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psychologist vol 27 no 4
april 2014
Charting ‘the mind and body economic’ The Midlands Psychology Group introduce a special feature on the theme of ‘austerity’
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letters 214 news 222 careers 276 reviews 286
personality – at the heart of health 256 interview with Christina Salmivalli 258 looking back: PsyBorgs on the loose! 292 one on one: with Stephen J. Ceci 296
Contact The British Psychological Society St Andrews House 48 Princess Road East Leicester LE1 7DR 0116 254 9568 mail@bps.org.uk www.bps.org.uk
the psychologist... ...features Charting ‘the mind and body economic’ The Midlands Psychology Group introduce a special feature dedicated to the theme of ‘austerity’
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Austerity in the university Ian Parker on increasing pressure and emotional labour at work for academics in times of crisis
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Inequality and the next generation Gary Thomas explains how the gradient of difference can impact upon identity in the classroom
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March 2014 issue 49,173 dispatched
Neoliberal austerity and unemployment David Fryer and Rose Stambe examine critical psychological issues
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The impact of austerity on a British council estate Carl Harris takes an ‘ecological model of systems’ approach
The Psychologist www.thepsychologist.org.uk www.psychapp.co.uk psychologist@bps.org.uk Advertising Reach 50,000 psychologists at very reasonable rates. Display Ben Nelmes 020 7880 6244 ben.nelmes@redactive.co.uk Recruitment (in print and online at www.psychapp.co.uk) Giorgio Romano 020 7880 7556 giorgio.romano@redactive.co.uk
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New voices: Personality – at the heart of health 256 Páraic Ó Súilleabháin on cardiovascular adaptation and health in the latest in our series for budding writers. See www.bps.org.uk/newvoices
Cover Detail from ‘Begging for change' by Meek. Photograph by Jake Smallman
© Copyright for all published material is held by The British Psychological Society, unless specifically stated otherwise. Authors, illustrators and photographers may use their own material elsewhere after publication without permission. The Society asks that the following note be included in any such use: ‘First published in The Psychologist, vol. no. and date. Published by The British Psychological Society – see www.thepsychologist.org.uk.’ As the Society is a party to the Copyright Licensing Agency agreement, articles in The Psychologist may be photocopied by licensed institutional libraries for academic/teaching purposes. No permission is required. Permission is required and a reasonable fee charged for commercial use of articles by a third party: please apply in writing. The publishers have endeavoured to trace the copyright holders of all illustrations. If we have unwittingly infringed copyright, we will be pleased, on being satisfied as to the owner’s title, to pay an appropriate fee.
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The Psychologist is the monthly publication of The British Psychological Society. It provides a forum for communication, discussion and controversy among all members of the Society, and aims to fulfil the main object of the Royal Charter, ‘to promote the advancement and diffusion of a knowledge of psychology pure and applied’.
Managing Editor Jon Sutton Assistant Editor Peter Dillon-Hooper Production Mike Thompson
Staff journalist / Research Digest Vacancies (p.283) Editorial Assistant Debbie Gordon Occupational Digest Alex Fradera
Associate Editors Articles Michael Burnett, Paul Curran, Harriet Gross, Marc Jones, Rebecca Knibb, Charlie Lewis, Wendy Morgan, Paul Redford, Mark Wetherell, Jill Wilkinson Conferences Alana James History of Psychology Nathalie Chernoff Reviews Emma Norris Interviews Gail Kinman, Mark Sergeant Viewpoints Catherine Loveday International panel Vaughan Bell, Uta Frith, Alex Haslam, Elizabeth Loftus
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psychologist vol 27 no 4
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the issue ...reports news 222 a new gameplan for psychological science; young female power; cognitive therapy; confidence intervals; vampire symposium; and more society 262 President’s Column; BPS Scotland; Health and Care Professions Council; and more
...debates letters the ‘stressed sex’ debate continues; call for formation of a Royal College of Psychologists; Putin – the naked truth; dementia; and more
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...digests the ‘youth bias’, the eccentricity/art relationship, and our farewell to Christian, in the latest from our free Research Digest (see www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog) 228
...meets interview against bullying: Christina Salmivalli (University of Turku, Finland) talks to our Editor Jon Sutton about her new approach to an age-old issue
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careers 276 we talk to Richard Bidder about his work for occupational psychology consultancy Catalyst; and Christopher Hunt tells us about volunteering in Sri Lanka one on one 296 with Stephen J. Ceci, Professor of Developmental Psychology at Cornell University
...reviews
This month we return to the issue of ‘austerity’, following last September’s ‘opinion special’. It remains one of the main political, social and psychological topics of our time, and we have five contributions covering the conditions in which people are learning, living and working. So far, argue the Midlands Psychology Group, psychologists have done little to challenge the dubious scientific assumptions upon which ‘austerity programmes’ rest. In fact, have they sought to profit from them, ‘through the mass promotion of therapies and techniques claimed to counteract the mental and emotional damage wrought by an ever more corrosive world’? Also in this issue (p.229), we bid a fond farewell to Dr Christian Jarrett, our journalist and Editor of the Society’s Research Digest. For more than a decade, Christian has delivered quality to huge audiences, and the Digest is regularly described as a ‘genuine game changer’ in how psychology is reported, taught and perceived. Quite some legacy: I’m sure we’ll be hearing more from him. Dr Jon Sutton Managing Editor
the usual mix of books and other media reviews, including The Silence of Animals, trauma and creativity online guide, Psychology, Mental Health and Distress, building a virtual brain, and True Detective 286
...looks back PsyBorgs on the loose! 292 Christopher D. Green and his team are taking the history of psychology into the digital realm, producing surprising insights The Psychologist and Digest Editorial Advisory Committee Chair (vacant), Phil Banyard, Nik Chmiel, Olivia Craig, Helen Galliard, Rowena Hill, Jeremy Horwood, Catherine Loveday, Peter Martin, Victoria Mason, Stephen McGlynn, Tony Wainwright, Peter Wright, and Associate Editors
One year ago Go to www.thepsychologist.org.uk for our archive, including our special issue on humour, comedy and laughter (April 2013) the
psychologist
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Have you heard the one about… … the psychology of humour, comedy and laughter?
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big picture centre careers 292 new voices 308 looking back 310
this is improbable 260 laughter 264 interview – Wiseman meets Herring 270 opinion: no laughing matter 272
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Big picture centre-page pull-out crudely erased adults: A.R. Hopwood’s false memory archive
LETTERS
Sex as a clinical variable
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Seager et al. (‘The hidden mental pain of men’, Letters, March 2014) are correct to highlight the imbalance in arguments about gender and mental health. Logically some diagnosed mental disorders are only possible because of biological sex (e.g. the diagnoses of puerperal psychosis and postnatal depression) but most of the differences claimed are a function of methodology, proven gender differences in help seeking and professional decision making about risk. The arguments about methodological artefacts were evident in the 1980s when the rallying feminist text The Female Malady was largely being read uncritically (Showalter, 1987; cf. Busfield, 1988). Showalter argued that in the Victorian era women were differentially oppressed by patriarchal psychiatry, setting a gendered trend. But the prevalence of female asylum inmates was higher because women lived longer than men; once that was taken into account then gender differences disappeared. Today both depression and dementia in older people are gendered for the same reason, if prevalence not incidence is measured. This prevalence/incidence argument remains pertinent
today. Women seek help more than men in primary care so are diagnosed more with ‘common mental disorders’, which means that women are medicated more than men in open community samples. For example, today 1 in 10 American women take antidepressants (twice the consumption of men). In the UK, women and men are admitted to acute care at about the same rate but men are twice as likely to be present in them. This is because women are discharged quicker, maybe because of gendered family responsibilities and greater risk being attributed to men by professionals (Pilgrim, 2012). As for the coercive wing of the mental health industry, not only are men overrepresented in secure facilities but women have been completely removed from most high-secure facilities after successful feminist campaigns. This begs an interesting question: if high security is considered to be too inhumane for women, then why is it legitimate for men to remain in such a brutal environment? If psychiatric oppression is indeed gendered then it would seem that now men, not women, have more to
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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complain about, if coercion is our defining focus. And if we only study women and not men in community samples, then we will generate evidence unevenly (Brown & Harris, 1978). The latter was intended to be a study of social class and depression not women and depression but for methodological convenience only female respondents were then used. Single social variables as predictors of mental health status are problematic, but if we do focus on them then social class and age are much better predictors than gender, with race hovering ambiguously in the hierarchy of determinants. The reason that single-variable determinants and their implied ideological special pleading are problematic is that in open systems a multiplicity of generative mechanisms intersect and lead to variegated outcomes (including clinical silence). Even just two variables studied in interaction inflect the evidence. For example, overall women seek help in primary care more than men, but in the US ethnic minority women (like white men) under utilise that service (Rogers & Pilgrim, 2005). If we are to look seriously at the social patterning of
diagnosis and service utilisation, then intersectional reasoning is required. Also, within-group differences in these intersections might be accounted for by variables little used in traditional epidemiological research, even its socially informed wing. In particular, traumatised groups (from childhood abuse, school bullying, war zones, intimate violence and regimes of torture) are significantly overrepresented in clinical samples, including those with a diagnosis of psychosis (Varese et al., 2012). ‘Traumatised victims’ as a single social variable is a more robust predictor, than gender,
…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. ‘Reach the largest, most diverse audience of psychologists in the UK (as well as many others around the world); work with a wonderfully supportive editorial team; submit thought pieces, reviews, interviews, analytic work, and a whole lot more. Start writing for The Psychologist now before you think of something else infinitely less important to do!’ Robert Sternberg, Oklahoma State University For details of all the available options, plus our policies and what to do if you feel these have not been followed, see www.thepsychologist.org.uk/contribute
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of mental health status, if we opt to use it as such. Intersectionality and intragroup differences accounted for by trauma should be our guides hereafter to researching the social patterning of mental health problems. But if gender is still considered to be important for mental health researchers, then the above arguments supporting the cautions of Seager et al. warrant due consideration. David Pilgrim Professor of Health and Social Policy University of Liverpool References Brown, G.W. & Harris, T.O. (1978). The social origins of depression. London: Tavistock. Busfield, J. (1988). Mental illness as a social product or social construct: A contradiction in feminists’ arguments? Sociology of Health and Illness, 10, 521–542. Pilgrim, D. (2012). Final lessons from the Mental Health Act Commission for England and Wales: The limits of legalism-plussafeguards. Journal of Social Policy, 41, 61–81. Rogers, A. & Pilgrim, D. (2005). A sociology of mental health and illness (4th edn). Buckingham: Open University Press. Showalter, E. (1987). The female malady. London: Virago. Varese, F., Smeets, F., Drukker, M. et al. (2012). Childhood adversities increase the risk of psychosis: A meta-analysis of patientcontrol, prospective- and cross-sectional cohort studies. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 38(4), 661–671.
