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the

psychologist vol 26 no 6

june 2013

The paradox of knowing Do we have greater insight into others than ourselves?

David Dunning investigates.

Incorporating Psychologist Appointments ÂŁ5 or free to members of The British Psychological Society

letters 382 news 390 careers 444 looking back 462

reports from the annual conference 398 imagining the future 418 interview: working at the cutting edge 424 methods: network analysis 430

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vol 26 no 6

june 2013

the

psychologist vol 26 no 6

letters diagnosis debate; humour; stupidity; the academic backlog; disabled scientists; A-level; the virtual conference; and more

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news and digest 390 the launch of DSM-5; hospital passport; emotional support following stroke; nudge unit; fist clenching and memory; replication; awards; and the latest nuggets from the Society’s free Research Digest service annual conference 398 reports from the Society’s Annual Conference in Harrogate, including: Alex Haslam and Robin Dunbar covering each other’s keynotes; asylum seekers; social media; Presidential Address; magicians, mesmerists and mediums; the 2011 riots; contemporary masculinities; revisiting the classics; ethics; working memory and education; nostalgia; and more ANNA HEATH

The paradox of knowing Why do we have greater insight into others than ourselves?

David Dunning outlines some intriguing research

414

pull-out

Imagining the future – a bird’s eye view James Thom, Nicola Clayton and Jon Simons on episodic future thinking

418

Interview: Working at the cutting edge Lance Workman talks to Kevin Browne about his international work on institutional childcare practices

424

Methods: Network analysis David Hevey, Aifric Collins and Amy Brogan

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society 432 President’s column; Lifetime Achievement Award; the Research Digest on the radio; and more careers and appointments

444

we meet Professor Dame Glynis Breakwell, and Dr Jennifer Hall writes about her work in Uganda

june 2013

THE ISSUE In As You Like It, Shakespeare noted that ‘The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool’. Bertrand Russell concurred: ‘One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision’.

In 1999 David Dunning and Justin Kruger demonstrated the effect experimentally in one of my favourite ever findings: incompetent people lack the competence to recognise their own incompetence.

But it’s not just the incompetent: we are all prone to errors in our understanding of ourselves in comparison to others. Nearly seven years on from his last piece (tinyurl.com/cu66oe3) we welcome Dunning back for an update on why people in general appear to know other people better than they know themselves.

Elsewhere we have an extensive set of reports from the Society’s Annual Conference (see p.398), and our broader ‘Reviews’ section (p.452) continues to benefit from willing volunteers, many alerted to opportunities through @psychmag on Twitter.

Dr Jon Sutton

reviews is psychology being taken for a ride?; pioneers; experiences of war; Being Human; A Box of Birds; Light Show; All in the Mind; and more

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new voices 458 an ecological approach to audio description from Louise Fryer in the latest of our series for budding writers (see www.bps.org.uk/newvoices) looking back Freud and the British royal family: David Cohen delves into some intriguing and bizarre connections

462

one on one

464

…with Stephen Murgatroyd

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381

LETTERS

Debate on DSM-5: a false dichotomy?

contribute

Recent media coverage suggests that the debate between clinical psychology and psychiatry has become polarised; that the latter group proposes a strictly biomedical conception of mental ‘illnesses’ and that the former is opposed not only to the DSM project and the over-medicalisation of distress, but to the idea of classifying people’s problems at all. However, clinical psychological research opens up a third position between these extremes, allowing us to think differently about what a psychological ‘diagnosis’ could mean.

Validity is a central theoretical concern to psychology, so it is no surprise that the DSM’s lack in this regard should be felt by clinicians to be an embarrassing indictment of the manual’s clinical utility.

However, it is a mistake to infer that a lack of validity in actually-existingdiagnosis precludes the possibility of

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

TIM SANDERS

A recent statement by the BPS Division of Clinical Psychology (DCP) attacking the DSM-5 gained substantial visibility in the media, including a high-profile article in the Observer (12 May 2013) accompanied by opinion pieces by Professor of Psychological Medicine Sir Simon Wessely and author and child psychologist Oliver James.

According to the Observer article, the DCP representatives claimed that ‘it was unhelpful to see mental health issues as illnesses with biological causes [italics ours]… On the contrary, there is now overwhelming evidence that people break down as a result of a complex mix of social and psychological circumstances – bereavement and loss, poverty and discrimination, trauma and abuse’.

The DCP representatives in the media appear to predicate their argument on a false dichotomy between genes and environment, which seems to presume that search for genetic risk factors equals drive for medication and that demonstration of environmental risk calls for psychological therapy. We do not know of any informed researchers who would make a simplistic proposal like this. The pronouncements in the media also give the impression that ‘psychological and social circumstances’ are something that transcends biology. Yet anyone who has done their homework in keeping up with the research in the past 20 years should be able to draw the following simple conclusions for which the evidence base is unequivocal: I Individuals’ psychological circumstances do not exist without biology. Only a committed dualist would make this argument. Therefore, to understand psychological disorders, we cannot ignore biology.

I

I

There are substantial individual differences in how people react to ‘environmental’ risk factors and overwhelming evidence that genetic factors play a role in susceptibility to both bad and good environments.

‘Environmental’ factors cannot be assumed to be causal or free from genetic influences.

The above points should be taken into account by DCP representatives who are in danger of muddying mental health issues by ignoring the biology. Their present stance will fail to deliver help for those who suffer from mental health problems.

Unfortunately, this advice will be lost on those who are not slowed down by a need for an evidence base, but instead

a valid system of diagnosis. Psychology is founded on statistical and psychometric tools which allow us to identify meaningful classifications and approach the question of whether there is a coherent concept ‘out there’ or not.

Psychologists measure, with some degree of success, such abstract concepts as ‘attachment’, ‘stigma’ and ‘theory of mind’, and there is nothing inherent to mental health problems (as opposed to DSM categories) that suggests they could not be categorised in the same way. This need not entail a classification of people who manifest these problems, and it need not entail the assumption that the problems in question are ‘illnesses’ with a poor prognosis.

In fact, much current clinical psychological research, even where it rejects the categories of the DSM, points

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

toward the possibility of a more effective underlying classification. A recent example is Longden et al.’s (2012) comprehensive review of the role of dissociation and trauma in voice-hearing.

Longden and her colleagues suggest that a phenomenon once considered to be a ‘symptom’ of schizophrenia can more usefully be regarded as the result of dissociative processes that emerge as a result of traumatic experiences.

Although this represents a welcome turn from the ‘medical model’ of psychosis, it nonetheless assumes a reliably observable process occurring in voice-hearing, one that helps both to distinguish and explain cases of the phenomenon. Identifying a common dissociative process is not to mark people out for social isolation or shame, but to understand why their minds have manifested their distress in

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

not permit the publication of every letter received.

However, see www.thepsychologist.org.uk to contribute to our discussion forum (members only).

vol 26 no 6

june 2013

letters

Fanning away the smoke irresponsibly make unsubstantiated and alarmist pronouncements about child abuse causing schizophrenia.

However, representatives of the DCP should know better. It is regrettable that the Observer appears to value a provocative soundbite over an informed debate on the issues of mental health and give column inches to die-hards like Oliver James.

As Sir Simon Wessely points out in his response piece to the Observer article, naturally the diagnostic ‘map’ changes as the scientific evidence comes in. And because the mechanisms that result in vulnerability to mental ill health are complex, the refinement of our understanding will not happen overnight.

The National Institute of Mental Health in the USA has indicated that they will direct their funding towards research that is not restricted by the current diagnostic criteria. As far as we can see, the purpose of their statement has not been to advocate a wholesale rejection of DSM-5 in current clinical practice, but instead to encourage new advances in our understanding of the symptoms that mark mental illness – particularly and explicitly with regard to biological vulnerability.

Current treatment methods for the symptoms of mental illness (whether these consist of medication or ‘psychological’ treatments) are far from universally effective. It is therefore critical that we do indeed endeavour to understand the complex factors that lead to mental ill health and that we do not write biology off in the process.

Professor Essi Viding University College London Professor Uta Frith University College London

a way that is, on the face of it, so confusing.

As a trainee clinical psychologist, I find formulation invaluable and idiographic research an essential corrective to the epistemic and social costs of categorisation; ultimately diagnosis should come to be seen as complementary to and not in conflict with these forms of knowledge. Ideally it would even be derived from something like a formulation and would be used in such clinical, research and administrative situations as require a short descriptive label.

Something like this may already be happening anyway, albeit without explicit acknowledgement; the sorts of arguments that get used against diagnosis themselves often rely on the same essential epistemological shortcuts that are currently clumsily provided by systems like DSM. A useful example is the diagnosis of ‘borderline personality disorder’.

So called borderline personality disorder is immensely controversial; it is widely acknowledged that it is a stigmatising term, even an insult.

I had long observed that nonnicotine factors can stop people quitting smoking (‘Why is it so hard to quit smoking?’ May 2013). Even anti-smoking ads with pictures of cigarettes or of pregnant women wreathed in

smoke can arouse desire. So the trouble with ecigarettes is that they are too much like real ones. I have also noted how many people begin smoking for something to do with their hands in a social situation.

My granddaughter was revealed to me as a two-years

Psychologists have shown that it is less a disorder than a particular psychic response to complex childhood trauma (e.g. Fonagy et al., 2003). Encouragingly, appropriate treatments have emerged in the form of manualised and evidencebased psychotherapies (e.g. Bateman & Fonagy, 2004; Linehan, 1993). In many ways, this has been a case of a category successfully tackled head on by psychological researchers and activists alike.

This success nonetheless relies on the existence of a common language between researchers and within services.

Campaigners can’t simultaneously deny the existence of the phenomenon whilst continuing to successfully discuss it as though it were real. The extreme nature of the problem (which can involve severe self-harm and suicide) makes it particularly important to have a shared language with which to understand it.

In abandoning the DSM, the Division of Clinical Psychology has dispensed with a particular set of names and their problematic assumptions concerning medical-genetic underpinnings. However to abandon classification altogether would

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smoker, when she had decided she wished to stop. She is a noted drama-queen in international TV and videomaking, working in a climate of smokers. I gave her a dozen cheap pretty folding handfans and ideas about how to flaunt them, and be a trendsetter.

There was also a laugh in using them too.

Since then I have offered playing with fans to other girls entrapped in smoking by social factors. To my knowledge they have all stopped smoking. Of course, other factors hold too – a disapproving grandmother may well be one.

Dr Valerie Yule Victoria, Australia

be to dispense with the conceptual means for addressing real clinical and social problems. The absence of any form of common language would send nomothetic clinical research and the organisation of mental health services into a communicative impasse.

Huw Green Trainee clinical psychologist and PhD student City University of New York References Bateman, A. & Fonagy, P. (2004). Psychotherapy for borderline personality disorder: Mentalization-based treatment. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fonagy, P., Target, M., Gergely, G. et al. (2003). The developmental roots of borderline personality disorder in early attachment relationships: A theory and some evidence. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 23(3), 412–459.

Linehan, M.M. (1993). Cognitive behavioural therapy of borderline personality disorder. New York: Guilford Press.

Longden, E., Madill, A. & Waterman, M. (2012).

Dissociation, trauma and the role of lived experience: Toward a new conceptualization of voice hearing. Psychological Bulletin, 138(1), 28–76.

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letters

In good humour The articles in your April edition attest to the therapeutic power of humour, comedy and laughter. I was therefore a little surprised to see no mention of Frank Farrelly, founder of Provocative Therapy, the cutting edge in the clinical use of humour and reverse psychology in psychotherapy.

Farrelly (1931–2013) began his professional life as a psychiatric social worker at Mendota State Institute in Madison, Wisconsin, a psychiatric hospital for patients with severe, complex mental disorders. Trained in the Rogerian method of client-centred therapy (today known simply as ‘counselling’) his psychotherapeutic methodology changed dramatically in 1963 as the result of a single encounter with a very ill, chronic schizophrenic inpatient. Farrelly had counselled this patient for 90 sessions with no discernible effect. In the 91st session he realised that empathy, warmth and genuineness (the cornerstones of counselling) were simply not working and his patient remained pessimistic about his prognosis and chances of ever leaving the hospital.

In his seminal text on the subject, Provocative Therapy (Meta Publications 1973), Farrelly describes how he ‘gave up’ and said to the patient: ‘Okay, I agree.

You’re hopeless. Now let’s try this for 91 interviews. Let’s trying agreeing with you about yourself from here on out.’ The patient responded immediately both in more assertive body language and by telling Farrelly that he disagreed with this hopeless assessment of his case and that he was ‘not that bad’. As an intrigued Farrelly persisted with this innovative paradoxical approach, the patient continued to argue animatedly against his devil’s advocate-like assessments and six

As someone who has made a detailed study of humour – it was my PhD topic, I believe that more cognisance should be taken of Freud’s (1905/1976) triad of wit, the comic, and humour.

In brief, wit comprises contrived jokes, originally often ‘put-downs’ but today also word-play and similar mind games involving incongruities. The comic refers to visual humour, born from poking fun at those considered deformed or inferior, thus giving a boost to one’s feeling of superiority. Humour, by contrast, is an attitude or personality trait that enables us to make sense of an ambiguous situation where logic fails: it is a survival mechanism requiring creativity.

Much wit is cruel, and it is believed that the relief provided by laughter once one has ‘got’ the joke originated from a primitive ‘roar of triumph’ of the victor in an ancient jungle duel (Pettifor, 1982).

The loser, if still alive, showed submission with the ‘smile of appeasement’ (Raskin,

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weeks later felt so much better that he discharged himself from hospital.

Emboldened by his success with this, the first tool of Provocative Therapy (‘There is no solution to your problem’) Farrelly developed dozens of further tactics such as ‘Play the Blame Game’, ‘Do more of the same!’ and ‘What’s wrong with that?’ He went on to teach Provocative Therapy to therapists all over the world. Many would not exclusively use Provocative Therapy, but most would learn how to use humour and reverse psychology effectively and safely in their practices.

The golden rule of Provocative Therapy is to ensure that you have ‘a twinkle in the eye and affection in the heart’ when you use it. The client finds that his/her aberrant behaviour and thoughts are being therapeutically satirised but s/he as a whole person feels validated, understood and cared for – all much in the spirit of Carl Rogers but strategically very different.

Laughter is by far the most common outcome in a session of Provocative Therapy although all forms of catharsis are possible. When psychologist clients get their inner jokes, the funny side of how they are preventing themselves from finding fulfilment in life, a window of opportunity for meaningful change opens up for them. The goal of Provocative Therapy is essentially to change clients’ behaviour by therapeutically provoking them with humour and reverse psychology to locate, verbalise, own and enact their own solutions to their problems. the

vol 26 no 4

april 2013

Dr Brian Kaplan London W1

Have you heard the one about… … the psychology of humour, comedy and laughter?

