ian tells me. ‘They need associations can be blunted by negative to be trained to understand and work moods (Kay et al., 2014). with it. Many opticians haven’t even heard of it. We need to have opticians, occupational psychologists and therapists Implications for treating working together as a minimum.’

Nicolas Rothen gives his predictions disorders for the future. ‘In the last decade, people Researcher and installation artist were concerned about showing that Barbara Ryan has gone a step further by synaesthesia was a real phenomenon, formulating ideas to help synaesthetes with but now, people are looking into what neurodegenerative disorders cope better. the effects of synaesthesia are on higher A grapheme-colour synaesthete herself, cognitive functions. What are the she tells me: ‘I worked with a person who advantages and disadvantages of could no longer use a telephone – she synaesthesia? Is it linked to conditions had to wait for everyone to phone her. like schizophrenia or autism?’ Clearly, Although she was losing the ability to read we still have a lot to learn. language, replacing people’s names with colours or characters helped her remember what names matched with what numbers.’

I Jack Dutton is a freelance writer Ryan believes that a lot can be done with jackdutton22@gmail.com

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ARTICLE

How relationships help us to age well Laura Soulsby and Kate Bennett consider a rich evidence base Research has shown that social relationships are important for successful ageing. But what is meant by ‘social relationships’, what happens to such relationships as people grow older, and what is it about them that is important for healthy and happy ageing?

One major life course event that may influence an older adult’s social relationships is the death of a spouse – a high probability event, especially for women. But in turn, what role do social relationships play in positively affecting wellbeing in widowhood?

questions

Bennett, K.M. & Soulsby, L.K. (2012).

Wellbeing in bereavement and widowhood. Illness, Crisis & Loss, 20(4), 321–337.

Mental health and social relationships: www.esrc.ac.uk/_images/ESRC_Evide nce_Briefing_Mental_health_social_r el_tcm8-26243.pdf

references

resources

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How do our relationships change as we grow older?

How does widowhood affect social relationships, and how might this influence health?

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Ajrouch, K.J., Blandon, A.Y. & Antonucci, T.C. (2005). Social networks among men and women. Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 60, S311–S317.

Baltes, P.B. & Baltes, M.M. (1990).

Psychological perspectives on successful aging. In P.B. Baltes & M.M. Baltes (Eds.) Successful aging: Perspectives from the behavioral

eclining fertility rates and increased life expectancy have led to a demographic shift towards an ageing population. In the UK, the proportion of people aged 65 and over is projected to increase from 17 per cent in 2010 to 24 per cent in 2051 (Office for National Statistics, 2012). As our population ages, the concept of successful ageing becomes increasingly important and there is an academic and political emphasis on promoting positive states of health in later life.

Some propose that ageing ‘successfully’ involves the maintenance of physical and cognitive function, the absence of disease, and a sustained involvement in productive activities (Rowe & Kahn, 1997). Another, perhaps less restrictive, view of successful ageing is the ability to effectively adapt to and compensate for functional losses (Baltes & Baltes, 1990). Researchers have attempted to understand what exactly determines successful ageing (e.g. Depp & Jeste, 2006) and, while older adults’ health is influenced by a wide range of factors, both social networks and social engagement have been highlighted as being fundamental (Phelan et al., 2004).

Social relationships in later life Social relationships have been defined and measured in a variety of ways but are most often understood in terms of social networks, social support and social participation (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010).

Broadly, social networks are the structural character of social relationships such as

sciences (pp.1–34). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Bennett, K.M. (2007). ‘No sissy stuff’: Towards a theory of masculinity and emotional expression in older widowed men. Journal of Aging Studies, 21, 347–356.

Bennett, K.M. (2010a). ‘You can’t spend years with someone and just cast them aside’: Augmented identity in older British widows. Journal of Women & Aging, 22, 204–217.

the number of contacts we have or how often we spend time with those people.

Social support is a transactional process and our relationships provide a platform for the exchange of emotional and practical support. Finally, social engagement relates to the frequency and quality of formal (e.g. religious participation, meeting attendance and volunteer obligations) and informal (e.g. telephone contact and socialising with friends) activities with members of our social network.

Research shows that there is an age-related reduction in overall social network size and levels of social engagement. Increasing age may be associated with smaller social networks which are contacted less frequently (Ajrouch et al., 2005), and this seems to be particularly true for older men (Cornwell et al., 2008). More specifically, high numbers of non-kin relationships have been found to be less common among older adults and, instead, older adults’ social networks are mainly made up of family members (Pahl & Pevalin, 2005). On the other hand, older adults may have higher-quality relationships within that smaller social network and be more involved in their community compared with younger adults (Carstensen, 1992). Research shows that older adults typically have greater contact with neighbours and are more likely to volunteer and attend religious services, though this is dependent on physical health (Cornwell et al., 2008).

Family, and particularly spouses and adult children, are a central source of support to older adults (Waite & Gallagher, 2000). Marital status has not been identified as an independent predictor in studies focused on successful ageing (e.g. Depp & Jeste, 2006), but, on the whole, research demonstrates that marriage has a protective effect on physical (Waite & Gallagher, 2000) and psychological well-being (Schwarzbach et al., 2014). Moreover, social networks and levels of social engagement, which themselves are associated with health,

Bennett, K.M. (2010b). How to achieve resilience as an older widower: Turning points or gradual change?

Ageing and Society, 30, 369–382.

Bennett, K.M. & Soulsby, L.K. (2012).

Wellbeing in bereavement and widowhood. Illness, Crisis & Loss, 20(4), 321–337.

Brannon, R. (1976). The male sex role – and what it's done for us lately. In R. Brannon & D. Davids (Eds.) The forty-

nine percent majority (pp.1–40).

Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Cable, N., Bartley, M., Chandola, T. & Sacker, A. (2013). Friends are equally important to men and women, but family matters more for men's wellbeing. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, 67, 166–171.

Carr, D., Ness, R.M. & Wortman, C.B. (2006). Spousal bereavement in late life. New York: Springer.

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vary by marital status. Marriage is often regarded as a fundamental basis for support and integrates people into wider social networks (Waite & Gallagher, 2000). However, it has also been suggested that couples’ networks shrink to a more family-centred network over time and, in considering friendship choice across the life course, Pahl and Pevalin (2005) found that the recently married were more likely to move from nominating a non-relative as their closest friend to having a family member as their closest friend. At the same time, marriage has a protective effect on health and evidence demonstrates that older nevermarried adults have poorer physical health and increased risk of mortality (Waite & Gallagher, 2000). It is likely

Marriage has a protective effect on health

that this is a consequence of the lack of support provided by a spouse and perhaps the absence of the associated social network.

Carstensen, L.L. (1992). Social and emotional patterns in adulthood.

Psychology and Aging, 7, 331–338.

Cornwell, B., Laumann, E.O. & Schumm, L.P. (2008). The social connectedness of older adults. American Sociological Review, 73, 185–203.

Cumming, E. & Henry, W. (1961). Growing old. New York: Basic Books.

Depp, C.A. & Jeste, D.V. (2006) Definitions and predictors of

Turning to social networks, Fiori et al. (2006) found five distinct network typologies among older Americans that differentially affect health: non family restricted, characterised by low likelihood of being married and very few or no children; non friends, characterised by very low frequency of contact with friends; family, where people had high levels of contact with family members; friends, where people had frequent levels of contact with friends; and diverse, where contact was fairly even across friends and family. Older adults who were embedded in diverse networks that included relationships with friends had higher levels of morale compared with those who were in family-based networks.

Moreover, size matters! Cable et al.

(2013) found that friendship network size was longitudinally related to psychological health, even after previous psychological health was taken into account.

So evidence suggests that, generally, the more varied your social network, the happier and healthier you will be. This tells us that intimate friends are very important for older adults, especially in the absence of strong family relationships. Often, family relationships can have a negative impact on health, but this is less typical of friendships. Friendships are the relationships we choose and, thus, may allow greater feelings of autonomy and facilitate integration into broader social networks and the wider community.

Despite this, the number of friends decreases with age (Ajrouch et al., 2005). Why should this be case? A simple explanation may be that the network is reduced as people out-survive their

successful ageing. American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 14, 6–20.

Fiori, K.L., Antonucci, T.C. & Cortina, K.S. (2006). Social network typologies and mental health among older adults.

Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 61, 25–32.

Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T.B. & Layton, J.B. (2010). Social relationships and mortality risk. PLoS Medicine, 7(7),

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friends. Several other theories have also been proposed to explain this pattern.

First, Cumming and Henry’s (1961) early theoretical perspective, social disengagement, suggested that older adults actively withdraw from their network and reduce their number of friends, perhaps as a result of declining physical health or loss of roles through retirement, for example. Socioemotional selectivity theory (Carstensen, 1992) offers an alternative view: as we age, we become more selective and strengthen emotional ties, dissolving peripheral relationships and creating a smaller number of high-quality relationships.

This occurs as the salience of emotional exchanges increases with age while informational functions of relationships become less important. Kahn and Antonucci’s (1980) social convoy model describes patterns of changing social relationships as people age. It holds that the personal (e.g. age, gender) and situational factors (e.g. roles, values, culture), and how these change over time, influence quantity and quality of social relationships. The model suggests that our ‘convoy’ of relationships changes as we age, and it highlights the increasing importance of emotional quality, rather than only the quantity of social contacts in older age.

Social relationships and health How do our relationships help us to age well? It is difficult to unpick the relative effects of social network, social support and social engagement since the terms are often used interchangeably (Schwarzbach et al., 2014). However, despite the lack of clarity in definitions, there is a wealth of literature suggesting that how many people we have around us, the support that we give and receive, and how often we see them impacts on our physical and psychological health. Social relationships provide a platform for the exchange of support and opportunities for social interaction, and research demonstrates their independent influence on mortality,

e1000316.

Ingersoll-Dayton, B., Morgan, D. & Antonucci, T. (1997). The effects of positive and negative social exchanges on aging adults. Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 52, 190–199.

Kahn, R.L. & Antonucci, T.C. (1980).

Convoys over the life course: Attachment, roles, and social

support. In P.B. Baltes & O.G. Brim (Eds.) Life-span development and behavior (pp.254–283). New York: Academic Press.

Office for National Statistics (2012).

Pension trends. Chapter 2: Population change. Retrieved 15 January 2014 from tinyurl.com/nqhqcax Pahl, R. & Pevalin, D.J. (2005). Between family and friends: A longitudinal study of friendship choice. British

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heart attack survival, cognitive decline, depression and anxiety (Umberson & Montez, 2010). Holt-Lunstad et al. (2010) conducted a meta-analysis across 147 independent studies focusing on the association between social relationships and mortality and found that people with adequate social relationships (including both functional and structural aspects) have a 50 per cent lower mortality risk compared with those who report poor social relationships.

Focusing on psychological health, support, relationship quality and presence of confidants emerge as significant predictors of depression in older adults (Schwarzbach et al., 2014). These effects of social relationships on health may also vary by gender, though the interactions are more complex (Cable et al., 2013).

Clearly, our relationships have some protective effect on both our physical and psychological well-being and the supportive resources promote successful ageing, where ‘success’ is tied to health.

Two general theoretical processes through which social relationships may influence health have been proposed (see Figure 1). First, social support may have a moderating effect on health, that is, it is mainly effective when high stress is encountered, buffering the negative effects of stressors on heath. This may work in either of two ways. First, people may not recognise a situation as stressful if they have high levels of support, or alternatively, the levels of support may modify the response after the initial appraisal. Rosengren et al. (2004) found that the association between an accumulation of critical life changes and subsequent heart attack was moderated by the quality of social support in middleaged men. The alternative view is that social support directly benefits psychological well-being and health, regardless of the degree of stress. Either those with high levels of support may feel a sense of belonging accompanied by high self-esteem (Fiori et al., 2006) or, instead, social relationships may encourage or model healthier behaviours, such as

Journal of Sociology, 56, 433–450.

Phelan, E.A., Anderson, L.A., La Croix, A.Z. & Larson, E.B. (2004). Older adults’ views of ‘successful aging’.

Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 52, 211–216.

Piferi, R.L. & Lawler, K.A. (2006). Social support and ambulatory blood pressure. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 62, 328–336.

Reinhardt, J.P., Boerner, K. & Horowitz,

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eating breakfast and even wearing a seatbelt (Waite & Gallagher, 2000).

Social relationships also offer an opportunity to provide support to others, which can be beneficial to older adults’ well-being, perhaps as a result of the increased feelings of independence and usefulness it allows (Thomas, 2010). Piferi and Lawler (2006) found that giving support was related to lower blood pressure and arterial pressure. Moreover, those participants who reported giving support were also more likely to report receiving support, greater feelings of self-efficacy, higher levels of self-esteem and lower levels of depression and distress. It is worth noting that there is a fine balance between providing too little or too much support to others, since providing too much can also lower well-being (Thomas, 2010).

It seems that if we are embedded in a varied network of social relationships where there are opportunities to give and receive support and engage in social activities, we’ll be happy and healthy.

Is that the full story? Whilst giving and receiving support from family and friends has a beneficial effect on our health as we age, there is also an argument that the receipt of excessive support, particularly from adult children, may in fact reduce psychological well-being and feelings of competence (Reinhardt et al., 2006).

According to Thomas (2010), the negative psychological impact of receiving support may be a consequence of identity disruption. For example, an older man must now rely on his daughter to take him to complete his weekly shop, when the norm throughout his life had been for him to provide support to her. This reduces his feelings of competence and, moreover, alters his role as ‘father’.

Relationship quality is also important, and may have a greater impact on wellbeing than structural characteristics of our social networks (Fiori et al., 2006).

Reduced well-being may occur when relationships are strained, and there is evidence that these negative social interactions are more strongly associated

A. (2006). Good to have but not to use: Differential impact of perceived and received support on well-being.

Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 23, 117–129.

Rosengren, A., Hawken, S., Ounpuu, S., et al. (2004). Association of psychosocial risk factors with risk of acute myocardial infarction in 11119 cases and 13648 controls from 52 countries (the INTERHEART study).

with psychological well-being than are positive social interactions, especially for those who are more stressed to start with (Ingersoll-Dayton et al., 1997).

Reciprocity, the bi-directional giving and receiving of support, also appears to be important for receiving the health benefits of social relationships. Non-reciprocity is associated with poorer self-rated health, trouble sleeping, and higher risks of depressive symptoms (e.g. von dem Knesebeck & Siegrist, 2003).

Widowhood in later life As we have demonstrated, social relationships and their supportive resources are important for health and help to facilitate successful ageing. The social convoy model (Kahn & Antonucci, 1980) demonstrates that events such as marriage, divorce, retirement and bereavement can affect composition of the social network, the availability of support and levels of social engagement. In our own research, we have explored the impact of spousal bereavement. How does widowhood shape older adults’ social relationships and how might this influence successful ageing?

The social support inherent in a marriage offers physical and psychological health benefits, but spousal bereavement removes a primary source of support – the spouse. The widowed report lower levels of psychological health compared with their married counterparts and report higher levels of mood and anxiety disorders (e.g. Schwarzbach et al., 2014), and older widowed adults may be more likely to experience loneliness, compared with younger bereaved spouses (Carr et al., 2006). Research demonstrates that psychological reactions to spousal bereavement are acute and the negative impact typically resolves over time (Wilcox et al., 2003). Spousal bereavement also has a negative impact on physical health, including increased number of health problems, changes in weight, smoking behaviour and inactivity (e.g. Wilcox et al., 2003).

The Lancet, 364, 953–962.

Rowe, J. & Kahn, R. (1997). Successful ageing. The Gerontologist, 37, 433–440.

Schwarzbach, M., Luppa, M., Forstmeier, S. et al. (2014). Social relations and depression in late life: A systematic review. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 29, 1–21.

Stroebe, M., Schut, H. & Stroebe, W. (2007). Health outcomes of bereavement. The Lancet, 370, 8–14.

Thomas, P.A. (2010). Is it better to give or to receive? Social support and the well-being of older adults. Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 65, 351–357.

Umberson, D. & Montez, J.K. (2010).

Social relationships and health.

Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 51, S54–S66. von dem Knesebeck, O. & Siegrist, J.

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2010a), interviewed 66 older British widows using a grounded theory approach.

One of the important themes to emerge from this study was changes in identity. In the interviews women spoke 1b. Social Support 1a. Social Support about the way as mediator as moderator their identities had changed as a consequence of Figure 1: Social support and the effects of stress on psychological their widowhood. well-being (Bennett & Soulsby, 2012) The women reported an augmented identity. That is, We hear anecdotal accounts of people women described not having an identity dying from ‘broken hearts’ after the death as a widow alone, but having an identity of their spouse, and research as a widow whilst retaining their identity demonstrates that widowed adults do as a wife. A sample quote was ‘You can’t have a higher mortality risk compared spend years with someone and just cast with married people, especially in the them aside’. Looking at identity in 60 immediate period following bereavement widowers from the same study, Bennett (Stroebe et al., 2007). Moreover, spousal found that men were more likely to bereavement typically has a negative discuss these issues with implicit impact on access to social support and reference to hegemonic masculinity, that causes significant changes in the wider is, the culturally bound expectations of social network (Pahl & Pevalin, 2005). how men should behave. Brannon’s The bereaved must learn to socialise as (1976) four masculine roles provided a single person, and may face the loss of a useful framework to think about relationships with other married couples widow(er)hood and masculinity (Bennett, as well as losing links with their shared 2007). These roles are ‘the sturdy oak’, friends. The social network then evolves ‘the big wheel’, ‘no sissy stuff’ and ‘give over time, with the duration of ’em hell’. The first three were common widowhood positively related to the likelihood of forming new friendships and amongst the widowers. Men demonstrated how they took care of their for some, new romantic relationships families, how they took control, and how (Wilcox et al., 2003). they overcame their emotions following Why should widowhood cause the deaths of their wives. They might say changes in social relationships? One ‘I really kept these things – perhaps explanation is that older widowed adults wrongly – pretty well to myself, and it experience a change in identity following was only when I started going to the loss of their spouse, which influences counselling…’, or ‘You’ve got to make who they want to spend time with, and a move, make that first step back on the how. As part of a large-scale qualitative road to normality’. study of bereavement, one of us (Bennett, There is sufficient research to conclude that the death of a husband or wife has a significant negative impact on health. It is, therefore, important to (2003). Reported nonreciprocity of social consider factors that promote better exchange and depressive symptoms. health. Stroebe et al. (2007) considered Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 55, why people are affected by bereavement 209–214. in different ways. Situational risk factors Waite, L.J. & Gallagher, M. (2000). The case for marriage. New York: Doubleday. (e.g. cause and circumstances of death, Wilcox, S., Evenson, K.R., Aragaki, A., et al. pre-bereavement caregiving), (2003). The effects of widowhood on interpersonal risk factors (e.g. material physical and mental health, health resources, social support) and personal behaviors, and health outcomes. Health risk factors (e.g. age, gender, personality) Psychology, 22, 513–522. were all found to predict adjustment after

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bereavement (see also Bennett & Soulsby, 2012). Access to adequate support following the death of a spouse may protect against the negative consequences of bereavement (e.g. Carr et al., 2006).

A clearer understanding of why a supportive social network can promote well-being, and why a dense support network offers better adjustment over time, may help us to promote ‘resilience’ in relation to older adults. In our research with widowers we identified three groups of resilient widowers (Bennett, 2010b).

The first group demonstrated resilience in bereavement, with stable levels of psychological well-being over time. In the second group, the men experienced lowered levels of well-being when their wife died but, over time, were able to return to the same level of well-being as before their loss. The men in the third group achieved resilience through a turning point. The narratives revealed that these men drew on combinations of factors to cope following spousal bereavement, including psychological resources, societal factors and, important to this paper, their social relationships.

Conclusions As people live longer, there is an increasing interest in understanding and promoting health in later life. We hold that social relationships play a key role in maintaining older adults’ health, likely through the opportunities they provide for support exchanges, social engagement and sense of worth. This is recognised by older adults themselves, who endorse social relationships and social activities as being important for ageing well (Phelan et al., 2004). A clearer understanding of the meaning of social relationships to older adults and the ways in which we maintain our social network as we age is vital to promoting successful ageing and promoting health in later life.

Laura Soulsby is a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Liverpool L.K.Soulsby @liverpool.ac.uk

Kate Bennett is a Reader in Psychology at the University of Liverpool K.M.Bennett@ liverpool.ac.uk

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difficult to describe, we are better off basing our decisions on our gut (i.e. intuition) (Dijksterhuis et al., 2006). The general claim is that we can ‘over think’ our choices and that this leads to poor decisions, judgements and inferences.

This point also extends to highly skilled motor behaviour, such as expert tennis players or golfers that choke as a result of Magda Osman refocuses our view on the evidence deliberately analysing internal processes rather than just letting their intuitive mind do the work (Bell & Hardy, 2009).

This is an example in which thinking a Who is ‘in control’? How do we here are many Big Ideas that place lot is less effective than not thinking at achieve more ‘agency’? Is any a heavy emphasis on shifting the all, and where feeling something right is ‘freedom to choose’ that we have responsibility of control away from a better indicator of what to do than illusory? Such debates run the conscious individual to our knowing why it might be right. throughout bestsellers, including unconscious selves. These include: We do indeed have a very the Nobel Prize-winning work of I Thinking hard is bad; Thinking sophisticated unconscious mechanism Daniel Kahneman. This popular intuitively is good. that is able to abstract and integrate view – that much of what we do I Unconscious thinking is bad; across lots of information that is difficult is shaped by unconscious thinking Thinking consciously is better. to evaluate consciously. So, if we sat down that we can’t access or reliably I Our brains are controlling us; We and tried to calculate the pros and cons control – has impacted on many don’t have conscious control of deliberately and then try to pick the best psychologists across different ourselves. option, we domains. would be worse The aim of this article is to These Big Ideas have filtered off than if we challenge this view, and to propose into the public domain through “What exactly is instinctive left it to our an unpopular alternative: We are popular science books, such as decision making? … There unconscious predominately conscious of, or can Risk (Gardner, 2008), Who’s in is no good definition” thought. recover conscious access to, the Charge (Gazzaniga, 2011), Blink Dijksterhuis and intentions behind our actions.

(Gladwell, 2007), The Self his colleagues (2006) Illusion (Hood (2012), Thinking, showed that as you ramp up the amount Fast and Slow (Kahneman, 2011), The of information you need to take into Decisive Moment (Lehrer, 2009) and account to make your decisions, you’re Nudge (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008). Along better off not thinking hard, because the with the fact that at least two of the ideas Where do people most readily accept more complex the material the harder it is are in contradiction, the other problem is control and responsibility over their on your memory and attention processes. that the big ideas are often supported by choices?

The advantage of an unconscious system the same cited evidence from a few key Do criticisms around evidence for the is that it doesn’t require much memory or psychological studies. This issue will be unconscious have implications for attention, which makes it hyper-efficient. the main focus of my critical discussion. government interventions such as This also means that it can process a lot ‘nudging’? of information quickly and accurately. So Thinking hard is bad; Thinking we have evidence for what seems like two Can our biases be brought under different minds, one fast, one slow. One intuitively is good control? requires a lot from attention and memory There are many areas of psychology – processes and the other doesn’t including judgement and decision (Kahneman, 2011). making, and reasoning – that have shown Osman, M. (2014). Future-minded: The The problem is that Dijksterhuis et that when it comes to complex decisions psychology of agency and control. al.’s (2006) evidence which has been cited that require us to pay attention to a lot of Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan. in support of the first Big Idea is not information, or pay attention to particular terribly reliable. For a start there are many types of information that might be

Does our unconscious rule?

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Bell, J.J. & Hardy, J. (2009). Effects of attentional focus on golf performance. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 21, 163–177.

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complex decisions better left to the unconscious? Further failed replications of the deliberationwithout-attention effect, Judgment and Decision Making, 4, 509–517.

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unconscious thought

Far from relying on so-called unconscious instinctive but disastrous decisions that failures to replicate the ‘deliberationprocesses, to date, the most reliable claim lives (Johnson, 2003). So thinking without-attention’ effect of Dijksterhuis et evidence shows that in order to make instinctively is not to be relied on. al. (2006) (for example Aczel et al., 2011; better decisions in complex situations we In addition, the far less sensational Acker, 2008; Calvillo & Penaloza, 2009; should commit conscious thought to the and more intuitive claim that has been Gonzalez-Vallejo et al., 2008; Mamede et issue at hand. gaining steady support in psychology al., 2010; Newell et al., 2009; Payne et al., Conscious thought 1, Unconscious since the 1960s is that the more mental 2008; Rey et al., 2008; Thorstein & thought 0? practice people commit to complex tasks, Withrow, 2009; Waroquier et al., 2009, the more they improve their performance 2010) Moreover, at best, the failed (Richardson, 1967). The findings show replications show that there is no Unconscious thinking is bad; that mental practice (rehearsing plans of advantage for unconscious thinking actions: Hegarty, 2004) and mental (assuming that this was what was tested) Thinking consciously is better simulation (preparing through imagining over consciously made decisions. Thus, When it comes to decision making, there various alternatives, the consequences of the message from an overwhelming are three types of evidence that tantalise number of attempts to psychologists, neuroscientists and replicate evidential others into treating the unconscious support for Big Idea 1 as the dominant system, which all is that when it comes to leads us in the wrong direction. The big decisions, or for any first is that very speedy decisions decisions at all for that often lead to error. Decision-making matter, conscious thought researchers sometimes call these types fares much better. of decisions automatic or Of course, many unconscious, but unfortunately will say that even if the precision is lacking in defining experimental lab work is exactly what is automatic or problematic there are unconscious (Osman, 2013). The many examples of second is that there are common decision making in the speedy decisions made in error under real world in which pressure (i.e. when time to respond is instinct appears to be the limited and attention is overloaded). guiding factor in expertise.