As a headline in The Psychologist once put it: ‘Studying sex differences – not for the fainthearted!’ (June 2012, p.418). We knew this when we set out on a journey, described in our book The Stressed Sex, to answer what we consider two very important questions: Who is more likely to develop mental health problems – men or women? And if there are differences between the sexes, what are the causes? Although on a controversial topic the reception for the book over the past year has been very positive. Until, that is, the letter by Seager and colleagues (March 2014). These six psychologists list evidence of particular mental health problems where men have greater difficulties than women, add a dose of anecdotal evidence, and conclude that men and women must have equal rates of mental health problems. This is exactly the type of selective approach we sought to avoid in The Stressed Sex. It is simply not in dispute that men have problems too. In our article (‘The stressed sex?’, February 2014) we write that there is a ‘worryingly high rate of psychological problems across the population as a whole: that is, for both men and women’. Our point is that, when you consider mental health problems together, women outnumber men. In other words, this is not a debate about specific disorders but rates of mental disorder in toto. (Incidentally, in the book we show that this applies even when a nondiagnostic approach is taken.) Take for example the study Seager and co. cite concerning a national epidemiological survey (Martin et al., 2013). Here, in a new analysis, gender differences
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in levels of depression are (unsurprisingly) reduced when problems such as anger and substance abuse are included in the diagnosis. But to understand overall rates of mental health problems one must look to the data on all problems, not just a selection. When this is done the findings from the same survey are clear: rates are higher for women than men (Kessler et al., 2005). The question of whether men are simply unwilling to report mental health problems is often raised in discussion of these issues, and it’s one we explicitly address in The Stressed Sex. We believe it probably plays a role, but there are many compelling reasons to believe that the difference in overall rate of psychological illness is genuine. Moreover, epidemiological surveys seek to minimise such reporting problems. In the end, of course, self-report is the only way to find out whether someone has a problem – and it’s possible that women are also underreporting: the research simply hasn’t been done for either gender. It’s worth noting, by the way, that the study by Pierce and Kirkpatrick (1992) did not simply find that men underreported their fear; it also discovered that rates of fear were higher among women, even after male bravado had been taken into account. For Seager and co. to dismiss a discussion of possible gender differences by evoking the spectre of the ‘hysterical female’ displays a worryingly limited view of the causes of mental health problems. Clearly, the number of people of both sexes affected by these conditions is too high. But if they think the gender inequalities in society have no consequences for women’s mental health, or that these consequences should be ignored or hidden away, then we must disagree. Daniel Freeman Professor of Clinical Psychology University of Oxford Jason Freeman Psychology writer and editor References Freeman, D. & Freeman, J. (2013). The stressed sex: Uncovering the truth about men, women, and mental health. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kessler, R., Chiu, W., Demler, O. & Walters, E. (2005). Prevalence, severity, and comorbidity of 12-month DSMIV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Archives of General Psychiatry, 62, 617–627. Martin, L., Neighbors, H. & Griffith, D. (2013). The experience of symptoms of depression in men vs women. JAMA Psychiatry, 70(10), 1100–1106. Pierce, K. & Kirkpatrick, D. (1992). Do men lie on fear surveys? Behaviour Research and Therapy, 30, 415–418.
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A new game plan for psychological science Science is imperfect: pick any branch and you will find skeletons in the closet, including dubious ethics, the ‘file drawer’ effect or outright research fraud. In recent years, following a number of high-profile scandals, a growing number of psychological scientists have set out to put their own house in order. The profession has sought to raise research practices and publication standards to a new level of reliability, and in March the Association for Psychological Science fleshed out the details of these new initiatives for a stronger science. Writing in the APS Observer, leading experts described efforts to promote open research practices, enhance methodology reporting and provide incentives for study replications. Kicking off, Brian Nosek (Center for Open Science and University of Virginia) admitted that his lab has a problem: ‘We do research, time goes by, and some research materials and data get lost.’ Nosek blames disorganisation, overconfidence in memory (‘I know what var0001 and var0002 mean, so why waste time writing the meanings down?’) or the complexity of managing information in collaborations. So how can this problem be solved? Based on the psychological literature, Nosek says behaviour is more likely to change if the solutions provide immediate rewards, integrate easily with existing behaviour and are easy to do. Hence the Open Science Framework (OSF) – a free, open-source web application that helps individuals and research teams organise, archive, document and share their research materials and data. It can be used for private collaboration, but using the OSF also enables researchers to improve the reproducibility of their work. ‘With our scripts, code, and data made public, other researchers can reproduce our analyses and findings, or reanalyze our data for their own purposes’, Nosek writes. Simple ‘nudges’, some payoff for making these practices routine, are integrated into the OSF itself, including a novel citation type – forks. ‘If other researchers want to use some of my public work, they can fork my public projects into their workspace. Their new project will always link back to my original work. They can revise a measure, reanalyze the data, or extend
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the work in some other way. The fork count is therefore a functional citation – others are using and extending my research outputs.’ Next, Daniel Simons (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Alex Holcombe (University of Sydney) tackled reproducibility: central to science, but sorely lacking in many psychology journals because publishing incentives tend to favour novelty over reliability. The Registered Replication Report (RRR), a new type of article introduced last year by Perspectives on Psychological Science, is ‘designed to help stabilise the foundations of our science by providing more definitive estimates of the reliability of important findings in the psychology literature’. The final report comprises multiple direct replications of a single finding, all using the same vetted protocol and materials. The design is preregistered, and all results are published regardless of the outcome. ‘In effect,’ write the authors, ‘the RRR is a planned meta-analysis, but one that is free from several problems that plague conventional meta-analyses, such as publication bias, variation in measures, and differences in procedure. RRRs are designed and carried out by multiple researchers with different vested interests, to reduce the influence of experimenter bias.’ A team led by Jon Grahe, a professor of psychology at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, also focus on replication. The Collaboration Replications and Education Project aims to facilitate student research training while at the same time solidifying psychological research findings. Over the coming years, the authors say they ‘hope to facilitate the research training of psychology students by encouraging replication projects and collecting data about the success (or failures) of the individual projects for use in metaanalyses and other research. In so doing, we now invite researchers and teachers to submit research findings that they feel are of crucial importance to the field, which they can do at www.tinyurl.com/mhyu87n. We hope replications will become a habit of psychology education and research.’
Geoff Cumming, Emeritus Professor at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, writes in praise of confidence intervals: ‘beautiful pictures of uncertainty’. Arguing that there is ‘life beyond .05’, Cumming calls on psychologists to ‘embrace the new statistics’ and go beyond null hypothesis significance testing. Noting that ‘almost all empirical research is guided by p values – which are in fact tricky conditional probabilities that few understand correctly’, Cumming admits ‘it’s discouraging to report that the average improvement in response time was 34 ms, 95% CI [7, 61], which means the true improvement could plausibly be anywhere between 7 ms and 61 ms. But the CI gives accurate information about uncertainty, and we need to come to terms with that – it’s way more informative than a mere claim of a statistically significant improvement.’ Applauding the ‘bold policies of [the journal] Psychological Science to improve
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PROMOTING WOMEN IN SCIENCE Staff at Birkbeck, University of London, are championing the role of female academics in scientific subjects as part of a five-country European project. The new initiative involves testing a blueprint designed to raise the status of women in scientific and technological organisations. There is a particular focus on encouraging women during the early stages of their careers. The total project is worth more than €3 million and also involves institutions in Italy, France, Spain and the Czech Republic. Birkbeck will receive €400,000 from the European Union for its participation in the Transforming Institutions by Gendering contents and Gaining Equality in Research (TRIGGER) grant. As part of the four-year applied research project, actions taken at Birkbeck will include systematic observation of potentially discriminating formal/informal behaviours and recommendations for action; promoting the inclusion of women scientists in external collaborative arrangements; and the creation of structural opportunities for the commercialisation of women’s work in research and innovation.
research practices and embrace the new statistics’, Cumming ends with a note of optimism. ‘We need better textbooks, better statistics courses, much better software, and more examples of good practice. But these are coming.’ Finally, Matthias Mehl (Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Arizona) outlines the need for ‘an observational ecological momentary assessment method’. With James Pennebaker, he has developed the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) as such an assessment tool. ‘The basic idea behind the EAR is simple,’ Mehl writes: ‘to obtain a sense of who people are and what they do by listening in on sound bites of their moment-to-moment social lives. Technically, the EAR is an audio recorder that periodically samples brief snippets of ambient sounds while participants go about their lives. Conceptually, it is an unobtrusive observation method that yields acoustic logs of people’s daily experiences as they
naturally unfold.’ Now the iEar, in app form, is being used in a number of ‘largescale, interdisciplinary collaborative projects that use the EAR method to assess everyday person–environment interactions naturalistically and objectively’; for example, in studying how couples use their daily conversations with each other to cope with cancer. In the introduction, E. David Klonsky, director of the Personality, Emotion, and Behaviour Lab at the University of British Columbia, is quoted as saying ‘Show me five studies in our field’s top psychological science journal, and I’ll show you four with conclusions that can’t be trusted.’ With innovative methodological, statistical and publication methods being pushed ever more to the fore, we can only hope those odds turn in the discipline’s favour sooner rather than later. JS I See tinyurl.com/psygameplan; and for our own special issue on replication, see tinyurl.com/psycho0512
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YOUNG FEMALE POWER Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore (above), from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, has appeared in the ‘Young Female Power List’ produced by The Times. The list features 30 women under the age of 45, Professor Blakemore was recognised for her research on the workings of the teenage mind, and for her TED talk, which has had more than a million viewings.
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Seriously staked Deborah Bowden reports from a ‘vampire symposium’ Modern vampire fiction, such as Twilight and The Vampire Diaries, has created a vampire frenzy, although the literary vampire first appeared in 18th-century poetry, followed by iconic novels such as Polidori’s The Vampyre and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Vampire fiction is largely rooted in the ‘vampire craze’ in Western Europe in the 1700s, which featured the exhumations of purported vampires Peter Plogojowitz and Arnold Paole in Serbia. But what is the science and psychology behind the vampire myth, and how have vampires impacted Western culture? In March, a symposium called ‘Seriously Staked’ was held at Goldsmiths College, London, to address such questions. The day was cohosted by the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena (ASSAP) and Goldsmiths’ Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit (APRU). Subject experts and academics gave presentations to an audience of around 200 academics, fans of vampire fiction and culture, and other interested members of the public. Professor Chris French, Head of the APRU, said in his opening remarks that he had
always enjoyed vampire films, but had not until recently considered vampirism to be a topic of relevance to anomalistic psychology. However, he has come to believe that studying historical accounts of, and belief in, vampires can help us to understand the human psyche, as with the study of other kinds of anomalistic phenomena. Deborah Hyde, editor of The Skeptic magazine, gave an extremely entertaining talk titled ‘Myths and monsters: Vampires in history’, presenting witness testimonies describing the corpses of suspected folkloric vampires, which did not look as the populace of the time thought normal corpses should. Such suspects were usually reported as being bloated and ruddy, purplish or dark, which was often attributed to the drinking of blood. Other characteristics included growth of hair and nails, lack of odour and failure to decompose. Science can now explain many of these attributes. Suspected vampires were often buried face down, causing blood flow to their faces, explaining their colour. A person’s skin and gums also lose fluids and contract after death, exposing the roots of
IS TRAUMA STRESS RESEARCH GLOBAL? Only 12 per cent of traumatic stress studies published in 2012 were conducted in low-to-middle-income countries (LMIC), where a full 83 per cent of the world's population lives and where risk of experiencing a ‘traumatic event’ is often the greatest. That’s according to a new bibliometric analysis, led by Dr Eva Alisic (Head of the Trauma Recovery Lab at Monash University in Australia) and published in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology. Less than 5 per cent of all author teams involved collaborations between highincome countries and LMIC researchers, and LMIC researchers appeared to publish empirical studies in lower-impact journals.