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

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

1985); thus the smile originated in a completely opposite manner to the laugh.

There are many claims to being the world’s oldest joke, but it would be difficult to go further back than a riddle found among the hieroglyphics in the tomb of Pharaoh Snefru (2613–2589 BC).

One could not openly criticise someone who was considered to be a god without risking execution, but a tomb architect obviously wanted posterity to know something about this deity that was not discussed in polite circles during his lifetime. The architect therefore compiled the following revealing riddle: ‘How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? – You sail a boatload of young women down the Nile, dressed only in fishing nets, and

invite the pharaoh to go and catch a fish!’ Although it might lose something in the translation, with only a few changes to the wording it can be made a topical witticism that can be applied to some of our contemporary politicians, sports personalities and entertainers. Indeed, it seems that life has not changed much over four and a half thousand years!

Dr Michael Lowis Northampton References Freud, S. (1976). Jokes and their relation to the unconscious. Pelican Freud Library Vol. 6, J. Strachey (Ed. and Trans.) and A. Richards (Ed.).

Harmondsworth: Penguin. (Original work published 1905) Pettifor, J.L. (1982). Practice wise: A touch of ethics and humour. Personality and Individual Differences, 13(7), 799–804.

Raskin, V. (1985). Semantic mechanisms of humour.

Dordrecht: Reidel.

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letters

The Laws of Stupidity It has long been my their universality would do contention that we much to obviate unnecessary psychologists spend far too hand-wringing over much time studying humanity’s foibles, providing intelligence whilst that other an understanding that our great human faculty, stupidity, highly evolved ability to be receives scant attention. Even stupid makes recurrent a cursory glance at history disasters simply inevitable. shows that our stupidity has Nikolaas Tinbergen, the great had a far greater effect on ethologist and Nobel Laureate, events than our much vaunted clearly recognised this when intelligence. (Warfare in its he said: ‘I believe that I have various forms is a good discovered the missing link example; don’t get me started between animals and on the tobacco industry.) intelligent life: it is us.’

Careful consideration of Let it not be said that I the field leads me to have been slow propose that there exists to apply these a set of underlying Laws insights to my of Stupidity, on a par professional perhaps with Newton’s work. I write Laws of Motion or the a lot of reports Laws of for the courts.

Thermodynamics in their In a recent one, universal applicability.

I offered a There appear to be four diagnosis of of these: stupidity, hedging Nikolaas 1. Stupidity is a this round with an Tinbergen universal human acceptance that this faculty, not found in did not exactly animals. – This means, comprise a recognised DSM-IV inevitably, that you are category. I argued that this was stupid and so am I. the only possible 2. Stupidity is not the opposite interpretation of the person of intelligence, they are having accidentally set fire to orthogonal dimensions. – their bed (with themselves in This means that it is it) on not just one, but no possible for someone to fewer than three occasions. be highly intelligent and The director of the agency that extremely stupid at the provided the instructions same time. promptly had kittens about 3. Whilst the stupidity of this unconventional diagnosis, others is obvious, one’s own but the court and the referring is entirely invisible, solicitors appeared to have no irrespective of magnitude. – problem with it at all.

This accounts for the There have been some common illusion that one moves in the right direction. is the only intelligent being A recent edition of New on the planet.

Scientist devoted its cover 4. Unlike intelligence, stupidity article to stupidity, recognising is additive, so that the the Second Law above and stupidity of a group equals commenting that the stupidity the sum of the stupidity of of intelligent people is its members. – Groups, particularly dangerous because such as corporations or of their ability to convert their governments, are therefore folly into action. Nevertheless, capable of acts of stupidity we shall probably have to wait which far exceed anything for some time before a Faculty any individual could of Stultology is established at manage by themselves. a university. And I still haven’t heard from Stockholm.

Galen Ives These laws explain a great Sheffield deal. A wider acceptance of

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FORUM SURVIVAL GUIDE Here’s an interesting question to ask any scientist: If you were to receive no more research funding, and just focus on writing up the data you have, how long would it take? The answer tends to go up with seniority, but a typical answer is three to five years.

Does this academic backlog matter? We’ve all done failed studies with inconclusive results, and it would be foolish trying to turn such sow’s ears into silk purses. But I suspect there’s a large swathe of research that doesn’t fall into that category, but still never gets written up. Is that right, given the time and money that have been expended in gathering data? Indeed, in clinical fields, it’s not only researchers putting effort into the research – there are also human participants who typically volunteer for studies on the assumption that the research will be published.

I think the backlog stems from the incentive structure of academia. If you want to make your way in the scientific world, you have to get grant funding and publish papers. When I started in research, a junior person would be happy to have one grant, but that was before the REF. Nowadays heads of department will encourage their staff to apply for numerous grants, and it’s commonplace for senior investigators to have several active grants, with estimates of around one to two hours per week spent on each one. Of course, time isn’t neatly divided up, and it’s more likely that the investigator will get the project up and running and then delegate it to junior staff, then putting in additional hours at the end of the project when it’s time to analyse and write up the data. The bulk of the day-to-day work will be done by postdocs or graduate students, and it can be a good training opportunity for them. All the same, it’s often the case that the amount of time specified by senior investigators is absurdly unrealistic. Yet this approach is encouraged: I doubt anyone ever questions a senior investigator’s time commitment when evaluating a grant, few funding bodies check whether you’ve done what you said you’d do, and even if they do, I’ve never heard of a funder demanding that a previous project be written up before they’ll consider a new funding application.

I don’t think the research community is particularly happy about this: many people have a sense of guilt at the backlog, but they feel they have no option. So the current system creates stress as well as inefficiency and waste. I’m not sure what the solution is, but I think this is something that research funders should start thinking about.

We need to change the incentives to allow people time to think.

I don’t believe anyone goes into science because they want to become rich and famous: we go into it because we are excited by ideas and want to discover new things. But just as bankers seem to get into a spiral of greed whereby they want higher and higher bonuses, it’s easy to get swept up in the need to prove yourself by getting more and more grants, and to lose sight of the whole purpose of the exercise – which should be to do good, thoughtful science.

Dorothy Bishop is Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology at the University of Oxford. Read the full version of this column at http://deevybee.blogspot.com. This column aims to prompt debate surrounding surviving and thriving in academia and research.

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letters

Disabled scientists invisible?

It’s 2013, and where is the recognition of the disabled scientist? How many readers of The Psychologist know of a disabled adolescent who chose to study a scientific subject? At university, I was one of two reading psychology and neither of us received much support.

Now a Fellow of the BPS, I still have a 100 per cent record of rejection of applications to committees.

I sense that colleagues look at the quantity of published papers, not what you’ve actually achieved. The lack of knowledge concerning the real experiences of a disabled person means that I have to read some very insensitive comments in our journals. Referees either have no idea, or don’t care about the damage caused by ill-informed opinions expressed as fact. Errors and distortions aren’t corrected, perpetuating myths and undermining best practice.

The fact is that there are disabled scientists who can make a contribution to the alleviation of suffering even though they are housebound. Example: Who was instrumental in creating awareness of the illness now known as chronic fatigue syndrome in the early and mid-1980s? I expect that few will know of my involvement because severely disabled scientists, bar one, are invisible. And in my view, our expertise is not valued.

There is no scientific equivalent of the Paralympics. Shouldn’t we, of all the professions, be challenging what is essentially pure discrimination?

Ellen Goudsmit Teddington, Middlesex

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Psychology A-level teaching A perennial issue in the teaching of A-level Psychology is the qualifications of those teaching it. This was most recently raised by Caroline Rigby (Letters, October 2012), who referred to Ofqual’s ‘A-level Reform Consultation’ document and put in a plea for the number of qualified subject specialists available to teach psychology to be increased as a matter of priority. However, I am aware that there has been much debate about the quality of training, the number of training places available and a general feeling of ‘malaise’ in relation to psychology as an academic discipline at pre-tertiary level.

Psychology is not regarded as a valuable subject in the Key Stage 4/5 curriculum by the present Education Secretary, who does not seem to understand the complexity of the subject. This is despite the fact that it is classed and funded as a STEM science, and has one of the highest numbers of candidates at A-level. In some schools, it is because of popular subjects like psychology that minority A-level subjects remain viable.

Psychology addresses key government priorities by equipping students with skills in science, communication and data handling.

Students are trained in numeracy and statistics, scientific method, communication skills and ethics, as well as gaining a deeper understanding of the diversity of human behaviour. Not only that, but psychology is the science subject which addresses a major gender issue, as it is studied by many more girls than boys.

The government funds psychology as a STEM science, so it is classified with the other sciences, and yet the Training and Development Agency for Schools places it in ‘other subjects’ when it comes to ITT; in higher education, psychology is a science with BScs and MScs being awarded, but in teacher training (and Ofsted inspection) it is a social science. Schools will be left with little or no choice but to teach psychology with non-specialists, as student demands for psychology remains high while the supply of qualified subject specialists declines.

This is problematic, given that it has been suggested that students taught by non-specialist psychology teachers often perform less well, particularly in research methods, statistics and cognitive psychology.

My local MP agreed to meet me to discuss my concerns further and we had a very productive 40-minute discussion after he observed one of my lessons. As a newly co-opted committee member of the Association for the Teaching of Psychology, I aim to continue to lobby the government on these issues. I am inspired by my own students, who describe psychology as ‘a disciplined scientific approach to understanding human behaviour’. We cannot let our students down by allowing psychology to be devalued by those who do not fully understand it.

Helene Ansell The Chetwynd Centre, Stafford

Clinical psychology heartache I wish to express my gratitude to Frances Harkness for her piece on breaking up with clinical psychology (Letters, May 2013). I was impressed with her frank discussion and filled with an overwhelming relief that it was not just me feeling this way.

I am a fourth-year undergraduate student and have been relentlessly pursuing volunteering opportunities throughout my undergraduate career, doing everything in my power to gain sought-after experience. I have been recently plagued with the dilemma of pursuing clinical psychology as a career, which would come at great cost to my finances, and time with the risk that it may be an unsuccessful pursuit. Due to naivety I often felt guilty for questioning the requirements

and saw this as my lack of commitment and resolve.

The heavy competition allows psychology to increasingly abuse graduates and I am fearful how long this can continue.

For many graduates it is simply unrealistic to be requested to work in minimum-wage support roles in pursuit of experience. This is leading to an elitist market in admissions, and will inevitably impact on the psychologist that the system produces. The nature of this system no longer reflects the values psychologists promote and has led me to question my faith in psychology. I feel inclined to take Frances’s message and invest my skills in a job which will reflect my personal values along with saving me five years of heartache.

I was recently at the Scottish BPS undergraduate conference and was delighted to listen to Society President Peter Banister comment on the wide range of skills psychology graduates gain, he described graduates as psychology’s ‘life blood’, and I was inspired by his take on the issue. Sadly, I feel the support for graduates is not reflected in the discipline and is increasingly dissipating their vital enthusiasm that psychology as a discipline could benefit from. By failing to nurture and support graduates I fear psychology is losing potential candidates like me, who would reflect the correct values required for clinical psychology training.

Sarah Rose Doune Perthshire

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letters

The validity of the virtual conference I recently attended a virtual conference, curious to see how it would operate. It did not live up to my expectations. This letter discusses some of its pros and cons, encouraging debate over how appropriate virtual conferences are to meet the conventional aims of a conference.

Listing 23 advantages of a virtual conference on the conference website, a factor analysis of sorts would spawn only a handful. Whilst many were true (mainly regarding sustainability), I disagree that the event had the ‘same validity as face-to-face (F2F) conferencing’. Mostly, there was a distinct lack of socialising, which I was anticipating could have been enhanced online. From experience, the positive memories from the conferences I have attended in my time as a PhD student, including BPS conferences, have been predominantly social. This event was merely a repository of papers.

With no fanfare, there was no ‘realtime’ interaction (which could have been easily arranged). As such, there was no

motivation to be online at any particular time. The most interactive it got was an e-mail informing that someone left a comment on your paper. The few times this happened – with zero comments on the majority of papers – I simply logged on and replied. This did not allow for a genuine discourse to develop. It in no way mirrored the sort of face-to-face questions at a conference, whether after a presentation or in the hallway. Irritatingly, there was no notification that other delegates replied to my own comments. In fact, there was a lack of correspondence from organisers overall, without even so much as an e-mail to confirm the event was live.

It wasn’t all bad. For the first time at a conference, I had my submission peerreviewed. The papers were organised thematically, and there were no technical hitches. How many presentations have you been to where PowerPoint didn’t work, or there was an ‘Apple vs. PC’-style mishap?

Whilst there are advantages, the key question raised is whether or not the virtual conference can replicate or improve upon the traditional conference.

Based on my experience, I do not believe this to be the case. Glamorous as it is not having to choose one presentation over another with conflicting schedule or fumble about with business cards, I don’t see that the overall template (at least in the guise noted above) can in any way rival the tried and tested formula of conferences.

Is this merely a reflection of my own experience though? The majority of delegates were from Eastern Europe and did not seem to complain. Perhaps more useful is to consider the very purpose of a conference. In this respect, a virtual conference allows for research to be disseminated much quicker and to a far broader audience than traditional conferences. For such reasons, and given the general rise of digital journals, etc., I expect many of you will find yourselves at a virtual conference in the future.

Hopefully it’s a better experience than mine.

Steven Caldwell Brown Glasgow Caledonian University

obituary

David Westbrook (1950–2013) Dave was only 62 when a car crash killed him this April, and the loss to the worlds of clinical psychology, CBT, Oxford Health NHS Trust, and to his family, is enormous.

He started his professional life in 1979 with a gold medal from his training as a Registered Mental Nurse, and worked on Vic Meyer’s behaviour therapy ward before re-training (again with distinction) as a clinical psychologist in 1985. Altogether, he worked for over 40 years for the NHS: as a therapist, supervisor, trainer, researcher and manager, making friends everywhere. He became especially skilled in treating people with chronic depression and with obsessional disorders; he was a founder member of Oxford Cognitive Therapy Centre (OCTC) and its director between 2004 and 2012. He retired last year, but continued to work as a clinician and to write.

His whole career provides an inspiring example of versatility in the very best tradition of clinical psychology. He has left us his contributions to the Oxford Guide to Behavioural Experiments in Cognitive Therapy, a hugely successful introduction to CBT, booklets for patients to use and many academic writings. All that he did was motivated by the wish to provide, develop and promote psychological services for those who need them. One of his special interests was in service-related research, and he tackled important questions: How does standard clinical practice compare with research results? Do people with complex problems benefit more from a longer than a shorter treatment?