The third is that the rationale behind This has been discussed at speedy decisions is hard to articulate. length by the journalist Essentially Big Idea 2 is founded on Gladwell (2007), and the claims that we often make speedy psychologist Gary Klein decisions based on a tiny fraction of (see Kahneman & Klein, relevant information at any one time, 2009). But there are because we are time-limited, and problems here too. What often this makes us choose options exactly is instinctive that are bad for us (i.e. unhealthy, subWe don’t know the frequency with which apparently instinctive decision making, and what optimal, short-sighted, dangerous, decisions are made by experts in high-stake situations that is it about the process that risky). lead to good outcomes is instinctive? There is no The main problem with Big Idea 2, good definition. Beyond as with Big Idea 1, is that we don’t different outcomes from actions and that problem, what we don’t know is have evidence of the frequency with decisions: Taylor et al., 1998) improves the frequency with which apparently which bad decisions are made as the physical activities (e.g. basketball, instinctive (let’s say speedy) decisions result of what might be deemed as football, gymnastics, tennis, weight are made by experts (e.g. fire-fighters, unconscious, and so the reasons for errors lifting) and mental activities (e.g. doctors, pilots, nuclear power plant in decision making from those made performing surgical procedures, landing operators) in high-stake situations that speedily could be multifaceted, and not planes, making clinical assessments) lead to good outcomes. While they can simply because they were the result of the (Baumeister et al., 2011; Coffman, 1990; make good decisions quickly, seemingly unconscious. Some speculate that there Driskell et al., 1994; Sevdalis et al., 2013). without thinking, they can also make are situational factors and psychological

Gazzaniga, M.S. (2011). Who's in charge?: Free will and the science of the brain.

New York: Ecco.

Gladwell, M. (2007). Blink: The power of thinking without thinking. New York: Back Bay Books.

Gonzalez-Vallejo, C., Lassiter, G.D., Bellezza, F.S. & Lindberg, M.J. (2008). ‘Save angels perhaps’: A critical examination of unconscious thought theory and the deliberation-

without-attention effect. Review of General Psychology, 12, 282–296.

Hegarty, M. (2004). Mechanical reasoning by mental simulation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 280–285.

Hood, B. (2012). The self illusion: How the social brain creates identity. New York: Oxford University Press.

Johnson, C. (2003). Failure in safetycritical systems: A handbook of accident and incident reporting.

read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk

Glasgow: University of Glasgow Press.

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Kahneman, D. & Klein, G. (2009).

Conditions for intuitive expertise: A failure to disagree. American Psychologist, 64, 515–526.

Lehrer, J. (2009). The decisive moment: How the brain makes up its mind.

Edinburgh: Canongate Books.

Libet, B. (1985). Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action .Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 8, 529–566.

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(2010). Conscious thought beats deliberation without attention in diagnostic decision-making: At least when you are an expert.

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factors that bring about error prone unconscious decision-making, which I will now consider.

Situational factors Does familiarity breed contempt? Being very familiar with a situation means that we can identify critical details that can be used to evaluate a situation, and this can also remind us of past similar situations that we’ve been in before. As a result, if we can assess without much evaluation the details of a situation in order to base our decisions, then we don’t need to bother inspecting to any great degree the decisions, actions and plans we implement in that situation. Essentially, the errors in decision making often come when we overlook vital information, or we chose to focus on incorrect or irrelevant information, or we make many more assumptions about the situation than are warranted.

So, yes, familiarity can breed contempt, at least in terms of the outcomes of speedy decisions. But, familiarity is the hallmark of learning, and there are many more good speedy decisions made as a result of being in a familiar situation. Given the variety of decision contexts we are in every day, and the many thousands of speedy decisions we make (Osman, 2014), along with the many underlying differences in the information processing systems that enable speedy decision making, we are simply not advanced enough in our research to say conclusively that just because the situation is familiar (or even unfamiliar) we can predict more bad speedy decision making.

Psychological factors: Hot and cold thinking The link between speedy decisions and emotions has often been made. There is no clear evidence to suggest outright that basing decisions on emotional states is conclusively bad, or conclusively good, any more than saying making speedy decisions in general is good or bad.

Again, there is no real agreement about

Miller, J., Shepherdson, P. & Treyena, D. (2011). Effects of clock monitoring on electroencephalographic activity: Is unconscious movement initiation an artifact of the clock? Psychological Science, 22, 103–109.

Newell, B.R., Wong, K.Y., Cheung, C.H.J. & Rakow, T. (2009). Think, blink or sleep on it? The impact of modes of thought on complex decision making.

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the key underlying basis for speedy decisions with little deliberation without emotional involvement (cold decisions) and with the involvement of emotional states (hot decisions). This is because there are different factors that prompt speedy decisions for some situations (deciding whether to splash out on a nice meal, or save the money for a rainy day), and different factors that invoke speedy decisions for other situations (e.g. talking to two friends and figuring out how to calm an argument that has just started between them).

If we assume that experience allows us to An arbitrary choice? make quick decisions, which sometimes lead to error as well as success, and that experience is and an oscilloscope timer was used that gained through training and deliberation, converts electrical signals so that they can then training ourselves via mental be displayed on a screen. The task for the simulation and mental practice can also person was simple. All they had to do was help us overcome errors we face, just as watch a rotating spot on a clock, and lift it can help us improve decision making their finger when they felt like it. In (Osman, 2014). addition, after the spot stopped at a Conscious thought 2, Unconscious random point, they have to say where the thought 0? spot was on the clock when they had the intention to lift their finger. Libet showed that the ‘free’ conscious intention to lift the finger occurs approximately 200 Our brains are controlling us milliseconds before the actual act of The work of Benjamin Libet (1985) has moving the finger. But the killer point is had one of the most significant impacts that there is neural activity in the motor on the debate on free will and control. cortex 500 milliseconds before the actual His work revealed that instead of our act of moving the finger. That is, the intentions causing our actions, our nonpreparation for moving the finger in other conscious brain processes initiate the regions of the brain occurs even earlier actions before we even intended to act. than when we have the conscious Put simply, or brains are making the experience that we intend to move our choices for us, and only later do we finger. consciously catch up with what we did.

From this very simple demonstration Through a series of elegant experiments, Libet was able to argue that consciousness Libet was able to show this. One of the is a late process because it takes time to most famous involved EEG generate the necessary neural activity to (electroencephalogram) electrodes enable it to occur, and so the brain attached to people’s scalps. These prepares for actions far earlier than our measured neural activity in the cortex

Psychology, 62, 707–732.

Osman, M. (2013). A case study: Dualprocess theories of higher cognition – Commentary on Evans & Stanovich (2013). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8, 248–252.

Osman, M. (2014). Future-minded: The psychology of agency and control.

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conditions on unconscious thought in complex decision making.

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Sevdalis, N., Aidan Moran, B.A., Si, F.P. &

Arora, S. (2013). Mental imagery and mental practice applications in surgery: State of the art and future directions. In S. Lacey & R. Lawson (Eds.) Multisensory imagery (pp.343–363). New York: Springer.

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intentions and decisions to act. The only real use for consciousness is a veto: to prevent actions. So consciousness really is a ‘free won’t’ rather than free will.

It is worth bearing in mind that there are some demonstrations that show that changing the format of the Libet’s experiment can reveal that the timings of intention and action actually correspond perfectly well (Miller et al., 2011). That is to say, our intentions are the factors that cause our actions. However, there is an even more profound problem with Libet’s set up, and that is that there is no actual incentive or motivation behind the ‘free’ action to move one’s finger.

There are also no consequences for the action that is taken. It doesn’t affect anything, there is no intrinsic reward and there is no real reason for lifting one’s finger or not. So, the conditions of the experiment, and in turn the findings themselves, don’t have much of a bearing on almost all of the situations which we experience in the real world. Typically our actions: (a) do have consequences, (b) have rewards or punishments attached to them, and (c) are goal-directed. Arbitrary action is not really free will in what we would usually like it to mean, which is freedom to choose between options that matter to us.

An arbitrary choice would be ‘Do I put a sock on my right foot first or my left foot?’. There is no attribution of responsibility and no consequences to my actions, other than one foot may be slightly colder than the other for a brief amount of time. Even if Libet type experiments might show that my motor cortex did indeed make the decision for such an arbitrary action (e.g. put the right sock on first), then so be it. At best, if the findings were actually sound, all they are suggesting is that for actions without consequence a random

Thaler, R.H. & Sunstein, C.R. (2008).

Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Thorsteinson, T. & Withrow, S. (2009).

Does unconscious thought outperform conscious thought on complex decisions? A further examination.

Judgment and Decision Making, 4, 235–247.

Waroquier, L., Marchiori. D., Klein, O. &

fluctuation of neural activities build up in such a way as to bring about one action over another, in the same way as flipping a coin. But if my motor cortex is going to decide 300 milliseconds, or even 10 seconds, before an action or decision that involves future consequences, such as which location to buy a house in or which school the kids go to, then I’m worried.

For now, as has been argued by many notable neuroscientists, psychologists and philosophers, as remarkable as Libet’s finding is, it does not undermine our agency or our control. Conscious thought 3, Unconscious thought 0?

View our complete archive and much more…

Parting comment We may not want to hear this, because we are always looking for short cuts. But the message from a substantial body of research is that conscious processing has the primary role in supporting our decision making and the actions we plan on taking when we want to achieve a goal. The most effective way of making choices is to think through the consequences of our actions, and evaluate the information from the situation, as well as evaluating our own motivations.

When it comes to controlling external situations as well as exerting self-control, we should accept the view that our conscious mind is at the forefront rather than in the background. When we accept this, we can have more control as a result.

I leave you with a final thought: why would such an effortful system as our conscious mind still be around to enable us to make decisions and plan actions, if evolution didn’t select it in as an effective and necessary part of cognition?

Magda Osman is Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Queen Mary University of London m.osman@qmul.ac.uk

Cleeremans, A. (2009). Methodological pitfalls of the unconscious thought paradigm. Judgment and Decision Making, 4, 601–610.

Waroquier, L., Marchiori. D., Klein, O. & Cleeremans, A. (2010). Is it better to think unconsciously or to trust your first impression? A reassessment of unconscious thought theory. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2, 111–118.

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The unheard victims Michelle Lowe and Bob Balfour look at service provision for male sexual abuse survivors ast year saw much discussion in The Psychologist over gender and mental health. In February, Daniel and Jason Freeman claimed that women are more likely than men to develop a range of mental health disorders. Their article was countered in the March issue by Martin Seager and colleagues, who (in our view correctly) claimed that mental health problems in men are woefully underreported, resulting in the hidden mental pain of large numbers of men.

We would like to add to this debate by considering one particular issue – the sexual victimisation of men and boys.

We pose some broad questions. What do we currently understand about the needs of male sexual abuse survivors?

What can service providers offer as potential positive outcomes for males who have experienced sexual abuse across the lifespan? And what part does psychology as a profession have to play in helping to support such outcomes?

The underreporting of the sexual abuse of males, and the societal disbelief that still presides over men’s experience of sexual violation, means that many males live in fear of reporting their abuse, or do not receive adequate support when they do. We consider how complex trauma, such that is created by sexual abuse and its aftermath, needs increased specialist services for male survivors. We argue that although sexual abuse is horrific for every survivor, regardless of who they are, male survivors have a particular set of problems that continue to need to be addressed by service providers and society as a whole.

questions

How can service providers improve the effectiveness of services for male survivors?

resources

The Bristlecone Project: http://bristleconeproject.org Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking Books.

Living Well app: www.livingwell.org.au/ get-support/living-well-app

references

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American Psychiatric Association (2013).

Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: Fifth edition. DSM5. Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing.

Bird, J. (2014). Rationale for personal growth and education course in prisons: The ‘Way Out’ course. NAPAC: Unpublished manuscript.

Briere, J. & Jordan, C. (2004). Violence against women: Outcome complexity

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What we know

What part does psychology play in helping to support effective service provision for male survivors?

Historically, sexual crimes against males were considered impossible or at best rare with the result that service provision for male survivors has been considered unnecessary. Indeed, the publicity that sexual crime received as a feminist issue contributed to the isolation experienced by male survivors (Davies, 2002), although of course Lew (2004) is correct that without women’s activism there would be even less support for males than already exists.

In recent years the scarcity of

and implications for assessment and treatment. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 19(11), 1252–1276.

Burrowes, N. & Hovarth, T. (2013). The rape and sexual assault of men: A review. London: Survivors UK. Craig, D. (2010). Virtually helping? An exploration of the use of the internet and online resources by adult male survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

Unpublished master’s dissertation,

information and lack of publicity about male sexual victimisation has slowly begun to change. In parallel there has been a shift toward increased rates of reporting of sexual offences against males.

In 2002, for instance, only 4096 sexual assaults and 852 rapes were recorded as being committed against men in the UK (Davies & Rutland, 2007). In 2010/11 however, whilst police recorded rapes upon women had increased by five per cent from 2009/10 to 2010/11, recorded rapes committed upon men rose by 12 per cent during the same timescale (Osborne, 2011).

Whilst the above reporting figures may highlight efforts that legal services have taken to increase the recording of sexual crimes against males, we know that reported sexual crimes only scratch the surface of actual offences, and that there are still biases in the way that some crimes are recorded but others are not.

The facts are simply that the majority of sexual abuse cases are never reported, and many survivors live with their hidden pain for life, without seeking help or professional support.

Let’s look at some figures. In a study of 40 UK male rape survivors, Walker et al. (2005a) showed that only five out of the 40 men had ever reported their rape to the police. Of the five, four claimed their dealings with the police were wholly negative, and only one case out of the five resulted in a conviction. Furthermore, post-rape medical services were utilised by only 14 out of the 40, with only five of the 14 revealing the sexual context of the assault (the others only disclosing their physical injuries). This means that most male rape survivors do not receive testing for sexually transmitted diseases that they may have contracted during their rape, and receive no follow-up support from psychological services to deal with the aftermath of their assault. Even if they do, the support they receive may be inadequate (see Burrowes & Hovarth, 2013; Foster et al., 2012; Lew, 2004; Mathews, 1996; Somerset, 2014).

In a follow-up study, Walker et al.

University of Manchester.

Davies, M. (2002). Male sexual assault victims. Aggression and Violent Behaviour, A Review Journal, 7, 203–214.

Davies, M. (2011). Perceptions of male sexual assault: A review. Forensic Update. 102, 22–29.

Davies, M. & Rogers, P. (2006).

Perceptions of male victims in depicted sexual assaults. Aggression

and Violent Behaviour, A Review Journal, 11, 357–367.

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Forensic Update, 89, 29–32.

Davies, M., Walker, J., Archer, J. & Pollard, P. (2010). A comparative study of long-term psychological functioning in male survivors of stranger and acquaintance rape.

Journal of Aggression, Conflict and

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(2005b) investigated the psychological functioning of these 40 male rape survivors compared with 40 matched controls, and found that the rape group experienced lower psychological functioning than the control sample. The average time of assault compared to time of study was 10 years, clearly showing the long-term negative psychological effects of rape upon men. Alarmingly, 19 out of this group of 40 men had attempted suicide after their rape.

Despite these long-lasting and profound psychological effects, men in general find it incredibly difficult to seek support due to their lack of willingness to

approach a suitable service, or because the services available are inappropriate.

Societal myths and victim-blaming attitudes, prevalent in society (see Davies, 2011, and Davies & Rogers, 2006, for reviews), significantly contribute to the stigma surrounding this type of offence and serve to act as a wall between the survivor and possible help and support.

In a recent Australian investigation O’Leary (2009) and O’Leary and Gould (2009) showed similar findings to Walker et al (2005a; 2005b), namely that sexually abused men (in this study, men abused as children) suffered a range of mental health difficulties, substance abuse and

suicidality. When compared with matched controls, men sexually abused in childhood appeared four times more likely to qualify for a clinical mental health diagnosis, and 10 times more likely to qualify for a diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

For male survivors, societal expectations about the male gender role and the concept of male (hetero-) sexuality impacts significantly on men’s understanding of what sexual victimisation means to them. This results in many male survivors questioning their gender identity after sexual abuse (Walker et al., 2005a; see also Davies et al., 2010).

Males blame themselves both for not stopping the abuse from happening and for struggling with the aftermath, because ‘as men they should be able to cope’. The sense of not living up to the masculine ideal of being strong, tough and able to protect oneself from adversity makes men who have been sexually abused unlikely to seek help due to their fear of ridicule and blame (Dorahi & Clearwater, 2012; Lee & James, 2012; Lisak, 2005).

Complex trauma

In a study of 40 UK male rape survivors, Walker et al. (2005a) showed that only five out of the 40 men had ever reported their rape to the police

Peace Research, 2(4), 25–33.

Devaney, J. & Spratt, T. (2009). Child abuse as a complex and wicked problem: Reflecting on policy developments in the United Kingdom in working with children and families with multiple problems. Child and Youth Services Review, 31(6), 635–641 Dorahi, M.J. & Clearwater, K. (2012).

Shame and guilt in men exposed to child sexual abuse: A qualitative

investigation. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 21, 155–175.

Foster, G., Boyd, C. & O'Leary, P. (2012).

Improving policy and practice responses for men sexually abused in childhood. Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault. Retrieved 1 December 2014 from www.aifs.gov.au/ acssa/pubs/wrap/wrap12 Freeman, D. & Freeman, J. (2014). The stressed sex. The Psychologist, 27(2),

read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk

Although not officially recognised in diagnostic classification by DSM-5, the term ‘complex trauma’ as used in this article describes a broad-ranging set of disorders, symptoms and social problems that are not captured by a limited diagnostic category of PTSD. The DSM-5 now notes that PTSD ‘may be especially severe or long-lasting when the stressor is interpersonal and intentional (e.g. torture, sexual violence)’ (APA, 2013, p.275), which goes some way to describing the complexity of the long-lasting traumas that sexual abuse survivors face. It does not, however, cover the broader issues relating to, for example, long-term social problems that many male survivors contend with. We argue that the blaming and disbelief of the male survivor experience deepens trauma of the original abuse experience, whilst serving to isolate him from the world. Sarbin (1986) posits

84–87.

Herman, J. (1997). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence from domestic abuse to political terror. New York: Basic Books.

Hunter, S.V. (2011). Disclosure of child sexual abuse as a life-long process: Implications for health professionals.

Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy, 32(2), 159–172.

Joseph, S. (2012). What doesn't kill us:

The new psychology of posttraumatic growth. Bodmin: Piatkus.

Kia-Keating, M., Sorsoli, L. & Grossman, F.K. (2010). Relational challenges and recovery processes in male survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 25(4), 666–683.

Lee, D. & James, S. (2012). The compassionate mind approach to recovering from trauma using compassion focused therapy. London:

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that self-narratives support human identity, and, without a story that is transparent, survivors experience a sense of detachment from the world around them. In short, he is unheard.

For many survivors, sexual abuse was not just a one-off event. Repeated trauma caused by ongoing sexual abuse, or victimisation experiences that occurred at different times through life, create a prolonged and profound set of problems that readily cause multiple social and mental health issues, such as depression, addictive and self-harming behaviour, substance abuse and dissociative and personality disorders (Wall & Quadara, 2014). Further, re-victimisation is likely to compound the effects of prior abuse experiences (e.g. Briere & Jordan, 2004), the strength and complexity of which is not covered in the PTSD diagnosis.

Service provision Judith Herman, in her seminal work Trauma and Recovery (1997), argued that some violations are too terrible to tell; and for many, the ‘unspeakable’ is still present and impacting upon their mental well-being. We argue that current service provision has largely failed to address the complex needs of male survivors. All sufferers of complex trauma need a multifaceted, varied and specialist approach. Harvey et al. (in McMackin et al., 2013) note that models of complex PTSD and an ecological approach support recovery in trauma survivor populations.

The negative effects on mental health that sexual victimisation can cause are readily acknowledged by professionals, but isolated treatment of particular symptoms may not resolve the underlying and deepseated issues caused by sexual abuse (Wall & Quadara, 2014). Indeed, some survivors spend years and thousands of pounds in intensive psychotherapy working on issues relating to the complex trauma associated with sexual abuse (Bird, 2014). Although we know current service provision is not meeting the needs of people with complex trauma, up to

Robinson.

Lew, M. (2004). Victims no longer: The classic guide for men recovering from sexual child abuse (2nd edn). New York: Harper.

Lisak, D. (2005). Male survivors of trauma In G.E. Good & G.R. Brooks (Eds.) The new book of psychotherapy and counselling with men (Revised & abridged edn) (pp. 47–158). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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now in the UK there has been no consistent approach to guiding services to become more responsive to complex trauma.

Whilst current policy in the UK highlights the importance of integrated services for abuse survivors, there is ongoing debate about how these broad policy objectives can be achieved in practice (see Devaney & Spratt, 2009).

Improving the effectiveness of service provision for people with multiple needs would create enormous benefits for survivors and also save in economic terms. Recent Social Return on Investment (SROI) research carried out by the Zurich Community Trust with a male survivor-led agency (Survivors Manchester: see Somerset, 2014) clearly evidenced the possible economic, as well as psychological, outcomes from integrated service models. However, this requires the implementation of personcentred – indeed, survivor-centred – systems that provide the array of services necessary to deal with the social and health aspects of complex trauma. In relation to male sexual abuse survivors, this seamless combination of service provision does not exist at the moment.

To enable this, services could build on and adapt existing models used with female survivors.

The elephant in the room – gendering of sexual abuse We began this article by supporting the argument made by Seager and colleagues (2014) that mental health problems in men are woefully underreported, and their effects often not considered, compared with those of women. We see a similar situation in relation to sexual abuse, such that men’s abuse is underreported, underresearched, and underprovisioned. Davies (2002) claimed that research and provision for male sexual abuse was, over a decade ago, many years behind that of female sexual abuse, and today, regrettably, the situation appears much the same in many areas.

Mathews, F. (1996). The invisible boy: Revisioning the victimization of male children and teens. Ottawa: National Clearinghouse on Family Violence, Health Canada. Retrieved 1 December 2014 from www.canadiancrc.com/PDFs/ The_Invisible_Boy_Report.pdf McMackin, R.A., Newman, E., Fogler.

J.M. & Keane, T.M. (Eds.) (2012).

Trauma therapy in context.

Boys are less likely to disclose at the time sexual

We are in no way saying that sexual abuse is worse for men than for women, rather that male responses are often different from females ones. For example: I in children, boys are less likely to disclose at the time sexual abuse occurs than girls (e.g. O’Leary & Barber, 2008); I men typically disclose being sexually abused in childhood 10 years later than women – on average 22 years after the assault (O’Leary & Barber, 2008; O’Leary & Gould, 2009); I men are one-and-a-half times less likely than women to report adult sexual assault to the police (Pino & Meier, 1999; although we have seen recent improvements on this situation in the UK); and I men make fewer and more selective disclosures than women (Hunter, 2011).

Such differences mean that specific services are needed for men. World Health Organization research (2007) shows that gender-neutral approaches in supporting change in men’s health and well-being are less successful than genderinformed ones. Gendered approaches are needed, directly addressing issues relating to men’s life, such as how cultural practices influence gender scripts and

Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

O’Leary, P.J. (2009). Men who were sexually abused in childhood: Coping strategies and comparisons in psychological functioning. Child Abuse & Neglect, 33(7), 471–479.

O’Leary, P.J. & Barber, J. (2008). Gender differences in silencing following childhood sexual abuse. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 17(2), 133–143.

O’Leary, P.J. & Gould, N. (2009). Men who were sexually abused in childhood and subsequent suicidal ideation: Community comparison, explanations and practice implications. British Journal of Social Work, 39(5), 950–968.

O’Leary, P.J. & Gould, N. (2010).

Exploring coping factors amongst men who were sexually abused in childhood. British Journal of Social

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I

supportive. This may be a work colleague, partner or friend (O’Leary & Gould, 2010).

Talking with someone who encountered a similar event. Men’s well-being is enhanced not just through receiving support but through having the opportunity to support and help others (Kia-Keating et al., 2010; O’Leary, 2009).

Developing a sense of hope, positive reinterpretation and growth.

Practising optimism, selfunderstanding, viewing survival and life accomplishments in a positive manner (O’Leary & Gould, 2010; Joseph, 2012).

abuse occurs than girls

shape men’s and women’s experiences.

The research of Joseph (2012) offers us one possible point to begin psychological debate in how we might support male victims. Joseph describes a model for self-help called THRIVE, part of which we believe is especially important for survivors: ‘Re- Authoring’.

This refers to listening to the stories the survivor tells himself in order to find new ways of looking at surviving. This model works especially well when male survivors are given support to explore them which hears and honours them as both male and survivor.

In general, fostering better coping in male survivors is the key here. Coping is a dynamic, complex process (O’Leary & Gould, 2010), and what we already know about men’s continued well-being could be used to foster better coping along the lines of Joseph’s THRIVE model.

Specifically, we know the following factors that are correlated with men’s enhanced well-being (see also Foster et al., 2012 for further details): I Practical information and assistance.

Working to develop concrete life skills that address the impact of sexual abuse, exploring feelings and learning to tolerate emotional distress (O’Leary & Gould, 2010).

I Talking with someone who is

Work, 40(8), 2669–2686.

Osborne, S. (2011). Violent and sexual crime. In R. Chaplin, J. Flatley & K. Smith (Eds.) Crime in England and Wales 2010/11: Findings from the British Crime Survey and police recorded crime (2nd edn). Retrieved 1 December 2014 from www.gov.uk/ government/uploads/system/uploads /attachment_data/file/116417/hosb10 11.pdf

The problems men experience after sexual abuse can manifest in all areas of their lives, in interpersonal relationships, parenting, employment, and social and leisure activities, and at different points throughout the life span (O’Leary & Gould, 2009). Consequently, it is important that services are flexible enough to respond to a wide range of issues, not just focused around mental health and sexual assault services.