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hair and nails, which can give the illusion of growth. The reported lack of odour and failure to decompose is likely to have been due to top-down processing, whereby those inspecting the corpses may have observed these characteristics because they were expecting to. This is supported by conflicting witness testimonies, where some witnesses reported decayed bodies, while others did not. Folkloric vampirism was also associated with contagion, with outbreaks of diseases like tuberculosis and the bubonic plague being attributed to vampires. Using vampirism as a scapegoat for deaths from unknown illnesses may have provided people with a sense of agency, helping to allay tension and perceived helplessness. Similarly, Dr Kathryn Harkup spoke about scientific theories for the origin of vampire myths relating to illnesses. She outlined the scientific evidence concerning whether rabies and porphyria,
which cause sensitivity to sunlight and other symptoms associated with vampirism, may be responsible for vampires. Hyde’s talk featured a quiz, where audience members were awarded ‘gummy vampire teeth’ for correctly answering trivia questions such as ‘Are folklore vampires attractive?’. Unlike the Eric Northmans and Edward Cullens of modern vampire fiction, folkloric vampires were grotesque and pestilence-ridden. The transformation over the past century of the unappealing folkoric monsters into beautiful and enviable playboys was the topic of a presentation by Jessica Monteith-Chachuat. Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the Anna Rice novels were instrumental in the evolution of vampires into romantic, dangerously attractive aristocrats, but what is the appeal of such creatures? Twilight’s Bella Swan is so irresistibly drawn to Edward Cullen that she begs him to turn her so that they will be
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THE KOBAL COLLECTION/HAMMER
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FUNDING NEWS The Richard Benjamin Trust has funding for early career postdoctoral researchers to pursue work in occupational, organisational or social psychology. Research proposals should have a clear benefit to the public, organisations, communities or families. Ten grants are available each year up to a maximum of £10,000. The closing date for applications is 17 April 2014. I tinyurl.com/nqkgumj MQ: Transforming Mental Health supports research across all the sciences, from basic bench research to clinical studies, to the social sciences. The Fellows Programme is open to early career researchers from all disciplines related to mental health research. Research can be based in the laboratory, clinic or field, and may involve experimental, theoretical or social science approaches. It must be relevant to the causes, treatment or prevention of mental illness. Early career researchers must have a PhD, MD or equivalent and have recently established their own independent research career or be about to become independent. The fellowships provide up to £75,000 for three years. Full details of what the funding can be used for and eligibility are on the website. There is a two-stage application process, with a closing date for letters of intent of 24 April 2014. I tinyurl.com/ncg3el3
and contemporary culture. The final talks were delivered by Skype, where Brent R. Myers discussed how vampires were only known to drink blood after the 18th century, but 700 years ago were believed to be sexually insatiable undead men that feasted sexually on women. Lastly, John Michaelson, wearing a demon mask, spoke of his personal experiences of searching for real vampires in London. The evening presentations were followed by ‘Seriously Social’, where the audience and speakers chatted over drinks and free peanuts (no blood). All in all, the event organisers did a fantastic job in putting on a day that was both entertaining and thoughtprovoking, rigorously answering most of the questions they set out to. I Deborah Bowden has a PhD in psychology from Goldsmiths College, with research interests in anomalistic psychology and complementary medicine
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The Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation Programme (EME) is inviting proposals for translational research into interventions to reduce the occurrence of self-harm or suicidal behaviours. Research should focus on people at high risk, and explore cognitive, personality and behavioural mechanisms of self-harm. The closing date for application is 1pm on 3 June 2014. I tinyurl.com/nracu6g A new Wellcome Trust and Education Endowment Foundation scheme aims to develop education interventions that are grounded in neuroscience research. Proposals should focus on raising pupil attainment in UK schools, especially that of disadvantaged pupils. Collaborative research between educational researcher, teachers, neuroscientists, cognitive scientists and psychologists is encouraged. Successful proposals will build on existing evidence about teaching and learning and explain how these can be made for effective by using evidence from neuroscience. The deadline for submission of the Initial Application Form is 6 May 2014. A small number of the most promising proposals will then be taken forward to the next application stage. I tinyurl.com/oz27cys
info
eternally young and beautiful together. She cannot redefine herself away from him, and does not go to university, nor gets a job, which may appeal to those desiring a Paris Hilton lifestyle. ‘Virginal’ blondes Buffy Summers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and True Blood’s Sookie Stackhouse, however, retain independence and girlpower in their vampire relationships, while being liberated from their purity and innocence. The other presentations were less relevant to psychology, but interesting without exception. Scott Wood spoke of the undead of England and elsewhere, while Dr Maria Mellins discussed the influence of the media on the London vampire community. John Fraser spoke about the men who invented vampires, followed by Dr Stacey Abbot on the role of science in vampire cinema. Jonathan Ferguson described the tools of the vampire hunter, and Dr Hannah Gilbert spoke about vampires in folklore, fiction
The MRC has a highlight notice to support the development of validated and reliable psychometric instruments to assess the quality of life of carers of people with cognitive impairment conditions, specifically dementia, in the home environment. The psychometrics to be developed should capture the health and qualityof-life implications on a carer’s life. They also need to be appropriate for use with younger and older people and be sensitive to cultural differences. Applications are considered at Methodology Research Programme Panel meetings. Next deadline: 4pm on 3 June 2014. I tinyurl.com/pbnzyug
For more, see www.bps.org.uk/funds Funding bodies should e-mail news to Elizabeth Beech on elibee@bps.org.uk for possible inclusion
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When was the most important public event of your lifetime? The idea that young people might find the world a stranger, more exciting place than older people makes intuitive sense. They’ve had less time to grow familiar with life. What’s irrational is to believe that more significant public events happen when people are young. Of course they’re just as likely to happen at any time of life. Nonetheless, a new study suggests that thanks to a phenomenon known as the ‘youth bias’ many of us do believe that more major public events happen during a person’s youth, than at any other time. Jonathan Koppel and Dorthe Bernsten began by asking 200 US participants recruited online to imagine a typical infant of their own culture and gender. The participants then read the following text: ‘…throughout this person’s life, many important public events will take place, both nationally and internationally, such as wars, the deaths of public figures, and sporting events. How old do you think this person is likely to be when the event that they consider to be the most important public event of their lifetime takes place?’ The question was phrased deliberately to tap people’s beliefs about the subjective sense of when the most important public event is likely to occur in a lifetime. There was an overwhelming bias for the participants to mention ages in the second and third decades of life (from 11 to 30 years). Splitting the participants into an older (aged 33 to 81) and younger group (aged 18 to 31), both groups showed this bias, although the younger group specifically mentioned an age in the range 16 to 20 more often, while the older group more often mentioned an age in the range 6 to 10. Next, the researchers recruited 198 more participants online and this time they tweaked the wording of their question. The participants were again asked to imagine an infant of their own gender and culture. Then they read this text: ‘… how old do you think this person is likely to be when the most important public event of their lifetime takes place?’ This time the question was phrased deliberately to tap participants’ beliefs about the objective distribution of major public events across a lifetime, regardless of the In the Quarterly Journal of Experimental subjective impact of events on a person. Again there was Psychology evidence of a youth bias. The participants far more often mentioned ages within the range 11 to 30. This was true for the whole sample, and when the sample was split into younger and older groups. The researchers explained there is no rational reason to suppose that major public events will more often occur in a person’s youth. ‘These findings represent the discovery of a heretofore unnoted cognitive bias, the youth bias,’ they said. ‘The youth bias holds that the most notable experiences of one’s life, whether private or public, occur in young adulthood.’ The researchers mentioned people’s perceptions about the timing of private and public events because prior studies by them and others have shown that people's narratives about their personal lives also show a bias towards perceiving more important personal events – such as marriages – as occurring more often earlier in life. The notion of a youth bias in people’s perceptions about the timing of major public and private events also chimes with research on a memory phenomenon known as ‘the reminiscence bump’. This is our tendency to recall more events from our teens and twenties than any other stage of our lives. In fact, Koppel and Bernsten speculated that perhaps the youth bias ‘structures recall,’ heightening access to our memories from our youth. They added that their discovery of a youth bias ‘opens up new vistas’ for research, including studies to find out whether the bias exists in other cultures outside of the USA, and whether it applies to other domains, such as people’s beliefs about when in a lifetime a person is most likely to meet the best friend they’ll ever have.
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Eccentricity and appreciation of art In the European Journal of Social Psychology Van Gogh sliced off his own ear. Truman Capote insisted he could only think in a supine position while sipping coffee and puffing on a cigarette. Michael Jackson hung out with a chimp, and posed for photographers while sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber. Lady Gaga attended an awards ceremony wearing a dress made from meat. There’s a stereotype that creative people are eccentric and it’s easy to find examples like these to support the point. A new study shows that because of this widely held stereotype, people infer that work produced by an eccentric person is better and more valuable than that produced by a conventional character. Eccentricity is taken as a sign of artistic skill, except when the work in question is conventional and/or the display of eccentricity is judged to be fake. Wijnand van Tilberg and Eric Igou tested these ideas across five studies. In the first, 38 students rated a painting by Van Gogh more positively if they were first told about the earcutting incident. In two other studies, dozens more students rated paintings by a fictional Icelandic artist more positively and estimated it to be more valuable if they were told he had an eccentric personality, or if they saw a photograph showing him looking eccentric, unshaven with half-long hair (as opposed to seeing a photo showing him
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looking conventional, with short hair and neat clothing). The fourth and fifth studies highlighted some caveats. Students rated the unconventional art of Joseph Beuys (‘The Pack’) more positively if they were told that Beuys was eccentric in that he had a habit of carrying roadside stones on his head. However, the same yarn about Andrea del Verrocchio did not lead to higher ratings for his conventional art (‘Lady of Flowers’). Similarly, seeing a photo of Lady Gaga crouching in an usual outfit (tight, all black, with shiny mask) led student participants to rate her as more highly skilled compared to seeing her seated in a conventional black dress; unless, that is, the students were told that Gaga’s eccentricity is fake and no more than a marketing ploy. In other words, eccentricity of the artist
leads to more positive ratings of their work, unless that work is conventional, and/or the artist's unusual behaviour is seen as contrived. ‘To the best of our knowledge,’ the researchers said, ‘this is the first detailed empirical research that establishes a link from creator eccentricity to appreciation of creative works.’ Their results build on prior research that’s shown thinking about unusual people boosts a person's creative output. The findings also fit with a prior study of ‘stereotype confirmation’, in which listeners rated a rap more positively if they were told it was by a black artist. ‘The perception of creative endeavours, typically considered as (usefully) original, deviant, and novel, is deeply embedded in conformist processes,’ van Tilberg and Igou said.
The material in this section is taken from the Society’s Research Digest blog at www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog, and is written by its editor Dr Christian Jarrett. Visit the blog for full coverage including references and links, additional current reports, an archive, comment and more. Subscribe by RSS or e-mail at www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog Become a fan at www.facebook.com/researchdigest Follow the Digest editor at www.twitter.com/researchdigest
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Dr Christian Jarrett, our Research Digest editor and journalist on The Psychologist, left the Society on 19 March. You can read his goodbye, and the comments of appreciative readers, on the Digest blog at tinyurl.com/cjleaves. We asked Professor Catriona Morrison, Chair of the Society’s Psychology Education Board, for her views on Christian’s legacy. She said: ‘The Research Digest came along at just the right time. Back in September 2003, the means of disseminating knowledge were changing rapidly. Science blogging was beginning to get a foothold, and social media such as Facebook was just around the corner. Twitter was still nearly three years off! Christian was adept at surfing this digital wave, and the resultant influence of the Digest is evidenced by the impressive levels of engagement by a very wide range of professional psychologists and nonpsychologists. It has opened the Society up to a much broader readership, consequently raising the profile of the Society not just in the UK but worldwide.’ Professor Graham Powell was Chair of the then Psychologist Policy Committee when the Digest was proposed. He told us: ‘Committees rarely get excited, but when feedback on the new venture started to come through, I nearly fell of my seat and most committee members woke up. The original aim was in part to feed the rising appetite for psychology to be found in schools, the A-level students cramming into our public
lecture events. The reality was that it was not just the youngsters who were hooked, but a large percentage of our expert membership! We had completely underestimated the power of good science writing to engage everyone. It was a pleasure for our hard-pressed members to have someone source, discuss, present a diverse range of evidencebased studies; it broadened our horizons, showed us what to be proud of in our science. Christian does not just summarise, he critiques, separates the sense from nonsense, building on his own background of PhD in psychology and postdoctoral work in Manchester. In checking out his website recently I was yet again bowled over by the sheer breadth of his writing and sourcing. I would therefore like to thank Christian for educating us and entertaining us for all these years, but above all for fulfilling so uniquely well the Society’s mission of diffusing a knowledge of psychology pure and applied, to all.’ Christian leaves the Digest in fine fettle: 32,000 subscribers to the free, fortnightly e-mail; 37,000 followers on Twitter @researchdigest; and an average of around 280,000 page views per month at www.researchdigest.org.uk/ blog. He will be a tough act to follow, but we are excited to push on into a new era for both the Research Digest and The Psychologist via the appointment of two full-time replacements: see ad on p.283. And Christian: thank you.