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He was a hands-on psychologist, with a talent for management, whose clinical work was guided by care and compassion. Those who benefited from his training and supervision, for example in Poland, Iceland, Kosovo and Libya, but especially those in Oxford, enjoyed his clear thinking and relaxed delivery. His attitudes and personal style seemed to be designed for cognitive therapy: collaborative, experimental, open and explicit, ready to listen, and to respond to feedback as well as to offer it clearly and honestly. As many will remember, he was completely informal: never dressed up in jargon (and almost never in a suit); always able to appreciate the ridiculous and to laugh at himself.

I worked with him for nearly 30 years and never once heard him boast.

Dave Westbrook was a big man with a big brain and a big heart. He had a serious commitment to important stuff, with laughter never far behind, and an enviable light touch. No wonder he loved music and read philosophy as well as being superbly competent in all things technical. He was a devoted and very much loved family man. He will be remembered with admiration and pleasure as well as sadness.

Gillian Butler Oxford

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NEWS

‘Seismic move’ or barely a tremor?

As this month’s issue of The Psychologist was headed to the printers, the American Psychiatric Association were just days away from publishing the eagerly anticipated fifth edition of their diagnostic code, the DSM-5. Never far from controversy, the publication’s imminent arrival was overshadowed by a double-whammy of criticism – from the director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the world’s largest funder of mental health research, and from the Society’s own Division of Clinical Psychology (DCP).

Writing on his official blog, NIMH Director Thomas Insel lamented the fact that diagnostic categories in psychiatry continue to be based on symptom clusters, not on underlying biological causes. ‘Patients with mental disorders deserve better,’ he said, adding that his organisation ‘ will be re-orienting its research away from DSM categories.’ He explained that for the last 18 months the NIMH has been running a project called Research Domain Criteria, which aims to ‘transform diagnosis by incorporating

genetics, imaging, cognitive science, and other levels of information to lay the foundation for a new classification system.’

Headed by clinical psychologist Bruce Cuthbert, the motivation for the decade-long Research Domain Criteria project is the frequent finding that biomarkers for mental illness do not match psychiatric diagnostic categories that are based on patient symptoms. For instance, an NIH-funded study published earlier this year reported that the same four genetic variations were associated with five different psychiatric diagnoses – autism, ADHD, depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia (see April News).

Commentators were divided as to the significance of Insel’s intervention.

Vaughan Bell of the Institute of Psychiatry called it a ‘potentially seismic move’. Hank Campbell, founder of the Science 2.0 website, said the NIMH had delivered a ‘kill shot to DSM-5’.

However, others were left wondering what all the fuss was about. It is well-

documented that the original aim of DSM-5 was to replace the old categorybased diagnostic system with a new dimensional format based on underlying biological risk factors, but the project was abandoned for lack of adequate data.

In a press statement, DSM-5 chair David Kupfer said the promise of biological markers for mental disorders had been anticipated since the 70s, but that we’re still waiting. Meantime, he said DSM-5 ‘represents the strongest system currently available for classifying disorders.’

Professor Francesca Happe, Director of the MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre at the Institute of Psychiatry and a member of the neurodevelopmental disorders work group for DSM-5, appeared to back Kupfer’s view when she told us: ‘At the beginning of the DSM-5 process, they asked everyone to consider whether neurobiological information, including genetics and anything you can think of on the biological side, could be used to aid diagnosis in any of these conditions,

Hospital passports ‘a great success’ An innovative scheme which aims to help children combat of how it helped make going into hospital seem less daunting. their fear of being in hospital is to be rolled out across Scotland.

I am delighted that the passport is now to be rolled out to other The Hospital Passport scheme was developed by children’s hospitals across Scotland, and I hope it can make a psychologists at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Glasgow difference to the experiences of more children and their families.’

(Yorkhill) and has been piloted in a number of wards in the A parent involved in the pilot scheme said: ‘It definitely hospital. helped me and my child talk more and made Children can use it easier to approach what is wrong with her the passport around the and why she has come to hospital.’ hospital collecting a Psychologist Dr Janie Donnan, who covariety of stickers and created the Hospital Passport Coping Kit at stamps as they go through Yorkhill, explained: ‘The passport has proven various treatments, or to be a great success not only among children ‘travel’ to different but also with parents and staff, and we are departments. It aims to delighted that we’ve had so much interest in make children feel more at developing it further and rolling it out across ease, and more involved in Scotland. their treatment and care.

‘Of the children and parents we surveyed Scottish Health about the impact of the passport, 100 per cent Secretary Alex Neil visited of children said they would recommend it to Yorkhill Hospital to meet their friends and more than 90 per cent of some of the children who parents said they would recommend the have benefited from the Hospital Passport as a useful tool. It gives passport, and said: ‘I’ve children a simple way to make choices about met with some of the what would help them with procedures and children and families who treatments, and communicates those easily to Alex Neil MSP meets children from the pilot have used the passport to staff, which helps place them at the heart of scheme and Dr Janie Donnan at Yorkhill Hospital decision making around their own healthcare.’ JS hear their own experiences

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news

and the resounding answer was no, or at least “not yet”.’

Meanwhile, the DCP issued a statement attacking DSM-5 from a different direction, for being too biologically based and for minimising ‘psychosocial factors in people’s distress’.

The Division’s statement (tinyurl.com/dcpdsm5) calls for a ‘paradigm shift’ in the diagnosis of mental health problems, for an approach ‘that is multi-factorial, contextualises distress and behaviour, and acknowledges the complexity of the interactions involved in all human experience.’ It follows a similar statement published by the British Psychological Society last year.

However, challenging the DCP statement in The Observer, Sir Simon Wesseley, Professor of Psychological Medicine at the Institute of Psychiatry, wrote that ‘Psychiatry is the study of the brain and the mind. Psychiatrists look at the whole person, and indeed beyond the person to their family, and to society.’

He concluded that DSM ‘isn’t the system

of classification that we use over here in any case. In practice, most UK mental health professionals will barely notice much difference… most of those in the business of helping those with mental disorders will be less concerned with what is in and what is out than with the reality of underfunded and overstretched services. The idea that we are part of a conspiracy to medicalise normality will seem frankly laughable as we struggle to protect services for those whose disorders are all too evident under any classification system.’ CJ I The Society’s Division of Educational and Child Psychology is holding a one-day event on 28 June: The Medicalisation of Childhood: Time for a Paradigm Shift.

See www.bps.org.uk/decpjune28 Also, Simon Wesseley is running a conference on DSM-5 at the Institute of Psychiatry in London on 4 and 5 June: (tinyurl.com/cgt56xr). Speakers include DSM-5 Chair Dr David Kupfer, and Honorary BPS Fellow, Professor of Clinical Psychology David Clark CBE.

FEELING OVERWHELMED The Stroke Association has called for more investment in clinical psychology services as part of its campaign drawing attention to the emotional impact of the condition.

In a report published in May, Feeling Overwhelmed, the organisation notes that over two thirds of stroke survivors reported feeling depressed or anxious as a result of their stroke, and yet 79 per cent said they’d received no information or practical advice to help them with the emotional impact of their condition (see tinyurl.com/c4a2zuj).

The findings are based on a UK-wide survey of 1774 stroke survivors and 937 carers.

The results also exposed the impact of stroke on carers, with 79 per cent reporting anxiety and over half saying that their

relationship with a stroke survivor had suffered or changed.

Despite the emotional impact of stroke, over half of stroke units in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have no access to psychology services; in Scotland this rises to two thirds. The new report cites research by the NHS Stroke Improvement Programme (in England), which indicates an ‘investment of around £69,000 in psychological care through a clinical psychologist-led service… may deliver a benefit of around £108,000 in around two years’.

Several psychologists were involved in the Feeling Overwhelmed report, including: Chartered Psychologist Professor Reg Morris, Clinical Psychologist at Cardiff and Vale

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University Health Board; BPS member Jack Smith; Associate Fellow and Chartered Psychologist Dr Audrey Bowen at the University of Manchester; and Chartered Psychologist and Associate Fellow Dr Becky Simm, Principal Clinical Psychologist at Southport and Ormskirk NHS Hospital Trust.

‘Depression, anxiety and fear of another stroke are common feelings amongst those touched by the condition, and in the most extreme cases people can be left feeling suicidal,’ said Professor Morris. ‘Better recognition of the emotional effects of stroke by health and social care professionals is essential in order to address the need for integrated psychological support for survivors and their families.’ CJ

FRAUD DETECTOR When Jim McCormick was sentenced to 10 years behind bars in May for selling fake bomb detectors, one psychologist was particularly satisfied. Bruce Hood, Professor of Developmental Psychology in Society at the University of Bristol, had campaigned against McCormick for several years.

McCormick is said to have made £50m from sales to countries including Iraq and Georgia. He claimed that the device, modelled on a novelty golf ball finder, could bypass ‘all forms of concealment’, detecting drugs, people, ivory and money along with explosives. Richard Whittam QC, for the prosecution, said: ‘The devices did not work and he knew they did not work.’

Professor Hood read a 2009 report in the New York Times (see tinyurl.com/yg4e4ev), and was shocked to realise the devices were nothing more than dowsing rods, an age-old practice believed to reveal the location of water and minerals. ‘Despite the claims of various associations and practitioners, dowsing is nothing more than a psychological phenomena known as the ideomotor effect,’ Hood said. ‘Simply put, when you are aware of the location of a potential target, you make imperceptible body movements that make finely balanced rods or pendulums point in the same direction. There is no evidence that these devices or the user can detect sources through supernatural powers.’

After Professor Hood blogged about it (http://brucemhood.wordpress.com), McCormick got in touch with him defending his actions and the device and issuing an invitation to check it out. ‘This was an opportunity to expose a fraud that was too good to miss.

Maybe he really believed the device worked but I was dubious… When it became known that I was in contact with the elusive Mr McCormick, the BBC Newsnight team contacted me and we set about trying to set up a sting to confront the fraudster. I corresponded with Jim via email to organise a meeting but he failed to show. In any event, we decided to go ahead with the broadcast in January 2010.

The following day, McCormick was arrested and an export order ban was imposed.’

I asked Professor Hood about the psychology involved in the case. ‘Many people regard magical beliefs as a bit of harmless fun, and in most cases that is true,’ he said.

‘However, there are those who are prepared to take advantage of others’ gullibility with lethal consequences.’ Was there any chance that McCormick himself believed in his product? ‘Clearly not’, Hood replied. ‘But the really big question is how he persuaded the various authorities that dowsing really did work?’ JS

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RESEARCH AWARD Chartered Psychologist and BPS Associate Fellow Professor Emily Holmes, a senior scientist at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, has won a prestigious Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von HumboldtFoundation. Worth €45,000, the awards are made to researchers who are ‘expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements’.

OLIVIER AWARDS The theatrical adaptation by Simon Stephens of Mark Haddon’s 2003 novel that stars a boy with Asperger’s – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – won a recordbreaking seven awards at the Laurence Olivier Awards in April, including best new play and best actor (Luke Treadaway). The play is currently showing at the Apollo Theatre in London’s West End.

NATHAN AZRIN Nathan Azrin, the psychologist who developed the principle of ‘token economies’ as a way to reward mental health patients for constructive behaviour, has died aged 82.

According to an obituary in the New York Times, his most influential publication was his 1968 book The Token Economy, coauthored with Teodoro Ayllon.

PRESIDENT OF INSAR Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience Francesca Happé is now President of The International Society for Autism Research (www.autism-insar.org), after taking over at the organisation’s annual meeting held in Spain in May. Happé is director of the MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre at the Institute of Psychiatry and a winner of the Society’s Spearman Medal.

‘Nudge unit’ in the news The UK government’s Behavioural Insights Team – nicknamed the Nudge Unit and headed by psychology graduate David Halpern – is to become a partprivatised mutual. The Unit advises the government on the use of psychological principles to encourage people to change their behaviour in ways judged to be for their own good, or for the good of the country. It also conducts research: example projects include using personalised text messages to boost the payment of Court fines, and exploring the impact of alcohol pricing. The BPS has collaborated with the Unit in the past, although there is no formal relationship.

A competition is now underway to attract a private partner who will own one third of the Unit. The government will retain a third and the Unit’s 13 personnel will own the remainder, following a mutual model similar to that used by the John Lewis department store.

This is the first time a government policy unit has been spun off in this way, in accordance with the Civil Reform Plan to increase efficiency in the civil service.

The Nudge Unit claims to have saved the government over £300 million since its conception in 2010, and its success has led to interest in its services from the private sector and even foreign governments.

Deputy Director Owain Service told us the team ‘would continue to prioritise its work for the Cabinet Office, which in the short to medium term will focus on jobs and growth. But the creation of the joint venture will enable the team to expand its external programme of work, but only where there is an underlying social purpose. As ever, the team are really keen

to engage with the academic community, including members of the BPS. If members would like to talk to the team about collaborating in these areas or others, they should get in touch.’

The Nudge Unit made the headlines for the wrong reasons late in April, after the anti-Coalition Skwawkbox blog (skwalker1964.wordpress.com) claimed that job seekers were being required to complete an online strengths questionnaire that gave similar results regardless of the way it was completed.

Devised by the Nudge Unit, the test was a shortened version of a questionnaire created by the VIA Institute on Character, a positive psychology organisation based in Ohio and headed by clinical psychologist Neal Mayerson. The Guardian picked up the story and reported that the VIA’s communication director had told Nudge Unit psychologists not to use the shortened version, which was nonvalidated. The newspaper added that complaints against ‘the unit’s use of the bogus survey’ had been lodged with the BPS and the Health and Care Professions Council, and the BPS supplied a statement in response to a Guardian request.

Replying in The Guardian (tinyurl.com/meqzfmb), Halpern and psychologist Professor Martin Seligman denied the test was either required or bogus, saying: ‘Like any test of this kind, meaningless responses to the questions will lead to meaningless results…

Exercises such as this test help rebuild self-confidence and identify character strengths, such as being good with people.

It would be a shame if that confidence, and help, is knocked by a cheap exercise in showing it is possible to game a test.’ CJ

KEEP AN EYE ON IT Placement of a poster showing ‘watching eyes’ above bicycle racks in Newcastle led to a 62 per cent drop in thefts over a 12-month period, compared with a 65 per cent increase in control locations without the poster. The research led by Daniel Nettle at Newcastle University was published in PLoS One (tinyurl.com/cxd88rr).