Where we could go Current service providers struggle to reach out to men. We now need to strengthen existing resources and open up new pathways to encourage and enable male survivors to seek the help that they have denied themselves previously. Academically and practically we can do more to understand men’s reluctance to access services that are currently available. The current raft of sexual violence inquiries and trials sparked by ‘Operation Yewtree’ offer an opportunity to explore what has previously been ‘unspoken’.

There is no doubt that delivering services to male survivors is a major challenge, and with a changing economic and structural climate, such challenges often seem insurmountable. But within change is often the opportunity to

Pino, N.W. & Meier, R.F. (1999). Gender differences in rape reporting. Sex Roles, 40(11/12), 979–990.

Sarbin, T.R. (Ed.) (1986). Narrative psychology: The storied nature of human conduct. New York: Praeger.

Seager, M., Morison, L., Wilkins, D. et al.

(2014). The hidden pain of men. The Psychologist, 27(3), 138–139.

Somerset, A. (2014). Social return on investment. Survivors Manchester.

read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk

innovate. For example, the increasing development of the web has allowed platforms like Big White Wall (www.bigwhitewall.com), and Psychology OnLine (www.psychologyonline.co.uk) to be explored. Such platforms could be adapted to deliver support for male survivors, therefore allowing them to avoid having to enter public spaces to receive therapy and support (Craig, 2010). Internet provision can also be combined with group work within the community. For example, Living Well and 1 in 6 Canada (www.livingwell.org.au and www.1in6.ca) will publish a ground breaking manual on conducting male sexual violence therapy groups this year.

Still underlying the issue of male survivorhood is the cultural belief that men should be strong and resilient and not call out for help – however badly they need it. Psychology is a profession that more than any other holds the possibility in our view of being skilled, open and disciplined enough to focus on supporting sexual violence survivors. The dividends for the profession, society and especially survivors could be profound.

But all stories need listeners to make them good ones – the unheard are watching to see if we are ready to hear their stories and help them re-author, not just the endings, but the tone of the story itself.

Retrieved 1 December 2014 from tinyurl.com/mhcb7t4.

Walker, J., Archer, J. & Davies, M. (2005a). Effects of rape on male survivors: A descriptive analysis.

Archives of Sexual Behavior, 34, 69–80.

Walker, J., Archer, J. & Davies, M. (2005b). Effects of male rape on psychological functioning. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 44, 445–451.

Michelle Lowe University of Bolton michelle.lowe@bolton.ac.uk

Bob Balfour Survivors West Yorkshire Bradford, Yorkshire survivorswy@mac.com

Wall, L. & Quadara, A. (2014).

Acknowledging complexity in the impacts of sexual victimisation trauma.

Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault. Number 16.

World Health Organization (2007).

Engaging men and boys in changing gender-based inequity in health: Evidence from programme interventions. Geneva: Author.

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STRENGTHS-BASED CBT LONDON

18-19 MAY 2015

A NEW WORKSHOP PRESENTED BY CHRISTINE A. PADESKY, PH.D

M

ost therapists want to improve clients sense of wellbeing and overall quality of life in addition to relieving stress. This is especially true for vulnerable clients with complex issues and those who suffer social stigma because of chronic mental health problems. For these clients, Strengths-Based CBT (SB-CBT) can provide a more positive therapy experience than therapy approaches that are solely problem focused. An emphasis on strengths and resilience is a welcome change for clients who may feel worse when therapy is solely focused on problems, especially when change comes slowly.

While SB-CBT methods can be used with most types of clients, this new workshop by master clinician Christine A. Padesky, Ph.D. places special emphasis on demonstration of SB-CBT with vulnerable clients and chronic issues. Learn how to:

identify client strengths even when clients deny their existence, help clients build a personal model of resilience, incorporate strengths-based methods into classic CBT protocols, use the NEW Paradigm approach to address chronic issues.

SHOW ME! How often do you watch a master clinician at work and wonder, "How did she know to ask that?" "Why did she do that?" In this first workshop in Dr. Padesky s new Show Me! Series, most of the teaching will be via clinical demonstration rather than didactic lecture, followed by discussions to guide participant learning. She will push the pause button during demonstrations and reveal what is going through her mind as she makes clinical choices. After her demonstrations, workshop participants have an opportunity to apply the ideas and methods via role play and structured exercises. Please join us in London for this unique learning opportunity to see Strengths-Based CBT in action with vulnerable clients and chronic issues.

COGNITIVE WORKSHOPS www.cognitiveworkshops.com

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To register, find more information, or download a detailed brochure, please go to www.cognitiveworkshops.com.

Or call 0845 330 9069.

vol 28 no 2

february 2015

Annual Conference 2015 5-7 May / ACC, Liverpool Gala Dinner Join us on Wednesday 6 May at the dynamic Rum Warehouse, located at the heart of Liverpool’s docklands. Liverpool’s most exciting new events space retains original features such as its floor-to-ceiling windows with stunning views over Stanley Dock.

For £40 your evening ticket includes a three course meal, drinks and live music.

Book your place at www.bps.org.uk/AC2015 The conference dinner is included in the residential package.

Book early and save yourself money Early bird rates apply until 17 March 2015 and there are a limited number of bursaries available to Postgraduate Student members

#bpsconf www.bps.org.uk/ac2015 ‘big picture’ pull-out www.thepsychologist.org.uk

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BIG PICTURE

Psychologist Colin Ellard is applying traditional and technological approaches to the study of urban spaces and those who inhabit them.

‘If we want to know how to make a better city, the place to start is at ground level, using observation and measurement, and applying what is known of the human sciences to those measurements to build a psychologically grounded view of the relationship between the physical design of a city and what happens there.’ So says experimental psychologist Colin Ellard (University of Waterloo, Canada). Ellard told The Guardian Cities website (see tinyurl.com/ellardcity) how he is going beyond simple observations of overt behaviour, to look inside the bodies and minds of city dwellers.

‘We can measure their gaze, their beating hearts, the state of their autonomic nervous systems as they react to arousing and stressful events, their brainwaves,’ Ellard says. ‘With apps on our phones, we can record our location and movements, but also our moods, interests, and our patterns of thought.’

But a truly scientific approach to the city is a challenge. We can't tear down and rearrange city blocks to compare alternative urban realities. So in the research laboratory for immersive virtual environments (Relive) at the University of Waterloo, Ellard and his team have turned to simulation methods to help build such a science. Participants are placed into highly immersive

simulations of city spaces, using sophisticated head-mounted displays, precise motion tracking, and a raft of sensors. ‘One of our environments is based on Shibuya, a hectic and seemingly chaotic part of Tokyo with its famous scramble crossing’, Ellard says. ‘We have found that journeys through systematic spaces are stereotyped and efficient and accompanied by low levels of arousal and attention; journeys through more chaotic spaces are longer, filled with more hesitations, arousal and effortful attention. Such findings give us a set of powerful methods by which to predict the psychological effects of an urban design before anything is built.’

Sometimes, though, there is no substitute for experimentation at street level. But what excites Ellard is the opportunity to then take those ‘realworld’ findings back into the simulations to pinpoint exactly what aspect of the environment is having the effect. He concludes: ‘As we move into an exciting new era of city design in which engaged citizens have never been more interested in how to make cities better, and in which they can be provided with good tools to contribute to the efforts to do so, this marriage of simulations and real-world observations leaves us poised to move into high gear.’

www.thepsychologist.org.uk

Inside the heart and mind of a city

Research. Digested.

Free.

www.bps.org.uk/digest ‘Easy to access and free, and a mine of useful information for my work: what more could I want?

I only wish I’d found this years ago!’

Dr Jennifer Wild, Consultant Clinical Psychologist & Senior Lecturer, Institute of Psychiatry ‘The selection of papers suits my eclectic mind perfectly, and the quality and clarity of the synopses is uniformly excellent.’

Professor Guy Claxton, University of Bristol

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vol 28 no 2

february 2015

Qualitative Methods in Psychology Section Conference

10 years

of QMiP Reflecting back Looking forward

2-4 September 2015, Anglia Ruskin University Here’s a small taster of our exciting keynote line-up: Dr Virginia Braun, University of Auckland Professor Paul Flowers, Glasgow Caledonian University Professor Carla Willig, City University London And there will be more world-renowned speakers to follow – check the conference website for latest details.

Interested in submitting your work?

We are seeking submissions under the theme 10 years of QMiP: Reflecting back and Looking forward. We encourage submissions from all related fields and at any level of experience, from student to long-term member/non-member. If you know a colleague or contact who could contribute to the theme and provide an interesting discussion please pass this information on. Deadline to submit is 31 March 2015.

Registration open! Book now to secure early bird rates.

Follow us on Twitter: #qmipconf @BPSConference @QMIP

www.bps.org.uk/qmip2015

THE PRESIDENTS’ AWARD FOR DISTINGUISHED CONTRIBUTIONS TO PSYCHOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE 2015 Members of the Society are invited to submit nominations for the Presidents’ Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychological Knowledge.

The Presidents’ Award is given to candidates normally resident in the United Kingdom as a mid-career award. It is intended as a timely acknowledgement of the achievements of those who are currently engaged in research of outstanding quality.

Grounds for proposing the candidate should be fully stated by the proposer, but a full CV need not be included. This may be requested by the Research Board once a shortlist of possible recipients has been agreed by the Board.

The Presidents’ Award carries with it Life Membership of the Society and recipients are invited to address the Society at its Annual Conference.

Professor Richard Crisp was the recipient of the Presidents’ Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychological Knowledge 2014.

Nominations should be sent to the Chair of the Research Board c/o Liz Beech at the Society’ office to arrive no later than 30 April 2015.

Further details, including the criteria can be obtained from Liz Beech (liz.beech@bps.org.uk)

read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk

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NEW VOICES

Together against bullying Suzy Clarkson with the latest in our series for budding writers (see www.bps.org.uk/newvoices for more information)

s a child and adolescent with ‘ginger’ hair, I was, like many other redheads, subjected to regular bouts of name-calling. I lacked the knowledge and skills to handle it, and I began to believe that this one observable trait defined me and determined my selfworth. When I asked for help, I was regularly told by adults to repeat the adage ‘Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me’.

This was not an effective tool to stop the name-calling, nor was it a strategy that equipped me to deal with the hurt. Now as an adult, psychology student and concerned parent, my interest and research lies in how schools can reduce and respond to bullying, and how social psychological research on bullying can contribute to proactive school practice.

Bullying is a universal phenomenon.

Approximately one in ten children worldwide experience being bullied (Currie et al., 2012). It has been defined as the exposure ‘repeatedly and over-time, to negative actions’ (Olweus, 2005, p.5) or the ‘cruel and repeated oppression by the powerful over the powerless’ (Rigby, 1996, p.11). In the last two decades, the media have reported on the predominantly unsuccessful efforts of policy makers and educators to reduce the bullying prevalence rates in the UK. At the same time, international government reports and academic research have highlighted the consequences of bullying. These are farreaching, affecting not only the well-being

references

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Anderson, M., Kaufman, J., Simon, T.R. et al. (2001). School associated violent deaths in the United States 1994–1999. Journal of the American Medical Association, 286(21), 2695–2702.

Currie, C., Zanotti, C., Morgan, A. & Currie, D. (2012). Social determinants of health and well-being among young people. Geneva: World Health Organization.

of the victim and perpetrator in the short term, but also producing effects that can persist into adulthood, impacting on subsequent relationships, mental wellbeing and life opportunities. Victims of bullying are significantly more likely to suffer from psychiatric disorders, including anxiety (Graham & Juvonen, 1998), and are twice as likely as nonvictims to be depressed in later life (Ttofi & Farrington, 2012). A victim’s health risk behaviour can also be heightened, including substance abuse (Molcho et al., 2004) and suicidal behaviour (Kim et al., 2005; Klomek et al., 2007). News headlines and government reports, in the UK and beyond, suggest that bullying can be a factor in homicide (e.g. Anderson et al., 2001), and in both planned and actual massacres (see tinyurl.com/m4ydtan and tinyurl.com/q68bntv). For the perpetrator, bullying behaviour is a strong indicator of future delinquency, antisocial behaviour (Merrell et al., 2008), and psychosocial problems (Nansel et al., 2004).

Such links have focused public and government attention on the moral imperative to address school bullying. For many years, social psychologists examined bullying as a dyadic relationship, between the perpetrator and victim, without considering the social context. More recently, they have recognised the importance of social context and the influence of peer clusters, school classes and school climate. This triadic approach explores bullying as a group process and has produced insights into the

Graham, S. & Juvonen, J. (1998). Selfblame and peer victimization in middle school. Developmental Psychology, 34, 587–599.

Hutchings, J, & Clarkson, S. (in press).

Introducing and piloting the KiVa bullying prevention programme in the UK. Educational and Child Psychology.

Kärnä, A., Voeten, M., Little, T.D. et al.

(2011a). A large-scale evaluation of the KiVa antibullying program: Grades

perpetrator’s motivation to bully and the probability of persistence. The approach has also highlighted the limited support experienced by the victim.

Christina Salmivalli and her colleagues (1996; interviewed in the April 2014 issue at tinyurl.com/kiva0414) were the first group to systematically investigate the influence of the bystander on school bullying. A bystander is present at an incident, acting as an observer or witness. Salmivalli (2001) suggests that bystanders are not neutral and that all pupils present during a bullying incident play a role. She identities two primary roles, perpetrator and victim, and four bystander roles: assistant of the bully, reinforcer of the bully, outsider and defender of the victim.

The prime motivation for the bully’s behaviour is the pursuit or maintenance of power and status within the group, with ‘victim selection’ being based on characteristics such as submissiveness, low power, and low self-esteem (Salmivalli & Isaacs, 2005). These characteristics permit the perpetrator to repeatedly demonstrate their power, with a low probability of confrontation. For the perpetrator’s power and status to be renewed and established they require an audience; pupil reports suggest that there are other peers present in 85 per cent of bullying incidents. Salmivalli et al. (1996) found that the bystander’s reaction to the bullying incident could positively or negatively affect the perpetrator’s behaviour. Therefore interventions that involve influencing bystander behaviour can contribute to reducing, or even eliminating, the motivation to bully.

This research is the basis of KiVa, a comprehensive school-based anti-bullying programme developed and evaluated by Professor Salmivalli and her team in Turku University (see www.kivaprogram.net/wales). KiVa was commissioned in 2006 by the Finnish government, due to their concern that bullying rates had remained static over the previous decade (despite a legal requirement on schools to possess their

4–6. Child Development, 82(1), 311–330.

Kärnä, A., Voeten, M., Little, T.D. et al.

(2011b). Going to scale: A nonrandomized nationwide trial of the KiVa antibullying program for grades 1–9. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 79(6), 796–805.

Kim, Y.S., Koh, Y.J. & Leventhal, B.L. (2005). School bullying and suicidal risk in Korean middle school

students. Pediatrics, 115(2), 357–363.

Klomek, A.B., Marrocco, F., Kleinman, M. et al. (2007). Bullying, depression, and suicidality in adolescents. Journal of American Academy of Child and Adolescence Psychiatry, 46, 40–49.

Merrell, K.W., Gueldner, B.A., Ross, S.W. & Isava, D.M. (2008). How effective are school bullying intervention programs? School Psychology Quarterly, 23(1), 26–42.

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new voices

own policy to safeguard their pupils from bullying).

Kiva is the Finnish adjective for ‘nice’, as well as an acronym for kiusaamista vastaan, which means ‘against bullying’.

The KiVa programme offers concrete tools for teachers and pupils to tackle bullying.

It has two core components: universal and indicated actions.

Universal actions are proactive and directed at the class and school level, including three sets of developmentally appropriate lessons covering the age range 7–15 years. The lessons aim to enhance the pupils’ awareness about the role of the bystander in the bullying process, and to increase the pupils’ empathetic understanding of the victim’s plight. Lessons also provide safe strategies to defend and support victims. Various activities encourage class and group discussions, to help children reflect upon their feelings and attitudes. An online game, linked to the lesson content, reinforces the behavioural skills of ‘I know, I can, I do’. ‘I know’ repeats and tests what has been learnt, ‘I can’ rehearses taking learning in to action, whilst the ‘I do’ reflects on motivation and actions.

Other universal components include a parent website, school assemblies, posters and playground tabards for staff to demonstrate the commitment and coordination of the school.

Indicated actions are triggered in response to confirmed incidents of bullying. The strategies are scripted and involve bullies committing to a plan to support the victim. At the same time the class teacher encourages prosocial children to also support the victim.

The programme was first evaluated in a randomised controlled trial with 28,000 pupils in Finland. Significant reductions were found in self-reported bullying and victimisation (Kärnä et al., 2011a).

Following this, a nationwide trial with 150,000 pupils found significant reductions (Kärnä et al., 2011b), and the programme is now implemented in over 90 per cent of schools in Finland.

Molcho, M., Harel, Y. & Lash, D. (2004).

The co-morbidity of substance use and youth violence among Israeli school children. International Journal of Adolescent Medicine and Health, 16(3), 223–251.

Nansel, T.R., Craig, W., Overpeck, M.D. et al. (2004). The Health Behavior in School-aged Children Bullying Analyses Working Group. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine,

My interest in the KiVa programme began whilst studying a social psychology module on my undergraduate degree.

I was fascinated to learn about how research findings from social psychology had been employed to improve the lives of so many people. I listened thoughtfully to lectures that involved programmes that improved children’s social skills and behaviour (Incredible Years), eating habits (Food Dudes), and reduced bullying (KiVa). However, due to my personal experiences, KiVa captured my attention.

When I discovered a vacancy for a Masters of Science by Research Scholarship with Professor Judy

Hutchings, to evaluate KiVa in Wales, I didn’t think twice. On completion of my master’s I applied to be a Research Project Support Officer for a Wales-based RCT of the programme. This position is giving me with the opportunity to study for a PhD and become one of only three accredited trainers of the KiVa programme in the UK. My MSc thesis evaluated the UK pilot trial of KiVa, which included 14 primary schools from Wales, funded by grants from the Welsh Government, and three from Cheshire (pupils aged 9–11 years).

The trial found KiVa to be effective in reducing self-reported victimisation and bullying, and acceptable and suitable for teachers and pupils (Hutchings & Clarkson, in press). Teachers reported that KiVa had a positive impact on children’s well-being and prosocial

158, 730–736.

Olweus, D. (2005). A useful evaluation design, and effects of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program.

Psychology, Crime & Law, 11, 389–402.

Rigby, K. (1996). Bullying in schools.

London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Salmivalli, C. (2001). Group view on victimization: Empirical findings and their implications. In J. Juvonen & S. Graham (Eds.) Peer harassment in

read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk

behaviour, and on the class and playground atmosphere. These positive results, however, should be interpreted with caution, as the pilot trial did not include any control schools: it was an opportunistic study following the inclusion of KiVa on a list of programmes eligible for Welsh Government grants.

The results from this pilot trial have informed the present RCT in Wales, run as a partnership between the Dartington Social Research Unit and Bangor University. It targets all of Key Stage 2, 7- to 11-year-olds, in 20 primary schools.

Phase 1 of the trial saw 11 schools implement the programme with the other nine schools on the control waiting list.

Phase 2 of the trial commenced in September 2014, with all 20 schools implementing the programme. The data are currently being analysed.

On my academic and research journey I have acquired many skills, learning about the challenges of real-world intervention trials, liaising with international developers, media companies, and schools. Throughout my time, I have been supported by a diverse range of people from Bangor and Turku Universities, and from the Social Research Unit at Dartington. Social psychology forms the building blocks of KiVa, and it is rewarding to see so many people coming together to promote a more proactive method for tackling bullying in UK schools. The robust evidence from Finland, alongside growing data from the UK, could enable public finance resources to be wisely invested on an evidencebased anti-bullying programme. I feel extremely fortunate to work on such a worthwhile and personally meaningful project.

school the plight of the vulnerable and victimized (pp.398–419). New York: Guilford Press.

Salmivalli, C. & Isaacs, J. (2005).

Prospective relations among victimization, rejection, friendlessness, and children’s selfand peer-perceptions. Child Development, 76, 1161–1171.

Salmivalli, C., Lagerspetz, K., Bjorkqvist, K. & Osterman, K. (1996). Bullying as

Suzy Clarkson is KiVa Research Project Support Officer, Centre for Evidence Based Early Intervention, Bangor University s.clarkson@bangor.ac.uk

a group process: Participant roles and their relations to social status within the group. Aggressive Behavior, 22, 1–15.

Ttofi, M.M. & Farrington, D.P. (2012).

Bullying prevention programs: The importance of peer intervention, disciplinary methods and age variations. Journal of Experimental Criminology, 8, 443–462.

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INTERVIEW

‘We are not islands, there is such a thing as society’ Robin Dunbar talks to Lance Workman about his attempts to see the big picture and find the big number

ou started out studying the social behaviour of the gelada baboon.

Y Do you think it’s a natural step from primatology to asking questions about humans?

I think the short answer is yes – almost everybody who has worked on primates has ended up also dabbling in humans.

Some famously so – look at people like Robert Hinde and John Crook, they both shifted their attention from monkeys to humans. In monkeys we seem to be seeing humans in a miniature cartoon version. So it’s a very easy step to move from that to the bigger story.

You’ve been in biology, anthropology and psychology departments. In terms of academic discipline how would you describe yourself?

This has always been a great source of trial and trauma. Actually, technically, my roots are in philosophy. I started by doing joint philosophy and psychology at Oxford. In those days you couldn’t do philosophy on its own – so I chose psychology, which I knew nothing about.

I’m not even sure I could spell it back then! I was very much a dyed-in-the-wool humanities person. But psychology turned me into a scientist – taught me statistics and the scientific method. So I ended up in psychology departments for my undergraduate degree, my PhD and my first postdoc position. That has always been core to what I do and explains why, unlike other people in behavioural ecology, I have always had this core cognitive dimension and why I became interested in the brain and in evolution.

You mention behavioural ecology.

Over the last 30–40 years we seen a plethora of evolutionary-based fields of the behavioural sciences developing… sociobiology, behavioural ecology, evolutionary anthropology, evolutionary psychology and evolutionary economics. Are these discrete disciplines, or are they tapping into different aspects of the same area?

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In a sense they are discrete disciplines because each one focuses on a particular corner of what it is to be human.

Evolutionary politics is another big area where people focus on political structures.

Or in evolutionary economics people focus on the economic behaviour. What the evolutionary bit is doing is to provide a unifying framework. If you look at psychology it is probably the most fractionated discipline you can imagine.

You have all of these different areas such as developmental, cognitive, neuroscience, educational, and so on, none of whom ever seem to speak to each other. They all have their little corner that they sit in.

My pitch is really that the evolutionary component does no more than provide a unifying framework that allows these subdisciplines to talk to each other. This is what happened for biology. The evolutionary framework allows, say, ecologists to talk to physiologists. They still do their ecology and their physiology, but now they have an interactive framework that provides an interface for communication. I think that would be hugely beneficial for psychology.

I couldn’t do what I do without that framework because it allows me to slip from doing what is jobbing social psychology at one end, through neuroscience and neuroimaging, through to standard cognitive psychology and then dabble in personality and developmental psychology. We simply couldn’t do that without the overarching framework of evolutionary theory. It’s a story that spreads across them.

My impression is that biological and cognitive psychologists are more sympathetic to the evolutionary approach than the social psychologists.

Is that a problem for you?

No, not really. Well, maybe they just don’t talk to me! I was struck by this some years ago… doing talks in psychology departments, someone commented that I tend to try to build this big picture to integrate these different components and

show where they sit. But that is very unfashionable in psychology. Psychology talks tend to act like ‘here’s my little area and I’m going to go into it in finer and finer detail’ – all the time losing the big picture. So there is a kind of cultural dissonance as they are not used to thinking in these big picture terms.

I’ve seen this with linguists as well.

I once had an excoriating review in Nature where a linguist wrote ‘how can you possibly write a book about the evolution of language without mentioning grammar – not even as a footnote?’ The answer is really: quite easily. He’s now one of my big buddies. Once I’d met him and he saw where I was going he was fine. In all disciplines you tend to see something coming out of the blue as either agreeing entirely with you or, if it doesn’t fit in exactly with your point of view, entirely against you and then you start to think it must be rubbish. But evolutionary theory allows you to step to the layer above and see the bigger picture.

Some social scientists are very critical of evolutionary psychology – they would rather it just went away. Why? Evolutionary psychology is really split into two groups of people who don’t entirely see eye–to-eye. You’ve got the behavioural ecology end where I sit, which is interested in individual differences. Most of us came out of zoology or anthropology via behavioural ecology. Then you have the classic Santa Barbara school, most of whom came out of psychology. They tend naturally to develop a modular view and tend to concentrate on human universals. I think they began to worry about being criticised as being seen as racist or sexist or any of the many other ‘–ists’ such as biologist or geneticist! Their attempt to duck that criticism was to say ‘no, no, we aren’t trying to say some humans are better than others, we are just dealing with human universals’. So this stopped them being seen as on the wrong side in the nature/nurture debate. This means that they have gone down a channel that they didn’t really want to go down – and maybe led to a polarising of evolutionary psychology against mainstream psychology which is much more on the nurture side of the equation.

It’s interesting because sociologists of science see a clear split amongst psychologists where people who would naturally have fallen on the nature side of the nature/nurture divide became the embattled minority within psychology over the last 30 to 40 years. Many of them saw evolutionary psychology as a bulwark against these awful nurturists. So

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I went to a talk you gave a few years ago about how many people we really know and I went home and checked my Christmas card list. It was about 50, but given that each card went on average to a family of three it came out pretty close to your magic number of 150 people – ‘Dunbar’s number’.

Dunbar’s number is simply the limit on the number of people you can have a meaningful relationship with. The definition we use is the people you would try to see or contact to catch up with at least once a year to keep the relationship going. The kind of people who, if you saw them in the transit lounge at Hong Kong airport at 3am, you would immediately go up and say hello because you know where they stand and you know where you stand. The relationship has a history. You have to invest time in relationships in order for them to work – but there is also a cognitive limit. You can only really know 100–200 people and on average it works out at around 150.