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Charting ‘the mind and body economic’ The Midlands Psychology Group introduce a special issue dedicated to the theme of ‘austerity’ Richard Branson and the Barclay Brothers both own their own island. … International motor shows unveil more exclusive and luxury models by Porsche, Bugatti and Rolls Royce at previously unheard of prices. … For a swimsuit for that special occasion, you’d need £15 million in spare cash to buy one ‘dripping in diamonds’ designed by Gideon Oberson. (Lansley, 2006 p.x; and see Freeland, 2012)
Neoliberal ‘austerity’ programmes – favoured by many governments across the globe since the ‘Great Recession’ of 2007 – add up to a toxic regime for the mind and body of the ordinary citizen. So far, psychologists have done little to challenge the dubious scientific assumptions upon which these programmes rest. If anything, they have sought to profit from them: chiefly through the mass promotion of therapies and techniques claimed to counteract the mental and emotional damage wrought by an ever more corrosive world. But there are other ways of doing psychology; and the articles in this special issue point the way towards a far more socially aware (and arguably more scientific) version of the discipline.
question resources
Draft Manifesto for a Social Materialist Psychology of Distress: www.midpsy.org Moloney, P. (2013). The therapy industry: The irresistible rise of the talking cure, and why it doesn’t work. London: Pluto. Smail, D. (2004). Power, interest and psychology. Ross-on-Wye: PCCS Books.
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Can the theories and techniques used by psychologists ever be free of either political significance or of political influences?
Abrams, F. (2002). Below the breadline: Living on the minimum wage. London: Profile Books. Basham, P. (2010). Are nudging and shoving good for public health? London: Democracy Institute. Butterworth, P., Leach, L.S., Strazdins, L. et al. (2011). The psychosocial quality of work determines whether employment has benefits for mental health: Results from a longitudinal
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n both sides of the Atlantic, the super-rich are gaining and flaunting fortunes on a scale last seen in the days of the British Empire. Meanwhile, social inequality of all kinds has been on the rise. At the close of the first decade of the new century, in the United States, one in seven households lacked secure supplies of food, and, astonishingly, nearly one in four of all American children lived in them (National AntiHunger Organizations, 2009); More than a quarter of all British children continue to live below the official poverty line (Child Poverty Action Group, 2013), and the figure is higher – 37 per cent – in the capital city (CPAG, 2012). As real wages for the majority have declined (Office for National Statistics, 2013) and social mobility in the UK has all but come to a stop (Dorling & Thomas, 2011), many of the poor are working, but in conditions that are more likely to drain than build their mental and physical reserves (Butterworth et al., 2011; Davis, 2012; and see Abrams, 2002). The share of the working population employed as
national household panel survey. Occupational and Environmental Medicine. doi:10.1136/oem.2010.059030 Child Poverty Action Group (2012). Between a rock and a hard place: The early impact of welfare reforms on London. London: CPAG. Child Poverty Action Group (2013). Child poverty facts and figures. Retrieved 10 August 2013 from www.cpag.org.uk/
domestic servants is the same as in the 1860s (Elliot & Atkinson, 2007); and chronic household debt is nearing an alltime high (Lanchester, 2010; Watt, 2013). For the last six years, the Western world has been in the grip of the longest and most serious economic slump since the 1930s. If individual health and economic climate are closely linked, as many would argue, then our political leaders and policy makers have responded to the Great Recession by placing all of us in what amounts, in effect, to a vast clinical trial; but one that is neither supported by firm scientific evidence, nor subject to the normal rules of informed consent. As the epidemiologists David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu point out in their new book, The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills, in the one arm of this vast ‘experiment’, millions of people in America and Europe, including the citizens of the UK, have been subjected to ‘austerity’. Presented as a strategy to tackle debts and deficits caused by an underregulated financial sector, it consists largely of amputation: swingeing cuts in government funding for public services, for healthcare coverage, assistance to the jobless and for housing support. It represents too an attack upon the wages and pensions of public sector workers. For those of middling and lower income – and especially for the poor, the sick and the disabled – austerity also means increased financial hardship and the spectre of homelessness. In Europe, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank have pressured governments in Spain, Greece and Italy to dispense this bitter medicine, traditionally imposed upon developing countries in search of economic aid (Stuckler & Basu, 2013). In the US the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act initiated by President Obama – intended to provide some government assistance to the most needy – was short-lived; ‘politicians are now cutting public health programmes, including those that boost economic growth and prevent hardship during recessions’ (Stuckler & Basu, 2013 p.142).
child-poverty-facts-and-figures Coote, A. & Lyall, S. (2013, 11 April). Strivers v skivers: Real life’s not like that at all. The Guardian. Davis, J. & Tallis, R. (2013). SOS NHS: How the NHS was betrayed – and how we can save it. London: Oneworld. Davis, R. (2012, 17 December). How food banks became mainstream: The new reality of the working poor. New Statesman.
Dorling, D. (2013). Unequal health: The scandal of our times. Bristol: Policy Press. Dorling, D. & Thomas, B. (2011). Bankrupt Britain: An atlas of social change. Bristol: The Policy Press. Elliot, L. & Atkinson, D. (2007). Fantasy Island. London: Constable Robinson. Epstein, W. (2013). Empowerment as ceremony. New York: Transaction. Epstein, W. (2010). Democracy without
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institutionalisation of insecurity: both for instance; and in some cases edging personal and communal. In the USA for closer toward premature death, whether example, suicide rates were already rising by self-neglect, or by deliberate choice. slightly before the start of the recession, In Greece, for example, a modern-day which then made a bad situation worse. casualty of extreme austerity, rates of selfIn the three years from 2007 to 2010, destruction soared in the wake of the American suicide deaths accelerated by erosion of pension rights and jobs, and an additional 4750 over the existing trend. likewise for cases of HIV and malaria A similar pattern was observed in the UK, infection, as the national government shut where self-inflicted mortalities rose by down the necessary environmental health more than 1000 cases between 2007 and monitoring and prevention programmes. 2010, shadowing the continued rise in Stuckler and Basu note that austerity British unemployment programmes in fact (Stuckler & Basu, 2013). have a long history None of this should throughout the last “austerity programmes be a surprise. The century, most of it carry huge costs in human epidemiologists Richard dismal. From the health and well-being” Wilkinson and Kate rejection of Roosevelt’s Pickett have shown that, New Deal by certain for industrialised countries, American states in the the size of the gap between rich and poor 1930s, to the (Washington-inspired) faithfully predicts the extent of mortality, economic ‘shock therapy’ applied to Russia ill health and interpersonal strife, and and Eastern Europe during especially for those with the least means the 1990s (which opened (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2012). In Britain up the former socialist and many other countries that have economy to privatisation embraced austerity, the poor are being and plunder) and onward, blamed for their own predicament. The to the IMF programmes in UK has not been as socially divided since the Asian crisis of the same the 1930s, but those who cannot work decade… austerity because of illness or disability have begun programmes carry huge to face vilification and hatred from the costs in human health and media, and from their fellow citizens, to well-being and seldom a degree that would have been unthinkable deliver the promised just a few years before (Coote & Lyall, widespread benefits in 2013). Public attitude surveys in the UK wealth and productivity indicate a growing indifference, if not (and see Harvey, 2005). contempt, toward the jobless and the In Russia, the country in indigent. To add insult to injury, this is which the collapse of happening at the time when sickness and economic and social safety disability benefit entitlements and legal nets was most drastic, male protections for the weakest are being life expectancy dropped systematically cut away. Much of the moral a full seven years, from 64 justification for this retrenchment is based to 57. This was the most The super-rich are gaining and flaunting fortunes upon a rhetoric that pits ‘scroungers’ catastrophic decline in mortality against ‘strivers’, or the deserving against for any industrialised country the undeserving poor, as the Victorians not embroiled in famine or war, during of us healthy and indeed sane. In the end, would have said (Lister, 2004; Mooney the last 50 years. Indeed, Stuckler and Basu we would argue, such policies make it & Hancock, 2010; Wiggan, 2012). show that in the current crisis, climbing more likely that some of us will become Trends like these are anticipated in the rates of poor physical health, infectious sick or sink into despair; perhaps trying research of social psychologists like Melvin diseases and of self-destruction are the to ease our worries through recourse to Lerner, who have shown that it is true indices of what amounts to an official chronic smoking or bingeing on alcohol, In Britain, the Coalition government has continued the transformation of the NHS, once viewed as the world’s most equitable and efficient of healthcare systems, into an increasingly dysfunctional, market-based programme (Davis & Tallis, 2013; Pollock, 2010). Clearly, the economic choices made by governments are more than matters of growth rates and of budgetary deficits; the work of Stuckler and Basu, at Oxford and Stanford Universities, respectively, and of their many colleagues across the world, shows that these choices are also about life and death (see, for example, Dorling, 2013; Wilkinson & Pickett, 2012). While governmental policies are not the toxins that directly cause illness, they nonetheless do serious harm because they threaten the medical, physical and economic resources, the daily routines and the places and affiliations that, together, help to keep all
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decency: Good citizenship and the war on poverty. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press. Freeland, C. (2012). The plutocrats: The rise of the new global super-rich and the fall of everyone else. London: Allen-Lane. Friedli, L. & Stearn, R. (2013, 10 December). Whistle while you work (for nothing): Positive affect as coercive strategy - the case of
workfare [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://centreformedicalhumanities.org/ whistle-while-you-work-for-nothingpositive-affect-as-coercive-strategythe-case-of-workfare Harvey, D. (2005). Neoliberalism: A short introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. Jones, C. & Novak, T. (1991). Poverty, welfare and the disciplinary state. London: Routledge.
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Judt, T. & Snyder, T. (2012). Thinking the twentieth century. London: William Heinemann. Lanchester, J. (2010). Whoops! Why everyone owes everyone and no one can pay. London: Allen Lane. Lansley, S. (2006). Rich Britain: The rise and rise of the new super-wealthy. London: Politico’s. Lerner, M. (1980). The belief in a just world: A fundamental delusion. New
York: Olenum Press. Lister, R. (2004). Poverty. Oxford: Polity. Midlands Psychology Group (2007). Questioning the science and politics of happiness. The Psychologist, 20(7), 422–425. Moloney, P. (2013). The therapy industry: The irresistible rise of the talking cure, and why it doesn’t work. London: Pluto. Mooney, G. & Hancock, L. (2010, Winter).