TOP THINKERS Two psychologists, Steven Pinker and Daniel Kahneman, were among the world’s top ten thinkers in an annual poll conducted by Prospect magazine (tinyurl.com/cqheqjt). CJ

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Neuroscientist Professor Melvyn Goodale, a major contributor to the dual system account of visual processing, is among the newly elected Fellows of the Royal Society announced in May. Goodale, who’s based at the University of Western Ontario, won the British Psychological Society’s Book Award in 2005 for Sight Unseen, which he co-authored with David Milner. Their research on the separate visual pathways for perception and action is a staple of undergraduate courses on visual cognition. Also elected to the fellowship as a foreign member was Professor Eric Kandel, renowned for his ground-breaking research into the biological basis of learning and memory. CJ

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news

Fist shaken scathing criticism from other memory researchers. Among the concerns are the small group sizes (n < 10), and the lack of a statistically significant effect for the crucial comparison between fist-clenching versus a control condition with no clenching.

Most damning in his commentary was Jon Simons, principal investigator in the memory laboratory at the University of Cambridge. Writing on the PLoS One website, he branded the paper ‘fistclenchingly poor science’ and said it would reinforce the prejudice that ‘open access journals will publish any old rubbish’. Propper subsequently posted a defence of her work. You can read her comments, as well as further criticism from Hal Pashler and others, at tinyurl.com/cxm7hlg. CJ

Trivial research A row has erupted over the replicability of another well-known social priming effect – the finding published in the late 1990s that thinking about a professor boosted participants’ performance on Trivial Pursuit general knowledge questions, compared with thinking about a secretary or a hooligan.

In a new paper published in the openaccess journal PLoS One, David Shanks at UCL and Ben Newell at the University of New South Wales attempted to replicate this professor effect across nine experiments involving 475 participants, but they found no sign of its existence. ‘We do not deny outright the possibility of unconscious influences on behavior…’ they wrote. ‘However the present results are consistent with many other examples where claims of unconscious influences have not withstood

subsequent scrutiny.’

The negative finding comes after a failed attempt last year (also published in PLoS One) to replicate another highly-cited paper 1990s paper, which purported to show priming with the elderly stereotype led participants to exit a lab more slowly (see News, April 2012). At the time, Yale University social psychologist John Bargh reacted angrily to the failed replication of his work, writing on his blog that the authors of the replication attempt were ‘incompetent and ill-informed’ (the blog post was later removed).

Now the reaction of Ap Dijksterhuis at Radboud University in Nijmegen, co-author of the original professor priming research, has led some commentators to fear history is repeating itself. Dijksterhuis posted a lengthy comment on PLoS One accusing Shanks and Newell of committing ‘beginners’ mistakes’ and conducting their research

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under ‘unprofessional circumstances’, with the result that their ‘substandard experiments’ failed to follow the protocols of his original research.

Shanks subsequently defended his work and, as was the case last year, the row has attracted the attention of science reporters. In particular, Nature published a news item headed ‘Disputed results a fresh blow for social psychology’ (tinyurl.com/bmw3jeq).

Their coverage has since been criticised by psychologists, including David Nussbaum at the University of Chicago.

Writing on Nature’s website, he said: ‘Ideally, science is self-correcting, so why would it be a blow to an entire field when it engages in self-correction?’ CJ

Call 3 of the National Awareness and Early Diagnosis Initiative to promote earlier diagnosis of cancer and access to optimal treatment is now open for applications.

The key questions are: I investigating the reasons for late presentation to primary care or A&E and low uptake of screening; I developing effective interventions to prompt change, at individual and systemic levels; I investigating reasons for delays occurring within primary care and onward referral.

Within these questions, behavioural responses to symptoms and clusters of symptoms are of interest. A call workshop will be held on 28 June for those interested in applying. The closing date for applications is 13 September.

I tinyurl.com/d34557q Under the EC ‘European Partnership on Sports’ action, a call is open for proposals to support transnational projects, put forward by public bodies and not-for-profit organisations, to identify and test suitable networks and good practices in: I strengthening good governance and dual careers in sport through support for the mobility of volunteers, coaches, managers and staff; I protecting athletes, especially the youngest, from health and safety hazards by improving training and competition conditions; I promoting traditional European sport and games.

Applications must be made by 19 July 2013.

I tinyurl.com/bqf3jsp The Paul Hamlyn Foundation have an Education and Learning Programme that supports proposals under the following themes: tackling school exclusion and truancy; developing speaking and listening skills; and supplementary education. The grants seek to support projects that have the potential influence policy and practice beyond a single organisation.

I tinyurl.com/c2aml5f Remedi supports research projects in any medical condition that causes impairment, activity limitation, restriction in participation and reduced quality of life for which rehabilitation is an appropriate response.

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info

A new study purporting to show an effect of fist-clenching on episodic memory has attracted withering criticism and sparked a debate about the reputation of openaccess journals.

In an experiment with 51 righthanders, Ruth Propper at Montclair State University and her colleagues claimed that right-hand clenching immediately prior to memory encoding and left-hand clenching immediately prior to memory retrieval boosted their participants’ memory performance. They said this provided support for the HERA (hemispheric encoding/retrieval asymmetry) model.

Their paper published in April on PLoS One attracted widespread media coverage and has been viewed nearly 17,000 times. But despite its popular appeal, the research has provoked

FUNDING NEWS

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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DIGEST

Serious power failure Psychology has had a torrid time of late, with fraud scandals and question marks about the replicability of many of the discipline’s key findings. Now it is joined in the dock by its more biologically oriented sibling: neuroscience. A team led by Katherine Button at the School of Experimental Psychology in Bristol, and including psychologist Brian Nosek, founder of the new Center for Open Science, make the case in a new paper that the majority of neuroscience studies involve woefully small sample sizes, rendering their results highly unreliable. ‘Low statistical power is an endemic problem in neuroscience,’ they write.

At the heart of their case is a comprehensive analysis of 49 neuroscience meta-analyses published in 2011 (that’s all the meta-analyses published that year that contained the information required for their purposes). This took in 730 individual papers, including genetic studies, drug research and papers on brain abnormalities.

Meta-analyses collate all the findings in a given field as a way to provide the most accurate estimate possible about the size of any relevant effects. Button’s team compared these effect size estimates for neuroscience’s subfields against the average sample sizes used in those same areas of research. If the meta-analyses for a particular subfield suggested an effect – such as a brain abnormality associated with a mental illness – is real, but subtle, then this would indicate that suitable investigations in that field ought to involve large samples in order to be adequately powered. A larger effect size would require more modest samples.

Based on this, the researchers’ estimate is that the median statistical power of a neuroscience study is 21 per cent. This means that the vast majority (around 79 per cent) of real effects in brain science are likely being missed. More worrying still, when underpowered studies do uncover a significant result, the lack of power means the chances are increased that the finding is spurious.

Thirdly, significant effect sizes uncovered by underpowered studies tend to be overestimates of the true effect size, even when the reported effect is in fact real. This is because, by their very nature, underpowered studies are only likely to turn up significant results in data where the effect size happens to be large.

It gets more worrying. The aforementioned issues are what you get when all else in the methodology is sound, bar the inadequate sample size.

Trouble is, Button and her colleagues say underpowered studies often have other problems too. For instance, small studies are more vulnerable to the ‘file-drawer effect’, in which negative results tend to get swept under the carpet (simply because it’s easier to ignore a quick and easy study than a massive, expensive one). Underpowered studies are also more vulnerable to an issue known as ‘vibration of effects’ whereby the results vary considerably with the particular choice of analysis. And yes, there is often a huge choice of analysis methods in neuroscience. A recent paper documented how 241 fMRI studies involved 223 unique analysis strategies.

In the May issue of Nature Because of the relative paucity of brain-imaging papers in their main Reviews Neuroscience analysis, Button’s team also turned their attention specifically to the brainimaging field. Based on findings from 461 studies published between 2006 and 2009, they estimate that the median statistical power in the subdiscipline of brain volume abnormality research is just 8 per cent.

Switching targets to the field of animal research (focusing on studies involving rats and mazes), they estimate most studies had a ‘severely’ inadequate statistical power in the range of 18 to 31 per cent. This raises important ethical issues, Button’s team said, because it makes it highly likely that animals are being sacrificed with minimal chance of discovering true effects. It’s clearly a sensitive area, but one logical implication is that it would be more justifiable to conduct studies with larger samples of animals, because at least then there would be a more realistic chance of discovering the effects under investigation (a similar logic can also be applied to human studies).

The prevalence of inadequately powered studies in neuroscience is all the more disconcerting, Button and her colleagues conclude, because most of the low-lying fruit in brain science has already been picked. Today, the discipline is largely on the search for more subtle effects, and for this mission, suitable studies need to be as highly powered as possible. Yet sample sizes have stood still, while at the same time it has become easier than ever to run repeated, varied analyses on the same data, until a seemingly positive result crops up. This leads to a ‘disquieting conclusion’, the researchers said – ‘a dramatic increase in the likelihood that statistically significant findings are spurious.’ They end their paper with a number of suggestions for how to rehabilitate the field, including performing routine power calculations prior to conducting studies (to ensure they are suitably powered), disclosing methods and findings transparently, and working collaboratively to increase study power.

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The love lives of the men and women who have no sense of smell In the February issue of Biological Psychology Around one in 7500 otherwise healthy people are born with no sense of smell, a condition known as isolated congenital anosmia (ICA). So dominant are sight and hearing to our lives, you might think this lack of smell would be fairly inconsequential. In fact, a study of individuals with ICA published last year showed just how important smell is to humans.

Compared with controls, the people with ICA were more insecure in their relationships, more prone to depression and to household accidents.

Now, in a follow-up paper involving the same 32 patients with ICA, Ilona Croy and her colleagues have looked at how this lack of a sense of smell affects their sexual relationships. The researchers’ analysis uncovered an intriguing sex difference. Compared with 15 age-matched controls, the 10 men with no sense of smell reported having substantially fewer sexual partners in their lifetime (male controls averaged five times the number of partners). In contrast, women with no sense of smell averaged just as many sexual partners as women with smell.

On the other hand, the 22 women (but not the men) without a sense of smell tended to report feeling more insecure in their relationship with their current partner, than did the healthy controls. This insecurity was specific to their sexual partner and wasn’t found in

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Female political role models have an empowering effect on women In the May issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology relation to friendships or maternal attachment.

Across both sexes, the impact of a loss of smell makes sense given the mounting evidence for the social importance of smell, for example we can use smell to detect other people’s anxiety; people with more empathy are more likely to remember your smell; and smells convey at least some personality traits.

Also, common sense suggests people without a sense of smell might worry about any odours they could be exuding without their knowledge. But the question still remains – why should not having a sense of smell affect men and women differently?

The researchers surmised that not having smell reduces men’s ‘exploratory sexual behaviour’, perhaps due to their lack of social confidence.

Consistent with this interpretation, there was a negative correlation between the male (but not female) patients’ levels of social insecurity and their number of sexual partners.

On the other hand, the researchers think the effect of a lack of smell on women makes sense in light of past research suggesting that smell is more important for their relationship security, than it is for men. For instance, a study published in 2008 found that a half of the women surveyed had worn someone else’s clothes (usually a partner’s) because of

its smell, compared with just 13 per cent of men. Also relevant – the female patients’ had lower social confidence than the female controls, and this correlated with their lack of relationship security.

Other research has shown that odour is more important to women than it is to men in choosing a partner: women supposedly prioritise good odour over good looks, men the opposite, although it’s not clear how this fits with the current findings. Women also seem to have a superior sense of smell, on average, compared with men, and value the sense more highly.

Croy and her colleagues acknowledged the need for caution given their small sample size, but they said their results emphasise ‘the importance of the sense of smell for intimate relationships’.

The late Margaret Thatcher – Britain’s first and, so far, only female Prime Minister – is criticised for failing to do more to help other women get ahead in politics. Supporters argue, however, that the example she set will, on its own, have been of profound benefit to women with leadership ambitions. A new study puts this principle to the test, examining the effect on women of reminders about the contemporary female political high-flyers Angela Merkel and Hillary Clinton.

Ioana Latu and her colleagues recruited 149 Swiss student participants (81 women) to make a persuasive public speech against the rise in student fees. The speeches were made in a virtual reality room in front of a virtual audience of 12 men and women.

Crucially, some of the participants performed their

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.

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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

speech in a room with a poster of Hillary Clinton on the back wall; others with Merkel on the wall; a third group with Bill Clinton’s poster on the back wall; and for a final group, there was no poster.

The key result is that the female students spoke for significantly longer (a sign of dominance) when Merkel or Hillary Clinton was on the back wall (as opposed to Bill or no poster) – an increase of 49 per cent and 24 per cent, respectively, making their speeches just as long as the men’s. These female students’ speeches were also rated as better quality by two coders blind to the experimental condition, and they also evaluated their own performance more positively. The presence of the different posters made no difference to the performance of the male students.

‘We believe these findings are important because although a wealth of research has studied the effects of role models on academic and math performance, there is no research that investigates the effect of female political role models on successful leadership behaviour,’ the researchers concluded.

‘Yet, exactly such behaviour is crucial because not only is an increase in female politicians the goal of equality, it can also be (as our results show) the engine that drives it.’

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Qualitative Methods in Psychology Section Conference University of Huddersfield, 4–6 September 2013 Making a difference, making ourselves known Registration now open! – Early-bird rates available until 24 July Submissions open for Posters, Five Minute Challenge & Pecha Kucha – Deadline 12 June Programme timetable now available Keynote speakers Conference Dinner to be held 5 September at the world-renowned Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Professor Kathy Charmaz, Sonoma State University, USA Dr Rachel Shaw, Aston University, UK Professor Nigel King, University of Huddersfield, UK

(See registration page of website for details)

Follow us on Twitter #qmip2013 @BPSConference @QMiP Find us on facebook /BPSConferences

The University is pleased to announce the launch of a new Master's degree:

MSc Personal Construct Psychology (September, 2013)

GAIN A DOCTORATE IN COUNSELLING PSYCHOLOGY – Emphasis on training in both existential and cognitive-behavioural approaches to practice

This highly practical and applied course will be of interest to those who work or intend to work in any setting where an understanding of human behaviour is advantageous, including: organisational change/development; healthcare professions; human resources management; education; market research; coaching; consultancy and academic research.