Then there’s an inner core of about five that you have really intimate relationships with. You found that if you bring a new person into the core, like a new romantic partner, you then jettison at least one old one. It’s interesting because my mother was just saying that she’s hardly seen my nephew since he got a new girlfriend.

Well, relationships are time-costly – even family ones. Most of these are established very early on. I think there is something odd about kinship which is deeply ground into the genetics of the cognitive system – and we can show this with our data. Kin are always on a different plane to friends, come what may. There is something that kicks in as soon as you mention that someone is kin. This is based on very early relationships where, in effect, you become imprinted on them.

But friendships are very unstable over time. There are some exceptions – the friends you make around about university years seem to be in a slightly different category because you can pick them up decades later more-or-less where you left off. But that is just a handful. Probably because you made friends over drinks – and alcohol leads to endorphins being released. The rest of your friendships do deteriorate over time very rapidly. In two

that stem from your scientific interests or is it a separate sphere for you?

I guess it’s a bit of both. As I say, I did start life as a philosopher. Then I became a psychologist and then finally a biologist; and I think it’s hard to be a biologist and to be religious. Some people do, but I find that puzzling. In the end, it is your biological contribution to future generations in terms of fitness that drives evolutionary processes (and hence the decisions organisms make). The social cohesion of things that I’m now working on is a major component of that – like all monkeys and apes, sociality is the key to our evolutionary success. Religion plays a role in facilitating this, because its rituals seem to be especially good at kicking off the endorphin response. But there’s a moral and philosophical position that you have to have in order to create a cohesive society – Mrs Thatcher notwithstanding, we are not all islands, there is such a thing as society. The principles that we hold dear – moral, social and political – are all important in creating bonded societies. So you have to have these mechanisms which you might think of as pseudo-religious.

JOHN FRENCH

they leapt on the evolutionary psychology bandwagon and restarted the nature/nurture debate in a way that probably hasn’t been very helpful to either party, because to a biologist it really doesn’t make any sense.

I think this made evolutionary psychologists become more pseudogeneticist than they really needed to be.

I’ve always backed off from that because my background in behavioural ecology means that there is an assumption that animals do things to boost their fitness, but this doesn’t assume that animal behaviour is genetically determined. The whole point of having a big brain is so you can adapt your behaviour and fine tune it to fit in with the circumstances.

All the genetics of the system does is to provide you with the end goal.

What happens on a day-to-day basis probably fits in more with what the environmentalists have to say. I really think evolutionary theory should unify these disparate fields, but you have to see it in the right way, otherwise you end up polarising things. Once that happens in science it takes for ever to break out.

years a friend can drift from being at the inner core to the outer core of your relationships.

That’s interesting about drink – does alcohol tap into something primeval?

Endorphins seem to be essential in the psychopharmacological underpinning of close relationships, and we trigger their social release by touch, laughter and all those kinds of things that we do in social interactions. Seemingly, alcohol is a very good releaser of endorphins. Maybe because it’s a poison – endorphins are released in response to any sort of physiological or psychological stress on the body. But you also have to realise that as a student if you don’t go drinking with people, how are you going to spend a lot of time with people so that they can become close friends? So people who don’t drink at university might be at a disadvantage.

You are supporter of humanism – does

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I get the impression that you are busier than ever these days, especially when it comes to giving public talks.

Yes, I’m afraid so! The problem is that it’s all getting more and more exciting.

Some areas of science are very difficult to put over to the public, but my area happens to be very easy. It’s an area where you can talk about quite sophisticated data, because even a lay person gets it. If it’s about physiology or physics then they look at you blankly, but if it’s about human relationship, it is so easy to get across. And I enjoy doing it because it can be fun.

But there is a very serious side of this too. It’s very easy for politicians to target science when looking for ways of making major savings because most science doesn’t show its benefits until decades later. And it’s very easy to throw a lot of science out for philosophical or religious reasons – such as in creationism in America –it’s an obvious target. Get rid of it because we don’t need it, and we can save a lot of money at the same time. So I think it’s very important that the scientific community gets out and stomps the boards and shows the public, who pay for all of this, what they are getting for their money and why they should be interested in it. It is a major component of our culture now and is at least as important as art and literature. So hopefully I’m doing my bit for the community!

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VIEWPOINTS

‘I felt let down by psychology’ We hear from a brain injury survivor, researchers and a practitioner

celebrated my 21st birthday during April 2010. I completed my undergraduate degree in psychology in May 2010 and I started my first job with a Youth Advocacy Program in June 2010. However, all of these positive and important events were overshadowed by 18 July 2010 – the day I was involved in a road traffic accident and suffered severe traumatic brain injury.

Unconscious, I was rushed to a hospital where the extent of my injuries became apparent. Brain scans revealed a fractured skull, haemorrhaging and cerebral oedema. I was transferred to another hospital in Dublin. Ten days later,

I

references

The brain injury surrvivor – Niamh Lowe

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Bhalerao, S.U., Geurtjens, C., Thomas, G.R. et al. (2013). Understanding the neuropsychiatric consequences associated with significant traumatic brain injury. Brain Injury. doi:10.3109/02699052.2013.793396 Bowen, C., Yeates, G. & Palmer, S. (2010).

A relational approach to rehabilitation.

London: Karnac.

Cicerone, K.D., Langenbahn, D.M., Braden, C. et al. (2011). Evidence-

I awoke from an induced coma unable to talk, move, swallow, create short memories or remember long-term memories.

I spent the next three months in another hospital. Each of the individual services – speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, nursing care and medical care – were excellent and helped me enormously while providing guidance, encouragement and support. However, during my recovery journey, I felt let down by psychology.

During these three months, I met a number of different psychologists, and I have no recollection of these individuals enquiring about my emotional state.

I longed for one the psychologists to ask me ‘How are you?’; ‘How are you coping?’; ‘Would you like to talk?’ The psychologists produced a range of memory, attention and executive function neuropsychological tests without telling me the names of the tests or why it was important for me to complete the assessment. I performed these tests obediently while feeling immense frustration and confusion inside.

The results of the tests were never revealed to me. Strangely, the implications of my injury were never highlighted and coping strategies were not discussed. Instead, I spent hours performing these monotonous and challenging neuropsychological tests, while trying to deal with the emotional impact of the car accident and my brain injury alone.

I remember one incident in the hospital with the psychologist using the Behavioural Assessment of the

based cognitive rehabilitation: Updated review of the literature from 2003 through 2008. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 92, 4, 519–530.

Coetzer, R. (2013). Behavioural neuroanatomy. In G. Newby et al.

(Eds.) Practical neuropsychological rehabilitation in acquired brain injury.

London: Karnac.

Gracey, F., Evans, J.J. & Malley, D. (2009).

Dysexecutive Syndrome (BADS). I was pushed in my wheelchair to the testing room and brought inside by the psychologist. The test apparatus was set up on the table. She was nice and polite, but did not explain the purpose of the test, and she did not enquire how I felt about participating in this assessment. When she finished reading the instructions out of the booklet, I remember holding back tears while she started the stopwatch.

I completed the assessment, someone wheeled me upstairs to my bedroom, and I cried.

Over the next two years I made huge physical advances. However, I had become increasingly emotionally unstable, desperate and expressed strong suicidal ideation. My mother was extremely worried and reached out to local support services for help and guidance in relation to my psychological state. The request for psychological help resulted in a home visit from an assistant psychologist. The assistant psychologist, however, did not appear to have been briefed about my mental state before she arrived. She never enquired about my emotional health and instead explained that I would be performing a six-hour attention test over three days.

One month after the assessment the assistant psychologist returned with the results from the assessment. My mood had deteriorated further, but the subject of my mental health was again not mentioned.

A copy of the clinical report was offered.

It used technical language, medical terms and psychological definitions. When we were asked if we had any questions my mother replied: ‘Niamh’s mood tends to be up and down, and in the last few months, it has been very down.’ I reacted very badly to this betrayal of personal information.

I told my mother to ‘shut up’ and she began to cry, and then I did the same.

The assistant psychologist left shortly after saying: ‘If there are no more questions, I’ll be heading, but if you think of any, don’t hesitate to call.’

My three years of rehabilitation ended with me experiencing an emotional

Capturing process and outcome in complex rehabilitation interventions.

Neuropsychological Rehabilitation. doi:10.1080/09602010903027763 Gracey, F., Malley, D., Wagner, A.P. & Clare, I. (2014). Characterising neuropsychological rehabilitation service users for service design.

Social Care and Neurodisability, 5(1), 16–28.

Haslam, C., Holme, A., Haslam, S.A. et

al. (2008). Maintaining group memberships: Social identity continuity predicts wellbeing after stroke. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 18(5–6), 671–691.

Irwin, L.G. & Fortune, D.G. (2014).

Schools-based interventions for reducing stigmatization of acquired brain injury. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 29(2), 194–205.

Jackson, H.F. & Hague, G. (2013). Social

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The health professional In practice, how can we integrate neuropsychological and social psychological principles to promote a holistic approach to client care?

The ultimate goal of rehabilitation following ABI is centred around community integration (Martelli et al., 2012). Whether problems arise at the end of intervention will generally depend on whether there has been a thorough assessment of the person’s strengths, needs and goals, understood within the everyday contexts and material conditions of their life. While standardised neuropsychological testing is a crucial part of neuropsychological assessment, equating testing with assessment is not likely to be helpful. Post-acute outcomes are invariably social, yet social aspects of cognition are rarely explicitly assessed during formal neuropsychological evaluations (Jackson & Hague, 2013).

There are however, some helpful signs that this may be changing, as assessment tools that are oriented towards more real-world problems are being continually developed and refined (e.g. Multiple Errands Test: Shallice & Burgess, 1991). Further, the move towards examining social aspects related to the self as vehicles of rehabilitation is to be welcomed (Gracey et al., 2014; Haslam et al., 2008).

For some people with ABI there can of course be problems with social inference, and misunderstandings with staff can occur (McDonald et al., 2014). Clients and family will often look to clinical neuropsychology services to create a narrative about what has happened to them and what may happen in the future, and then for services to do something about these issues. Occasionally, however, services may get caught up on the thorny problem of assessment and helping the person to understand the ‘brain injury problem’.

The idea that the multitude of neurons, neural connectivity and experiences may make up a self who develops comfort from being understood by another person can occasionally become lost in the need to provide answers to such tricky neuropsychological questions.

Reductions in social disability, and improvements in social participation, mental health and quality of life, are increasingly valued as more than just the distal outcomes of rehabilitation (Cicerone et al., 2011). Some common aspects of depression in particular can be understood to result from a loss of social connectedness and changes in social identity. Interventions that foster such (re)connectedness have been used in ABI, from the individually based, such as metaphoric identity mapping (Ylvisaker et al., 2008), dyadic interventions aiding social communication (Togher et al., 2012), through group-based interventions that promote social decision making, to broader community anti-stigma interventions delivered by people with ABI (Irwin & Fortune, 2014).

It is almost old hat to state that the biological, psychological and the social are interrelated in these complex disabilities, and that

consequences and social solutions.

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London: Karnac Books.

Kitwood, T. (1997). Dementia reconsidered: The person comes first. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Kolb, B. & Whishaw, I.Q. (2009).

Fundamentals of human neuropsychology. New York: Worth.

Main, C.J., Richards, H.L. & Fortune, D.G.

(2000). Why put new wine in old bottles: The need for a biopsychosocial approach to the assessment, treatment, and understanding of unexplained and explained symptoms in medicine.

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McDonald, S., Honan, C., Kelly M. et al.

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each component must be given its due in neurorehabilitation in order to promote an environment in which people with ABI may prosper. Indeed some recent research (e.g. Miller et al., 2013) supports the conceptualisation of this interrelatedness in terms of ‘enriched environments’ Professor Dónal Fortune, Senior (comprising opportunities Clinical Neuropsychologist, Health to engage in a combination Service Executive South, Republic of of group cognitive, physical Ireland and social rehabilitation).

Results demonstrate positive neural outcomes for clients (e.g. diminished hippocampal atrophy at 28-months follow-up).

So there are a number of substantial challenges of working within the current system, among them the complex needs of people with ABI and their families, the need for additional training, development of a viable translational social neuropsychology research and development agenda, and issues relating to commissioning and resource allocation. In order to meet the needs of people with ABI, I would advocate: I A more reflexive knowledge and training base for staff. The dynamic nature of the organisation, function and response to experience in the social world needs to be as prominent as the neural element in neurorehabilitation theory and practice.

I Addressing the ever-present variability in facilities and care pathways (particularly in more rural areas), which may result in bottlenecks with delayed or inappropriate referrals. In addition, the fragmentation of services in rehabilitation, and competition between them, may not always be to the betterment of clients’ experiences.

I Moving ABI services from within general intellectual disability services. Growing evidence on the economic efficiency of postacute neurorehabilitation (Oddy & da Silva Ramos, 2013) has been slow to translate for commissioners of services, and the current positioning may mean that complex needs are not appropriately addressed.

I More research from those in neurorehabilitation. It is compelling that the authors of the most recent meta-analysis of psychological interventions for depression following ABI found it ‘amazing’ (p.1394) that the number of published studies available was so small, despite the high prevalence of depression following ABI (Stalder-Lüthy et al., 2013).

(2014). Disorders of social cognition and social behaviour following severe TBI. In S. McDonald et al. (Eds.) Social and communication disorders following traumatic brain injury (2nd edn). Hove: Psychology Press.

Miller L.S., Colella B., Mikulis D. et al.

(2013). Environmental enrichment may protect against hippocampal atrophy in the chronic stages of traumatic brain injury. Frontiers in

Human Neuroscience, 7, 506.

Oddy, M. & da Silva Ramos, S. (2013).

Cost effective ways of facilitating home based rehabilitation and support. NeuroRehabilitation, 32, 781–790.

Shallice, T. & Burgess, P.W. (1991).

Deficits in strategy application following frontal lobe damage in man. Brain, 114, 727–741.

Stalder-Lüthy, F., Messerli-Bürgy, N.,

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breakdown and suffering severe depression with no personal feeling of hope about recovery or the future. I was referred to a psychiatric hospital where I remained an inpatient for two months. It was here that I met a psychologist who sat opposite me,

and enquired sensitively and genuinely ‘How are you?’ This simple question produced the suppressed emotions of the last three years.

A person is not a sum of their parts, a person is greater than their brain

functioning. In my personal experience, many of the psychologists I met failed to create a personal connection with me, and instead focused almost exclusively on assessing my brain function through neuropsychological tests.

The researchers To mark Brain Awareness Week 2014, we joined with Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) Ireland to run an awareness campaign about head injury. We wished to create a forum where lay experiences of brain injury could be shared and heard, with particular respect given to the lived experience of ABI. Indisputably, the defining part of the day was when Niamh Lowe – a survivor of brain injury and psychology graduate – addressed the audience.

Much of what Niamh had to say exemplified in a very human way the importance of psychologists taking time to think about the impact of their work practices on those they are seeking to support. Niamh’s narrative appeared to exemplify the argument that we have previously outlined (Walsh et al., 2012): that advances in neuropsychological knowledge are leading to higher-quality classification and rehabilitation technology in ABI, but often this orientation to particular deficits and the injury is interfering with a more holistic understanding of the equally important social processes that can both contribute to and detract from rehabilitation.

Neuropsychology includes a spread of intellectual traditions, but it is the cognitive approach that most often features in neuropsychological assessment (Bowen et al., 2010). Neuropsychological instruments offer considerable practical utility to rehabilitation clinicians. For example, people often experience serious cognitive deficits following closed head injuries in the absence of apparent cerebral damage on their neuroimaging. In such cases standardised neuropsychological testing can constitute the only available route for

Hofer, H. et al. (2013). Effect of psychological interventions on depressive symptoms in long-term rehabilitation after an acquired brain injury. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 94(7), 1386–1397.

Togher, L., Power, E., Rietdijk, R. et al.

(2012). An exploration of participant experience of a communication training program for people with traumatic brain injury and their

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documenting the extent and nature of cognitive disturbance impacting a person (Kolb & Whishaw, 2009).

Neuropsychological testing is, however, often predicated on an individualistic model of the person that regards all behaviour as explicable in terms of brain function.

This individualistic model can give rise to constructions of individuals as ‘information processors’ (Yeates et al., 2007). The cognitive, information Dr Elaine L. Kinsella, R. Stephen Walsh and Professor Orla processing aspect of each T. Muldoon, University of Limerick person is critical to their well-being; yet, viewing the ‘brain injury’ may trump other concerns person only through this lens may lead to about an individual’s mental health. Indeed, oversights about other social factors that this may well be why mental health issues influence each person.

Depersonalisation in healthcare settings are so frequently left undiagnosed in this population. A theme in Niamh’s story is the is likely to be particularly significant for absence of her sense of feeling valued and vulnerable clients such as those with ABI – listened to by the psychologists that she particularly when the label of ‘brain injury’ encountered – key determinants of patient may result in the client not being given the trust and satisfaction (Walker et al., 1998). right to take an active role in their Perhaps this was amplified for her as she rehabilitative journey. According to was a psychology graduate herself – she Kitwood (1997), depersonalisation may expected more. On the other hand, the role lead to disempowerment (failing to allow of families in supporting psychological the individual to use the abilities they health, is also evident. Shared social retain or failing to assist them to complete relations and the personalised care offered actions they have initiated), infantilisation (treating and talking to people as if they are by families is an important health resource (Walsh et al., in press), which is too often children), labelling (as the main basis for and too routinely undervalued. interaction and explaining behaviour) and The challenge for psychology is to stigmatisation (treating the person as if avoid the pitfalls of the traditional medical they are a diseased object). The label of

communication partners. Disability and Rehabilitation, 34(18), 1562–1574.

Walker, J., Brooksby, A., McInerney, J. & Taylor, A. (1998). Patient perceptions of hospital care: Building confidence, faith, and trust. Journal of Nursing Management, 6, 193–200.

Walsh, R.S., Fortune, D.G., Gallagher, S. & Muldoon, O.T. (2012). Acquired brain injury: Combining social psychological and

neuropsychological perspectives.

Health Psychology Review. doi:10.1080/17437199.2012.733914 Walsh, R.S., Muldoon, O.T., Gallagher, S. & Fortune, D.G. (in press). Affiliative and self as doer identities: Relationships between social identity, social support, and emotional status amongst survivors of acquired brain injury (ABI). Neuropsychological Rehabilitation.

Yeates, K.O., Bigler, E.D., Dennis, M. et al.

(2007). Social outcomes in childhood brain disorder. Psychological Bulletin. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.133.3.535 Ylvisaker, M., McPherson, K., Kayes, N. & Pellett, E. (2008). Metaphoric identity mapping: Facilitating goal setting and engagement in rehabilitation after traumatic brain injury.

Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 18, 713–741.

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model, where the person is defined by their problem rather than being treated in a holistic way. Comorbidity associated with ABI is well-documented and the likelihood of developing depression in the wake of such a catastrophic injury is very high (Bhalerao et al., 2013). After brain injury, emotional difficulties can be the product of biological, psychological and social factors (Coetzer, 2013). Thus, biomedical models are insufficient to account for the complex disabilities often associated with chronic conditions (Main et al., 2000). In particular, Gracey et al. (2009) suggested that improved awareness might be connected to an increase in negative emotions as individuals cognitively engage with what has happened to them. The team tasked with Niamh’s care were likely to be aware of the complexity of factors influencing Niamh’s health outcomes.

However, the concern about re-establishing cognitive function may have blocked a more holistic approach to Niamh’s rehabilitation.

The specialisation within the system is of course one potential cause of this problem. A second troubling cause is the increased deployment of staff who are illprepared to deal with individual and

familial catastrophes due to limited training, experience or supervision. The over-use of assistant psychologists, particularly their use as low-paid and unpaid labour to stitch together services that are under stress, is a serious concern for the discipline. As a profession, we need to manage and govern the use of assistant psychologists carefully. In the medium and long term, the (mis)use of graduates with limited training in lieu of clinical professionals damages clients, the profession and the discipline.

Niamh’s experiences within the services are, of course, a consequence of the current system. As psychology has grown and diversified, the level of specialisation has resulted in the splitting of services. There is no doubt that this specialisation results in higher-quality care and therapies that are more appropriately tailored to the clinical problem at hand. Neuropsychology has made great progress in terms of both assessment and interventions. The psychological impact of ABI and subsequent rehabilitation represents key interests for researchers at the Centre for Social Issues Research, University of Limerick. An enduring concern in our research is the apparent lack of integration

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of the social psychological perspectives within clinical neuropsychology (see Walsh et al., 2012). Consistent with our aim of producing meaningful research that informs policy and praxis, we have built partnerships with local and national organisations, such as ABI Ireland.

We hope that an empowered patient perspective, alongside the integration of the neuropsychological and social psychological perspective – particularly one that pays due attention to systems and structures that affect care and recovery in clinical contexts – can go some way to providing the holistic service we aspire to and that clients deserve.

Seeking more viewpoints In this series we hear the viewpoints of those who have conducted published psychological research, those who have taken part in it and those who may put those findings into practice; or those who have come into contact with practitioner services.

Contact the Associate Editor, Dr Catherine Loveday, on C.Loveday@wmin.ac.uk

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SOCIETY

President’s column Dorothy Miell

President Professor Dorothy Miell

Contact Dorothy Miell via the Society’s Leicester office, or e-mail: presidentmiell@bps.org.uk

President Elect Professor Jamie Hacker Hughes Vice President Dr Richard Mallows Honorary General Secretary Professor Pam Maras Honorary Treasurer Professor Ray Miller Chair, Membership Standards Board Dr Mark Forshaw Chair, Education and Public Engagement Board Professor Catriona Morrison Chair, Research Board Professor Judi Ellis Chair, Professional Practice Board Dr Ian Gargan The Society has offices in Belfast, Cardiff, Glasgow and London, as well as the main office in Leicester. All enquiries should be addressed to the Leicester office (see inside front cover for address).

The British Psychological Society was founded in 1901, and incorporated by Royal Charter in 1965. Its object is ‘to promote the advancement and diffusion of a knowledge of psychology pure and applied and especially to promote the efficiency and usefulness of Members of the Society by setting up a high standard of professional education and knowledge’.

Extract from The Charter

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instead spending most of our working lives he turn of the year saw me attend the interacting only with those within our own annual conferences of two of our Divisions specialism (albeit geographically spread), or – the Division of Clinical Psychology in with those from other professional backgrounds December 2014 and the Division of but who practise alongside us in a particular Occupational Psychology in January 2015. setting. The sense of ‘Psychology’ as a coherent Chatting to colleagues at these conferences, and recognised I was delighted to encounter the discipline and as enthusiasm, indeed passion, a distinctive form with which they talked not of professional only about their work as practice is professional psychologists in something we can often very difficult and no longer take for demanding contexts, but also granted but need about their involvement with to work at and their Divisions and the Society. fight for.

In both cases these levels The UK of enthusiasm were evident not Research just amongst those who are Excellence regular attenders at such Framework events and very much part of exercise, assessing the Society’s and the the state of all UK profession’s establishment, but research, is pleasingly also amongst the another area where trainees, students and earlywe can see some career practitioners I spoke to, of the difficulties who were bursting with ideas. we currently face.

In many cases they had In the REF process, probing questions to ask me It is very difficult to build an accurate and peer reviewers about how to improve the coherent picture of the quality, quantity and spent much of external profile and impact impact of psychological research in the UK 2014 examining of psychology, how to ‘make the published things happen’ in the Society outputs of all researchers since 2008 as well overall (as opposed to within their own as looking at their research grant earnings, subgroup) and why things currently work the assessing institutions’ PhD training record and way they do (or don’t!). What was interesting wider aspects of their research environment and was that although the questions were support and also, for the first time, evaluating challenging and the concerns real, it wasn’t the evidence of the wider social, policy and difficult to establish a sense of common purpose economic impact of research. after some discussion and explanation. Their For this exercise Psychology was grouped evident passion didn’t mean that they weren’t together with Psychiatry and Neuroscience for prepared to listen, consider, sometimes rereview by a single panel, whereas in the 2008 evaluate previous positions and commit to exercise the majority of the discipline’s research improved and more joined-up ways of working. had been evaluated on its own by a panel of It was not difficult, in those discussions at least, psychologists, with only clinical psychology to build a sense of an overall shared identity as split off to a separate panel with Psychiatry and psychologists, and as members of the BPS, Neuroscience. Being part of a composite panel rather than primarily defining ourselves in ways is one of the reasons it’s difficult to gain an that highlight our differences more than our integrated picture of the quality of UK commonalities – whether as trainees, clinical psychology research and its impact, since we psychologists in the NHS, independent can’t as yet separate out the Psychology from the practitioners, academics or students.

Psychiatry and Neuroscience entries and scores.

I’m not sure we take enough time to have Furthermore, as with previous exercises, many those conversations across the different parts of Psychology researchers’ work was submitted to our discipline, profession and Society, however,

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Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in Practice 2014 Guy Holmes A clinical psychologist who has worked in NHS mental health services in Shropshire for the last 20 years has been honoured by the Society.

Dr Guy Holmes has won the 2014 Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in Practice. The award is made each year by the Society’s Professional Practice Board to recognise the achievement of someone who is currently making an ‘unusually significant contribution’ to the profession.

Dr Holmes has published over 50 academic articles in areas as diverse as psychiatric medication, male victims of sexual abuse and service users' experiences of mental health services. Many of his articles have been co-authored with people who are receiving mental health services, as indeed were his books This Is Madness, This Is Madness Too and Psychology in the Real World.

His community-based groupwork has been profiled on BBC Radio 4’s All in the Mind and he was one of the judges for the programme’s 25th anniversary awards. Walk and Talk, a group he

other panels for assessment, often because the work lay on the boundaries with sociology, business, social work, education or allied health professions, for example, and was seen as more likely to be assessed effectively by those other panels.