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disturbingly easy to bring about conditions in which the victims of mistreatment are blamed for their own persecution and suffering, attributed to their supposed lack of morals and of internal resolve. Lerner argues that for the more comfortable onlooker, it is sometimes easier to believe that the world is really a fair place (in which everyone ultimately gets their just deserts) than to acknowledge the evils that it systematically inflicts (Lerner, 1980). The associated quasi-religious belief in the power of the individual to overcome their own problems is embedded deeply in Anglo-American culture, and within much of psychotherapy itself (Epstein, 2010, 2013), has long been used by the powerful as a justification for disciplining the poor (Jones & Novak, 1991). Nowhere is this ruthless attitude more evident than in the current governmental assault upon the principle of universal entitlement to state benefits: hastily being displaced by a system that places conditions on the receipt of such support, that forces people into low-paying and unsatisfying work, and that is designed to reduce and deny payments to those who are already struggling to get by. The new fitness-to-work tests and a so-called tax on ‘spare bedrooms’ for people living in social housing share the common feature of individualising the entitlement to benefits, but do nothing to address the widespread social inequalities that cause indolence and poverty in the first place (Wiggan, 2012). This line of thinking complements the introduction of the psychological ‘technologies’ of parenting training, antiobesity initiatives and of central government endorsement of the use of ‘behavioural nudging’ toward healthier lifestyles – in theory designed for the general population, but in practice aimed mainly at the poor (Basham, 2010; Moloney, 2013; Throop, 2009). Returning to Stuckler and Bisu’s metaphor of the cross-continental clinical trial, what then of the alternative therapy, which they term ‘stimulus’? For this treatment, citizens in some places have insisted that their leaders invest
Poverty porn and the broken society. Variant, pp.14–17. National Anti-Hunger Organizations (2009). NAHO roadmap to end childhood hunger in America by 2015. Retrieved 28 December 2012 from tinyurl.com/p3nl8yr Office for National Statistics (2013). Real wages fall back to 2003 levels. Retrieved 18 August 2013 from tinyurl.com/onuaanx
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in a contrary path: designed to strengthen public health and social safety net programmes. Sweden underwent a massive economic crash in the early 1990s but suffered no comparable rise in suicide or alcoholrelated deaths. In the early 21st century, Iceland struck the worst bank crisis ever, but, in response to demands from ordinary voters, its government eventually rejected the IMF’s calls for radical austerity, and instead increased its social security spending between 2007 and 2009, with the result that the general health of The new fitness-to-work tests and a so-called tax on ‘spare Icelanders bedrooms’ for people living in social housing share the common improved during feature of individualising the entitlement to benefits the crisis, while the small government and free markets will economy of the country grew by 3 per cent always and everywhere achieve better (Stuckler & Basu, 2013). Similar gains in results than the state. As many historians public health are evident in other countries and economists have shown, there is little that have rejected austerity during the evidence for this neoliberal orthodoxy, period of the current recession, including either (Harvey, 2005; Judt & Snyder, Canada, Norway and Japan (Harvey, 2005; 2012). But it does serve the interests of Stuckler & Basu, 2013). politicians and of their allies and sponsors, If the scientific evidence shows that who seek to gain from the attack upon the the real danger to public health is not state and from the privatisation of health recession per se, but austerity; then it is and social welfare services (Davis & Tallis, worth asking why so many governments 2013; Perelman, 2006). eschew the idea of stimulus. One answer If rates of psychological distress and is that ‘austerity’ persists, not because it suicide have been rising in consequence, is based upon good clinical evidence, or then how have our political leaders even upon common sense, but because responded? They have dismissed these it reinforces an official myth: that in trends as ‘short-term fluctuations’, and everything from health care to education,
Perelman, M. (2006). Railroading Economics: Creating the myth of the free market. New York: Monthly Review Press. Pollock, A.M. (2010). NHS plc: The privatization of our healthcare (2nd edn). London: Verso. Stuckler, D. & Basu, S. (2013). The body economic: Why austerity kills. London: Allen Lane. Tallis, R. & Davis, J. (2013). NHS SOS:
How the NHS was betrayed – and how we can save it. London: Oneworld. Watt, N. (2013, 20 November). Soaring UK personal debt wreaking havoc with mental health, report warns. The Guardian. Throop, E. (2009). Psychotherapy, American culture, and social policy: Immoral individualism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Wiggan J. (2012). Telling stories of 21st century welfare: The UK Coalition government and the neo-liberal discourse of worklessness and dependency. Critical Social Policy, 32, 383–405. Wilkinson, R. & Pickett, K. (2012). The spirit level (2nd edn). London: Penguin.
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more and more developmental syndromes they have offered us ‘improved access to in such students and the supposed psychological therapy’ and lectured us treatments for them. Rather, about ‘happiness’, and how to attain it. educationalists, families and communities They have implemented measures of need to nurture a better understanding of national well-being that are of questionable how inequality leads to so many children validity and that downplay the reality of being viewed, wrongly, as dysfunctional widespread personal distress, especially and unable to learn, and of finding ways amongst the least privileged sectors of of helping the school system to accept society (Friedli & Stearn, 2013; Midlands their difference, and to build upon their Psychology Group, 2007). For the strengths. The discussion poses deep psychology professions, the resulting questions about the nature and purposes growth in therapeutic services has been of the education system, about who has largely welcomed. What has been sorely the power to define normality and lacking is a thoughtful and critical deviance, and to what ends. appraisal of this situation, and of what it Traditionally of course, school has implies for the work of psychologists and usually been seen as a preparation for for the theories that they use. The articles work and as a kind of inoculation against in this issue of The Psychologist are the possible state of unemployment in intended to open the door to just such an adulthood – the theme of the next article, analysis, and to further debate. by Professor David Fryer and his PhD Because all kinds of official psychology claim academic roots, then a good starting point is the tertiary education system, which has suffered more than its share of cuts and realignments, first under New Labour, in the name of ‘business values’, and then under the ConDem coalition’s austerity programme. Professor Ian Parker’s article explores how the teaching and researching of social psychology is being affected and where this is likely to lead us. Parker argues that when education is increasingly regarded as a commodity, there is at least more room for the students’ voices to be heard, if only as consumers. However, psychologists – overburdened with administrative work, in competition for limited resources, and under growing pressure to achieve ‘productivity’ as defined by managers – are retreating defensively into their own narrow specialist niches. The danger is that critical and feminist voices in academic psychology will continue to be ignored, and that the discipline will Toad Bosses (1920) by George Grosz be pushed even more toward its customary focus upon the individual, as the supposed student at the University of Queensland, locus and cure of all personal and social Rose Stambe. While acknowledging that problems. the cuts represent untold misery and ill These themes are echoed in Professor being, they focus sharply upon how the Gary Thomas’s searching examination of concepts of ‘unemployment’ and its some of the key assumptions and values antonym have been understood (and that underpin the British school system. deployed), by health researchers and Drawing upon the income inequalities governments alike. Professor Fryer and Ms hypothesis of Wilkinson and Pickett, Stambe find deep irony in how the fear of Thomas, an educational psychologist at ‘unemployment’ has come to serve as an the University of Birmingham, asks what unacknowledged instrument of social and austerity implies for the welfare and political control. Best of all, when the performance of those students who absence of work is widely seen as harmful: struggle the most. These are the students since it can then be used, in the name of who have traditionally been viewed by ‘job creation’, to erode social security safety he education structure as the bearers of nets and workplace conditions to the developmental disorders like ADHD, and benefit of employers, and to justify more of who have too often been seen as failures. the same neoliberal social and economic He argues that the key is not to identify
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policies that are so toxic for ordinary people, whether they are in work, or out of it. The authors point out that these same policies have also been used to justify the creation of work for a swathe of wellmeaning middle-class professionals, intent upon reforming the poor and the deviant. When it comes to their efforts to help the victims of austerity around the world – rather than rushing to provide individualised therapy or the motivational skills supposedly needed to secure jobs that do not exist – psychologists should be asking questions about their own complicity, in what is in effect a war being waged by the powerful against those with the least means. These topics – of the political role of the practitioner and whose interests they serve – are key ones for community psychology; and in the final article Dr Carl Harris considers how this discipline can help the citizen to achieve some of these aims. He discusses his involvement as a clinical and community psychologist with the residents of a council estate on the edge of Birmingham, which had received funding for local initiatives from the New Deal for Communities Regeneration Initiative. Dr Harris describes his work with the Family Well-being Project, in which he and other health and social care professionals allied themselves with a group of residents to chart those aspects of life on the estate that they believed most important to their well-being, and to use this knowledge to improve the delivery and planning of housing, health, policing and other public services and amenities. Carl draws upon the experiences of these local residents to show how the current and planned reductions in public services are likely to harm this community, and many others like it, in the UK. The analyses presented here suggest that psychologists – drawing upon their scientific and clinical knowledge and experience – are in a good position to chart ‘the mind and body economic’: to show how our day-to-day emotional wellbeing can all too often reflect the fiscal policies that govern our lives. More fundamentally, these analyses challenge the single underlying premise upon which so many of the recent austerity programmes rest; namely, that people are impoverished because of their psychological deficits – their lifestyles, their worklessness, family breakdown, bad parenting, drink and drug addiction, irresponsible debt, criminality and lack of motivation or positive thinking – when, in truth, they are poor because they lack money. I Midlands Psychology Group www.midpsy.org
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INTERVIEW
KiVa – against bullying Christina Salmivalli (University of Turku, Finland) talks to Jon Sutton about her new approach to an age-old issue
here are many ways to define, measure and tackle bullying. What’s T different about yours? There are three main components to the KiVa programme. What we call ‘universal actions’, such as student lessons about peer relations, aiming to influence the bystanders who often provide social rewards for the bullies who are seeking status and power. In a group, you often do things that you privately think are wrong, so in the lessons before we even go to bullying we talk about group pressure and how it influences you. It’s about making salient our private actions, and making people see that we have the power to stop it. Then there’s an online learning environment and games related to the topics of the student lessons, so when you have gone through three lessons in the classroom you can play level one of the game. In the game you’re also asked to reflect and report your own behaviour. Finally we have ‘indicated actions’, which means when there is a case of bullying there is a KiVa team who have clear guidelines on how to address bullying problems.
many interventions that have said ‘we don’t even need to talk about bullying, let’s just improve the school climate’, but actually there is no evidence that such changes would be enough to reduce bullying. But there is evidence of the contrary effect, that if we reduce bullying then the atmosphere gets nicer. So to tackle bullying we need to talk about bullying, but not just in a negative way… everyone has the right to a nice, safe school environment, we are all responsible for that together.
And it works? www.kivaprogram.net One PhD student of mine Contact: kiva@kivaprogram.net calculated that during the first year of People have said that anti-bullying implementation of the programme we interventions need to stem from the were able to save about 12,000 victimised school themselves, to be effective. students and about 8000 bullies. You haven’t necessarily found that to be the case? Impressive! KiVa actually means ‘nice’ in Finnish, as well as being an acronym I don’t think so. The KiVa programme is more systematic and structured than for ‘against bullying’ in Finnish! So as many others. It’s not only that we provide much as it’s an anti-bullying policy it’s materials for schools and say ‘you can use a ‘pro-nice’ policy? them if you have some problems’, it’s Yes, although I would say there have been
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really supposed to become an ongoing part of the normal school life. In Finland at first we thought teachers don’t like it if you tell them that in September you should do this and in October this, and so on, but actually this was well received. I think it’s a reality that schools are already struggling with little resources, and I know that for us it took a lot of time and effort to develop the programme, and years of research. So just as someone has developed materials to teach mathematics or some other curriculum subject, I think it makes sense that this happens somewhere else, and also that the programmes and practices don’t have to be different from school to school – there can be a national strategy. By having that economy of scale of its being a national programme, does it become cheaper to implement? Because when I hear you talking about it, I think ‘that sounds expensive, that sounds difficult to keep going’! Actually per student it’s not expensive at all. In Finland we have certain systems how we are trying to support schools in implementing the programme, like newsletters that we send them four times a year, KiVa conference days where staff from the schools gather annually… that’s a very nice event and certainly something that motivates them by seeing that there are other people that are enthusiastic about this. And it’s nice for you to see the impact, so you get that continued involvement. You’re ensuring that the anti-bullying policy isn’t just a yellowing piece of paper stuck to a classroom wall. That’s the big challenge for us now in Finland. The government supported the schools so that every school that started implementing the programme during the first three years that it was rolled out, they got all the materials for free and all the pre-implementation training for free, but now some of those schools are not implementing it. So we are all the time trying to find ways to support them and motivate them, and tell them about the findings. There’s still so much we don’t know about effectiveness, for example whether it works better with younger or older children, whether it stops people taking up bullying or becoming a victim or tackles existing bullying. It seems that KiVa, at least during the first year when we started it and did the randomised control trial, we had much stronger effects in primary school. The same was true during the broad roll-out,
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but now it’s starting to change. But I think that often when there are cases of bullying in the secondary school they can be really strongly embedded in the social system, something that has lasted a long time. But I guess there are also reasons related to the way secondary schools are organised and how teachers perceive their role – they are subject specialists so they might find it more difficult to talk about these things with the kids.
cannot send it anonymously, each child has their own personal ID.