– 3 years, 2 days per week, 10:00-17:00 (Mondays and Tuesdays)

Part-Time - Block Teaching Days

PROFESSIONAL DOCTORATE IN EXISTENTIAL PHENOMENOLOGICAL COUNSELLING PSYCHOLOGY (DPsych) COMMENCES SEPTEMBER 2013

Graduates will gain an in-depth knowledge of: PCP interviewing skills; ways of eliciting value systems; PCP based survey techniques; the design and analysis of Repertory Grids; the use of personal construct theory in understanding behaviour and in addressing Resistance to Change.

For further information, please contact Nick Reed, Director, Centre for Personal Construct Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Hertfordshire. n.b.reed@herts.ac.uk

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For further details visit: www.bps.org.uk/qmip2013

– Successful completion leads to eligibility for registration as a counselling psychologist – BPS accredited and HCPC approved

APPLY NOW T 020 7487 7505 E exrel@regents.ac.uk W regents.ac.uk/spcp This award is currently validated by The Open University

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CONFERENCE

You had to be there Alex Haslam (University of Queensland) opens our Annual Conference coverage with his report on a keynote by Robin Dunbar

TONY DALE

Technology is often presented as Do they really offer anything different?

Conference in Harrogate in April. a solution to the woes of the human And, if they do, is this something we Despite the fact that many of the condition. E-mail, for example, was really need or can actually use? These speaker’s lectures are available online initially promoted as a tool that would were questions that Robin Dunbar – (e.g. on Oxford’s Creative Commons facilitate a host of cumbersome working Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology website), the auditorium was packed to practices and free up time for things that at the University of Oxford – addressed the proverbial rafters. This itself bears we really wanted to do. Reality, though, in his recent keynote address to the testimony to the fact that in the age of is less glamorous. Indeed, it sometimes British Psychological Society’s Annual the digital classroom, there is still seems that the main thing e-mail has something significant to be freed us up to do is more e-mails. gained from face-to-face At a more specific level, the NHS experience. Moreover, having National Programme for IT was been there, this is something initially sold as a project that would to which I can attest. Indeed, revolutionise health delivery and save in itself, the ability to say ‘I both time and money by streamlining was there’ is no trivial thing. the management of medical records For those at the BPS meeting and associated processes across it affirms one’s place in the institutions, services and professions. world as a high identifier with Ten years and £13 billion later contemporary psychological (enough to pay the salaries of 30,000 science just as surely as having clinical psychologists for a decade), seen Derek Stark’s screaming the project was scrapped without a 40-yard goal in Dundee single patient ever having benefited United’s 2-0 victory over AS from it.

Roma in the 1984 European In such ways, our capacity to be Cup semi-final marks one out seduced – but ultimately betrayed – as a committed and credible by technological development seems Tangerines fan. to be as limitless as the budgets that Moreover, having watched such developments demand. the Roma match replayed on Turning, then, to new social YouTube and listened to media like Facebook and Twitter, Dunbar again on Podcast, I can a critical question is whether their confirm that technology does promise to create a new superviolence to social reality. At The Society’s Annual Conference in Harrogate in connected and super-socialised Tannadice, Stark’s shot screamed April was attended by more than 500 delegates citizenry is equally far-fetched. into the net like a guided missile,

Opening the box Robin Dunbar returns the favour, with his report on Alex Haslam’s keynote Every discipline has its icons, and for social psychology these are surely the classic studies of conformity and aggression carried out by Stanley Milgram at Yale in 1961 and Philip Zimbardo at Stanford exactly a decade later. Taking a leaf from Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the Eichman Nazi warcrimes trial that same year, the grand conclusion from both these studies was that humans are not intrinsically evil, just mindless conformists. Alex Haslam takes a different view.

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One starting point for this claim was Haslam’s own investigations, with Steve Reicher (University of St Andrews), in the Milgram archives. What caught their attention was Box 44 – the original handwritten comments made by Milgram’s subjects after the experiment.

Among the most common was gratitude for having been allowed to take part in an important, ground-breaking scientific experiment – ordinary folk making their

contribution to science, something they viewed as worthwhile. (Oh, the days when scientists were held in such high esteem!) In essence, Haslam’s argument is that most of these people were far from being distressed by their experiences (as some have claimed) but rather were delighted to take part, felt honoured by the opportunity and were therefore committed to the grand project (science) that the experiment represented. They would have

done whatever Milgram asked because they believed in him: this was ‘engaged (or identified) followership’, not mindless conformity. Milgram himself had contributed to the effect: it was clear from the notes that he had ‘bigged up’ the experiment and their value in it.

Both Milgram and Zimbardo were skilled salesmen, and this in part explains why their experiments succeeded.

Herein, mused Haslam, may be

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on YouTube it looks altogether more ordinary. And although Dunbar’s lecture was up there with very best, the same is true of conference keynotes. Moreover, it is one thing to hear the applause of others, quite another to be part of its collective authorship.

Technology, then, is a good supplement but a poor substitute for the real thing. And much the same, it turns out, is true of Facebook friends. In its infancy Mark Zuckerberg’s creation was promoted as having the capacity to do for friendship networks what jet engines did for aeroplanes – with possibilities limited only by the scope of the user’s imagination. In the case of Facebook, this means that one could potentially have up to 5000 friends. But in reality, unless they are using them for something other than friendship (e.g. as a client base or fanclub) the number of friends that people actually have appears stubbornly constrained to an average of around 150.

For Dunbar, 150 is an integer that has particular resonance, since it is the number that bears his name. Why? Well because, as his research has shown, this is a recurring number when it comes to modern social groups (equating ‘modern’ with the emergence of the human neocortex approximately a quarter of a million years ago). It is, for example, the size of a band of hunter-gatherers, the size of effective organisational units (as discovered by Gore-Tex), and the number of people that typically read the Christmas cards we send.

Dunbar’s key point is that for all its promises, the value of technology is always constrained by human socio-

an answer as to why young graduate students so often find their experiments not working properly: unlike Milgram and Zimbardo, they lack the ‘identity entrepreneurship’ to talk up their project and persuade their subjects to engage enthusiastically.

Towards the end of his lecture, Haslam turned back to Arendt’s assessment of Eichmann, a view that had played a seminal a role in Milgram’s own thinking. In fact, Haslam makes a case for

biology – in this case, the number of people with whom we can interact meaningfully. Biology (the size of the neocortex) places limits on the number of people whose names we can remember, whose activities we can work into our diaries, whose allegiances we can monitor. Or, looked at another way, it was the need to sustain large social networks (and, in the animal kingdom, 150 defines the upper extreme of a continuum) that required us to develop brains that could support this.

Going back to one of the examples with which we started, the significance of this analysis is that it points to the problems that are likely to arise when we put a technological cart before the social psychological horse. The reason the NHS IT project failed was that its architects imagined foolishly that social behaviour would necessarily follow where computer science led. Likewise, it seems naive to believe that Facebook or any similar product can, in and of itself, be a panacea for problems associated with a lack of human connectedness.

This is not to say that such technologies are worthless. Indeed, Dunbar presents plenty of evidence that speaks to their utility and value – something with which 40 million Facebook users would no doubt agree.

The critical thing, though, is that our appreciation of their worth and our ambitions for their application must be tied to an appropriate understanding of the nature of human society. Indeed, empirical work that explores the impact of new technologies affirms that, far from making such understanding redundant, it is now more important than ever.

their having been ‘identified followers’. Himmler’s ‘Posnan Speech’, delivered in 1943 to his SS extermination squads in Poland, illustrates this. Like Milgram, Himmler played up the big story – the contribution the squads were making to the greater good.

Yes, it was dirty work and hard to do, and, yes, none of them liked doing it… but by giving the squads a purpose in the grand scheme of things, he was able to turn ordinary men into engaged followers,

read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk

THE WAY THEY MOVE The vulnerability of child and adult witnesses to leading questions is well documented. But what about the way the interviewer moves their hands? Elizabeth Kirk at the University of Hertfordshire presented her research that involved the questioning of 30 two- to fouryear-olds and 26 seven- to nine-year-olds about the events in a 90-second video.

Kirk found that 93 per cent of the children were susceptible to being misled by an interviewer’s gestures – for example, stroking their chin at the same time as asking if a (clean-shaven) man in the video had had a beard. On average the children incorporated around 2.5 out of eight misleading gestures into their narratives.

Age and superior language ability offered no protection. Among older children only, a greater tendency to mirror the interviewer’s gestures was associated with more vulnerability to misleading gestures. ‘These findings have serious implications for how we interview child witnesses,’ Kirk said.

A related line of research was presented

by Daniel Gurney, also based at the University of Hertfordshire. Sixty adults were presented with a staged crime captured on CCTV and then asked 20 questions about what had happened. If the interviewer nodded as the participants answered, the participants tended to say they were more confident in their answers. In contrast, a shake of the interviewer’s head was associated with reduced confidence. Debriefed afterwards, it was those participants who said they’d noticed the nods and shakes who’d shown the strongest signs of being influenced.

A member of the audience asked about the subtlety of the gestures – would police interviewers really nod and shake their heads in this way? ‘We spend a lot of time performing these gestures in the most natural way possible, rehearsing them,’ Gurney said. CJ

enthusiastically and creatively doing what was necessary.

The key insight is that it makes nonsense of the ‘theymade-me-do-it-guv’ defence.

Eichmann and his ilk were not forced to do what they did.

They weren’t even given orders by the Führer (as Eichmann claimed in his defence). Theirs was a willing and committed engagement with the grand plan. Hitler didn’t need to tell them what the plan was: their whole being was committed to second guessing what the

Führer and his henchmen might want. Haslam’s point is that it was not blind obedience that motivated Milgram’s subjects and Himmler’s thugs; rather, they were actually engaged in a labour of love.

That’s an argument that gels with the emerging evolutionary social psychology view of charismatic leaders and the important role they have played (and still do play) in creating social cohesion around a central theme – in both politics and religion.

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Emotional closeness across the net As use of social media like Facebook and Twitter has exploded, there’s been an accompanying cacophony of speculation about the impact of these new media on our relationships. This symposium on the ‘perils and pleasures’ of social media was a chance at last to hear about some actual data on this controversial issue.

Jens Binder of Nottingham Trent University began by describing his new ‘fictitious friends’ paradigm. Student participants read six-month-long exchanges between two friends conducted via virtual media (such as Facebook) or traditional media (such as the phone and face-to-face).

Virtual exchanges were rated as less enjoyable, even though the content was just as positive as in the exchanges by traditional media. The students’ own technology use also made a difference.

Binder said low-tech users were ‘blown away’ by friendship exchanges that relied on virtual media, rating them very positively, but were less impressed by more traditional interaction patterns.

The reverse was found for high-tech users who responded less positively to virtual media use.

A similar study involving female nonstudents recruited online found that

friendships relying on virtual media were rated more negatively, but only when it was a close friendship.

Next we heard from Sam Roberts (University of Chester), who has been looking at the question of whether Facebook has the potential to increase the size and/or intensity of our social networks – in other words, to overcome ‘Dunbar’s number’ (the idea that time and cognitive restraints limit the number of people we can maintain in a social network). Two studies comparing Facebook users vs. non-users found no differences in their social network size or emotional closeness to contacts, even when focusing only on ‘active’ users as opposed to passive browsers.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS: KEEPING A ROOF OVER PSYCHOLOGISTS’ HEADS In his Presidential Address, Peter Banister addressed ‘ignorance about how the Society is governed and how it works’, and reminded us of the successes of the Society in notably challenging times. The shift to HCPC regulation went ‘smoothly’, with approval also gained for the BPS qualifications. Membership numbers increased in anticipation of the HCPC move, and have remained at a steady level. Financial stability has been achieved – with the BPS literally keeping the roof over psychologists’ heads despite persistent thieving

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of the lead from the roof of the HQ building in Leicester!

Banister also pointed to other ways the BPS is growing and evolving to meet the needs of its diverse membership and to improve public impact.

These included the Learning Centre and online shop; myCPD and elearning provision; 100+ conferences and events a year; an increased public policy emphasis; the international impact of the Research Digest and the availability of The Psychologist in several formats; and an expansion

in electronic resources for members, such as EBSCO and Wiley Blackwell journal access, and the new PsychSource portal.

Banister described the Society’s web and social media developments as ‘a good effort’: although he said ‘I do not personally find it as useful as it might be’, it has been a developing avenue for increasing public awareness and information sharing about both the BPS and psychology in general.

On that note, do feel free to share your thoughts on the successes and challenges of the BPS on Twitter via @psychmag. AJ

Most compelling was Roberts’ diary study in which, for two weeks, 41 people kept track of their interactions with five friends, including how they felt after each contact and how much they laughed.

People reported laughing more and feeling happier after face-to-face contact, including via the video-call platform Skype, compared with after text-based or phone contact. Roberts said this shows the importance of non-verbal cues.

What of the idea of media multiplexity? This states that relationships improve as more media channels are used for communication.

Bernie Hogan at Oxford University put this to the test, analysing data from 24,242 husbands and wives from across Western Europe. He found that emotional closeness between couples increased the more types of media communication they used (ranging from interaction in virtual worlds to blogs, Facebook and more), but only up to a point. Beyond five forms of media, emotional closeness stalled or actually went into decline. Hogan speculated that perhaps excessive multimedia contact reflects couples’ attempts to save their relationship, or maybe it’s a sign of stalking behaviour as people lose trust in their partners. Hogan also shared an irony – his study had been sponsored by the dating website eHarmony, he said, and yet he found overall lower levels of closeness between spouses who first met online.

Lastly, we heard from Monica Whitty at the University of Leicester about the hundreds of thousands of people who have been ripped off by online dating scammers. The fraudster uses a fake photo and profile and close daily internet contact to ‘groom’ their victim. At first, a small gift is requested, and this progresses to a request for an airfare to visit the victim. ‘Crisis’ occurs when they fail to show up, by which time real-life personal relationships have often been displaced.

Whitty has conducted in-depth interviews with 20 victims of these scams.

Often the image they have formed in their head of their new ‘partner’ is so strong that they find it difficult to correct even when the truth is known. Some victims even continue to cherish supposed ‘photos’ of the person who scammed them. Whitty said the key for prevention was breaking up the relationships before the requests for money start. CJ

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The lives of asylum seekers and adversity. Clare argued that seeing themselves as resilient, allows participants to position themselves as responsible and capable mothers who are in control of their life and able to work towards building a better future for themselves and their children.

Nonetheless, she indicated that a discourse of strength can be problematic, as it can mask vulnerabilities and reduce opportunities for support to be offered and accepted.

In the final paper, Shani Burke (Coventry University) investigated how refugees manage talk about returning to their countries of origin.

As was highlighted in earlier presentations, participants contrasted the safety of the UK with the danger of their home country.