Once again this makes it very difficult to build an accurate and coherent picture of the quality, quantity and impact of psychological research in the UK. This is particularly problematic as we seek to present a clear picture to the public and to governments/policy makers/funders as part of our attempts to raise the profile of the discipline and make strong arguments for the value it provides. The Society’s Research Board is of course working hard to try and help interpret the output of the REF2014 exercise to enable the Society to present this strong unified picture, but it is a difficult task.

The larger point that psychology’s experience in the REF exercise raises for me is that it seems to be increasingly difficult (and yet increasingly important) to be able to talk about the whole discipline of psychology, not just feel it is a loose assemblage of a bewilderingly large number of subdisciplines, many of which seem increasingly isolated from and perhaps even antagonistic to each other, if we are ever to make an appropriate impact in the public arena.

To end, some good news. Three members of the Society were recognised in the New Year Honours list and congratulations go to all three (see p.90 for details).

Dr Guy Holmes established the Walk and Talk group helped set up with people who currently receive mental health services and other members of the general public, was also featured this year on Claire Balding’s Ramblings programme.

His community psychology approach, as well as community groups that Guy and other local people have set up such as Toxic Mental Environments, The Black Dog and Thinking about Medication, are described on the website www.psychologyintherealworld.co.uk.

The site was designed and is administered by Dr Holmes’s collaborator Nicki Evans.

Grant award for Liverpool interactive art exhibit Madlove, an interactive art exhibit reimagining a psychiatric hospital, is set to receive a 2014 Public Engagement Grant from the Society.

Madlove is a new participatory installation and event series created by the artist known as ‘the vacuum cleaner’ (Jamie Leadbitter) in collaboration with FACT (a Liverpool-based media arts centre) and BPS Associate Fellow Professor Peter Kinderman, Head of the Institute of Psychology, Health and Society at the University of Liverpool.

As part of the research and development process the vacuum cleaner is holding workshops throughout the UK with patients and professionals from the health and psychology sectors, as well as members of the general public. The accumulated ideas and knowledge will be used to develop a blueprint for a creation of a temporary psychiatric hospital at FACT in spring 2015 that will be open to the public as part of its Group Therapy exhibition (see tinyurl.com/o57zd3x).

Professor Kinderman said: ‘We are extremely pleased to have received this BPS grant to help facilitate this opportunity for an arts/science collaboration. We hope that involving the public in the creation of a dynamic

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designer asylum they can actually visit and engage with will encourage people to consider current perceptions of mental health through a playful and imaginative design process.’

Professor Catriona Morrison, Chair of the BPS Education and Public Engagement Board, said: ‘As the representative body for psychology in the UK making the public aware of the breadth of psychology as a science is an important part of the Society’s work. The Public Engagement Grants are one of the methods we use to achieve this.’

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Exploring the ‘always-on culture’ What are the implications of technology use across the working life span for well-being, work–life balance and work outcomes?

During 2015 Dr Christine Grant, Professor Gail Kinman, Dr Almuth MacDowell, Dr Cristina Quinones and Svenja Schlachter will be hosting a series of seminars funded by the Society’s Research Board.

The series will explore and develop an understanding of how people are managing digital usage, and to what extent they are able to manage boundaries between work and activities in other life domains. Also explored will be the impact of ICT use on psychological and physical well-being, as well as work-related outcomes and other domain-specific issues, such as satisfaction with life and work. Particular consideration will be given to exploring the strategies individuals use at different life and career stages to ‘manage’ their ICT use, their preference for work–life integration or separation, and the role played by perceptions of control over domain management and other individual differences. The seminars are as follows: I 27 March: Open University, Milton Keynes. Will include high-profile keynote speakers and presentations and discussions of research from a range of relevant disciplines.

I 15 May: Birkbeck, University of London, Bloomsbury. The

I

impact of technology across the life span and its impact on boundary management. Keynote: Professor Ellen Kossek, Purdue University, Indiana, USA. 7 July: University of Bedfordshire, Luton. The way forward, how to develop effective policy, best practice and guidance on technology use across the working life span. Speakers: to be announced.

Professor Gail Kinman told us: ‘The research to be discussed and synthesised in this seminar series has important implications for individuals at different life stages, organisational functioning and society in general. It will inform approaches to “healthy” working practices relating to ICT use. Given that the nature of work is rapidly changing, with many being increasingly able to work “anytime and anywhere”, employees and employers need more creative, flexible and sustainable strategies to manage work–life balance effectively throughout the life span, and equip individuals with coping skills to do so proactively.’

I For further information contact: christine.grant@coventry.ac.uk, A.McDowall@bbk.ac.uk or Gail.Kinman@beds.ac.uk. Note each seminar may be booked separately, spaces are limited and will be allocated on first come first served basis.

Lifetime Achievement Award Neil Frude The Cardiff-based pioneer of a mental health self-help scheme that has gone around the world has been honoured by the Society.

Professor Neil Frude, head of the South Wales Doctoral Programme in Clinical Psychology, is to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award for 2014 from the Society's Professional Practice Board. This award is made each year to recognise someone who has made an unusually significant contribution in a career as an applied psychologist.

In 2003 Professor Frude developed the

Book Prescription Scheme, under which GPs recommend books from a shortlist of self-help books ratified by psychologists to their patients.

It has developed from a local initiative to a national, government-funded scheme in Wales.

Similar schemes have been set up in other countries, including Denmark and New Zealand. In 2013 a national books on prescription scheme for England was launched by The Reading Agency.

Earlier in his career Professor Frude researched the family and the effects of

SOCIETY NOTICES Psychology in the Pub See p.104 Annual Conference 2015, Liverpool See p.i Qualitative Methods in Psychology Section Conference See p.123 Presidents’ Award – call for nominations See p.123 CPD workshops 2015 See p.136 Crisis, Disaster & Trauma Psychology Section ‘The Psychology of Military Transition’, 18 March, Manchester See p.137 Psychology of Education Section Conference, Liverpool See p.142 Developmental and Social Psychology Sections Joint Annual Conference 2015, Manchester See p.145 Division of Counselling Psychology Conference See p.147 Lifetime Achievement Award (RB) – call for nominations See p.165

physical abuse on children.

More recently he has taught in universities and on clinical psychology training courses. He is a Professor Neil Frude Fellow of the British Psychological Society.

In 2004 he appeared as a stand-up comedian for 16 nights at the Edinburgh Fringe in his one-man show.

Society vacancies Membership Standards Board

Chair, Qualifications Standards Committee See advert p.137 Closing date 2 March 2015 Awards & Qualifications

Chair, Occupational Psychology Qualifications Board See advert p.138 Closing date 28 February 2015

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Organised by BPS Conferences

2015

BPS conferences are committed to ensuring value for money, careful budgeting and sustainability

CONFERENCE

DATE

VENUE

WEBSITE

Division of Occupational Psychology

7–9 January

Hilton Glasgow

www.bps.org.uk/dop2015

Faculty for People with Intellectual Disabilities

29 Apr–1 May

The Oxford Hotel

www.bps.org.uk/fpid2015

Annual Conference

5–7 May

ACC, Liverpool

www.bps.org.uk/ac2015

Trainee Conference

6 May

ACC, Liverpool

www.bps.org.uk/trainee2015

Supervision Conference

7 May

ACC, Liverpool

www.bps.org.uk/supervision2015

Division of Forensic Psychology

1–3 July

Manchester Metropolitan University

www.bps.org.uk/dfp2015

Division of Counselling Psychology

10–11 July

Majestic Hotel, Harrogate

www.bps.org.uk/dcop2015

Qualitative Methods in Psychology Section

2–4 September

Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge

www.bps.org.uk/qmip2015

Developmental Section & Social Section

9–11 September

The Palace Hotel, Manchester

www.bps.org.uk/devsoc2015

Division of Health Psychology

16–18 September

Radisson Blu Portman, London

www.bps.org.uk/dhp2015

International Academy for Professional Development Centre for Stress Management

Centre for Coaching

promoting the cognitive behavioural approach for over 25 years

promoting the cognitive behavioural approach

Diplomas† Advanced Certificates

Two-day & Three-day Courses Stress Management

28-29 Apr

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy & Training

5-6 March

Problem Focused Counselling, Coaching & Training

25-26 March

Advanced Cognitive Behavioural Skills Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy

19-21 May 18-19 March

Assertion and Communication Skills Training

23-24 Apr

Other Courses (modular) Foundation Certificate in CBT and REBT (4 days)

Certificate Courses Coaching (15 Credits, Level 5)† Psychological Coaching (15 Credits, Level 6)†

9-13 Mar; 13-17 Apr; 1-5 June 23-27 February; 22-26 June

Coaching Psychology (20 Credits, Level 7)† 23-27 February; 22-26 June Stress Management and Performance Coaching (Level 5, 30 Credits) (6-days)† modular

Two-day Courses

Foundation Certificate in Cognitive Behavioural Therapies (4 days)

Stress Management Health and Wellbeing Coaching

Certificate in REBT (5-days)|Certificate in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (5-days) Certificate in Stress Management (6 days) Advanced Certificate in CBT & Stress Management (11-days)

Coaching (40 Credits, Level 6) Psychological Coaching/Coaching Psychology (50 Credits, Level 7)

modular

Performance Coaching Problem Focused Counselling, Coaching & Training

28-29 Apr 16-17 February 3-4 Mar 25-26 March

Distance Learning Courses

Coaching/ Coaching Psychology Supervision

21-22 Apr

Life Coaching: A cognitive behavioural approach

Assertion and Communication Skills Training

23-24 Apr

Stress Management

† Courses accredited by Middlesex University. All courses recognised by the International Society for

All courses recognised by the International Society for Coaching Psychology

Coaching Psychology. The Centre for Coaching is an ILM Recognised Provider.

Email: admin@managingstress.com Website: www.managingstress.com

Email: admin@iafpd.com Website: www.centreforcoaching.com

Our courses are British Psychological Society Learning Centre Approved and are held at the BPS London, Borehamwood and Edinburgh or in-house. We have trained 1000s of practitioners on our recognised modular courses since the 1980s. The Founder Director of the Centres and Academy is Prof Stephen Palmer PhD. Our experienced trainers have authored books and/or articles in their particular fields. They include Chartered Psychologists: Prof Stephen Palmer, Dr Siobhain O’Riordan, Nick Edgerton & Kasia Szymanska.

156 Westcombe Hill, London SE3 7DH. Tel: +44 (0) 208 853 4171. Reservations: 0845 680 2075. Part of the International Academy for Professional Development Ltd. Website: www.iafpd.com

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135

2015 CPD Workshops Professional development opportunities from your learned Society Understanding autistic spectrum disorders and attention deficit disorders (Cross network)

4 February

Supervision skills: Ongoing development – supervision of supervision (Workshop 4)

6 February

Working with interpreters in mental health (Cross network)

9 February

Working phenomenologically with the body in sessions (Cross network)

9 February

From what is wrong to what is strong: Applying positive psychology to improve sport performance and coaching (DSEP)

18 February

Expert witness: Court room evidence (Workshop 3)

19 February

Aggression with parents in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (Cross network)

25 February

Introduction to talent management (DOP)

5 March

‘Seen but not seen’: Exploring visible and invisible differences in the therapeutic encounter (Psychotherapy)

9 March

New developments in the psychological management of stroke (Cross network)

10 March

Expert witness: Using psychometrics (Workshop 4)

20 March

Cognitive assessment of children and young people (Day 1) (Cross network)

25 March

Exploring terrorism and extremist behaviour (DFP)

26 March

Positive psychology and authentic well-being (Cross network)

30 March

Personality disorder and psychopathy in female offenders (DFP)

7 April

Mindfulness and health (DHP)

7 April

Adventures in playfulness: Exploring the role of play and creativity in working with children and families (Cross network)

9 April

Children and PTSD (Crisis Section)

20 April

Understanding and enhancing the social and emotional development in the early years (Cross network)

21 April

Complaints against psychologists: Lessons to be learned from HCPC’s ‘fitness to practice’ proceedings (Cross network)

24 April

Qualitatively-driven mixed methods research (Cross network)

28 April

Cognitive analytic therapy in a forensic setting (DFP)

1 May

Introduction to evidence-based hypnosis and hypnotherapy (Cross network)

7 May

Supervision skills: Essentials of supervision (Workshop 1)

8 May

Engaging the disengaged: Using motivational interviewing as a tool for young people and adults in education contexts (DECP)

14 May

Expert witness: Responsibilities and business (Workshop 1)

14 May

Expert witness: Report writing (Workshop 2)

15 May

Supervision skills: Enhancing supervision skills (Workshop 2)

15 May

Sharing best practice of diagnosing and assessing adults with neuro-diversity in the workplace (DOP)

18 May

Behaviour management in a trauma context (Developmental Section)

19 May

For more information on these CPD events and many more visit www.bps.org.uk/findcpd.

Follow us on Twitter: @BPSLearning #BPScpd

www.bps.org.uk/learningcentre

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Qualifications Standards Committee Chair The Membership Standards Board (MSB) is seeking to appoint a Chartered Member of the Society to act as Chair of the Qualifications Standards Committee (QSC) from June 2015 for a period of three years.

The remit of QSC (as delegated by MSB) is to oversee the Society’s Qualifications Boards as follows: I oversee and maintain HCPC approval of Society qualifications; I review and monitor the delivery of Society qualifications to ensure that standards are maintained; I develop and issue appropriate guidance and support for candidates; I propose changes in policy/regulations to MSB as appropriate; and I monitor the provision of Society qualifications.

For full details on this vacancy or to request a Statement of Interest Form please contact Nigel Atter on 0116 252 9904 or nigatt@bps.org.uk.

The closing date for Statements of Interest is 2 March 2015. Interviews will be held on 27 March at the Society’s Office in Leicester.

The Psychology of Military Transition: Problems, Solutions and Recommendations

Connect…

Wednesday 18 March 2015 9am to 4.30pm Imperial War Museum North The Quays, Trafford Wharf Road, Manchester M17 1TZ Libeskind Room

Fees Section Members: £100+VAT = £120 Affiliate subscriber: £145 + VAT = £174 BPS Members: £125 + VAT = £150 e-Subscribers: £155 + VAT = £186 Non-Member: £ 160 + VAT = £192 Concessions: £70 + VAT = £84

http://www.kc-jones.co.uk/cdt2015

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…with The Psychologist and the Society’s free Research Digest service for more psychological news and analysis

Follow us at

tinyurl.com/thepsychomag and www.facebook.com/researchdigest www.twitter.com/psychmag and www.twitter.com/researchdigest

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To book visit http://shop.bham.ac.uk

Train in the original form of CBT The Centre for Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) at the University of Birmingham is dedicated to the promotion and practice of REBT as the original transdiagnostic model of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).

Learn more Tel: 0121 414 3763 Email: cbtprogramme@contacts.bham.ac.uk Web: www.birmingham.ac.uk/rebt Twitter: @CentreforREBT

We currently offer three REBT short courses accredited by the Albert Ellis Institute in New York: Primary Certificate in Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT), 27–29 March 2015 Advanced Certificate in Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT), 24–27 September 2015 Associate Fellowship Certificate in Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT), 24–27 September 2015 Facilitators: Professor Windy Dryden, Professor Peter Trower, Dr Jason Jones and Dr Richard Bennett

www.birmingham.ac.uk/psychology

Chair of Occupational Psychology Qualifications Board Qualification in Occupational Psychology (Stage 2) The Board is seeking to appoint a Chartered Member of the Society who is an Occupational Psychologist to take on the role of Chair from 1st April 2015. The Society’s Qualification in Occupational Psychology is a postgraduate qualification for independent candidates who wish to become Occupational Psychologists and Chartered Members of the Society.

If you are interested in applying for this post please contact meg.ashcroft@bps.org.uk for details on the role and how to apply.

Completed forms and documentation should be received by 28 February 2015.

Interested parties are welcome to contact the current Chair, David Carew, via Meg Ashcroft for an informal discussion before they put forward their statement of interest.

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Presents

Working Through Ruptures and Impasses How to identify and resolve blocks to progress in therapy Jeremy D. Safran, Ph.D. New School for Social Research, New York A good therapeutic alliance has been shown to predict effective therapy. This 2-day workshop provides a systematic framework for understanding factors contributing to problems in the alliance and how to resolve them. Video-taped material will be employed to illustrate different types of alliance ruptures, as well as essential principles relevant to addressing and repairing ruptures when they occur. A third follow-on day will offer an opportunity for those involved in training and supervision to address the issues involved in introducing these models of rupture repair into routine therapeutic practice.

Topics will include: • Different types of ruptures in the alliance • Evidence based intervention strategies to address and resolve blocks to progress • The use of therapist self-disclosure and meta-communication (‘mindfulness-in-action’) • Working constructively with intense feelings that emerge for patients and therapists • Therapists’ capacity to regulate their own affective experience in working to resolve ruptures Dr. Safran has spent over 30 years playing a leading role in developing a “second generation” of alliance research that investigates factors promoting the development of a strong alliance, as well as principles relevant to repairing strains or ruptures in the alliance when they occur. He is the author of Negotiating the Therapeutic Alliance: A Relational Treatment Guide (2000), Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Therapies (2012); Interpersonal Process in Cognitive Therapy (1996); Emotion, Psychotherapy and Change (1987), and numerous journal articles and book chapters on relational processes in psychotherapy.

Venue: University of Oxford Department of Continuing Education, Rewley House, 1 Wellington Sq., OX1 2JA 2-day workshop on clinical skills: 1-day workshop on training and supervisory skills: Cost for all three days:

May 11th and 12th May 13th

£250 £125 £360

More details at: www.oxfordpsychologicaltraining.co.uk To book or for further information email david@oxfordpsychologicaltraining.co.uk

read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk

139

See sample pages at www.hogrefe.com

Become Positive With Hogrefe Books!

New! Fredrike P. Bannink

Handbook of Positive Supervision for Supervisors, Facilitators, and Peer Groups 2015, xii + 204 pp.

ISBN 978-0-88937-465-2 £ 27.90 Also available as E-book!

This clearly written, practical handbook describes an innovative and successful approach to individual, group, and peer supervision that is suitable for use in any environment (clinical, corporate, educational, health, governmental, community): positive supervision.

Positive supervision focuses on what actually works instead of on problems and on supervisees’ strengths rather than on their deficits. The task of supervisors using this approach is – unlike the more traditional problemsolving – to create solutions with their supervisees and to teach them to apply the same approach when working with their own clients.

Essential reading for all supervisors, this book introduces a new form of supervision, based on positive psychology and solutionfocused brief therapy, that is shorter, more positive and hopeful, and more cost-effective than traditional methods.

What supervisees say: “In traditional supervision I learned from the ‘sharp minds’ of my supervisors; in positive supervision I learned to use my own ‘sharp mind.’ This helps me to become more independent and more effective in creating and supporting change.”

“Suddenly I realized I had more competencies than I previously thought I had. By experiencing what positive supervision does to you, I became instantly excited to also use this approach in the treatments with my clients.”

“This supervision gives me a sense of empowerment. I do hope that other supervisees will experience the same as I did through this book.”

Also available: Ryan M. Niemiec & Danny Wedding

Positive Psychology at the Movies Using Films to Build Character Strengths and Well-Being 2nd edition 2014, xvi + 486 pp.

ISBN 978-0-88937-443-0 £ 34.00 “The most important book about movies of our times.”

Frank Farley, PhD, L. H. Carnell Prof., Temple Univ., Philadelphia, Former President of the APA Watching the films recommended in this book will help the reader to practice the skill of strengths-spotting in themselves and others, inspiring self-improvement. Positive Psychology at the Movies is conceived for educators, students, practitioners, and researchers, and for anyone who loves movies.

Ryan M. Niemiec

Mindfulness and Character Strengths A Practical Guide to Flourishing 2014, xx + 274 pp. + CD with meditation exercises ISBN 978-0-88937-376-1 £ 22.50

Looking for the latest research and practices on character strengths and mindfulness? Curious about how character strengths can supercharge your mindfulness practice? Look no further – the answers are in this book!

At the core of this hands-on resource is Mindfulness-Based Strengths Practice (MBSP), the first structured program to combine mindfulness with the character strengths. This 8-session program systematically boosts awareness and application of character strengths – and so helps people flourish and lead more fulfilling lives.

Hogrefe c/o Marston Book Services Ltd 160 Eastern Ave., Milton Park · Abingdon, Oxfordshire OX14 4SB Tel: 01235 465577 · Fax: 01235 465592 E-mail: direct.orders@marston.co.uk · www.hogrefe.com

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OXFORD INSTITUTE OF CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY TRAINING

Post-Graduate Certificate in Supervision of Applied Psychological Practice (Validated by the University of Oxford)

An exciting opportunity for those who use psychological principles in their work to complete a 1 year PG Cert in supervision, validated by the University of Oxford, starting in October 2015, ending in September 2016.

This PG Cert provides comprehensive, high quality training in the key skills required to be an effective supervisor. A broad range of models, theory and research relevant to supervision will be covered and, given the evidence base, there will be particular emphasis on the supervisory relationship.

The course team are experienced trainers, supervisors and researchers in this field, committed to providing a supportive

Applications are invited from applied psychologists, qualified psychotherapists and counsellors, and health and social care professionals who use psychological principles in their work. Successful candidates must have responsibility for supervision and their own supervisory arrangements for the duration of the programme. Fee ÂŁ3,100.

For more information or an application form please contact: Ms Marianne Peedell, Course Administrator: +44 (0) 1865 226431 marianne.peedell@hmc.ox.ac.uk Dr Sue Clohessy , Course Director susan.clohessy@hmc.ox.ac.uk

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CPD Workshops Acceptance & Commitment Therapy With Professor Sue Clarke 9th February 2015 - BPS London

Teaching Clients to use Mindfulness Skills With Dr Maggie Stanton & Dr Christine Dunkley 21st February 2015 - Cambridge University 20th March 2015 - Cardiff University 18th April 2015 - Newcastle University 8th May 2015 - St Patrick s College Nr Dublin 15th May 2015 - Stirling University

Group Supervision in the Helping Professions.

The Supervisory Relationship Difficulties and Delights With Robin Shohet 13th + 14th March 2015 - BPS London

For details and for our full range of workshops :stantonltd.co.uk or grayrock.co.uk

HIGHGATE CONSULTING ROOMS * Purpose-built for psychotherapy * Architect designed and elegantly furnished * Sound-proofed * Air-conditioned group room * Entryphone system to all rooms * Waiting areas * Support staff * Sessions to suit individual requirements Contact Sally for further details: West Hill House, 6 Swains Lane, London N6 6QS Tel no: 020 7482 4212 E-mail: info@westhill-house.biz Web: www.consulting-rooms.co.uk

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy T Training raining Extended with FAP FAP A and RFT - Euston, London Including assessment of your learning through regular supervision 1. ACT Experiential Introduction with Martin Wilks & Henry Whitfield 25-26 Apr + 16-17 May 2015 2. ACT Intermediate level skills training with David Gillanders & Henry Whitfield 6-7 June + 4-5 July 2015 Taking 3. Relational Frame Theory (RFT), The Self and Perspective T a akin aking with Louise McHugh April 21-22 March 2015 FAP W.. Kanter 4. Supercharging CBT/ACT with FA P with Jonathan W (call for the dates) 5. Supervision for Extended ACT programme with Joe Oliver MBCT Experiential Intro with Martin Wilks 12-13 Sept + 10-1 1 Oct 10-11 Mindfulness Training Training r Ltd. To T o book call 0800 849 6723 or visit www w..presentmind.org .pr www.presentmind.org

British Journal of Educational Psychology Annual Conference 2015

The role of competence beliefs in teaching and learning 23–24 October, Jury’s Inn Conference Centre, Liverpool Keynote Addresses Professor Mimi Bong, Department of Education and the Brain and Motivation Research Institute, Korea University The many faces of competence in achievement contexts Professor Lisa Linnenbrink-Garcia, Department of Counseling Educational Psychology and Special Education, Michigan State University Motivational profiles and student engagement: An integrative perspective

Professor Reinhard Pekrun, Department of Psychology, University of Munich Academic Emotions: The role of competence beliefs Vernon Wall Lecture Professor Andrew Martin, School of Education, University of New South Wales, Australia Explicit instruction, discovery learning and motivation: can they work together?

The 2015 British Psychological Society, Psychology of Education Section, Annual Conference is jointly hosted with the British Journal of Educational Psychology.

Deadline for submissions Friday 29 May 2015 Details for Abstract Submission and Registration can be found at www.kc-jones.co.uk/poe2015

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NEW MSc Work Psychology and MSc Business Psychology Starting September 2015

As a Top-10 UK business school we’re passionate about developing well-rounded, highly employable graduates who are ready to make a difference.

From September 2015 we are launching two exciting new MSc programmes focused on occupational psychology. Both focus on developing the competencies that graduates need in order to apply psychological theory and research in ways that meet the needs of workers and work organisations. Students will be taught by experienced psychologists and business and management specialists who are leading academics and practitioners in their respective fields.

To attract the highest calibre students we are offering a range of scholarships worth up to 100% fees.

Both courses are delivered through block teaching to make them accessible to both full-time students and those wishing to study part-time alongside their existing work commitments.

We will be holding a Masters Open Day on 25th March 2015.

Please email us on sbe.pgt@lboro.ac.uk to receive full details once these are ďŹ nalised.

MSc WORK PSYCHOLOGY 1 year Full-Time or 2-4 years Part-Time (block teaching).

This specialist MSc is for students with a BPS-accredited undergraduate Psychology degree who wish to develop a career as an Occupational Psychologist. We are currently seeking British Psychological Society Accreditation for this programme for the September 2015 intake.

MSc BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY 1 year Full-Time or 2-4 years Part-Time (block teaching).