Bullying research in psychology has been around for about 30 years now, do you think it has delivered? When I left the area, what was frustrating me was that at every conference I went to people were still talking about definitions and extent, rather than actually doing much about it. And they still are, that’s true. It is sometimes frustrating, but I think that When I was researching in the area now I see very nice possibilities in good for my own PhD (which was very much evaluation studies, in longitudinal studies inspired by your approach), people where you are actually implementing always used to say ‘you’re never going programmes in some schools and not in to stamp out bullying’. Perhaps in others… we must those older children it’s going be going in that to be very hard, but if you keep direction now, it getting to successive “everyone has the right can’t be any more generations of younger to a nice, safe school that we just make children it might never develop environment” an intervention to that extent. study and look at Yes, I think it would be a bit pre-test post-test. I think unrealistic to think we could stop that will help us to understand much bullying completely with any kind of more, going back to the mechanisms, prevention programme. It’s just part of how the effects unfold and in what human nature, we can never stop timeframe. But so far people haven’t really aggression. But I think we can reduce it had such data – it’s a big effort to collect a lot, and hopefully even if there are cases and it’s also very expensive, so we were of bullying that emerge, hopefully they lucky in Finland that we had support will not last that long. If we have better from the government. ways to intervene, or more responsible peers who are witnessing bullying, they Rolling it out to other countries is are going to do something sooner. These interesting. Presumably you’d like to are all the things we can influence. see loads of countries take up your approach, to avoid the danger of lots Technology has had a pretty bad press of different intervention studies in in terms of facilitating bullying, but do different countries, when we’d get you think in some ways it could be one more and better data with a big push of the keys to tackling it? of one approach? I think so. I think that all this discussion Well, of course, part of me would like to about cyberbullying… of course it can be say everyone should start using the KiVa horrible, but I think it’s much more programme, but it’s not realistic. The horrible what’s going on in the schoolyard main thing is that before people start big everyday. Cyberbullying is now a very hot dissemination I would like them to collect topic, but if we discuss it too much even very good and deep data, to understand the educators might start to think that how the programmes work. That’s helpful bullying is now in cyberspace, it doesn’t for everyone then in developing their happen in school. It can make it easier to approaches. close your eyes to the bullying that is happening in front of you. So it’s about that evidence base, Technology is motivating and fun which has been surprisingly lacking for children, so why not use it in the over a long period. prevention work? And also in reporting. Exactly. And even just the designs in When we started out with KiVa, we saw bullying intervention studies have been that there were many children who were so varied. If you read them and you look repeatedly bullied, even in KiVa schools, at the findings and the effects and you and they never ended up with the KiVa look at the methods and the design, you team – they were still suffering in silence. must admit that we can’t really say So we were thinking of how we could whether the effects were caused by the make reporting easier, and that’s when we intervention or not. added this component, that you can send a message to a mailbox to report if you And maybe often the interventions are bullied or if you see somebody else is have stemmed from a personal suffering. It has been used a lot. You
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approach to bullying rather than the evidence base. In terms of that personal approach, I always used to get asked ‘which were you then, a bully or a victim?’ Do you get that? Well, many people are assuming that was my problem. That doesn’t apply, no. Of course now that I’ve been doing this work I’ve thought more back to the school days and I’ve remembered some cases. But I also remember we were in secondary school and there was this girl who was bullied mainly by other girls, a very prototypical victim, the only child of older parents, very withdrawn and shy… I remember we were a group of girls and we went to a teacher who had been our teacher in primary school, we were telling her that this girl was treated badly. But even though we did that, with the intention to help that girl, I still think that when we were back in our secondary school class we were also part of the problem. So it’s the social context, and it’s so ambivalent. Exactly. In a way you feel bad and you would like to do something for the person, but… … you don’t want to be bottom of the pile. So that’s where the group processes and bystanders come in. Do Finnish schools differ from those in the UK when it comes to the ethos and climate around bullying? I have no idea! There are always these stereotypes that in the UK there are these old boarding school systems and still something stemming from that… Not so much in my experience, but then I suppose like most researchers in the field I had quite a biased view, based on the more enlightened schools that let me in! There were plenty that just said flat out ‘we don’t have any bullying here’. Yes. Now we have this trial in Wales, done in collaboration between PhD Nick Axford from the Social Research Unit in Dartington, and Professor Judy Hutchings from the Centre for Evidence-Based Early Intervention in the University of Bangor, Wales. With funding from the big innovation grant they started a randomised controlled trial in the fall of 2013. It will be so exciting to see the results from this trial, as well as from others that are ongoing in the US (Delaware), Estonia, Italy, and the Netherlands. There is even a small pilot going on in Japan school! In the near future we can talk about the effects of KiVa across countries and cultures.
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School of Law and Criminology Senior Lecturer in Forensic Psychology (Chartered Forensic Psychologist) Salary is in the range £48,534 to £55,899 per annum inclusive of London Allowance Full time Applications are invited for a permanent post at Senior Lecturer level in the School of Law and Criminology, Royal Holloway University of London. This post is part of a strategic initiative to strengthen and expand the Department’s teaching portfolio to include the development and accreditation of a new MSc in Forensic Psychology (delivered jointly with the Department of Psychology) to complement our new and existing undergraduate programmes in Criminology & Psychology, Criminology & Sociology, and Law. We invite applications from Chartered Forensic Psychologists that demonstrate a well-established teaching and research profile together with leadership in undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes. This is a full time and permanent post, available from August 1st or as soon as possible thereafter. This post is based in Egham, Surrey where the College is situated in a beautiful, leafy campus near to Windsor Great Park and within commuting distance from London. We offer a dynamic and supportive environment, in an internationally recognised and multidisciplinary department. The Department has a strong research culture and good links with Criminal Justice agencies, prisons and the NHS, as well as government and charitable organisations. Academics in the Department work closely with colleagues in the Department of Psychology: http://www.rhul.ac.uk/psychology/home.aspx Successful applicants should possess an excellent teaching record, with previous experience of contributing to a BPS Accredited Masters programme in Forensic Psychology. You must be a Chartered Forensic Psychologist and member of the British Psychological Society’s Division of Forensic Psychology, possess the broad range of skills needed to teach effectively and should be able to contribute to and develop the Department’s teaching portfolio at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, including the supervision of doctoral students, and to contribute to a vibrant and multidisciplinary research community. Information about our existing teaching and research in the areas of Criminology, Criminal Justice, and Forensic/Criminological Psychology can be found at http://www.rhul.ac.uk/criminologyandsociology/home.aspx
Job Titles: Editor, Research Digest; Journalist, The Psychologist Employer: The British Psychological Society The Editor of the Society’s Research Digest and Journalist for The Psychologist, Dr Christian Jarrett, has moved on after more than a decade of exemplary service (see also p.229). As one era ends another begins, and we are excited to be recruiting two full-time replacements to these posts. These are genuinely exciting opportunities for those with a passion for psychology. Writing his farewell post (see tinyurl.com/goodbyecj), Christian recalls walking with his wife on Saturday afternoons along the canal between Slaithwaite and Marsden, in West Yorkshire. ‘We’d buy The Guardian, find a cosy cafe, and I’d flick through the jobs section with tea and a scone. Nearing the end of my PhD, I was in a quandary over what I’d do next. I knew I couldn’t spend the rest of my life studying eye movements, discovering more and more about less and less. But can you really earn a living out of a fascination with psychology and a love for writing, as I hoped to do?’ Indeed you can. I had come up with the idea of a new ‘e-research digest’ (as Christian says, ‘the ad put the quaint “e” in inverted commas just like that, in reference to the Digest being an e-mail newsletter’). We recruited Christian, and he now tells how his ‘dream job quickly became a passion’. Eleven years on, he has digested well over 1500 journal articles, written hundreds of news items and numerous features. Both the blog and Christian’s features have won awards, consistently received praise from diverse audiences, and reached huge audiences (last month the blog received over 300,000 page views. psychologist We’ve now got over 32,000 subscribers to the e-mail, and over 38,000 followers on Twitter @researchdigest). There’s no doubt Christian is a tough act to follow, but the expansion of both roles to fulltime shows the Society is very keen to build on this success and to continue to expand and modernise our offerings. These roles are absolutely central to the Society’s Royal Charter objective of a ‘dissemination of psychology pure and applied’, and exciting times are ahead. So if you love nothing more than immersing yourself in psychological research and practice, and communicating it to a large and diverse audience in an engaging and informative way, then we could be just right for each other. But you will need to be quick off the mark: the closing date for both roles is 31 March. Dr Jon Sutton Managing Editor the
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The psychology of stuff and things
Informal enquiries regarding this post can be directed to Head of Department, Dr Rosie Meek on r.meek@rhul.ac.uk or tel: 01784 276482. To view further details of this post and to apply please visit https://jobs.royalholloway.ac.uk The RHUL Recruitment Team can be contacted with queries by email at: recruitment@rhul.ac.uk or via telephone on: +44 (0)1784 41 4241. Please quote the reference: X0314/7615 Closing date: Midnight 11th April 2014. Interviews are expected to be held 29 - 30th April 2014. The College is committed to equality and diversity, and encourages applications from all sections of the community.
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Christian Jarrett on our lifelong relationship with objects
Incorporating Psychologist Appointments £5 or free to members of The British Psychological Society
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letters 542 news 552 careers 596 looking back 612
social support following stroke 566 the voices others cannot hear 570 managing to make a difference 576 why are effect sizes still neglected? 580
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Editor – Research Digest (ref:ERD)
Journalist, The Psychologist (ref:JTP)
Full-time permanent. Salary in the range £25k–£33k p.a, depending on experience.
Full-time permanent. Salary in the range £25k–£33k p.a, depending on experience.
For more than a decade, we have digested the latest academic journal articles in psychology to engage and inform a large, diverse and international audience. The Research Digest now receives an average of 230,000 page views per month in blog form, has 32,000 email subscribers and 37,000 Twitter followers. We want to build the success of this awardwinning blog and the work of the previous editor, in order to develop the Digest into a new era. The post is expanding to full-time in order to look ambitiously to the future: this is an exciting role with considerable potential. Your key responsibilities will be to research newly published, peer-reviewed studies in psychology; write accurate, clear and engaging ‘digests’ of these journal articles; commission and edit freelance contributions; and present the final material via various online and social media channels. The ideal candidate will combine a background in psychology with a passion for communicating specialist information in an easily accessible way. You will join our Psychologist Team, reporting to the Managing Editor, Dr Jon Sutton. You will work out of the Society’s offices, although there may be the potential for remote working.