Although participants frequently faced

hostility and punitive treatment and did not feel they were living a good life in the UK, they were prepared to sacrifice happiness for safety.

The research findings presented in this symposium were in stark contrast to mainstream media representations whereby a horde of ‘bogus’ asylum seekers come to the UK for financial gain. Although the UK is considered a safe haven, refugees continue to face many privations here and their long-term safety is far from guaranteed. Nonetheless, despite their negative experiences, refugees do not want to be pitied or seen as spongeing on society. Participants’ accounts revealed a genuine fondness for British people and British culture and a genuine wish to contribute to society. GK JOHN HARRIS/REPORTDIGITAL.CO.UK

This symposium, convened by Simon Goodman of Coventry University, explored the experiences of people who have fled their home countries to escape conflict, persecution or violence. Four papers were presented that analysed asylum seekers’ accounts of their life in the UK using a qualitative, predominantly discursive approach. Helen Liebling (Coventry University) argued that safety was of fundamental concern for asylum seekers. Although the UK was generally considered a ‘safe haven’, they are frequently the target of hostility and racism from the community, and harsh sometimes inhumane treatment from the Home Office. The greatest fear for asylum seekers, however, is to be forcibly returned to their country of origin to face persecution or even death. Liebling disclosed that symptoms of trauma are common, which are exacerbated by loneliness, disorientation and feelings of being trapped and controlled by punitive Home Office procedures. Support received from friends and refugee centres in the UK is particularly valued, as many asylum seekers are destitute and homeless.

Steve Kirkwood (University of Edinburgh) considered asylum seekers’ constructions of racism and the consequences for social relations.

Reflecting Liebling’s findings described above, most participants had experienced antagonistic behaviour, ranging from name-calling to serious assault. Such experiences were downplayed or even excused, however, as participants were reluctant to acknowledge that widespread and ingrained racism exists in the UK. A range of alternative motivations for such behaviour, such as boredom and ignorance, was expressed. Kirkwood argued that attributing antagonistic behaviour to racism is problematic for asylum seekers; they are reliant on the host country for protection and may appear ungrateful if they criticise its citizens. He also proposed that it is functional for asylum seekers to make unstable attributions for what are clearly racist acts, as this engenders optimism for their future integration into UK society.

Maria Clare (University of Warwick) investigated how women refugees from Africa talk about emotion to construct an empowered and resilient identity. Analysis of participants’ accounts revealed two interconnecting themes: ‘rejecting pity’ and ‘being strong’ in the face of trauma

Who’d be a referee?

Constant stick from crowds, players, managers and the media. How do referees cope? Well, new research from Melissa Anderson (Northumbria University) suggests they are protected by an illusory belief that they are better than their peers.

Anderson compared 11 Premier League referees with a larger sample of countylevel officials. The refs rated themselves on positive characteristics such as how well prepared, confident and decisive they were, and negative ones such as their levels of anxiety and apprehension. Both groups saw themselves as superior to their colleagues, with no significant difference between elite and county refs (although age and years of experience correlated positively with superiority).

Turning to football managers, Andrew Manley (Leeds Metropolitan University) found that the impact of coach reputation was diluted by a footballer’s ‘need for cognition’. In other words, if a player was motivated to think, they were more likely to consider other sources of information when assessing a coach, rather than simply going on their trophy cabinet.

read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk

The trainer–exerciser relationship has parallels with the coach–athlete relationship, and Paul Davis (Northumbria University) investigated it in the context of ‘bootcamps’ and zumba classes. Feedback from trainers that was perceived to provide encouragement, improve technique and correct bad form was positively associated with closeness, commitment and complementarity.

Perhaps surprisingly, instructors’ use of criticism did not influence perceptions of relationship quality.

Lastly in this symposium, John Batten (University of Winchester) presented an ambitious field study into studentathletes’ perceptions and behavioural responses toward a sport psychology consultant. When engaged in a standard imagery session with a consultant they had been told was inexperienced, studentathletes fixed their gaze on the consultant more so than if they thought they were experienced. Batten argued that they were engaged in a more rigorous and systematic data-driven strategy as they questioned the consultant’s reputation. JS

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A violent version of the Mexican wave? rational, collective response to oppression by the state. It is important to note that in the months prior to the riots, police in Hackney and Tottenham (a key area for rioting) performed 6894 stop and search procedures, mainly on young black men, but 6807 of them resulted in no further action. By rejecting the notion that the

the management of future crowd situations and discourage the generation and escalation of violence, we must reject simplistic explanations that focus on mob pathology. It is vital to identify the circumstances that led to and fuelled the riots through an identity-based theory of crowd behaviour that acknowledges its inherent complexity. In an analysis that drew on YouTube and Google Maps, Stott highlighted the role of the police, who typically acted against crowds as a whole rather than problematic individuals, thus engendering psychological unity and empowerment in such groups to resist police action. He concluded by emphasising the need for a science-based analysis of antisocial behaviour by crowds that embraces rather than marginalises psychological explanations, and the development of community-based interventions that work towards solutions rather than apportioning blame. The success of such interventions has been demonstrated, as Stott was involved in training police in conflict resolution techniques that proved to be successful in last year’s London Olympics. GK JESS HURD/REPORTDIGITAL.CO.UK

What can psychology teach us about the 2011 English riots?

For more than a hundred years, social psychologists have tried to understand the reasons why crowds engage in antisocial activities. Various explanations have been provided: deindividuation theory maintains that people indulge in ‘mindless’ violence because their personal identity is subsumed into that of the mob, whereas convergence theory holds that crowd behaviour is a product of a ‘coming together’ of individuals who are predisposed to criminality.

In this incisive and very well-received talk, Clifford Stott (University of Leeds) considered the utility of these ‘classic’ psychological explanations in explaining why a peaceful protest escalated to serious rioting in several cities and towns across England in late summer, 2011. He argued that such explanations are flawed as they imply that antisocial behaviours by crowds would occur randomly, whereas analysis of the circumstances surrounding the riots has identified specific patterns.

Stott highlighted a determination amongst mainstream commentators to pathologise the riots and those that were involved in them, whereby the events were popularly constructed as a ‘a violent version of a Mexican wave’ performed by ‘flaming morons’ and ‘feral rats’. He also observed a general reluctance amongst these commentators to see the riots as a

riots were a rational response to such treatment and a reaction to the cuts, Stott argued that these commentaries raised important questions about the marginalisation of psychological theory where it contrasts with the government’s ideological stance.

Stott argued that in order to improve

MAGICIANS, MESMERISTS AND MEDIUMS ‘You need people like me’, argued Peter Lamont (University of Edinburgh), an expert in historical and conceptual issues in psychology. Psychologists are ahistorical, he said, neglecting centuries of data. In this talk, the focus was the feats magicians, mesmerists and mediums have performed, and what they can teach us about extraordinary beliefs.

Using plenty of nifty sleight of hand himself, Lamont demonstrated how tricksters direct the audience towards the ‘effect’ and away from the ‘method’ by harnessing our natural psychology: exploiting

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naturally interesting stuff, using eyes, voice and body language, and reducing or diverting suspicion. I was struck by the difference between magicians and psychics: the latter group

are more likely to struggle, and sometimes fail, giving the impression that they are not in control of their ‘powers’ in order to make it all more plausible.

When it comes to measuring paranormal belief, Lamont again turns to history. As he points out, traditional questionnaires can appear flawed in the cold light of day. Witches do exist, some people do have the ability to predict the future, mind reading is possible to an extent. To Lamont, we can shed more light on what is ‘paranormal’, what is believed in, through historical

examples such as the Davenport brothers’ spirit cabinet. As psychologists and historians we can then witness a kind of ‘tug of war’ around beliefs, where the exact same evidence used by sceptics becomes evidence of the nature of the phenomena for believers. Psychology itself is a product of thought and behaviour, Lamont argued, it’s reflexive. Even the modern sceptical movement is an expression of certain beliefs about the paranormal, and it is only the turn to history that can help us understand how people continue to come to the conclusions that they do. JS

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Contemporary masculinities This symposium, convened by Peter Branney from Leeds Metropolitan University, explored how representations of masculinity are lived out in and through the body. A total of four papers were presented, followed by an open discussion through a pecha kucha (a presentational method showing 20 images for 20 seconds each to initiate intensive discussion) led by the artist John D. Edwards.

Branney began the symposium by considering how conceptions of masculinity can be embodied in the penis, and how this sense of masculinity is affected by penile cancer.

Although penis cancer is rare, accounting for less than 1 per cent of new cancer cases, it has the potential to cause significant trauma. This is not only through the cancer in and of itself, but also through the potential surgical removal of penile tissue.

Losing part, or indeed all, of the penis left some males in this study feeling ‘less of a man’, although others recognised that there was more to being a man than possession of a penis. One of the key messages to emerge for this talk was that the support of a partner could be very important for feeling secure. Some of the interviewees indicated that they had even altered their sexual techniques following surgery, which had the positive effect of ‘spicing up’ their relationships.

Kate Hunt, from the MRC Social and Public Health Sciences Unit in Glasgow, considered men’s reactions to being diagnosed with breast cancer. One of the first challenges faced is for men to reconcile having an archetypical female cancer in a male body.

Male breasts are seldom the subject of discussion, unless linked to obesity, and many males do not realise that they can be diagnosed with breast cancer. Some men had elicited shock or

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disbelief from others and had to show their scar from breast removal surgery to convince others that they actually had breast cancer. This led to men having a dual status as both ‘a man’ and ‘a breast cancer patient’, statuses which had hitherto been regarded as mutually exclusive. This presents challenges to men in (re)forming their identity and sense of their own body.

Brendan Gough, from Leeds Metropolitan University, looked at the effectiveness of the ‘Motivate’ scheme in Nottingham to help men manage their weight. Male obesity is on the rise, but men tend to downplay the level of their own obesity. Similar to women, males on the ‘Motivate’ scheme rejected the idea of ‘normalised’ (BMI-based) ideal weights. Men also tended to use humour when discussing the issue of their own weight. Clothes acted as a barometer for their problems; if the men being interviewed could fit into certain clothes, or brands of clothes, they would feel better about their weight.

The final presentation in the symposium came from Paul Flowers, from Glasgow Caledonian University, looking at the rise in commodification of the aesthetic and function of the penis. There is a growth industry in marketing penis enhancements to men. Adverts for such techniques tend to link penis size to confidence, attractiveness and heterosexuality (there are very few, if any adverts aimed at gay men). These adverts try to establish their credentials through a strong biomedical theme, making their products and techniques appear more scientific and professional. The websites encourage men to view the penis as the centre of their lives and actively encourage comparisons with other men; constructing penile pathologies and concomitant vulnerabilities for many men. MS

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Revisiting the classics Where other sciences have their cardinal theories, the foundations of social psychology rest on a series of controversial, classic studies that have shaped the course of the discipline. This symposium revisited three – ‘interrogating’ them, in the words of coconvenor Professor Alex Haslam (University of Queensland), and moving our understanding forward.

Joanne Smith (University of Exeter) began, summarising Richard LaPiere’s 1930s ‘hospitality study’ in which he travelled across the US with a young Chinese couple. Despite this being a time of intense prejudice towards people of their ethnicity, the couple were denied board at only one out of 251 establishments. Yet when LaPiere contacted these same hotels and restaurants six months later, 92 per cent said they would refuse entry to Chinese people. To LaPiere , this showed there exists a profound disconnect between people’s stated attitudes and their actual behaviours.

Smith highlighted some of the shortcomings of LaPiere’s study – for example, he measured behaviour first, then attitudes, and he neglected to account for the influence of faceto-face social norms. Nonetheless, the research was hugely influential, inspiring others to identify the factors that affect whether there is a mismatch in attitudes and behaviour or not – including Icek Ajzen’s theories of reasoned action and planned behaviour. In more recent years psychologists have come to distinguish between explicit and implicit attitudes and their relationship with actual behaviour.

LaPiere was disappointed by the impact of his study, but, Smith said, ‘his key message – that we should not take anything about attitudes or behaviour, or their relationship, for granted – endures and continues to shape the field today’.

Next, Haslam was on fighting form as he accused post-war social psychology of

espousing a ‘conformity bias’ – the idea that we are somehow naturally inclined to obey and conform to group demands, as supposedly evidenced by the classic studies of Zimbardo, Asch and Milgram.

Haslam took particular aim at Zimbardo’s

On hearing he was a joint winner of the Society’s Award for Promoting Equality of Opportunity, Martin Milton (Surrey University) said he felt ‘excitement, humility, but then real anger’. Titled ‘From stonewall to the consulting room: Power, equality and sexual difference’, Milton’s talk explained why.

Milton said that attitudes to sexuality

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have changed, and that sexual minorities are now treated better, experience less discrimination, less physical threat and increased occupational freedom. ‘I/we /the field have achieved something. But are we at risk of starting to get complacent?’

It’s not that long ago, pointed out Milton, that our own profession was divided on the topic, with homophobic comments and letters sent to the proposers of the then Lesbian and Gay Psychology Section of the Society. The profession was also complicit in how sexualities were treated in DSM. ‘My anger is telling me “don’t think we’ve cracked it’’,’ Milton said.

Thankfully, Milton believes the anger has brought passion and energy to right some wrongs. Although critical of the Society for being ‘overly conservative’ in the past over what it could and could not do in terms of campaigning as a charity, Milton praised developments such as the guidelines for working therapeutically with sexual and gender minority clients, and the position statement on therapies

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attempting to change sexual orientation.

‘We didn’t miss that boat’, he concluded.

‘We have an amazing role in helping society move towards equality of opportunity.’

The other winner, Mark Burton (Manchester Metropolitan University), followed on with a stirring and thoughtprovoking summary of an ethical orientation that has evolved over the course of his career. We face a perfect storm of ecological, economic and social crises, he warned. To talk of ‘the promotion of equality of opportunity’

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claims that ‘people cannot help but conform to the toxic requirements of toxic environments’ – the so-called Lucifer effect – an idea that he’s invoked to explain reallife instances of cruelty, such as at Abu Ghraib.

But Haslam pointed out that Zimbardo neglects to mention how much of an active role he played in the events of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Assuming the role of ‘prison superintendent’ Zimbardo issued dark instructions to his student guards, telling them: ‘their [the prisoners’] life is totally controlled by us’. This fact, Haslam argued, ‘is ‘massively inconsistent’ with Zimbardo’s story that the prisoners received no training, that their behavioural script was ‘their sole source of guidance’. ‘No it wasn’t,’ said Haslam, exasperated, ‘You fucking told them what to do.’