This conversion course is designed for students without a BPS-accredited psychology degree wishing to develop their knowledge of how psychology can be applied to a range of key business issues including employee selection, managing change, employee training, leadership and individual development.

Both MSc courses are suitable for those working in, or aspire to work in, personnel functions, human resource management roles or as business consultants in areas such as selection and assessment, organisational change and employee development.

BS.6455

www.lboro.ac.uk/sbe/pg

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vol 28 no 2

february 2015

Developmental & Social Sections Joint Annual Conference 2015 9–11 September 2015, The Palace Hotel, Manchester Keynote Speakers Dominic Abrams, Malinda Carpenter, Hazel Markus & Tania Zittoun

Call for Submissions We are pleased to announce that submissions are now open and we are inviting standard papers, five-minute challenges, workshops, posters and symposia presentations until 15 April 2015. For full details of how to make a submission please visit the conference website below.

Registration Registration will open in January 2015. To register your interest please email us at devsocconf@bps.org.uk

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Positive approaches: Challenging contexts Celebrating the 21st Anniversary of the Division of Counselling Psychology 10–11 July 2015, Majestic Hotel, Harrogate Join us as we explore the contemporary contexts of counselling psychology, empowering professional resilience and enriching client well-being.

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Studying F Forensic orensic Psy Psychology chology at the Univ errssity of Winchester supports University y ou to gain the specialist knowledge you equired to work with and skills rrequired individuals within the Criminal Justice S ystem and fforensic orre ensic mental System health services. This includes individuals who off end sexuall y offend sexually and/or violentl y and those with violently mental health and/or per rsonality s personality difficulties.

The core focus of the programme is forensic psychology combined with quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection and analyysis. ysis This fulfils Stage 1 of the Chartership process to become a forensic psychologist.

We are committed to helping students to move onto Stage 2 of the Chartership process. Students may benefit from the volunteering opportunities and links the University has with local Criminal Justice agencies to gain experience in forensic practice

The teaching team consists of chartered psychologists who have a number of years of experience of working in forensic practice and criminal investigation.

Research and knowledge exchange are at the heart of activities at Winchester, with academic staff at the fo orefront of their disciplines and internationallly recognised in terms of originality, significance and rigour.

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Richman EMDR Training offer small interactive EMDR trainings (max 20 participants), incorporating the complete standard EMDR training accredited and approved by EMDRIA/EMDR-Europe plus an Intermediate workshop between Part I and Part 3 training. After Part I participants are able to practice EMDR and Part 2 revises the protocol and offers supervision of case material. Part 3 training teaches EMDR with more complex cases and offers further case consultation.

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147

CAREERS

‘I owe my career to inspirational deaf people’ Andy Cornes talks to Ian Florance

D

eaf people are not just hearing people whose ears happen not to work. ‘They are a group with their own unique culture who have suffered oppression from the hearing majority.’

Talking to Dr Andy Cornes before this interview it was clear he wanted to raise awareness of working as a psychologist specialising in deafness. So, how did he get interested in the area?

A light bulb moment

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‘I was planning to work in construction in Toronto. I had no degree, few prospects and my passport had just been stolen. At that time UK employment was very high

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and I was worried about the future.

My mum cut out an advert for a training course in communicating with deaf people and sent it to me in America.

I don’t think I’d even met a deaf person before but that was it. I took a total immersion course in sign language with no talking allowed, then secured a job as an unqualified social worker with deaf people. I simultaneously did a master’s degree in Deaf Studies at the University of Durham whilst undertaking social work training.’

Why did the group have such a big effect on you? ‘I saw a perfect match with my values, not least those relating to social justice, derived in part from my working-class upbringing. The more I learnt the more I realised how much ignorance there was about deaf people, how pernicious some attitudes towards them were and the extent to which mental health professionals were letting them down. I had travelled a fair bit (even more so now!) and have always tried to learn about what makes people’s worldviews and cultures different, and sign language and deaf culture blew me away!’

Andy specialised a long time in the areas of mental health and child protection, then sent CVs to deaf societies and was offered interviews in Melbourne, Sydney and in New Zealand, finally getting a job as a Family Counsellor and Manager of Community Services for the Deaf Society of New South Wales. He emigrated to Australia in 1997 and began working in Rivendell

Adolescent Psychiatric Unit. ‘While I was there I enrolled on a PhD in Psychological Medicine and did a psychology degree alongside it. That’s the second time I’ve done two degrees at the same time.

I helped to set up and run mental health services for deaf children in NSW and started to write and lecture on deaf mental health.’ Andy also trained at the Institute of Psychiatry in Sydney. He lived in Sydney for eight years and has dual citizenship but came back in 2005 for family reasons.

The need for experts in deafness So, what is the situation he would like to change? ‘Of course there are excellent specialist services for deaf people but non-specialist services tend not to be responsive to deaf people’s clinical needs and access is often poor. Deaf people tend to present in crisis at psychological services, sometimes with intractable problems.’ Andy cites legal work – he acts as an expert witness – as an example of this. ‘Deaf people are overrepresented in the court system, and they generally get a very poor service. I became professionally and ethically outraged at reading “expert” reports written by psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers who simply did not possess the requisite skills to offer an opinion on complex matters such as how deaf parents raise children, their values and their experience as a minority and misunderstood cultural group. Unfortunately, the wrong experts are appointed and the implications are highly damaging.

‘Some people have the oddest ideas.

Deaf IQ is consistently under-measured due to the lack of good focused assessments. The fact that deaf people come out of schools with an average reading age of 7.5 years is taken by some to indicate lack of intelligence. Hearing aids or cochlear implants don’t provide perfect hearing, and there is a significant lack of access to information due to lack of provision of sign language interpreters.

In addition, British Sign Language (BSL)

member-only benefits as the site develops over the coming years. Please let the Managing Editor know what features you would appreciate, on jon.sutton@bps.org.uk.

Please help us to spread the word. Recruiters can post online from just £750, and at no extra cost when placing an ad in print.

For more information, see p.152.

vol 28 no 2

february 2015

careers

is not – contra the views of some comedians and media – just flapping your arms about. It is a distinct and natural language with its own grammar and dialects and different versions in different countries: For example, when I’m working in Australia I use Australian Sign Language (Auslan).‘

We need more positive deaf role models I asked Andy to explain some of the issues in more detail and to suggest what needs to be done.

‘We need more assessments standardised on deaf populations and translated into relevant sign languages.

I’ve been doing work with Professor Margaret Brown of Melbourne University using an Auslan translation of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, which I developed for my PhD thesis.

Mental health assessments of profoundly deaf children are very complex. For example, psychological states are described differently in BSL and English.

Many words and phrases cannot be translated literally and require clarification for interpretation while certain concepts (e.g. “panic attack”) in English do not have direct equivalents in BSL, therefore several signs have to be used in order to convey one concept.’

Andy adds ‘It’s vital that schools with deaf children have baseline psychological data to guide, track and develop programmes that support and promote emotional wellbeing.’

Is there a greater incidence of mental health problems among the deaf?

‘Research suggests there is, although hearing impairment as such does not create that risk on its own. The context within which deafness exists influences psychological outcomes – for example, how a family is affected by their child’s deafness is likely to impact upon how they relate to the child, and affect how children view themselves. Educational input is also key, yet its psychological impact is little understood and underresearched.’

This leads on to the critical issue of parenting. ‘Between 90 and 95 per cent of deaf children are born to hearing parents, and this will cause communication problems and different family dynamics.

Unique patterns of social and emotional development seen in deaf children – for instance lack of effective parent–child communication and social isolation – may predispose them to psychological distress. Hearing parents of deaf children need education, parent training and support. Many deaf people fail capacity-

to-parent assessments despite any concrete evidence (e.g. cognitive impairment, mental illness or neglectful or abusive parenting). Deaf parents are, by and large, assessed on the presumption of incompetence. There is no evidence to support deaf parenting as inferior to hearing parenting’.

Andy returned to the role of experts in court proceedings. ‘Assessments of deaf people are being undertaken by professionals without specialist expertise.

This results in poor-quality, invalid assessments, so a lawyer or even the deaf client may have to fund a second specialist. Experts should not only have experience of working with deaf people but should be aware of their culture, have worked with interpreters and be proficient in sign language. Going into a court and feeling you’re not understood or being misrepresented can be a horrendous experience. Having the right knowledge available will ultimately save money and stress. Family members are often asked to fulfil the role of interpreter despite the ethical implications, their lack of qualifications and an obvious conflict of interest.’

Andy feels that we need more research and to raise the profile of deafness on psychological courses, including degrees and on clinical doctoral training. ‘And professionals should undergo deaf awareness training and be aware of their obligations under the Equality Act. ‘We desperately need more positive role models for deaf people,’ he continues. ‘There are high profile deaf people in the public eye – for example, Evelyn Glennie and Marlee Martin – but what we need is more qualified deaf mental health professionals. There are a few inspirational deaf people in this area and I hope we encourage more of them to become involved and make a difference.

I owe my career to inspirational deaf people.’

Psychology as positive advocacy For the past two years Andy has been working for his own company, View Psychology Ltd. ‘I’m involved in work with schools to develop and lead therapeutic services that are responsive to psychological needs. My corporate work often focuses on the psychological resilience in professionals working in challenging contexts. I do a lot of supervision, consultancy and training and have delivered a number of master classes and international keynotes. My expert witness work involves assessing kids with emotional, behavioural and psychological problems and also undertaking parental

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assessments. I also provide evidence on issues such as the impact of abuse, as well as placement and access for children and parents. I’m rather proud of the fact that I was involved in a high-profile case recently, and I am allowed to mention it as it is in the public domain, in the Court of Appeal, which changed the law on deaf people’s access and assessment in Family Court proceedings, in the case of Re C (A Child) [see tinyurl.com/nduzcn5]. The bureaucracy in the work I’d done for the previous eight years in the NHS generally stifled creativity, but in my own company I hope to be able to overcome those limitations. It also allows me to have a portfolio of bespoke psychological solutions to a range of diverse clients.

I am a Senior Fellow at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne, a consultant counselling psychologist and one of three world experts on the Panel for Health for the World Federation of the Deaf.’

I learnt a huge amount about deaf people – too much to put into one article – from talking with Andy. He also confirmed two linked conclusions I’d arrived at over recent interviews for the careers section of The Psychologist. Some time ago I interviewed Stella Acquarone on autism and she talked passionately about positive aspects of autism. Equally, Andy emphasised an approach to deafness which does not over-emphasise deficits but looks at positive aspects of the condition – one that comes with its own culture and creative language. As Andy put it: ‘Many deaf people perceive themselves as culturally different rather than disabled. The deaf community typically comprises deaf people who regard themselves as members of a minority group sharing cultural traditions and values and community aims, such as the preservation of deaf culture.’

The linked point is the extent that someone like Andy has developed highlevel advocacy skills, over and above those of an academic, researcher, trainer, supervisor and practitioner. He is now widely regarded as an international expert in the emotional, social and psychological development of deaf children and is currently the only specialist psychologist in deafness in the UK who is qualified to conduct both psychological assessments and capacity-to-parent assessments (as he is also a registered family and systemic psychotherapist). Psychology can be as much about challenging ignorance via a message about funding, service organisation and attitude, as it is about clinical competence.

I See www.viewpsychology.co.uk for more on Andy’s work

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careers

Playing a small part in a journey of discovery Rachel Mulholland (Glasgow Caledonian University) f I am asked about my career, about what it feels like to be a senior lecturer and practitioner occupational psychologist working in a university, it seems like an easy question. But to do the answer justice, I need to go beyond what I like and dislike about my career: I need to reflect more deeply about the joys of the job and to be open about its challenges and demands. Luckily, as a psychologist in love with workplace issues, exploring work and its complexity is close to my heart.

Unlike many lecturing staff in psychology, I have come to this place in my career via a non-traditional route, as a practitioner occupational psychologist. In some respects my long and winding road starts in my undergraduate days, when I was lucky enough to lead the Student Industrial Society at Queen’s University Belfast. It was made up of a diverse bunch of students from different disciplines (e.g. business, biochemistry, aeronautical engineering and psychology) who were interested in industry. We often visited workplaces and took part in events to help us learn more about work processes, and the range of opportunities and challenges that existed within them. They were great fun and it was illuminating to see how many different aspects of the workplace had people at their heart – the things we were being taught about in social psychology, individual differences and cognitive psychology, were to the fore.

This led me to realise that occupational psychology was the domain I wanted to pursue.

One could study and work within varied types of organisations and industries, and use a mix of core knowledge domains at

I

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learning. This has led to an important and interesting shift in my own thinking. Working as an ‘expert’ in the field where you apply your considerable knowledge to work on real organisational issues, and then having to step back and think about your knowledge from the

individual, group, and organisational levels of analyses. I loved the variety of subjects covered, from human factors, to leadership, to what motivates people in work.

That variety has served me well in my career. I have drawn from both the public and private sectors, giving me a strong understanding and appreciation of different approaches to work and professional issues. I have developed leadership and entrepreneurial training programmes; assessed and counselled people for work; led multidisciplinary research and project teams; and developed and delivered lectures Rachel Mulholland with her award for professional, industry and university students. It is perhaps these latter aspects perspective of a ‘novice’, makes of my work which gave me for some challenging times. specific skills to transfer to the You have to change the way you role of senior lecturer at share knowledge and learning Glasgow Caledonian University. and also have to realise that to So began the next (and some degree you are a ‘novice’ continuing) stage of my career in a new job role! to date.

This made me realise One of the major challenges the need to undertake further I faced when I came into development, and this came in lecturing was the realisation the form of a Post-Graduate that on the surface it seems Certificate in Higher Education. very similar to the design and This helped me to better delivery of customised training understand the professional programmes, where you are standards and diverse issues focused upon development and that are important to the work learning. However, there are role of a lecturer, and enabled critical differences between me to gain professional them. For example, they can membership of the Higher be very different in terms of the Education Academy. I learned length, learning outcomes and about applying psychological diversity of learners being learning theories in different exposed to your teaching and ways and it made me reflect on learning materials. As John how we use the same words to Biggs highlights in his 2003 mean different things when we book Teaching for Quality wear different professional hats.

Learning at University, it is less I came across new concepts about being the expert and such as ‘constructive alignment’ more about being a facilitator of and I learned about the reality

of being a student who was holding down a job at the same time as studying (an experience increasingly part of the lives of modern students). Importantly, it helped me to grow as a lecturer, and it made me think about the changes that we often have undergone as our knowledge has moved beyond Bloom’s initial level of learning.

For example, you can forget how much underpinning academic information, practical application and deep learning has taken place in your own development. You can assume that others have the same levels of understanding, background knowledge and appreciation of issues that you have yourself. You can also forget what it felt like to be a ‘student’ – the classes and lecturers that you enjoyed because they interested you, and others where you felt unsure about the topic and were afraid to speak and discuss issues because you felt self-conscious.

There are also the courses taken by students just because they have to! I came into the university with the somewhat naive conception that all students were as interested in my field of study as I was myself. But instead it was clear that they come to my modules with a range of diverse motivations and interest levels.

That’s part of the joy and challenge of lecturing – you are faced with a broad mix of students who have a varied set of expectations, knowledge and interest in the topics you teach them about. You are trying to build upon their knowledge base and scaffold their learning, but the big challenge involves helping them to engage with the subject matter as much as possible. As a lecturer you want

vol 28 no 2

february 2015

students and learners to dig deeper and learn more about the topic under scrutiny. But you are also trying to help them develop their academic and personal skills in a wide range of areas including reading, navigating and using large amounts of data (in different forms), and formulating critical arguments about their newly acquired knowledge using a range of different formats (e.g. written and oral). I love to use my professional knowledge and experience to test their view of the workplace as a onedimensional structure to one that is a changing, dynamic and challenging place.

This is another one of the true joys of working in this field: seeing how your students open their minds to new theories and evidence, which allows them to analyse and understand issues from different perspectives. When you see students gain the confidence to challenge assumptions and go beyond the materials presented in lectures and seminars to present the depth of their understanding in a topic, you know that you have played a small part in their journey of discovery, and it is very rewarding and satisfying to experience this. But at the extreme, where some students struggle to engage and understand, the challenge you face is to help them to achieve their potential and to reach their own particular goals (this might be to ‘do better’ in the module, or their desire to ‘just pass’ your module, or even perhaps to look at alternative options that may be more suited to their talents). Doing this is very demanding – not just in terms of preparing lectures and seminars but also in dealing with the range of issues that can arise in a learning setting.

Upon reflection I feel that this is an area where the crossover of coaching and training

skills developed as an occupational psychologist have helped me to consider and offer support. Embedding feedback and opportunities for self-reflective learning is a vital technique to help students review their academic and personal goals. I often stress that as future graduates it is important for them to think like professionals of the future and take responsibility for decisions and conclusions they make.

All of this has been very rewarding, and to be nominated and shortlisted in Student-Led Teaching Awards and last year to actually win the award for ‘Inspiring Individuals’ was a pleasure and privilege. But so much for the ups, what about the downs? In the current climate of workload demands and metrics used in the higher education sector, there are areas of the job that can be very demanding. I have had the dilemmas of teaching many different modules and having to balance administrative and lecturing work with research ambitions – as many of us in the sector might recognise, this often means working at weekends, in the evenings and holidays. At times my knowledge and background in stress management in the workplace, and dealing with organisational change, have helped me to understand and deal with such issues, and even to work with colleagues to offer relevant short sessions and courses. At other times, being part of research teams has offered collegiate support and the opportunity to do applied research in employability.

So on balance, I love my work (past and present) and see myself developing further in the applied research area of occupational psychology, as well as hopefully continuing to inspire, support and help new learners to fall in love with psychology the way I have myself.

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To realise the possibilities for your career, visit www.nelft.nhs.uk/workingforus today.

vol 28 no 2

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Registered Psychologist Based at HMP Isle of Wight Salary is from £32,945 up to a maximum of £39,535 This is an exciting opportunity to work with an experienced team of Forensic Psychologists based at HMP Isle of Wight and part of the broader South Central Psychological Service.

In this varied role you will have the opportunity to be involved in the risk assessment of prisoners, devising and carrying out individual psychological interventions, conducting research, providing consultancy and delivering training to staff to support their work with a high risk group of offenders.

You will also be involved in mentoring trainee psychologists to ensure they develop through the key steps towards chartered and registered status.

HMP Isle of Wight has an excellent record for delivering high quality treatment services to sexual offenders via the Sex Offender Treatment Programme. The Psychology team provides the clinical input to this programme and also provides treatment to men who cannot engage with SOTP. This position is demanding but also very rewarding.

Additionally, the prison is set within the Island’s rich and varied natural landscape, with its 57 miles of unspoiled coastline, stone-built villages, and many Blue Flag beaches.

With almost half the Island designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, it hosts two large music festivals annually, yet remains within two hours’ travel from London.

seek and advertise at www.psychapp.co.uk

To join us, you will need to be a Registered Practitioner Psychologist with the Health and Care Professionals Council.

You will bring to the role strong decision making skills, a collaborative approach and a commitment to building capability for all. A persuasive individual, you demonstrate excellent communication, leadership and influencing skills.

In return, you will enjoy excellent flexible benefits including your choice of Civil Service Pension Scheme, plus extensive opportunities for further training and development.

Closing date: 27th February 2015.

To find out more and apply, visit www.justice.gov.uk/jobs and search for job reference IW0121-RR4, or call 0845 010 3508 quoting the reference number.

For details of other Registered Psychologist vacancies across the Country or to setup a job alert, please visit our website for further details.

We are committed to promoting the benefits of a diverse workforce.

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Mental Health and Learning Disabilities Services NHS Grampian is seeking to recruit experienced, ambitious applied psychologists to senior positions within our general adult mental health and adult learning disability services. The successful applicants will have the opportunity to live and work in the vibrant north-east of Scotland which boasts a spectacular combination of rugged coastline punctuated by quaint fishing villages, beautiful countryside with historic market towns, stunning snow-capped mountain ranges and the bustling port and oil capital of the UK, Aberdeen City. Thus Grampian is ideal for those who prefer city life with easy access to theatres, art galleries, music venues, cinemas, restaurants and shops galore, while for those who prefer a more rural lifestyle there are many smaller coastal and inland communities within easy commuting distance to work, but which also offer superb quality of life.

Adult Mental Health Directorate Consultant Lead Psychologist – Aberdeen City Band 8C – 37.5 Hours per week Due to the retirement of the current post holder an opportunity has arisen to apply for the exciting and challenging permanent post of Consultant Lead Psychologist in the Department of Clinical and Counselling Psychology based at Royal Cornhill Hospital, Aberdeen. The Department is staffed by 18 (16.2 wte) clinical and counselling psychologists and is responsible for the provision of specialist psychology services for adults aged 18 to 65 from Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire who present with severe and complex mental health problems.

This post provides line management and professional support to psychology staff who primarily deliver services in Aberdeen City (currently 9.5 wte) working closely with colleagues in nine multi-disciplinary teams which each serve a defined group of GP practices. Reporting to the Head of Department, the role also involves acting as a member of the Department senior management team with responsibility for ensuring the delivery of high quality, effective psychology services through appropriate clinical and professional governance.

In addition to carrying a significant personal caseload of clients with severe and complex mental health difficulties, the post holder will be responsible for the operational delivery of the psychology service to Aberdeen City.

To fill this important post, we are looking for a suitably qualified psychologist with extensive experience of working in secondary care adult mental health services who is innovative and has a passion for continuing service improvement. It is expected that the successful candidate will have completed training in at least two evidence based modalities of psychological therapy to an accredited standard and be capable of offering clinical supervision and training in those modalities for other staff.

work closely with colleagues in their CMHTs and primary care to deliver specialist services. CMHT patches vary in size of population served ranging from roughly 9,000 up to just under 30,000. The Department is based in modern accommodation in Royal Cornhill Hospital and enjoys the benefit of close links with other mental health professionals based there. Clinical services are also delivered in primary care settings outwith Aberdeen City.

Further information on these Adult Mental Health posts may be obtained from Dr George Deans, Consultant Clinical Psychologist, NHS Grampian Professional Advisor in Applied Psychology/Head of Department on (01224) 557219 or e-mail: george.deans@nhs.net

Learning Disabilities Directorate Consultant Clinical Psychologist – Forensic Complex Cases Band 8C – 30 Hours per week Owing to the retirement of the previous post holder, an exciting opportunity has arisen for a Consultant Clinical Psychologist to join this well established Department of Clinical Psychology for Adults with a Learning Disability.

The Department is staffed by 7 (6 wte) clinical psychologists, is based in Elmwood on the Royal Cornhill Hospital site and is responsible for the provision of specialist psychology services for adults with a learning disability across the whole of Grampian. This post provides line management and professional support for the psychology staff who deliver forensic services across Grampian and to the new prison in Peterhead.

The role also involves responsibility for the delivery of psychology services to the Shetland Islands as outlined in a service level agreement. The successful candidate will be expected to deputise for the Head of Department on occasions at both a local and national level.

We are looking for an enthusiastic, motivated psychologist who has extensive experience of working in learning disability services for people with complex needs across a range of settings and who has shown a commitment to developing and maintaining very high standards of professional practice and to continuing service improvement.

Further information on this post may be obtained from Margaret Harlin, Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Head of Department, Clinical Psychology on 01224 557155 or e-mail mharlin@nhs.net To apply for all posts please visit www.nhsgrampian.org/jobs and search for Ref No PR9941 for Band 8C (Adult Mental Health), Ref No PR9943 Band 8B (Adult Mental Health) and Ref No PR9942 for Band 8C (Learning Disability).

Closing date for all posts 18th February 2015.

Principal Clinical / Counselling Psychologist Two Band 8B posts – 37.5 Hours per week Applications are invited from suitably qualified candidates for these two permanent Band 8B posts in the Department of Clinical and Counselling Psychology, each of which is to provide a specialist psychology service (alongside a Band 8A) to two multi-disciplinary Community Mental Health Teams. The appointments will be full-time (37.5 hours per week) and the successful candidates will contribute to the provision of general adult psychology services to clients aged 18 to 65, living in Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire. Referrals are received from CMHT colleagues and GPs for clients who present with a broad range of mental health problems. Each CMHT provides a service for a small number of general practices, and psychologists

Join our team...

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for more information: www.nhsgrampian.org/jobs

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Job Title: A variety of jobs in Mental Health and learning Disabilities Services Employer: NHS Grampian

A lot is happening in Grampian’s applied psychology services. I spoke to George Deans, Grampian’s Advisor in Applied Psychology and Head of AMH Department, about the three jobs in adult mental health. ‘As they say, this is an exciting time to join us. We’ve been working towards the 18-week access target for psychological therapies for a while and, apart from anything else, this is has been creating increased opportunities for training and skills development. Then there is Scottish legislation on integrating certain aspects of health board and local authority budgets to create Health and Social Care Partnerships.

There will be three of these in Grampian and these new structures will manage budgets and present a real opportunity for psychologists to shape the future delivery of mental health and learning disability services.’

NHS Grampian employs around 17 thousand staff, runs 19 community hospitals serving half a million people spread over three thousand square miles. It’s a very varied area taking in Aberdeen city, Aberdeenshire and Moray. ‘A wonderful place to live whether you like urban or rural life. Aberdeen’s a cultured city with great restaurants.

The area’s a paradise for people who like golf or skiing. These posts, by the way, are based in Aberdeen city, the third biggest in Scotland.’

George is very clear about the approach of the mental health teams. ‘Each team is linked to a set of defined GP practices. GPs refer to the teams, which are multidisciplinary and include the usual NHS professionals, as well as social workers. Each team also treats clients in dedicated beds in the Royal Cornhill Hospital, which is the main

seek and advertise at www.psychapp.co.uk

centre in North East Scotland for the treatment of adult mental health problems. The community teams meet weekly with the ward teams so, as you can see, we’re attempting to keep communication flowing, to ensure continuity of care for clients. The Consultant Lead Psychologist will have a leadership and strategic role. He or she will have his or her own case load. Our service has gradually concentrated more and more on treating clients with complex problems so there is a clinical challenge there. But we’ll be looking for experience in a leadership role or, at the very least, evidence of the aptitude to take on such a role.