We are recruiting a journalist for our monthly publication, The Psychologist. The Psychologist has a readership of 48,000 in print and more online, along with 24,000 followers on Twitter. It is regularly cited in the national press, and its journalist-written news and features are cornerstones of its topicality and distinctiveness. We want to build on this success and look ambitiously to the future, in order to take The Psychologist into a new era. This is an exciting new role which the right candidate will have considerable potential to shape. Your key responsibilities will be to propose, source, research and write quality, timely copy for The Psychologist ‘News’, ‘Society’ and feature articles; and present the final material in print and via various online and social media channels. The ideal candidate will combine a background in psychology with a qualification or experience in journalism. You will join our Psychologist Team, reporting to the Managing Editor, Dr Jon Sutton. You will work out of the Society’s offices, although there may be the potential for some remote working. Some out of hours work and travel (with occasional overnight stays) may be required.
For further details see www.bps.org.uk/jobs/society-office-staff-vacancies/society-office-staff-vacancies To apply for either of the vacancies above, please send a CV and covering letter linking your skills to our specific needs and quoting the job reference you are applying for, and how you found out about the vacancy, to: Personnel, The British Psychological Society, 48 Princess Road East, Leicester, LE1 7DR. Email: personnel@bps.org.uk The closing date for applications is noon on 31 March 2014. Interviews will be held on 1 or 2 May 2014 at our Leicester office.
seek and advertise at www.psychapp.co.uk
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REVIEWS
At peace with thoughts In Britain, John Gray has become a well-known public intellectual, in no small part due to the massive success of his 2002 book Straw Dogs. This book saw him emphasise the similarities between humans and animals (he refers to ‘human animals’ rather than merely ‘humans’), a theme he takes up again in The Silence of Animals. For psychological purposes, arguably the most relevant area of debate is that pertaining to the book’s title, of exploring the kinds of silence pursued by human and non-human animals. Whereas non-human animals run away from noise in their environment that they perceive as dangerous, human animals seek silence for ‘an escape from inner commotion’ (p.162). However, Gray thinks we human animals are not very good at doing this, for even the monastic flight into the desert or monastery will lead one into ‘dialogue’ with God, one’s past, or projections of the future. Unlike other animals, humans construct narratives about their lives. Seeking meaning from these narratives, and the ‘myths’ that underpin them (such as of progress or redemption), humans cannot help but use language in this way. Gradually, human animals have come to realise the error of retreating into silence, preferring instead to keep oneself so unsustainably busy that there is no time for reflection. Instead of inward retreat or The Silence of remaining busy, Gray thinks one should turn Animals: On outwards to nature, to hear ‘something beyond Progress and words’ (p.165). To this end, Gray cites the Other Modern example of J.A. Baker (1926–1987), author Myths of The Peregrine. Baker spent a considerable John Gray amount of time following peregrine falcons, and whilst he neither aimed to, nor achieved, a release from language, he was nonetheless able to still his mind temporarily for the time he was out with the falcons. To anyone familiar with the third wave of behavioural therapies, Gray’s line of argument may be familiar. His assertion that ‘to overcome language by means of language is obviously impossible’ (p.165) is reminiscent of the shift from the second generation of behavioural psychotherapies to the third generation, or ‘third wave’, as it has been termed by Steven Hayes. Rather than aiming for direct cognitive restructuring, some third-wave therapies have introduced silence and contemplation, such as mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR). Gray would question whether MBSR would lead to inner chatter and conflict, rather than to peace. Other third-wave therapies, such as acceptance and commitment therapy, seem not to try to want to replace language through cognitive restructuring, but are arguably replacing one myth (progress) with another (‘accepting one’s fate’, as Nietzsche would put it), for Gray would argue that we are always using myths to construct narratives. In other words, Gray’s book functions as a thought-provoking challenge to third-wave therapies, making one question their aims and methods. Nevertheless, Gray’s own solution, of an outward focus on peaceful nature, is romantic, but impractical; at some point the modern world demands we turn back from nature not only to society, but also to our own thoughts. I Allen Lane; 2013; Hb £18.99 Reviewed by Matthew Edward Harris who is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at Staffordshire University and Claire Harris who is an assistant psychologist at Green Lane Hospital, Devizes
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For the course reading list Psychology, Mental Health and Distress John Cromby, David Harper & Paula Reavey Yet another psychopathology textbook you may think, with reams of chapters about different therapies and disorders, but, oh no, this book’s whole aim is the exact opposite, and in part achieves what it sets out to do. In a bit of a two-finger salute to the medical establishment this book questions concepts in depth, such as diagnosis, the notion of normality and cultural identity, in a refreshing and certainly novel way. At times the various authors appear to go a bit far, arguments appearing slightly unbalanced, instead coming across as a bit of an ideological and political rant. For example, as a way of deconstructing the labelling issue of diagnosis they instead use the term distress, however this appears to hold a number of negative connotations, a number of my patients certainly have some positive and life-enhancing experiences as a result of their illness, which they would probably not be too happy to have labelled as ‘distress’. Distinct chapters on culture and service-user experience are an inspirational change to the standard psychopathology literature, everything from politics to early childhood attachment being considered in relation to mental health, this certainly leaving me pondering on some of my current clients. As a clinician and an academic, I was left (in a good way) reflecting on elements of my practice in relation to diagnosis, formulation and treatment, all of which are detailed in their own chapters, but the anti-psychiatry message at times felt a bit strong and idealistic. The easy read and engaging style, the vast range of references and up-to-date material mean this book would be a great addition to course reading lists. I still need convincing about its usefulness in clinical practice, but maybe the fact alone that I’m left reflecting on my view on related issues is exactly what the authors set out to achieve in the first place. I Palgrave Macmillan; 2013; Pb £38.99 Reviewed by Dr Claire Thompson who is a Chartered Psychologist and Senior Lecturer at Nottingham Trent University
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Building a virtual brain Exchanges at the Frontier BBC World Service podcast super computer which performs a million trillion calculations per second. Such a machine doesn’t yet exist, but Markram’s ambition is to have it built within the next decade. He shies away from the term ‘modelling’, preferring the concept of ‘algorithmic or principle-based reconstruction’ of the brain. ‘We have to be able to get to the principles, to reconstruct the hypotheses of the brain, check it against the biology, and keep doing that until finally we’ve understood the principles and we have an accurate copy.’
An easy guide to narrative therapy Narrative CBT John Rhodes The popularity of narrative approaches both in psychology and medicine has hugely increased in recent years. Physicians are used to talking about narrative medicine, qualitative researchers about content analysis, and psychologists about narrative therapy. In the psychological field narrative approaches recur within very different frameworks: cognitivism, constructivism, psychoanalysis, and so on. Narrative CBT has already become part of the third wave of cognitive therapies, by recognising that problems and changes are embedded in the personal stories of one’s own life. In this book, John Rhodes offers us the distinctive features of narrative therapy in the form of an accessible guide. Narrative CBT exhibits the pros and cons of every easy guide. It creates an easy-tounderstand overview of practical features and techniques, avoiding extensive theoretical and methodological backgrounds that can motivate the choice of one solution over another. The author himself explicitly recognises these limits
and clarifies his aim to explore how narrative ideas and practices can be combined with CBT. Narrative CBT is an introductory guide that may help CBT practitioners to embody the basic assumption of the third wave: perhaps it’s better to change the meaning of an event, rather than the event itself. I Routledge; 2014; Pb £14.99 Reviewed by Simone Cheli who is in the Psycho-oncology Unit, Department of Oncology, Florence, Italy
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And Markram’s end goal is an actual, visual representation: ‘We have to get close up, we have to go inside, we have to travel inside to be able to image the virtual brain across all its levels.’ This idea of levels is where the whole thing gets a bit too vague for my liking. As Markram acknowledges, scientists get trained to study the brain at a particular level. ‘The only way we can think of it is to build a digital model that contains all the levels.’ But can this virtual representation in any way represent ‘the genetic level, the protein level, the cellular level, the systems level, the wholebrain level, the behavioural level, the psychophysical level, the psychology level’? Markram wants his virtual brain, in a virtual body, to run around and make a decision... ‘the moment it makes a decision – e.g. there is some cheese behind the door – we will be able to trace back the entire causal chain of events that led to that behaviour. This is just not possible with any technology or any approach available today.’ I suspect that even in tomorrow's world, a billion euros could be a drop in the ocean in making it possible in any meaningful way. But what do I know. By the end of the 50 minutes, Markram’s soothing voice had
contribute
Professor Henry Markram has received the biggest personal grant in the history of science. But even with a billion euros from the European Union to play with, Markram has his work cut out. He has taken on the task of building a biologically accurate model of the human brain: ‘almost certainly the most sophisticated thing in the known universe’, according to podcast host A.C. Grayling. Modelling a thinking, remembering, learning, decision-making, virtual version of the human brain requires a
reassured me that he was well aware of the vast, interdisciplinary nature of the challenge his scientists face. ‘It’s beautiful, the brain’, he enthused. A neurone is ‘like a galaxy’, then later on Markram says it’s like the universe itself. Either way, Markram plays the role of starsailor rather well, so much so that it seems smallminded to chide him for spending huge sums of money which could, in other ways, make a real difference to those suffering from the very disorders he seeks to explain. ‘We need to put a spotlight on the human brain,’ he says. ‘This is not something where we should say “let's wait until we've understood the snail”… This is the one thing that guarantees society in the future.’ I suspect space agencies advance a similar argument, so why not properly fund an exploration of the universe within? Markram's own son has autism, and Markram sees people with such conditions as ‘scouts of evolution’. Perhaps in 10, 20, 100 years time we will come to view this project in a similar way. I Podcast: www.bbc.co.uk/ podcasts/series/ideas Reviewed by Jon Sutton, Managing Editor of The Psychologist
Sample titles just in: The Social Science of Cinema James C. Kaufman & Dean Keith Simonton (Eds.) The Handbook of Solitude Robert J. Coplan & Julie C. Bowker (Eds.) The Skeleton Cupboard: Every Life Has a Story Tanya Byron In Touch With the Future Alberto Gallace & Charles Spence For a full list of books available for review and information on reviewing for The Psychologist, see www.bps.org.uk/books. Send books for potential review to The Psychologist, 48 Princess Road East, Leicester LE1 7DR And remember: ‘Reviews’ now covers much more than books, so if you have other ideas please e-mail jon.sutton@bps.org.uk or follow @psychmag on Twitter for opportunities.