In contrast to the conformity model, social identity theory states that subordinated groups can resist

oppression, as long as they achieve a shared oppositional identity, as was shown to happen during Haslam and Steve Reicher’s BBC Prison Study.

Zimbardo has rejected this notion of prisoner uprisings as having ‘no external validity’. But it clearly does: Haslam highlighted several real-life examples of prisoner resistance, including at The Maze, in Northern Ireland and Robben Island, South Africa. The model of conformity purportedly supported by the classic studies is ‘dangerously flawed’, Haslam concluded, ‘appearing to explain why the social world is inherently toxic, rather than explaining how this toxicity is brought about by certain forms of leadership and identity – and hence how toxicity can be resisted and overcome’.

Last up, Mark Levine (University of Exeter) re-examined the story of Kitty Genovese and the bystander effect. He challenged the idea that 38 witnesses did nothing to help (in fact, none saw her actual murder), but he acknowledged the bystander effect itself is ‘one of the most reliable, robust’ phenomena in social psychology. This is the simple notion that people’s sense of social responsibility is diluted by the presence of others.

Unfortunately, said Levine, recognition

of the effect had for many years failed to translate into practical insights for how to overcome it, in part because it was assumed the group only ever inhibits helping behaviour.

Over the last decade, that’s changed, as Levine and others have examined the social identity factors influencing when and why the presence of others can actually encourage rather than inhibit individual action. For instance, in a 2005 study Levine and his colleagues showed that Manchester United fans were likely to help a fallen Liverpool fan when their shared identity as ‘football fans’ had been primed. Another paper published in 2009 showed that bystander women were actually more likely to say they’d intervene to help a female attack victim when they were in a group with other women, as opposed to when they were on their own.

‘It is only by unpacking the psychological relationships between bystanders, victims and perpetrators and how social identity processes might contribute to groups being harnessed for the power of good,’ concluded Levine ‘that we will be able to increase the likelihood of future Kitty Genoveses receiving help.’ CJ

A LIFESPAN PERSPECTIVE ON ATTACHMENT at this point risks being something of a diversion, Burton argued: it neglects (in)equality of circumstances. It is ameliorative, not transformative: the wider transformational, liberatory agenda is silenced. Burton’s answer is community psychology, which he says offers a corrective to the psychologisation that can occur in psychology and in society.

Burton referred to recent events such as the Mid-Staffordshire NHS scandal, where ‘staff acted so callously, leaving their hearts at the door of the hospital’.

But care scandals are not new, he pointed out. So where did it all go wrong?

Interestingly, Burton points to the colonisation of the Americas as a point at which other humans were redefined as subhuman, the outsider, the lower order.

From then on, new coloniality did not require a colony any more – this sad situation is now integral to the modern world. We must work for the replacement of the present systems of domination, calling on liberation psychology in order to take the perspective of the oppressed. JS

When we think of ‘attachment style’ the first thing that comes to mind is usually the relationship between infants and caregivers.

The symposium convened by Andrea Oskis (University of West London) reminded us that Bowlby’s theory of attachment is in fact a lifespan perspective, in which childhood experiences play an important role in shaping our relationships and emotional well-being in adulthood.

We know that insecure attachment stems from adverse experiences in childhood, but two talks showed that different types of mistreatment actually have differential impact. In a high-risk community sample of women, Antonia Bifulco (Kingston University) found that severe lack of care in childhood, through neglect, antipathy or role reversal, was related to insecure anxious styles of attachment, whereas severe abuse was related to insecure angry dismissive styles. Further, insecure attachment mediated the relationship between childhood experiences and new onset of depression and anxiety.

Vittoria Ardino (London School of Economics) considered the relationship

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between childhood trauma, attachment style, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in forensic populations. Specific aspects of early childhood neglect and abuse in a sample of prisoners highlighted different pathways to PTSD, with maternal physical abuse particularly associated with risk of reoffending.

The other talks in the symposium looked at attachment style in adolescence. Insecure attachment style has previously been linked to dysregulated patterns of cortisol secretion in adult women but Oskis presented evidence that this link is also present in adolescent females. However, Catherine Jacobs (Kingston University) showed that change in attachment style during adolescence is possible. Her action research in partnership with St Christopher’s highlighted the very high incidence of insecure attachment styles amongst young people in residential care. Following a social learning intervention with rewards for prosocial behaviour though, all but one of 58 young people aged 11 to 16 years showed some form of improvement in their attachment style. AJ

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Working memory and education Whenever we need to hold multiple items of information in mind for further processing or imminent retrieval, it’s our working memory that we depend on. In her keynote, Professor Susan Gathercole, Director of the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at Cambridge, described her lab’s research showing how this mental capability varies between children, and the implications this has for their performance at school.

Research with more than 400 children aged 7 to 10 with poor working memory has found that they tend to make poor academic progress, they have difficulty following instructions and keeping place when writing and copying, and they struggle with classroom tasks that require both processing and storage of information, of which there are many.

Teachers often describe children with poor working memory as ‘being in a world of their own’ or ‘always daydreaming’. Gathercole, a former winner of the Society’s Spearman Medal and Presidents’ Award, believes it’s not the case that the children have chosen not to listen – it’s that they can’t help it. Their difficulties are similar to those reported in children diagnosed with the inattentional

form of ADHD, and Gathercole confirmed there is a large degree of overlap between the populations.

So, having identified the importance of working memory ability for children, what can be done to help those who struggle? In the first instance, there are practical steps that can be taken in relation to teaching style, including – being prepared to re-show information, keeping a close eye on pupils with poor working memory, teaching children strategies to compensate for their memory weakness, and conducting classes in a way that minimises the load on working memory.

Gathercole has produced a free classroom guide for teachers which outlines these ideas in more detail (contact her directly).

Even more appealing would be if there were some way to improve children’s working memory ability. This is the precise claim of many online brain training products, and Gathercole has been at the forefront of research testing one of these, known commercially as Cogmed. The programme involves playful but challenging games that place demands on children’s working memory and that grow progressively more difficult as their performance improves. There have been

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promising results. A 2009 study that Gathercole conducted with Joni Holmes and Darren Dunning found that 35 minutes training a day for 20 days or more (over five to seven weeks) led to significant, sustained improvements in working memory. There was also a small knock-on benefit for maths performance, but this hasn’t been replicated.

And therein lies the crux of an ongoing controversy in this field.

Although working memory training programmes improve working memory performance, many studies have now shown that these benefits don’t generalise to learning performance or other aspects of daily life. Indeed, just days before Gathercole’s keynote, the New Yorker ran an article by the Pulitzer-winning writer Gareth Cook with the stark headline: ‘Brain games are bogus’ (see also the recent meta-analysis covered on our Research Digest: tinyurl.com/arnxjzq).

Acknowledging this transfer issue, Gathercole said the important point now is what to do about it. ‘Is it the case that we’ve only done half the job?’ she asked.

Borrowing from the field of brain injury rehabilitation, Gathercole and her colleagues are now working on new training programmes, including the use of virtual school environments, that engender a flexibility in children, encouraging them to transfer their working memory gains to real-life tasks.

Will it work? Watch this space! CJ

The affable Peter Thompson (University of York) accepted his Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology Education with modesty, humour and double entendre (‘Hard things can be fun’). ‘It’s an award which I thoroughly do not deserve’, he said, before going on to demonstrate ably why he does.

As the late Tom Troscianko wrote in his award nomination, Thompson demonstrates that good teaching can inspire good research. His famous ‘Thatcher illusion’, demonstrated for the audience in timely fashion two days after her death, began as a demonstration for electronics students, of high spatial frequencies in human perception.

‘I went to the Tory party office in York’, Thompson said, ‘and did it on the living room floor in 10 minutes.’ It has now been cited more times than there are words in the paper he wrote, Thompson noted: ‘a good goal for any writing’.

So has he learnt anything about how you engage people’s interest? Absolutely not, he said. But he had a message for people who say ‘It’s so easy for you, because visual perception is really interesting’. ‘That’s complete rubbish. There are people who can do it and people who can’t. And I have no idea which are which.’ JS

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Epistemic superhighway Therapy is not just about the ‘what’ but the ‘how’ of learning, opening the person’s mind via the establishment of trust.

That was the key message from Professor Peter Fonagy (University College London) in his opening keynote, meshing themes of the conference such as the atypical mind, education and attachment.

Fonagy took the audience through some successes of the Children and Young Persons’ Improving Access to Psychological Therapies initiative, an ‘ambitious

plan to transform services from something already good to something great’ by introducing evidencebased organisation of care.

At the heart of it all, in Fonagy’s view, is communication: humans are predisposed to ‘teach’ and ‘learn’ new and relevant cultural information from each other. Infants display species-specific sensitivity to, and preference for, cues which mark that a piece of cultural knowledge is about to be transmitted.

This opens an ‘epistemic superhighway’, with

ostensive cues (e.g. ‘hello baby’) triggering epistemic trust. Influential communicators (such as Bill Clinton, and Fonagy’s own Hungarian teacher from school!) create the ‘illusion’ of recognising agentiveness of the listener.

Fonagy sees social adversity – most deeply, trauma – as the destruction of trust in social knowledge of all kinds. The solution, he concludes, is to set up clinical services that focus on partnership and communication. JS

Doctors of the dark side?

Should psychologists help supervise the interrogation of terror suspects, ostensibly to ensure procedures remain safe and legal, or should we refuse collectively to play any part? This is a controversy, documented in our own news pages, that has rocked the profession for several years, especially in the USA, where declassified documents have shown psychologists were involved deeply in the design and practice of morally repugnant interrogation practices used in Afghanistan, in Iraq and at Guantánamo.

On the last day of the conference, delegates were shown an edit of US clinical psychologist Martha Davis’s 2011 feature-length documentary Doctors of the Dark Side, which uses interviews and dramatic interrogation reconstructions to explore the controversy (see www.doctorsofthedarkside.com).

We heard, for instance, about the existence in the US security forces of Behavioural Science Consultation Teams (BSCT – pronounced ‘biscuit’), whose job it is to identify detainees’ weaknesses. We heard how army psychologists like James Mitchell oversaw the waterboarding of detainees, including 83 instances of the practice used repeatedly on one single prisoner. And we heard how Mohammed Jawad, captured in Afghanistan by US authorities when he was just a teenager, had been subjected in prison to the

recommendations of a BSCT psychologist, including an instruction to ‘work him harder’ and increase his isolation.

Released without charge after seven years, his mother apparently no longer recognised him.

And yet the film said complaints made to State Licensing Boards against Mitchell and other psychologists have so far all been dismissed. Often these cases are taken up at a local level because the psychologists are not members of the American Psychological Association, and so can’t be disciplined by that organisation. The APA sanctions psychologists’ involvement in interrogation so long as strict ethical guidelines are followed – a position that has provoked fierce criticism from many quarters, including Psychologists for Social Responsibility, who believe psychologists should have no involvement whatever.

On the discussion panel after the screening were Karen Kitchener, a former chair of the APA ethics committee, and Frank Margison, chair of the Trustees of Freedom from Torture. Kitchener outlined the five ethical principles she believes should guide all psychologists (including doing no harm). She stated her belief that all five principles had been broken by the interrogation psychologists featured in the film. CJ

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BOOK AWARD The Society’s Book Award was given this year, shock horror, for a book that contained not a single new idea. This is because, unusually, this year the award went to a populist book – The Psychology Book (DK, 2012). As part of the Big Ideas Simply Explained series, this text manages the seemingly impossible task of condensing all of the big ideas in psychology into a single volume, in a way that is informative and easy to understand. The scale of the challenge faced by the authors was further revealed when it became apparent that the two (of six) contributors giving the award speech, Marcus Weeks and Merrin Lazyan, had not actually met before accepting the award.

This was possible because the book is designed to be read in sections, allowing students, teachers, parents, any interested reader, to dip in and out of different aspects of psychology. Weeks and Lazyan described the difficulty of having to select the most important ideas in the whole discipline and fit them within strictly allocated spaces. The four other authors are Catherine Collin, Nigel Benson, Joannah Ginsburg and Voula Grand.

In the future more popular science books will be recognised by the BPS in this way, with the creation of four awards in different categories: academic monograph; practitioner text; text book; popular science.

See tinyurl.com/bmz6cxq for details. AJ

KETAMINE James Moore, from Goldsmiths, University of London, spoke about the effects of ketamine on sensorimotor prediction in sense of agency (SoAg). SoAg refers to the experience of initiating and controlling actions in order to influence events in the outside world. SoAg is associated with a subjective compression of time: actions and their outcomes are bound together in subjective time. This is known as ‘intentional binding’ and, in healthy adults, depends partly on advance prediction of action outcomes. A disturbed SoAg is often found in schizophrenics, and is thought to be related to aberrant sensorimotor prediction.

Ketamine is a well-established drug model of schizophrenia. Participants completed the intentional binding task on ketamine and, in a separate session, using a placebo. Relative to the placebo, ketamine significantly increased the contribution of prediction to intentional binding. This pattern of results closely resembles previous data from patients in the early stages of schizophrenia, rather than those with more established schizophrenic illness. This suggest that ketamine is a useful model of aberrant experiences of agency associated with the earlier, rather than the later, stages of schizophrenia. MS

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MALTREATMENT AND PSYCHOSIS Over the past decade there has been a resurgence of research into the potential links between childhood maltreatment and the development of psychotic symptoms, reported Helen Fisher (Institute of Psychiatry). Accepting the Society’s Award for Outstanding Doctoral Research Contributions to Psychology, Fisher began with the worrying statistics that 25 per cent of young people are maltreated by their parents, and 63 per cent victimised by peers. The risk of psychosis – hallucinations, delusions and thought disorders – is much higher if you’ve experienced such bullying and maltreatment, with physical and emotional abuse by mothers having the strongest association.

It’s not an easy area to study – memory problems in self-report of maltreatment can clearly be compounded by delusions, and half of the association between childhood maltreatment and psychosis can be explained by re-victimisation in adulthood.

Thankfully Fisher has been able to make use of the ALSPAC prospective epidemiological study to tease apart how the specific characteristics of abuse exposure are differentially related to psychosis. Fisher suggested a passive gene–environment correlation, in that having a parent with psychosis does increase your chances of being maltreated. Child maltreatment is one of many risk factors for psychosis, Fisher concluded, though most with psychosis have not been abused and most abused do not develop psychosis. JS

Health, thinking and hormones As part of the student stream, Peter Lovatt (University of Hertfordshire) gave an enthusiastic and engaging overview of his research on the psychology of dance and its many implications for well-being.