The lead psychologist must have trained to an accredited standard in two psychological therapy modalities as well. The other two posts are ideal for psychologists who want a very varied case load, can work flexibly drawing on different therapeutic models and genuinely work well with other professionals, communicating well.’

The NHS Grampian website stresses a number of issues including a commitment to diversity, training opportunities and a commitment to research. ‘The Scottish Government is seeking to foster clinically relevant collaborative research. We have links with Aberdeen and Robert Gordon Universities, allowing for collaborative work. Some practising psychologists have been awarded career research fellowships, funding them to work part-time on an area of research over a three-year period.’

The advertisement describes a further job in the learning disabilities directorate but my conversation outlined exciting opportunities for an obviously fast-changing service.

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To check the latest jobs please go to www.psychapp.co.uk to advertise please contact: Giorgio Romano, 020 7880 7556, giorgio.romano@redactive.co.uk

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Specialist health & social care: supporting people with brain injury, learning disability, mental health difficulties & physical disability

Therapeutic Support Workers Required VP Forensic supports clients & teams in secure services nationwide, helping to maintain the balance between safety & the needs of the client & service.

VP Community Care supports people in community settings. With our specialist knowledge & skilled team we help clients live functional & fulfilling lives.

Excellent pay | Flexible shifts | Complex care | Specialised training | Appraisals & supervision | Diverse client care | MDT working Excellent opportunity for experienced staff or those wishing to acquire the necessary experience before applying for professional training. We welcome applications from assistant psychologists, graduates, & trainee nurses.

0870 850 4265 | www.vpfn.co.uk

Experienced Female* Support Worker required for rewarding position in Enfield, London: To work with a lively 19 year old young lady with cerebral palsy.

• Hours: 21 hours per week (additional hours available during college holidays) • Rate of pay: £12 per hour (week days) £14 per hour (weekends) • An Enhanced DBS check will be pursued.

• Driver essential.

For more information please call: 01844 214669 quote Ref: BC 0115.

*The Equality Act 2010

Graduate Therapeutic Care Worker/ Learning Difficulties 5 posts available Our care homes in West Berkshire, receive the highest ratings and commendations for provision of care to adults with learning difficulties. Our Service Users are unique individuals, often having their primary diagnosis of learning disability complicated by co-morbid presentations including; autistic spectrum disorders (ASD), personality disorders, and/or mental ill-health. We aim to provide the best quality of life for our service users and staff are supported by a forward-thinking and motivated management team.

Starting salary £15,390.45 plus enhancements Therapeutic care role: You will be exposed to the range of psychological difficulties associated with learning difficulties.Your psychological knowledge will be enhanced by our training programme, informing your practice in assisting our service users with aspects of their personal care and daily living.

You will need:

A psychology degree.

An interest in clinical psychology aspects of care.

A commitment to spending 1 year, minimum, in post.

Good team-working and communication skills.

What we offer:

Structured, clinically-based training, including; seminars, with opportunities for individual research, training in psychological interventions and writing risk assessments.

Assisting with mentoring and implementing clinical programmes.

Opportunities for a career path in the organisation to enhance application for Clinical Psychology

Staff accommodation available For more information go to www.rccthewalledgarden.co.uk and email your CV hr.walledgarden@btconnect.com. (Closing date: Friday 28th February 2015).

seek and advertise at www.psychapp.co.uk

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Part-time Clinical/ Educational Psychologist (24 hours/week) | Salary range £36,500-41,500 pa, pro rata St Christopher’s is an independent Special School and Children’s Home providing an integrated waking day curriculum for up to 52 weeks for children and young people aged 5-19.

We are looking for a Clinical/Educational Psychologist to cover maternity leave for a part time position for up to 1 year. There may be scope for this post to become permanent.

The successful candidate needs to have sound experience in working with children/young people with complex learning disabilities and behaviour difficulties. You will be working alongside a multi-disciplinary team delivering an integrated provision.

We are looking to appoint as soon as possible.

For further details and an application form please contact: HR@st-christophers.bristol.sch.uk Closing date: 6th February St Christopher’s School is committed to safeguarding.

Experienced Female* Support Worker required for rewarding position in Whitstable, Kent: To work with a lively 18 year old with a brain injury who enjoys an active and sociable life in and out of college. She has learning difficulties, social communication difficulties and problems with challenging behaviour, and therefore it is essential you have qualifications or experience of working with young people with complex needs. You will be supported and supervised by a multidisciplinary team including an experienced clinical psychologist.

A clean driving licence is essential.

• Hours: Up to 15 hours per week, including alternate Saturdays 9.30am – 5.00pm.

• Additional hours available during college holidays.

• Rate of pay £12 per hour (week days) £14 per hour (weekend).

An Enhanced DBS will be pursued.

For more information please call: 01844 214669 quote Ref: AH 0115. *The Equality Act 2010

HSE – SOUTH TIPPERARY, CARLOW/ KILKENNY, WATERFORD, WEXFORD, IRE The Health Service Executive South, Ireland, currently has opportunities available in the following Community Healthcare Organisation (CHO): South Tipperary, Carlow/Kilkenny, Waterford, Wexford Temporary Staff Grade Clinical Psychology posts with immediate vacancies in the following areas:

Primary Care Adult Mental Health Child & Adolescent Mental Health Two year contract initially with possibility of extending further.

Salary scale: €48,585 x 10 annual increments to €74,882.

LSIs: €77,178, €79,458.

Closing date: Monday, 2nd March 2015 at 5pm.

For further information on these posts and how to apply please visit:

www.hse.ie/eng/jobs www.hse.ie/eng/jobs Easy Access • Public Confidence • Staff Pride

The Health and Care Professions Council Regulating health, psychological and social work professionals

Clinical/Counselling Psychologists – Substance Misuse £Competitive + benefits Full and part time opportunities Wakefield, West Cheshire, Oxfordshire, East Kent, Wiltshire, Croydon, Medway & East/South East Help to improve peoples’ psychological wellbeing and recovery from substance misuse by leading the delivery of quality psychosocial and psychological interventions.

We’re always looking to innovate and improve. So, you’ll also develop, implement and evaluate new service delivery as a key part of our national team. Able to manage others, and work with a small caseload, this is your chance to join a social enterprise that invests every penny back into its care – and its people.

To apply, visit careers.turning-point.co.uk or call 0121 713 8333 to speak to our Recruitment Team or for an informal discussion, call Jan Hernen, Consultant Clinical Psychologist on 07587 772111 or e-mail jan.hernen@turning-point.co.uk

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Are you interested in being involved with your regulator?

Registration assessor recruitment Registration assessors review applications for registration and make decisions on whether applicants meet our standards.

We are seeking HCPC registrants who are practitioner psychologists in the occupational psychology modality to undertake this role.

You must be registered with the HCPC, have excellent oral and written communication skills and the ability to communicate with a wide range of stakeholders.Training will be provided and a fee will be paid as will travel and accommodation expenses in accordance with the HCPC Partner Expense Policy.

The HCPC is committed to equality of opportunity and actively guards against unfair discrimination on any grounds (including sexual orientation, religion or beliefs, race, sex, age or disability).

How to apply For more information and an application form please visit: www.hcpc-uk.org/aboutus/partners/recruitment Closing date for applications: 28 February 2015 13 22 April 2015 Tentative interview dates: Compulsory training days: TBC For more information about the work of the HCPC visit: www.hcpc-uk.org

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South & Mid Highland (Inner Moray Firth) Operating Unit

2 x Clinical Psychologists – Band 8a Post 1: 37.5 hours per week permanent New Craigs, Inverness

Ref: ES1/14/125

Post 2: 30 hours per week Ref: ES1/14/126 Fixed term for 1 year/secondment opportunity Caithness and Sutherland £39,632 - £47,559 (pro-rata) We are seeking 2 Clinical Psychologists with relevant experience and enthusiasm to undertake work in the Inverness and Caithness and Sutherland areas.

You will be HPC registered and have experience of work in Adult Mental Health Speciality and experience of working with psychological problems. The department offers services across all age groups in mental health learning disabilities and physical care.

Good links exist with training courses in Clinical Psychology and supervision in a range of therapies is available, as is local training and support.

A full current driving licence and use of own car for work purposes is essential.

Informal enquiries to: Sue Waring, Head of Adult Mental Health, Telephone: 01463 704683.

Application form and job description available from Recruitment and Employment Services Section, John Dewar Building, Inverness Retail and Business Park, Highlander Way, Inverness, IV2 7GE or e-mail nhshighland.recruitment@nhs.net Closing date for receipt of applications: Friday 20 February 2015.

Quality care to every person, every day.

www.nhshighland.scot.nhs.uk

In a recent survey of job advertisers, 80% said they had received a good response and 70% said they had filled a vacancy as a result of their ad. to advertise please contact: Giorgio Romano, 020 7880 7556, giorgio.romano@redactive.co.uk

The University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh is an exciting, vibrant, research led academic community offering opportunities to work with leading international academics whose visions are shaping tomorrow’s world.

College of Humanities and Social Science The School of Health in Social Science

Lecturer in Clinical Psychology £38,511 - £45,954 Applications are invited for a full-time, open ended Lecturer in Clinical Psychology. We invite applications from academic clinical psychologists preferably with an interest in developmental psychopathology and the clinical psychology of children, young people and families.

You will contribute to the programme organisation, teaching and research supervision in relation to MSc Children & Young People’s Mental Health and Psychological Practice. Involvement and development of research will be expected, either in collaboration with members of staff or in the applicant’s own area of interest. The Section of Clinical Psychology has an active research group in the area of applied developmental psychology and psychological therapies development and evaluation.

You are expected to have a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology with current HCPC registration as practitioner psychologist/clinical psychology or a PhD in applied developmental psychology. You are expected to have a track record in research and teaching.

Apply online, view further details or browse more jobs at our website. Ref: 032317. Closing date: Monday, 16 February 2015 at 5pm (GMT).

Committed to Equality and Diversity

Clinical Psychologists (Band 7/8a equivalent | Woking, Sheffield & Bury) Due to the expansion of the adolescent services, exciting opportunities have arisen for experienced psychologists at the three national sites in Woking, Bury and Sheffield. As part of the multi-disciplinary team, you will assist in the development, delivery and evaluation of evidence based interventions, in addition to contributing to research, training and supervision. There is a strong emphasis on intensive clinical work with individuals or within small group settings. Experience or formal training in Learning Disability, Autism, Trauma and Family Therapy will be an advantage for these positions.

We have a part-time vacancy in Woking and will consider part and fulltime posts in Sheffield and Bury.

For all posts you will need to have HCPC registration and should have full applied divisional membership of the BPS. The successful candidates will have to demonstrate experience of working with complex clients in secure care or with adolescent clients.

To apply for any of the positions, please email:tim.ward@alphahospitals. co.uk for an information conversation please contact Neil Gredecki, Therapy Services Manager, Adolescents on 0161 762 4388.

The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.

www.ed.ac.uk/jobs

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REVIEWS

Common threads and fault lines Alan Baddeley and Graham Hitch introduced the term working memory to a meeting of the UK Experimental Psychology Society in 1972 to point out that it is inadequate to consider ‘short-term memory’ as a simple receptacle for fast-fading traces of recent perceptions. To interact with a rapidly changing world we need an active system that integrates current with just-recorded information, predicts what new information is necessary to make sense of these integrations, shifts attention to seek and obtain this new information, sets goals for future action, makes plans to achieve them and, in short, is more concerned to foretell the immediate future rather than to record the immediate past. An unkind tease from the EPS audience was that ‘working memory seems to be anything you happen to be working on at the time’. The diversity of topics covered in this collection of six essays shows that, 33 years later, a weak jibe has become marvellously prescient and working memory has indeed become the nearest candidate for a ‘Grand Theory of Everything’ in cognitive psychology.

Tim Salthouse discusses how nice studies, mainly his own, show that old age impairs reorganisation of recently perceived with new Working Memory and information. His further interesting Ageing psychometric analyses show that the Robert H. Logie & concepts of fluid intelligence, (gf) and Robin G. Morris (Eds.) working memory are closely related, both in terms of the verbal descriptions we use to define both these capabilities and by performance on the behavioural tests that we use to ostensively define each of them.

Angela Kilb and Moishe Naveh Benjamin discuss another element in our job description for working memory: the maintenance and management of attention. Their explanation of increasing inefficiency of these processes in late life is that brain changes deplete the amount of ‘central resources’ available for these tasks. As David Navon once pointed out, if it is predicated only on behavioural data, this idea of ‘global resources’ becomes so vague as to be a ‘theoretical soup-stone’. However, it does become useful and illuminating if we think of it as global degradation of neuronal functionality, associated with losses of connectivity and increasing deaths of neurones, marked by gross brain changes picked up by brain scans, such as increasing incidence of whitematter lesions. These neurophysiological changes, and their relations to behaviour, are documented by Rebecca Charlton and Robin Morris in a review of own, and others’ recent work.

So a common theme in the chapters by Salthouse, NavehBenjamin, Charlton and Morris and other contributors is their departure from the initial assumptions made by Baddeley and Hitch and others of their intellectual generation. The early assumption was that by designing sufficiently clever behavioural experiments we can identify subsystems responsible for each of many different capabilities attributed to working memory: such as ‘binding’ and associating different attributes of perceptions, separately retaining and analysing visual and auditory input, etc., etc. We can then track

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relative age changes on each of these behaviourally defined systems by comparing performance of old and young people across the tasks that we have used to define them in the first place.

If we have done our job properly, we can further hope to relate differential changes in performance on the behavioural tasks we have used to define these putative systems to changes in correspondingly distinct neuroanatomical structures.

A logical problem in using this approach to study individual differences is the circularity of defining systems in terms of scores on different tasks and then using differences in scores on these tasks as evidence for differential changes. A methodological problem is how to be sure that the different behavioural tasks on which we compare old and young people are equally difficult.

A further problem, as Salthouse’s psychometric analyses illustrate, is that scores on the various tasks we have used as definitions of putatively separate capabilities are, actually, closely intercorrelated. Logie et al. compare the amounts of age-related decrements in performance on behavioural tasks that have been used as ostensive definitions of various putative working memory subsystems, such as auditory and visual storage, binding, etc. etc.

They hope to avoid the problem of incommensurability of difficulty of these different tasks by standardising scores for older adults on average baseline scores by young adults. I do not see that this solves the problem. I think that the sensitivity of tasks to detect change must also depend on the number of possible gradations of scores that each can yield rather than solely on differences between simple average scores. In addition there remains the major issue that scores on these putatively independent tasks are, in fact, highly inter-correlated. A more convincing statistical treatment to avoid all of these problems might be to derive a factor structure for data from all of these tasks and to compare age loadings across these factors.

So, a fault-line between assumptions underlying these essays is the gap between the idea proposed by Logie et al. that the way forward is to compare scores of old and young adults on behavioural tasks defining putatively distinct information-processing subsystems and the contrasting psychometric treatment of aggregated task data by Salthouse, the ‘general resource decline’ models of Naveh-Benjamin and, even more interestingly, the global, and task-undifferentiated, changes in connectivity and computing power suggested by the neurophysiological data collected by Charlton and Morris. My personal bets are on the success of these latter, newer, descriptions rather than on the outdated cognitive models on which Bob Logie and I were brought up.

The remaining chapters are a fine and useful review, by Stigdotter-Neely and Nyberg, of evidence for and against the idea that ‘brain training’ on selected working memory tasks can benefit performance on other tasks that make quite different (‘distant’) rather than closely comparable (‘near’) demands. Also a concluding, masterly, conceptual overview of the field by Nagel and Lindenberger.

I have enjoyed this collection of essays, and believe that I have learned more from the diversity of approaches and assumptions they represent than from any common thread between them.

I warmly recommend them to all who are interested in individual differences in working memory, even if they are not, at all, interested in the tiny and unfashionable field of cognitive ageing.

I Psychology Press; 2014; Pb £29.99 Reviewed by Patrick Rabbitt who is Emeritus Research Professor of Gerontology and Cognitive Psychology, University of Manchester

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reviews

Captures a powerful truth Disobedient Objects Victoria and Albert Museum In some ways it is unfortunate that the South Kensington Museum changed its name in 1899, given that the loving couple whose lives it was renamed to celebrate had become synonymous with notions of psychological and political repression.

Accordingly, for many, the idea that one might visit the Victoria and Albert Museum to gain insight into the colourful dynamics of resistance and emancipation would seem fanciful in the extreme. And yet, in recent years, this storehouse of the establishment has staged a number of groundbreaking exhibitions that have done just this – starting with the hugely ambitious and spectacularly successful David Bowie Is, which showcased the iconoclastic oeuvre of the 70s glam rocker cum latterday cultural prophet.

Bolder still is the current exhibition, Disobedient Objects. This furnishes a large exhibition hall with a sweeping array of resistance iconography and paraphernalia, all of which speaks to the richness of the human appetite for justice – especially in the face of the catalogue of repressive isms of the last half century. Thus we see gorilla outfits worn to challenge sexism in gallery access for artists (mostly male) and models (mostly female), computer games designed to parody the production lines of exploitative capitalism within the computer industry, and bicycle-mounted mobile sound systems constructed to broadcast challenges to

authoritarianism in Taksim Square.

Elsewhere, posters trumpet the creative and revolutionary possibilities of humble everyday objects: the plastic bottle, the bike lock, the shopping trolley.

More generally, the parsimonious curating cleverly communicates the broad range of artistic forms that have advanced revolt and rebellion from Greenham Common to Gezi Park.

There is much here to ponder, not least for psychologists – especially of the social variety. In particular, vivid evidence of a global upsurge in acts of protest in recent years challenges the limited imagination of a discipline whose classic studies are routinely invoked to support notions of a human propensity to obey, to conform, and to passively reproduce the status quo. This exhibition reveals this as the falsehood that it is – forcing us to engage with our collective potential for change as well as our extraordinary ability to develop art and culture as weapons in the collective quest for fairness and decency. Indeed, in this, the

V&A manages to capture a powerful truth that is only now dawning on psychological science: that the human mind is a vehicle not only for reproduction but for revolution, and that in the face of perceived injustice it is ultimately mobilised not through subservience but through disobedience.

From elsewhere in the museum one imagines William Blake, William Morris and Gisèle Freund looking on approvingly. As for Victoria and Albert, well I swear the walls were dancing with their lack of amusement.

I Disobedient Objects is at the V&A Museum in London until 1 February 2015. Entry to the exhibition is free.

Reviewed by Professor Alex Haslam who is at the University of Queensland

Arresting images Domestic Abuse: Caught on Camera BBC One This Panorama documentary broadcast in December addresses new techniques used to prosecute perpetrators of domestic violence: a timely offering, given the new legislation allowing sentencing of up to five years for ‘coercive and controlling behaviour’ in relationships.

The increasing scale of this issue is made clear from the outset. A shocking 1 out of 10 prosecutions now involves domestic violence, with around a quarter of all homicide victims killed by an intimate partner.

Various case studies are shown in this 30-minute programme, with victims bravely going into detail over the intensity and

duration of the abuse they overcame. In particular, the case of Dawn stands out due to the extreme images documented by police-recorded video accounts.

Although nursing horrific facial and chest injuries inflicted by her husband, she holds a calm, muted manner to police responding to the incident: a coping mechanism she has learnt to keep peace following years of abuse. The use of police recordings such as this is helping to convict increasing numbers of domestic abuse violators, in cases where women may be too scared to give testimony themselves.

Criminologists and psychologists provided insights

read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk

into the cognitions of both abusers and victims, including Dr Ruth Jones OBE from University of Worcester.

Emphasised throughout was the common use of ‘coercive control’ by abusers: using nonviolent tactics underlined by violence to determine the victim’s behaviour. The damaging use of children as targets during such control strategies was also stressed, showing familial effects far beyond the partner.

A sole focus on female victims was given throughout.

However, given that 4 per cent of men are estimated to be victims of domestic violence (compared to 7 per cent of women), this

stance is unwarranted.

Domestic violence is indeed experienced by men on a significant scale and should be discussed in arenas such as these to promote awareness of it.

I truly hope that legal improvements, combined with increased active engagement by the police as seen is this documentary, will help all victims.

I Available on BBC iPlayer until November 2015: www.bbc.co.uk/ programmes/b04v5zpj Reviewed by Emma Norris who is a PhD student at University College London and Associate Editor (Reviews)

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reviews

Does the ‘crisis’ in psychology continue today?

Psychology After the Crisis: Scientific Paradigms and Political Debate Ian Parker This book is part of Ian Parker’s Psychology After Critique series, which brings together key papers produced from his career to date. I was particularly keen to read this book to find out how he would address the ‘crisis in psychology’ debates more than 20 years after those historic debates and challenges between experimental and critical psychologists.

In this first book in the series, he discusses key issues including: what the ‘crisis’ was and how this has informed contemporary psychology today; how discourse analytic research emerged in relation to cognitive laboratory research and finally, consideration of the extent to which debates about perspectives and theories in psychology is important for considering the type of discipline that psychology is today.

Each chapter in this book includes a summary box, which is placed at the introduction of each new chapter. This was a useful addition to this text as it contextualises each paper and enables Parker to reflect on each work. In the first few chapters, Parker begins with charting the ways in which discourse analysis and critical psychology emerged during the 1970s as well as outlining core critical psychological approaches such as: Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis and post-structuralism.

Other chapters in this book include coverage of how universities are ‘not a good place for psychotherapy and counselling training’ as well as considering issues for psychologists, such as climate change and why it is important to consider how politics and radicalism should be an important part of the research and practice that we engage in, both within and outside of psychology.

Finally, I think that this book would be particularly useful for psychology and counselling undergraduates, postgraduates and scholars as well as students and researchers in fields such as language studies, cultural studies, sociology and anthropology.

I Routledge; 2014; Pb £22.65 Reviewed by Dr Alexander John Bridger who is Senior Lecturer at the University of Huddersfield Note: There are reviews by Alexander Bridger of two more books in Ian Parker’s Psychology After Critique series in this month’s online-only reviews at www.thepsychologist.org.uk/reviews

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Showing the human condition X+Y Morgan Matthews (Director) With a suitable amount of background knowledge in my pocket, I expected to be overly critical of X + Y. If its depiction of a boy with autism stepped out of line of what I deemed to be accurate characteristics of someone on the spectrum, then I had little hope of enjoying it. Of course, individuals are individuals, but we know too well that cinema can often go over the top given the opportunity.

Diagnosed as having autism with aspects of synaesthesia, young Nathan (Asa Butterfield) plods along through his youth as an apparently emotionless and cold child, much to his mother's despair. However, after discovering his love for maths and the support of an uncharacteristically likeable teacher (Rafe Spall), Nathan attempts to take on the International Mathematical Olympiad to prove his worth, but along the way his social struggles may make the task harder than it first seems.

With compliments needed across the board, X + Y should be considered as staple viewing for its importance in bringing autism back to the forefront of cinema. Most significantly, the film focused on an aspect of the autism so often forgotten about in the provision of care. The effect on the family, portrayed emotively through Nathan’s mother (Sally Hawkins) reminded me so vividly that help is necessary not only for the one with the diagnosis.

What I enjoyed most about X + Y was how my scepticism quickly washed away as the film unfurled. Every time a key situation came along (and believe me there were many) I worried about sensationalism and tarnishing the essence of the film for the sake of cinematic licence. Fortunately, the film continued at an ebb and flow that was not only insightful to the world of autism, but also played on the innate human drive to find solace in each other when times get hard, even for a disorder so often characterised as lacking in empathy. Nathan, the supporting cast and everyone involved in X + Y brilliantly show the human condition runs through everyone, just in different ways.

I Reviewed by Ben Carroll who is an Assistant Psychologist for Autism Care UK

Unique and engaging Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) Alejandro González Iñárritu (Director) Birdman depicts the struggle of Riggan Thomson, an ex-iconic superhero actor (Michael Keaton) trying to launch his own Broadway play. As opening night approaches, he fights his ego in battling to save his play and his romantic, friend and family relationships. He is also desperately striving to find himself relevant in the world, as an actor long-gone from the public eye.

Riggan is confronted with his voice and visual representations of his younger Birdman self – mocking or reinforcing his actions throughout this stressful time.

The viewer is left with many questions throughout the film. Riggan is seen to perform acts of telekinesis and levitation feats when alone. Is he really Birdman?

Does he have an active imagination? Is he schizophrenic? He also evidently blurs the roles of himself in real-life and the part he is playing on stage, with huge consequences to his health and personal relationships. Is he method-acting? Is it a ploy to gain publicity? Or is it a call for help?

The film is written, produced and

directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, and there are some stand-out performances from Keaton, Emma Stone as his recovering drug-addict daughter and assistant and Edward Norton as his play’s star actor: taking an immersive, hilarious methodacting approach to the play. Also special in this movie is the camerawork, shot as if the film is one continuous sequence. The long, sweeping camerawork travels through the depths and layers of a New York Broadway theatre and on to the hectic city streets themselves. Off-beat jazzy drum rhythms throughout also capture the chaotic nature of Riggan’s experiences brilliantly.

Although the title and indeed the highly edited trailer may convince you otherwise, this is not a superhero movie! This is wholeheartedly an oddball, dark, adult comedy and indeed one of the most unique and engaging films I’ve seen in a long time.

I Reviewed by Emma Norris who is a PhD student at University College London and Associate Editor (Reviews)

vol 28 no 2

february 2015

reviews

Managing psychological disability

Job satisfaction

Mental Illness in the Workplace H.G. Harder, S.L. Wagner & J.A. Rash If one in four people experience mental illness at some point in their lives, then it is quite possible that a given employer will, sooner or later, encounter a mental health concern amongst its workforce.