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A creative introduction Did the trauma of World War One lead to great creativity? BBC iWonder Did the trauma of World War One lead to great creativity? That was the question addressed in an 'iWonder' online guide from the BBC, combining short video clips, slideshows and text presented by politician and academic Baroness Shirley Williams and Chartered Psychologist Dr Victoria Tischler (University of Nottingham). Dr Tischler visited the Maudsley Hospital in London, built in 1915 to treat soliders suffering from shellshock. Patients were encouraged to take up creative pastimes to aid their recovery, and Dr Tischler described how this can help people to process traumatic experiences and deal with negative emotions. The result can be a positive identity shift, from patient to artist. Baroness Williams spoke about her mother's book Testament of Youth, about her experience of serving as a nurse in World War One. 'Whilst acute trauma can hinder creativity,' she said, 'there is evidence that such experiences can increase the imaginative capacity. A 2012 study found that veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder were better able to develop imaginative and complex imagery compared to those veterans who has not suffered from it.' As Baroness Williams concluded, the results of creative processes have a wider impact on society, challenging stigma, educating us all. This online guide is, in itself, a creative way to introduce a wide audience to concepts such as post-traumatic growth, and as such could be very suitable for teachers during this commemorative year. I www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zptgq6f Reviewed by Jon Sutton, Managing Editor of The Psychologist
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Nothing about us without us CBT for Children and Adolescents with High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders Angela Scarpa, Susan Williams White & Tony Attwood (Eds.) This book contains thought-provoking work by various authors on different CBT-based psychosocial approaches to treating young people with high-functioning autism (HFASD) – those diagnosed with ASD but with no intellectual impairment. Some chapters look at working with common problems, such as anxiety, that are comorbid with HFASD, whilst others look at working with difficulties, like social skills deficits, directly associated with HFASD. It is argued that CBT is an appropriate model for this work because young people with HFASD have a tendency to logical thinking that can be used to evaluate the biases and assumptions that affect their feelings and behaviours. The thorough summaries of relevant research in each chapter show that evidence supporting the different approaches is very limited. In particular, the book contains many useful ideas about how to adapt therapy to the needs of young people with HFASD, which could be of relevance to all therapists working with this client group, but there has been little work done
on which of these are effective. There could have been more emphasis on these adaptations, such as structuring sessions, offering multiple-choice answers, teaching about emotions, using special interests, and not relying on words but using textual and visual aids. It would have been nice to know what the young people being treated thought of these approaches – the voice of the young person with HFASD is missing from the book. This reflects the underlying assumption that the therapist and the parents know what is best for the young person, which raises ethical issues that merit much greater consideration. It is only in Isabelle Hénault’s excellent chapter on relationships and sexuality that the rights of the young person with HFASD are raised – the right, in this case, to experience sexual curiosity and interest. And that lack elsewhere is a pity. I Guilford Press; 2013; Hb £30.99 Reviewed by Chris Baines who is a schools counselling coordinator and trainee counselling psychologist
Do you need to go on a digital diet? Menthal Android app, free from Google Play Menthal is an Android app designed to show users how much time they are spending on their smartphones. It was developed by Professor Alexander Markowetz and his team of computer programmers at the University of Bonn, with Markowetz commenting: ‘If you would like to go on a digital diet, we will provide you with the scales.’ Menthal provides feedback on your mobile phone usage, with the developers claiming this allows the user to ‘maintain a sustainable digital lifestyle’. Running in the background, it records every time you unlock your phone, start an app, receive a call, etc. The data is sent to the developers once a day (using just 100 kilobytes of data per
day). There they extract the most interesting indicators, such as the total time you spent with your phone or the number of times you used a particular app. ‘You can then browse this aggregated information’, say the developers, ‘and interpret it in the context of your lifestyle.’ Menthal has been applied to excessive smartphone use,
but alternatively it could be conceptualised as a ‘digital diary’. Perhaps it could benefit adults suffering with shortterm memory loss or Alzheimer’s disease, as the app allows users to recall personal time spent using technology. However, we would have liked to see more personalisation and social features: essential components for enhanced positive and engaged user experiences. I Reviewed by Derek Laffan, Niall Byrne and Seán Doyle who are at the Institute of Art, Design and Technology (IADT), Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, Ireland
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Beyond conscious horizons The Power of the Placebo How You Really Make Decisions BBC Two If a map of the human mind were to be drawn in the style of a 17th-century naval cartographer, there would have to be a sizeable region labelled ‘Here be dragons’. The idea of unconscious influences on thought and behaviour was most famously developed into a theoretical framework by Freud. More recent investigations of the unconscious have ditched his largely unfalsifiable speculations about id, ego and superego, in favour of a focus on the physical and cognitive outcomes of unconscious processes. In ‘The power of the placebo’ Horizon showed how positive medical outcomes often result from interventions that have no active ingredient, but that somehow fool the mind. In one instance, patients experienced pain relief when accidentally given the wrong treatment for their damaged backs. The ‘right’ treatment turned out to be a placebo. Likewise, fake acupuncture, where patients only think their skin is being punctured, is as effective as the real thing, and more so when the doctor behaves in a caring manner.
Placebo medicine can lead to measurable physical changes. Fake oxygen to treat altitude sickness reduces levels of the PGE2 neurotransmitter, even though blood oxygen levels do not change. Placebo treatment for Parkinson’s disease leads to increased levels of dopamine, the neurotransmitter that regulates movement. Placebos can even work when patients know they are receiving placebo treatment. Another Horizon programme, ‘How you really make decisions’, introduced the idea that conscious thought may, in large part, serve to rationalise decisions that have already been taken at an unconscious level. Intuitive thinking is often associated with irrationality and over 150 cognitive biases have been identified by researchers. The phenomenon of loss aversion appears to underlie irrational behaviour in cab drivers, city traders and rhesus monkeys. The animal research suggests that loss aversion may have evolved 35 million years ago, although no one
addressed the question of why something so apparently irrational would have been favoured by natural selection. We were also provided with a demonstration of inattentional blindness, in which focusing your attention on one thing can lead you to miss important information elsewhere. My own interest in the subject matter almost, but not quite, blinded me to one rather striking observation: both shows were heavily dominated by men. The placebo programme, narrated in an annoyingly breathless fashion by Steven Berkoff, featured some nine scientists, all male. In the decisions programme, also with a male narrator, I counted seven scientists, just one of whom was female and who (in the tradition of Diane Fossey and Jane Goodall) worked with animals. One wonders what unconscious influence this gender disparity might have on the potential scientists of tomorrow. I Reviewed by Dr David Hardman who is at London Metropolitan University
HIGHGATE CONSULTING ROOMS
A pleasure to read Political Psychology: Critical Perspectives Cristian Tileaga ˇ In a time when a wide variety of political actions are making headlines worldwide this wellwritten and informative book provides a new way of understanding the psychological factors involved in politics. The focus on European political psychology provides an interesting counterpoint to many of the other introductory texts, which tend to describe North American approaches to the subject. The book presents a view of what it terms ‘interpretive political psychology’ that aims to go beyond simply describing modern culture to provide a deeper understanding of the way in which society functions over time. A wide variety of topics are looked at through this lens, including political communication, extremism and political identity. The most striking thing
about this book is the way in which complex topics are clearly and succinctly presented whilst still managing to emphasise the theoretical and methodological diversity of the field. Throughout all the chapters runs the author’s vision of a political
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psychology that moves beyond the individualistic paradigms that are the norm in much of the current work on political values and behaviour. He effortlessly incorporates significant research in many areas of social psychology in a way that makes this book a pleasure to read. Of particular interest is the author’s understanding of both individual and collective human action and the way in which these impact on politics and society. Although this is an introductory textbook, there is a detailed bibliography that will enable those who are interested to further explore the ideas that are presented. I Cambridge University Press; 2013; £60.00 Reviewed by Evelyn Gibson who is with West London Mental Health Trust
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reviews
JIM BRIDGES – HOME BOX OFFICE
Self-indulgent watching True Detective HBO
The new HBO series True Detective, showing in the UK on Sky Atlantic, is not a bundle of laughs. Anyone watching it for Woody Harrelson, expecting it to be like Cheers purely because he’s in it (hello, my wife), is likely to be disappointed. The protagonists trudge through bleak backwood US settlements which look like they've been dropped out of the sky, solving grisly murders, all to a masterfully curated but gravelly soundtrack. But from an audience of psychologists, it may at least raise a knowing smile. I have so far only caught up with episode one, but was struck by the psychological content in the script. ‘We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self’, says Rust Cohle. ‘A secretion of sensory experience and feeling. Programmed with total
assurance that we are each somebody, when, in fact, nobody is anybody.’ Psychologist Professor Bruce Hood, and his latest book The Self Illusion, sprang to mind. Indeed, over on Discover Magazine blog (see
tinyurl.com/obtb2xf), Kyle Hill was making the same connection, citing Hood’s work and concluding: ‘Matthew McConaughey’s character in True Detective could go down in TV history as the world’s biggest
A sturdy foothold Psychopaths: An Introduction Herschel Prins Writing from over half a century of experience within the field, Prins offers a ‘toe in the bath’ introduction to psychopathy. Spanning five concise yet informative chapters, past literature, law and cultural examples are recruited to highlight the diversity of psychopathic research. Whilst this text is aimed at students in criminology, psychology and law, others with wider learning interests may welcome its accessible nature. Although earlier stages highlight the steep progression of psychopathic literature, it is the latter chapters, which will grasp the interest of the reader. Questions are asked of how the British criminal justice systems are tasked with the difficulty of juggling containment, treatment
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and rehabilitation, whilst assessing wider complexities in understanding psychopathic disorder. This is staged in the context of a social climate whereby the public places higher importance on punitive, compared to rehabilitative measures for the ‘mad or bad’. Though interested readers may be left wanting to know more about some of the topics proposed, Prins provides further reading to key texts when appropriate and offers open discussion questions at the close of each chapter. An informative read which is sure to offer a sturdy foothold to any student in the field. I Waterside Press; 2013; Pb £16.50 Reviewed by Dean Fido who is a PhD student at Nottingham Trent University
bummer – a pessimist walking into extinction. That doesn’t mean he’s wrong. Knowing that the mind is not separate from the brain, that our senses can be fooled, that our sense of self can break down if we simply pay attention to the here and now, Rust Cohle is right – we are a multitude of unconscious processes cobbled together in a locked room and labelled “You”.’ The psychological analyses continued over on Psychology Today, with clinical psychiatrist Dale Archer writing on the identities and ‘broken boundaries’ of Cohle and his partner Martin Hart (heart and soul, anyone?). Cohle sees human consciousness as ‘a tragic step in evolution… Nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist by natural law.’ He believes ‘we became too self-aware’, but for a series like this I’m not sure that’s possible… I for one am looking forward to watching the rest of this series in an annoyingly selfaware fashion, unravelling its mysteries and pondering what it all means for our view of self. I Reviewed by Jon Sutton, Managing Editor of The Psychologist
vol 27 no 4
april 2014
BPS Textbooks in Psychology No other series bears the BPS seal of approval Refreshingly written to consider more than Northern American research, this series is the ďŹ rst to give a truly international perspective. Every title fully complies with the BPS syllabus in the topic. Each book is supported by a companion website, featuring additional resource materials for both instructors and students.
Special discounts available for BPS members*
* For further information go to
www.wiley.com/go/bps iv
vol 27 no 4
april 2014
BIG PICTURE
Crudely erased adults Image from A.R Hopwood’s False Memory Archive. Send your ideas for ‘Big picture’ to jon.sutton@bps.org.uk.
Based upon scientific research that demonstrates how susceptible we are to false memories, A.R. Hopwood’s False Memory Archive exhibition features artworks and an everexpanding collection of vivid personal accounts of things that never really happened. Including a display of manipulated
photographs of UFO sightings and a collaboration with a fictional security guard (pictured here in ‘Crudely Erased Adults, 1/6’), Hopwood’s work evocatively reflects the way we creatively reconstruct our sense of the past, while providing insight into the often humorous, obscure and uncomfortable things people have
www.thepsychologist.org.uk FALSE MEMORY ARCHIVE: CRUDELY ERASED ADULTS, 1/6, A.R. HOPWOOD, 2012
misremembered. Hopwood has collaborated with psychologists to revisit key experiments, reflecting on the history and consequences of this provocative field of memory research including with Professor Elizabeth Loftus (University of California, Irvine) and Professor Christopher
French (Goldsmiths College). The works collectively explore where the truth lies in a ‘false’ recollection, while questioning how a blend of fact and fiction can be used to challenge assumptions about memory. Other works include an LP of silences from a memory experiment, Jackie Kennedy’s
Chanel suit re-made and a ‘remote’ past life regression reading by a psychic called Crystal. Touring venues include The Mead Gallery in Coventry, The Exchange in Penzance, the Freud Museum London, and the University of Edinburgh’s Talbot Rice Gallery (including a presentation by Professor Sergio
Della Sala on 19 April). A.R. Hopwood’s False Memory Archive is supported by grants from the Wellcome Trust, Arts Council England and Creative Scotland. You can view more about the project and submit a false or ‘non-believed’ memory here: www.falsememoryarchive.com.