What should the employer do about it?

This is the main question to which Harder and colleagues address themselves here.

The authors begin with some scenesetting: what we understand by ‘mental illness’, and why it should matter to employers. Importantly with regard to the latter point, they put forward both the moral argument (inclusion and engagement in work can be beneficial for well-being) and the business argument (a workplace that promotes good mental health is likely to be more productive and have lower staff turnover). The text then turns to the examination of depression, anxiety and stress as specific mental health conditions that could be encountered in the workplace. For each, there is some discussion of aetiology and treatment, followed by the implications for the management of staff within an organisation.

Finally, some further general issues are discussed: integrating employees with mental health conditions into the workforce; involving mental

Workplace Wellbeing: How to Build Psychologically Healthy Workplaces Arla Day, Kevin Kelloway & Joseph Hurrell Jr (Eds.)

health professionals; and creating a psychologically healthy workplace. In discussing the last topic, the authors draw from positive psychology as well as traditional work design models. Those who may find themselves putting forward a business case for an intervention in their own organisation will find the appendices on calculating return on investment particularly useful.

This book is largely intended to provide practical guidance, grounded in relevant concepts from clinical and occupational psychology, on dealing with mental health issues at work – both the prevention of problems in the first place and the management of problems that do occur. While it is accessible to a general management audience, I suspect that such readers would find it a little too technical to read in its entirety. It is, though, ideal for a human resources professional or administrator of an employee assistance programme. It would also be a helpful read for a psychologist who requires an introduction to managing mental health at work.

I Gower; 2014; Hb £85.00 Reviewed by Denham Phipps who is a Research Fellow, at the University of Manchester

Global to small-scale companies are looking to create psychologically healthy workplaces to boost employee productivity and well-being, reduce sickness costs and show social responsibility. This edited collection from an international team of authors reflects traditional and recent work in organisational health psychology. Aimed primarily at practitioners, the book’s focus is largely on well-being rather than physical health.

Topics covered range from business-orientated areas such as financial benefits and agreeable leadership, to health-related aspects of positive psychology, stress and work–life balance. Learning styles in the workplace are also touched on, bringing in some work from educational psychology. Perspectives are given from both employers and employees, with discussion of benefits, obligations and legal rights for both parties. Step-by-step processes are provided displaying methods for installing healthy workplaces: useful guides for practitioners and those designing interventions. Each section ends with discussion of future directions, providing useful starting points for research projects.

Although detailed, this book is very text-heavy and would benefit from more model diagrams or photos to boost appeal. As a physical activity researcher, I was disappointed by a lack of consideration of activity and other health behaviours in the work environment. Work sedentary time is a hot topic at the moment, with increased popularity of standing desks and walking meetings. As there is such a strong evidence base for the association between physical activity and mental health, it seems the authors may have missed a trick here. However, this book will arguably be relevant to students and teachers of organisational and health psychology, as well as practitioners and HR consultants in the field.

I Wiley Blackwell; 2014; Pb £34.99 Reviewed by Emma Norris who is a PhD student at University College London and Associate Editor (Reviews)

A practical and open message The Small Big: Small Changes That Spark Big Influence Steve J. Martin, Noah J. Goldstein & Robert Cialdini The Small Big outlines how deceptively small changes can produce big results when influencing others. Social influence is introduced as the way in which individuals are shaped by the perception and actions of others. The title takes a practical perspective, distilling decades of research in persuasion science into easily digested chapters centring on a single factor of influence. The experience of the three authors,

all prominent characters in the field, brings a critical and supportive presence to the bear on the title.

Though the individual ‘small Big changes’ discussed are highly diverse, loosely these follow Cialdini’s six weapons of influence (authority, reciprocity, scarcity, liking, consistency and social proof). Real-world examples are drawn, both from the writers’ personal experiences and further afield,

read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk

including: changes that lower tax avoidance rates; developing resilience in the face of failure; and building confident and effective communication skills.

The Small Big presents a very engaging and accessible read, providing practical insight in a well-supported yet succinct manner. Whilst some may

grumble that the book lacks academic detail, this is insignificant criticism in comparison to the overall practical and open message conveyed and fulfilling reading experience.

I Profile Books; 2014; Pb £11.99 Reviewed by Rory McDonald who is a writer and researcher at the University of Central Lancashire

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reviews

Lose weight or lose the bet Weighing up the Enemy Channel 4

contribute

Perfectly timed for the New Year resolution season, you’d be forgiven for avoiding this latest series hosted by Dr Christian Jessen. However, this programme takes a positive and very different approach to weight loss for many reasons. Firstly, based on work by Yale economists (Ian Ayres’ The $500 diet, and www.stickk.com), a financial cost is wagered by two individuals in competing to reduce their size. The sum wagered is chosen by each individual as an appropriate cost relative to their outgoings.

The premise here is that we are more likely to stick to a cause when we are risking a personal, financial loss.

Competitors are pitted against someone with a similar overall fat percentage with very different personal rewards if victorious in greater weight loss. Sacrificing money as the loser to a cause you despise is another incentive to strive for triumph. In this first episode, Harriet, a big-spending, single London doctor wagers £500

Sample titles just in: Madness Cracked Mick Power Psychometrics @ Work Peter Saville & Tom Hopton Prisoners, Solitude and Time Ian O’Donnell The Rise: Creativity, The Gift for Failure, and the Search for Mastery Sarah Lewis The Private Life: Why we Remain in the Dark Josh Cohen For books available for review see www.bps.org.uk/books. Send books for potential review to The Psychologist, 48 Princess Road East, Leicester LE1 7DR Of course, ‘Reviews’ now covers much more than books. If you have seen or heard anything psychological, get in touch with jon.sutton@bps.org.uk about a potential review, or follow us on Twitter @psychmag for pointers.

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with a reward of a racing car track day, whilst Jo, an ‘eco-warrior’ Mum of two wagers £100 and seeks classes on constructing ecological outbuildings. This contrast in attitudes and values is amusing to watch but also makes sense to further stimulate the competitors to win.

This motivation – as opposed to a diet-based approach – is supplemented by a ban on crash dieting. Participants are required to consume at least 1200 calories a day and are not told how long the ‘competition’ will continue for (six weeks in reality). This provides a refreshing, more realistic and manageable approach to health promotion and weight loss. Additionally, the aim of the game here is to lose more body fat, as opposed to more biased, overall weight loss seen in so many other shows. The two competitors meet during the process to compare progress and get a motivation boost to win.

Although very entertaining, this social comparison and anticipation of reward is also well grounded in research and behaviour change techniques, for example the work of Charles Abraham and Susan Michie.

Some issues remain. As with any health intervention, follow-up is paramount and maintenance is not shown beyond four weeks post-intervention. Additionally, although competitors are matched on fat levels, they are not matched on lifestyle. Viewers may not see a mother of two as equally able to lose weight compared to moderately wealthy single woman (indeed, the single woman is the victor here).

However, this show should be praised for its promotion of a sensible, achievable weight-loss technique with research backing.

It provides sound advice on portion control and manageable exercise as feasible changes that can be easily maintained. This is a welcome move away from diet-promotion and a positive start to health viewing for 2015.

I Reviewed by Emma Norris who is a PhD student at University College London and Associate Editor (Reviews)

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february 2015

A therapist’s personal and professional intrigues A Bird Stuck on the Sky: A Psychological Tale Gerald Alan Fox The author, as a practising psychotherapist has created an engaging novel depicting the life of a fictitious behavioural psychotherapist, Mike Daniels. The story entwines Mike’s work life, describing different client cases, and his home life. His wife is tormented by a family tragedy, and Mike decides to ignore all common sense and unwritten rules about working with one’s own family and tries to treat her.

Throughout the book the description of Mike’s work with clients is captivating, almost urging you to rush ahead and find out what is at the root of an issue. He seems to glide smoothly through to a denouement with most of his clients. In sharp contrast, his efforts with his own wife seem incompetent and difficult. Mike, himself, also has a secret from his past that hinders his progress, narrowing his perspective in his personal life, putting his marriage and more at risk.

This book would make an interesting and easy read for those who enjoy a good mystery or Sherlock Holmes/Poirot case, not only in the fascinating patient cases that Mike encounters, but also the adventures in exploring and understanding his own issues and those of his wife. The reader gains an insight into how the mind and our memories can influence and profoundly affect our lives.

Overall, the author has written an entertaining novel, thoughtprovoking and enlightening for not just psychologists but anyone who enjoys the intrigues of the human mind.

I CreateSpace; 2015; Pb £7.99 Reviewed by Kate Sparks who is a Chartered Psychologist in health

‘We are here to help you be more like people like you’ Codename: REMOTE Tassos Stevens (Director) Codename: REMOTE transports its audience to a world where the character Dennis is pitching his vision, a theatre of the future. We have been brought together to help the final stages of development of a system that will enable theatres to learn to respond to our desires.

This project is part of Coney, an interactive theatre and game play company: ‘Our work is guided by principles of loveliness, curiosity and adventure and inspired by the belief that the world can be magical place where ordinary people can do extraordinary things.’

This fun piece explores themes of freedom of choice and the impact of an evergrowing internet. Working in the NHS with increased discussions about advances in technology and the related pros and cons, this piece really struck a chord.

How will things change with Google Glass and personalised consumer technology? With audience participation throughout, responding to simple questions, I was aware of the possible social biases at play. Are we really governing the decisions being made? Are we really responding truthfully or are we responding how we think we should?

This performance at Camden People’s Theatre was a ‘scratch’ performance to test out new ideas and is part of development, with the final piece scheduled for later in 2015. This is an exciting and thought-provoking piece, and if you are up for some gentle audience participation I recommend you go see it.

I Reviewed by Harriet Mills who is an Assistant Psychologist with Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust

read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk

Lifetime Achievement Award The Research Board is delighted to call for nominations for the Lifetime Achievement Award. This award recognises distinctive and exemplary contributions to psychological knowledge. The recipient of the 2014 award was Professor Peter Venables.

Eligibility: Academics and researchers, including those in retirement, in any area of psychology. Nominees need not be members of the Society but they must be resident in the UK. It is expected that award winners will not only have an outstanding record of personal achievements but will have also made significant contributions to the advancement of psychological knowledge; contributions to the work of the Society would also be considered appropriate in this instance.

Nominations should include: •

A statement, up to 2000 words in length, detailing the nominee’s achievements and the grounds for nomination.

•

A full CV

•

The names and addresses of three potential referees (to include a least one current/former colleague of the nominee, who may be an employer such as a Head of Department, Dean etc.)

•

Any other relevant supporting documentary evidence (e.g. published articles, books etc.)

The Award will confer: •

Life Membership of the Society

•

£1000 to be spent on furthering an area of research of the nominee’s choice

•

A commemorative certificate (which will be presented to the recipient at the Society’s Annual Conference).

Nominations should be sent to the Chair of the Research Board c/o Liz Beech at the Society’ office to arrive no later than 30 April 2015.

Further details can be obtained from Liz Beech (liz.beech@bps.org.uk)

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LOOKING BACK

Experiencing death to improve life Jelena Martinovic on near-death experiences and psychology in the 1960s and 70s

he history of the near-death experience (NDE) is most commonly associated with the work of Raymond Moody and his 1975 book Life after Life; with parapsychology and spiritually oriented practitioners; with successfully reanimated cardiac arrest patients (Van Lommel et al., 2001); and, more recently, with the neurosciences (Blanke & Dieguez, 2008). But another tradition of research preceded all this, in which psychologists and psychiatrists played a major role.

This alternative history started in thanatology, palliative care and psychotraumatology. It investigated the NDE in its various manifestations – anticipation of death by incurable patients, experiences in extreme danger by survivors of accidents, attempted suicides. I will demonstrate this neglected chapter by presenting one particular body of work: the research conducted by the American psychiatrist Russell Noyes, professor emeritus at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.

A respected psychosomaticist, specialist of anxiety disorders and author of more than 250 scholarly published articles, Noyes dedicated his research during the 1960s and 70s to the experience of dying and near-death. He interpreted the NDE in psychological terms, defining it as a protective mechanism. His work is a window on the motivations of a psychiatrist for engaging in the study of NDE, the clinical and therapeutic implications of his results, and

references

T

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Aldrich, K. (1963). The dying patient’s grief. Journal of the American Medical Association, 184, 329–331.

Blanke, O. & Dieguez, S. (2008). Leaving body and life behind: Out-of-body and near-neath experience. In S. Laureys & S. Tononi (Eds.) The neurology of consciousness (pp.303–325). New York: Elsevier.

Cappon, D. (1959). The dying patient.

Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 23, 466–489.

both healthcare practices and attitudes towards the dying patient during that period of history.

The popularisation of death Let’s all die, Let’s practice a little, Let’s play dead for a couple of hours Let’s everybody weave elegant everlasting cerements Build fantastic tombs Carve lifelong coffins And devise great ways to die let’s!

(Corso 1960, p.40).

Gregory Corso’s pieces of advice, taken from his collection of poems The Happy Birthday of Death, reflects the popularisation of death that captured the American public sphere in the 1960s.

Numerous scientific and popular books dealing with death, dying and fears of dying were published: among them, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ On Death and Dying (1969), Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss’ Awareness of Dying (1965) and Herman Feifel’s collected essays and studies Meaning of Death (1959).

One of the main concerns for these authors was contemporary manners of dying, especially those occurring in hospitals. In the late 1960s, early in his career, Noyes joined this discussion enthusiastically by publishing articles such as ‘The taboo of suicide’, ‘The dying patient’, ‘The art of dying’, or ‘The care and the management of the dying’ (Noyes

Chodoff, P. (1960). A psychiatric approach to the dying patient. CA: Bulletin Cancer Progress, 10, 29–32.

Corso, G. (1960). The happy birthday of death. New York: New Directions.

Eissler, K. (1955). Dying patient and the psychiatrist. New York: International Universities Press.

Kübler-Ross, E. (1969). On death and dying. London: Routledge.

Moody, R. (1975). Life after Life. Covington,

1967, 1968b, 1971a, 1971b). His argument was that progress in biomedicine (oncology, transplantation of organs, gerontology) caused a ‘taboo of death’. To undo this taboo, the practitioners looked to publish extensively on what it is to die.

Psychological and psychiatric skills were in high demand in the domain of the care of the dying and incurably ill.

Psychiatrists started to systematically describe emotional reactions of terminally ill patients suffering from cancer and incurable illnesses, emphasising the importance of psychotherapeutic supervision in the care of these patients (Cappon, 1959; Chodoff, 1960; Eissler, 1955; Weisman 1972). Noyes referred to empirical findings on survivors of catastrophes and concepts of grief, such as the ‘anticipatory grief reaction’ (Aldrich, 1963), in order to emphasise the condition of a dying patient. In his perspective, dying patients had similar emotional distress as survivors or persons who had lost a beloved one, because they had to accept that reality and relationships as they experienced them no longer existed (Noyes, 1968a).

Along with many other health practitioners Noyes believed that emotional distress experienced by incurably ill patients may also lead to benefits, if the process of anticipating death is approached as a learning experience. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s fivestages model of dying is one of the most famous and controversial examples of an instruction on how to die in a psychological manner; by evolving from denial toward acceptance (Kübler-Ross, 1969). Psychedelic researchers formulated similar arguments. At the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center in Baltimore for example, multi-professional teams administered LSD in several sessions to terminally ill patients suffering from cancer in order to provoke a ‘peak experience’ and a better appreciation for life (Pahnke et al., 1970) [see also our ‘Hallucinogens’ special issue, September 2014].

GA: Mockingbird Books.

Munk, W. (1977). Euthanasia. Or, Medical treatment in the aid of an easy death.

Baltimore, MD: Williams & Wilkins.

(Original work published 1877) Noyes, R. (1967). The dying patient.

Diseases of the Nervous System, 28, 790–797.

Noyes, R. (1968a). Grief. Journal of the Iowa Medical Society, 59, 317–323.

Noyes, R. (1968b). The taboo of suicide.

Psychiatry, 31, 173–183.

Noyes, R. (1971a). The art of dying.

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 14, 432–446.

Noyes, R. (1971b). The care and the management of the dying. Archives of Internal Medicine, 128, 299–303.

Noyes, R. (1972). The experience of dying.

Psychiatry, 35, 174–184.

Noyes, R. & Kletti, R. (1972). The experience of dying from falls. Omega,

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looking back

Eager to find out what happens at the very edge of death, Noyes turned his interest away from narratives of incurably ill patients toward those of survivors.

From 1970 on, Noyes started to collect narratives on near-death states from literature, poetry and first-hand accounts.

Among them was Michel de Montaigne’s essays on death: in particular the passage where the French philosopher recounts his own near-death experience, which occurred after a riding accident and left him so impressed that he was less fearful of death afterwards. Another example includes a narrative from a survivor of a nearly drowned admiral cited in William Munk’s Euthanasia.

Or, Medical Treatment in Aid of an Easy Death (1877/1977).

The survivor describes that when all exertion had ceased, ‘a calm feeling of the most perfect tranquility superseded the previous tumultuous sensations’ (Munk, 1977, p.12).

Noyes’ historical researches eventually led him to an 1892 compilation of near-death experiences in the Yearbook of the Swiss Alpine Club. Albert Heim (1849–1937), a famous Swiss geologist and alpinist, had written a description of his spectacular 20-metre fall following a failed attempt to catch his hat: I saw my whole past life take place in many images, as though on a stage at some distance from me. I saw myself as the chief character in the performance... Everything was beautiful and without grief, without anxiety, and without pain... I felt no conflict or strife; conflict had been transmuted into love...

(Noyes & Kletti, 1972, p.50)

In the original article entitled ‘Notizen über den Tod durch Absturz’ (Notes on Fatal Falls), Heim compared his sensations and perceptions with the accounts of more than 20 other survivors, mostly alpinists from the Alpine Club. He

2, 45–52.

Noyes, R. & Kletti, R. (1976).

Depersonalization in the face of lifethreatening danger: A description.

Psychiatry, 39, 19–27.

Pahnke, W., Kurland, A., Sanford, U. et al.

(1977). The experimental use of psychedelic (LSD) therapy. Journal of the American Medical Association, 212, 1856–1863.

Pfister, O. (1930). Schockdenken und

concluded that 95 per cent of the persons having faced death did not feel any pain, but rather sensations of well-being.

Inspired by this reading, Noyes and his former colleague, the psychologist Roy Kletti, translated the article into English and published it in 1972 in a journal of thanatology, Omega. From this was developed a three-stage model of the experience of dying evolving from denial to acceptance: (1) resistance, (2) (panoramic) review, (3) transcendence (Noyes, 1972).

From 1970 to 1977 Noyes replicated Heim’s approach by contacting members of the American Alpine Club. Noyes also investigated skydivers and contacted several institutes of Public Health to find records of people who had nearly drowned. In all, Noyes assembled 250 folders of correspondences from around the world. From these he developed questionnaires to measure perceptions, sensations and emotions of the survivors during their experiences in extreme danger. However, the most important question for Noyes was whether NDE – although described in psychopathological terms – could be a protective mechanism capable of preventing the subject from a traumatic experience.

Depersonalisation in danger From 1975 to 1977 Noyes compared sensations of selected survivors of car accidents with testimonies of psychiatric patients suffering from various disorders.

After analysing the questionnaires, Noyes argued that the experience of near-death corresponded to a ‘transient syndrome of depersonalisation’. Noyes postulated that

Schockphantasien bei höchster Lebensgefahr. Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, 16, 340–455.

Van Lommel, P., Van Wees, R., Meyers, V. & Elfferich, I. (2001). Near-death experiences in survivors of cardiac arrest: A prospective study in the Netherlands. Lancet, 358, 2039–2245.

Weisman, A. (1972). On death and denying: Psychiatric study of terminality. New York: Behavioral Publications.

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in situations of extreme danger an individual’s personality would split into a ‘participating self’ and an ‘observing self’ (Noyes & Kletti, 1976). In this state the individual would experience opposite sensations of rapid thought processing and heightened perception, combined with a feeling of distance from reality.

This simultaneous hyperactivity and detachment enabled the individual to make corrective movements, while falling or nearly drowning, but also to revive images of a joyful past (panoramic memory) to enable acceptance of life’s end. This conception of near death was partly inspired by the Swiss psychoanalyst Oskar Pfister’s theory of ‘shock phantasies’ (Schockphantasien), which suggested that in a moment of extreme danger a person protects herself with a ‘real’ and an ‘autistic’ element (Pfister, 1930).

Noyes’ empirical findings and methods were widely copied to measure death attitudes and NDE from the 1980s on, but his interpretation of NDE fell out of step with developments. With the newly defined PTSD a survivor of a lifethreatening danger was associated with traumatic rather than transformative experiences. On the other hand, parapsychologists have dominated the debate on NDE since the 1980s, explaining experiences close to death as extrasensory perceptions, rather than (just) meaningful experiences capable of altering fears related to death.

Nevertheless, Noyes’ research shows that it was not controversial for an ‘orthodox’ psychiatrist to study neardeath during the 60s and 70s. This changed after 1980: as psychiatry became more specialised and ‘new age’ approaches proliferated in parallel, it became polemic to study NDE. Noyes’ research sheds light on how death was thought to be prepared in the 60s and 70s: individuals should train themselves to experience their own death, at least simulate it, in order to reduce their fears. Narratives of survivors proved to be an excellent illustration of the simple but urgent argument: dying is a fear- and pain-free experience. Noyes’ findings, which complete the longstanding tradition of ars moriendi, may still be of interest today, namely when it comes to know whether it is necessary to prepare one’s own death, and if yes, how.

I Dr Jelena Martinovic is a research associate at the Institut d’histoire de la médecine (IUHMSP), University of Lausanne jelena.martinovic@chuv.ch

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ONE ON ONE

… with Migel Jayasinghe

‘I became an atheist and freethinker’ One inspiration Dr Leonie Sugarman when lecturer at Birkbeck College (1980–82) now Reader in Applied Psychology, University of Cumbria. She was my tutor during my MSc in Occupational Psychology at Birkbeck. I had arrived from Zambia without any hope of returning to the profession with only a first degree. She was so supportive.

One alternative career path you might have chosen I could have read English instead and become a recognised creative writer.

I am now a self-published poet, author of Solace in Verse.

One first I believe I was the first immigrant from Sri Lanka to qualify and practise as a psychologist in the UK. There have been several since, who achieved recognition in the fields of occupational and clinical psychology.

coming soon

Migel Jayasinghe is a retired occupational psychologist migel.jayasinghe@ live.co.uk

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One book that you think all psychologists should read Freud’s Civilisation and Its Discontents. I think this is one of the seminal books in applied psychology, although it is classified as political philosophy. I first read it as a sixth-former in Ceylon.

Coming from a Buddhist background my world-view was not so different from Freud’s (‘eros’ and ‘thanatos’).

Like Freud, I became an atheist and freethinker.

One moment that changed the course of your career While a research assistant at Industrial Training Research Unit, Cambridge, I was interviewed for work as an occupational psychologist at the Educational and Occupational Assessment Service in Lusaka, Zambia,

by Dr Mary Allen. After I had answered a couple of questions she turned to her Zambian colleagues on the interview panel and said: ‘Look no further, you have the right applicant for the job.’

That was the moment when, at the age of 38, I began to believe that a career in applied psychology was a possibility.

One hero from psychology Vygotsky. Always compared and contrasted with Piaget,

Boredom, eldercare, glucose and much more...

I Contribute: reach 50,000 colleagues, with something to suit all. See www.thepsychologist.org.uk/contribute or talk to the editor, Dr Jon Sutton, on jon.sutton@bps.org.uk, +44 116 252 9573 I Comment: email the editor, the Leicester office, or tweet @psychmag.

I To advertise: Reach a large and professional audience at bargain rates: see details on inside front cover.

Vygotsky was one of the most influential theorists on child development of the last century. Piaget studied the individual child from a cognitive perspective while Vygotsky concentrated on social constructivism.

Vygotsky’s theory of the ‘Zone of Proximal Development’ was a radical breakthrough in child psychology.

One great thing that psychology has achieved Giving permission to question the status quo.

uses rhetorical devices such as the anaphora, (Words, words, words), asyndeton (to die: to sleep – to sleep, perchance to dream), and hendiadys (the expectancy and the rose of the fair state). Sigmund Freud and Ernest Jones commented on the oedipal theme in the play.

Jacques Lacan also critiqued Hamlet in terms of oedipal theory and semantics. There is much more that psychologists can learn from this play.

One thing that you would change about psychologists Call upon them to embrace the new paradigm of complexity theories (e.g. hermeneutic, chaos, non-linear dynamics, and quantum theory).

One nugget of advice for aspiring psychologists Treat human beings not as ‘subjects’ or natural objects, but as persons.

One proud moment A young rehabilitee (in his early 20s) who had never attended school was, at my insistence, kept for more than month at the Waddon Employment Rehabilitation Centre, and instead of being recommended for manual, unskilled work was sent for further education. He eventually gained a 2:1 degree in philosophy and found work as a library assistant (see Counselling in Careers Guidance, 2001, pp.87–90).

One cultural recommendation Shakespeare’s Hamlet (text, play, and film versions). This is a play of ideas, philosophy and beliefs. It is not based on action as most plays are. It

One hope for the future Cross-fertilisation with other disciplines.

One problem that psychology should deal with How to intervene optimally in global conflicts.

One more question As an undergraduate I kept being told that there is no such thing as ‘mind’. There are so many things going on at the same time inside your head, the brain, how can you generalise and say it is ’mind’?

I retorted: ‘There are so many more things going on inside you at any one time, how can I then call you a ‘man’?’.

Someone in the class shouted ‘Iconoclast’.

Who would you like to see in One on One? Get in touch: jon.sutton@bps.org.uk

vol 28 no 2

february 2015

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