Several different strands of research were covered, which were well illustrated

by Lovatt’s energetic dance routines and reinforced by audience participation.

The impact of dance on thought processes was highlighted, whereby structured dancing can enhance divergent problem-solving abilities and improvisation can

improve divergent thinking and creativity.

Lovatt also highlighted the health-related benefits of dance, providing evidence that it can reduce symptoms of Parkinson’s disease over and above the mere physical effects of exercise. Interestingly, only certain types of dance appear to be beneficial, with ‘a tango being more effective than a foxtrot’.

Research is currently under way to examine the long-term benefits of dancing for people with neurodegenerative disorders.

Dance also has an important role in the mate-

selection process. Lovatt’s research demonstrates that a woman’s fertility cycle influences the way that they dance. Women tend to isolate and move their hips more during their fertile periods. Eyetracking techniques have shown that men’s attention is more likely to be focused on women’s pelvic area during this time. Also emphasising the role of hormones on dance styles, Lovatt explained that women tend to rate more symmetrical men (who have higher levels of prenatal testosterone exposure) as better dancers. GK

INJECTING A FEELING Facial-feedback theory postulates that the facial expression of an emotion (for example smiling) creates, maintains or strengthens that emotion. Michael Lewis (Cardiff University) argued that injections of botulinum-toxin (botox), commonly used to ‘smooth out’ facial wrinkles, can influence our emotional experiences. Evidence was provided that paralysis of the frown muscles may temporarily reduce levels of depression and anxiety due to an inability to use these muscles. Moreover, injections of botox into the forehead may increase gullibility, as people are unable to raise their eyebrows to express surprise and scepticism. The clinical implications of this research were highlighted by Lewis, whereby paralysing the muscles responsible for nose wrinkling (the facial expression of revulsion) has the potential to reduce feelings of disgust in people with OCD, which is a common and distressing feature of the disorder. GK

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TIME FOR A WIKIASSIGNMENT? ‘There are projects to catalogue every cheese on Wikipedia; why not psychological topics?’ So argued Martin Poulter, an Associate for Wikimedia UK. A keen Wikipedia editor himself, he was running a workshop to encourage more psychologists to do the same.

Some pages on Wikipedia – for example Asperger’s syndrome – receive up to 20,000 views per day, yet are thought to be ripe for improvement.

Popular misconceptions, abstract concepts, competing traditions, fragmented terminology and insufficient review papers all mean that this is often the case with psychology. Poulter covered the rewards of contributing: he estimates that his piece on confirmation

bias was seen by 53,000 people in one day and his efforts ‘are a factor in the fact that people talk about confirmation bias more now’.

Why not encourage Wikipedia editing as an educational assignment, Poulter said. These are, after all, the same habits we’re trying to encourage in degree-level education: critical understanding, active involvement and more. Also, 72 per cent of students in a US survey preferred a ‘Wikiassignment’ to a conventional assignment. I note that more than 2000 psychological scientists and their students have joined the Association for Psychological Science’s Wikipedia Initiative: perhaps it’s high time for a UK equivalent. JS

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The emotions of ethics The psychologist gently told his client he was flattered by her feelings, but that it would be unethical for him to pursue the relationship outside of the office. She seemed to understand and left the office to go home, but her car wouldn’t start. It was raining hard, so she returned to the office to wait for a tow truck. She was soaking wet, so the psychologist grabbed a towel and started to help her dry off.

As he did so she turned and threw herself into his arms. They kissed and ended up having sexual relations on the couch in his office.

So concluded a fact-based scenario from Karen Kitchener (University of Denver) in her keynote (available in full via tinyurl.com/cd93lyk), in which she argued that in ethical dilemmas people are often thinking with something other than their head. Emotional responses, and the environment in which they find themselves, can have a big impact.

Drawing on the theories of Herb Simon and Daniel Kahneman, alongside fMRI studies in neuro-economics, Kitchener demonstrated that many moral decisions result from affective processes that are non-conscious and automatic.

I was struck by her reference to the research of Mumford and colleagues, finding that with socialisation into the

justification has two levels: the intuitive, which is the seat of our emotional reactions to the situation, our values, the level of our professional identity development, and the facts of the situation itself; and the critical evaluative, which allows us to reflect on our intuitions, reform them when they are biased and make decisions when intuitions give us no guidance. The moral principles identified by the model differ somewhat from those identified by the Society’s own Code of Ethics and Conduct. They include nonmaleficence (do no harm), beneficence (produce good), respect for autonomy, justice and fidelity (be truthful, keep promises).

Kitchener presented a model of how such reasoning develops and a methodology that can be used to study its development. She finished with the implications of the ideas for Critical evaluation allows us to reflect on our teaching and learning ethics. intuitions, reform them when they are biased ‘Students need frank discussions of and make decisions when intuitions give us no the ethical environments in which guidance they find themselves,’ she said. ‘It is difficult and takes courage to be the and with more exposure to unethical only one who speaks up about the ethics events students’ moral decision making of a situation. Hopefully, I found ways to declined. give students that courage and that you Kitchener postulates that ethical will too.’ JS social and biological sciences ethical decision-making improved or stayed the same; yet ethical decision-making decreased with years spent in the health sciences. Moral decisions were affected by perceptions of the department climate,

The meaning of nostalgia from death awareness and anxiety. How would you complete the following word: COFF__? Sedikides showed that people who are asked to describe their emotions at the thought of their own death and then answer such a word completion task, respond differently depending on their level of trait nostalgia.

High nostalgics are more likely to answer COFFEE, whereas low nostalgics are more likely to answer COFFIN. So, far from being a psychological deficit, nostalgia, according to Sedikides, both confers meaning in life and acts as a natural defence against existential threats. AJ TONY DALE

As I think back on my time at the BPS Annual Conference this year, I fondly remember the talks, the large quantities of coffee, the time spent with friends and colleagues new and old, the large quantities of wine, and the dancing at the gala dinner. Fortunately, I am aware that becoming nostalgic in this way is not just a way to procrastinate in the face of the looming exam-marking period. According to the winner of the Presidents’ Award, Constantine Sedikides (University of Southampton), nostalgia, a sentimental longing for one’s past, should not be viewed as a dysfunction or liability but rather as a psychological strength.

When people are asked to think about a nostalgic event and either write about it for a few minutes or note down four key words, their sense of social connectedness increases. People who have become

nostalgic are less attachment avoidant and less insecurely attached. Nostalgia helps to provide meaning in life, mediated by our sense of sociality.

Being nostalgic may also protect you

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MALE SUICIDE Men aged in their 30s to 50s are particularly at risk of suicide because of potential social isolation linked to numerous changes in social roles and the conception of gender. That’s according to Clare Wyllie, from Samaritans Policy and Research.

Many males don’t have a way of expressing or coping with the changes in their lives.

Interactions with other males, who could provide social support, are often based on performing specific activities, such as sports, rather than discussing emotional issues. This results in the ‘big build’, which is an accumulation of mental issues and stress that continues until a breaking point is reached. Suicide prevention for this group must include the development of social connections as a key measure, taking into account the kinds of relationships and interactions men value. MS

PTSD Laura Freeman and Carolyn Choudhary, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, spoke about the occurrence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and its interrelationship with shame among new referrals to an NHS psychological therapy service. Shame may become a lasting disposition and involve defence strategies such as avoidance, concealment and aggression. These may affect interpersonal relationships and impede the process of therapy.

Surprisingly, up to 79 per cent of participants in the study met a diagnosis of PTSD. Total shame scores were also high among the sample and positively related to PTSD scores. Interestingly, characterological shame (as opposed to behavioural shame or body shame) made an independent significant contribution to PTSD. These findings support the conception that shame may be a symptom of PTSD and that screening for PTSD and self-conscious emotion should be considered for patients seeking therapy. MS

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Learning about ethics Ethical practice is at the core of psychological practice, and thus we might expect that teaching about ethics would be at the core of teaching about psychology. Unfortunately, this is not necessarily the case, as highlighted by Kirsten Bartlett (University of York) within the ethics symposium convened by Tony Wainwright (University of Exeter). A survey of postgraduate students found that around 65 per cent had received some formal ethics training at undergraduate level. Around the same level of PhD and master’s students reported receiving training during their current courses, though this increased to nearly 100 per cent for clinical doctorate students.

Worryingly, this means that some postgraduates will fall into a group who have not received formal teaching in ethical practice at any point in their studies.

The training that was reported was diverse, including structured teaching sessions, training focused on gaining approval for research, and training around specific dilemmas (for clinical students). It was also pragmatic, largely focused around how to gain research approval. A pragmatic approach to ethics teaching may be effective, but Bartlett asked whether this is really sufficient.

The potential consequences of insufficient training and knowledge in ethical practice issues were shown in a separate presentation by Jean Daly (University of Ulster). Daly explored how clinical psychologists, counsellors and psychotherapists respond to clients’ disclosures of unprosecuted criminal offences. Only 52.5 per cent respondents felt adequately informed about their legal obligations, and only 56.4 per cent had received training about these. Of greatest concern perhaps was that some participants who were aware of their legal duty still engaged in non-reporting behaviour when faced with hypothetical scenarios. Factors which affected reporting rates were the identity of the client, type of crime, timescale since offence, and level of risk to third party.

Wainwright, Chair of the BPS Ethics Committee, reinforced the need to question the way we currently think about ethics and ethics training in light of moral psychology. Despite the existence of many codes of ethical conduct which psychologists in different organisations may operate within, there is still much unethical conduct. It seems it is a good time to ask whether we want to create pragmatic researchers and practitioners, or moral psychologists. AJ

Mixed experiences of mixed methodology Attendees of the workshop on mixed methods research, developed by Rachel Shaw (Chair of the Qualitative Methods in Psychology Section, Aston University), Nollaig Frost and Anthony Murphy (both Middlesex University), included undergraduates, practitioners and academics up to senior lecturer level. Although mixed research designs are not new, people were there not only to learn about these approaches but also to learn how to increase others’ acceptance of them.

Mixed methods research might mean conducting a qualitative pilot study to

inform a larger-scale quantitative project. It could also mean integrating quantitative and qualitative measures to meet a research aim or understand the effectiveness of an intervention. This mix of quantitative and qualitative methods is usually what mixed methods research brings to mind. However, the workshop showed that it can also mean a mix of qualitative approaches or a mixture of types of data.

One approach covered was pluralism, where multiple qualitative methods are used to answer a complex research question. Looking at data through more than one lens,

rather than being driven by epistemological and ontological assumptions, may enable a greater level of insight into the meanings they contain. This is not about performing multiple analyses until you find one that produces the right result (equally an ever-present concern in statistical analyses, of course). Rather it was argued to be about putting the research question at the core, and accepting that there may be more than one explanation.

Whether psychologists can all accept that using more than one method may be advantageous is another argument altogether. AJ

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Protection or exclusion?

Do we have the right to risk harming vulnerable people by including them in research? Equally, do we have the right to deny people the benefits of research by deciding they are vulnerable?

Kate Bullen (Aberystwyth University) raised these challenging questions within the symposium on ethics convened

by Tony Wainwright (University of Exeter). The key message was that we must strive to minimise harm but also maximise the benefit when conducting research with vulnerable groups. For example, although working with cancer patients receiving palliative care is emotionally charged (for both patients and researchers), this should be balanced against the way in which taking part in research can help to give meaning at the end of someone’s life. And whilst we must use increased sensitivity when working with frail elderly populations, taking into consideration factors such as capacity and ongoing consent, this does not mean that it is right to exclude these older people from research.

An example of the dilemmas involved in conducting research with vulnerable people was separately provided in a talk by

Nadia Wager (University of Bedfordshire). Initially the project to conduct an online survey with survivors of sexual victimisation received an ethics rejection, prompting Wager to research the research process itself. Again, the key point was to minimise costs and enhance benefits. Literature showed that being asked about sexual victimisation was unlikely to bring up forgotten memories, whilst it was found that allowing people open spaces to record their thoughts and experiences maximised personal benefits. When the study actually went ahead, Wager asked participants to complete further questions about the experience of research participation. Survivors of sexual victimisation felt the survey was respectful, but interestingly people who did not have a history of victimisation felt it was not. Some reported experiencing unanticipated distress, and for a small minority this lasted the rest of the day, but participants also reported experiencing personal benefits. At the time of the talk, a follow-up study was planned but was struggling to receive ethics permission.

Both of these talks forced us to recognise that from the very moment we start considering the issue of vulnerability, we are beginning a power dynamic between researcher and participant. Who gets to say who is vulnerable, do you feel you should decide? AJ

Still no simple autism answers it is particularly important to include females in studies of autism.

The triad of autistic symptoms identified by Kanner – social difficulties, communication difficulties, and restricted repetitive behaviours and interests – are now thought to be separable.

Ronald explained the fractionable autism triad hypothesis, which suggests that these symptoms might actually have separate causes.

Each part of the triad is individually highly heritable, but little overlap has been found in their heritability.

However, shared genetic risk factors have been found between autism symptoms and comorbid disorders, such as ADHD. It is thought that further research into comorbidity will TONY DALE

Angelica Ronald (Birkbeck, University of London), winner of the Society’s Spearman Medal, considered how far we have come in our understanding of autism since Leo Kanner first described it as a disorder in 1943. We are sure now that genes and environment both play a role. As the etiology of autistic traits does not seem to differ from that of autism, it is also thought that there is a continuum at both the genetic and environmental level of risk.

It has long been known that boys are more at risk of developing autism, Angelica Ronald but it has recently been recognised that this means girls who develop autism may have a greater burden of risk factors. Therefore,

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help to shed more light on the causes of autism.

Seventy years on, our understanding of what causes autism has certainly deepened but as Ronald’s speech showed, there are no simple answers. AJ

YOUR REPORTERS Professor Robin Dunbar (University of Oxford) Professor Alex Haslam (University of Queensland) Dr Alana James (Royal Holloway, University of London) Dr Christian Jarrett (Journalist, The Psychologist) Professor Gail Kinman (University of Bedfordshire) Dr Mark Sergeant (Nottingham Trent University) Dr Jon Sutton (Managing Editor, The Psychologist)

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ARTICLE

The paradox of knowing We have greater insight into others than ourselves. David Dunning outlines some intriguing research.

To know others is wisdom, to know one’s self is enlightenment.

Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu

People appear to know other people better than they know themselves, at least when it comes to predicting future behaviour and achievement.

Why? People display a rather accurate grasp of human nature in general, knowing how social behaviour is shaped by situational and internal constraints. They just exempt themselves from this understanding, thinking instead that their own actions are more a product of their agency, intentions, and free will – a phenomenon we term ‘misguided exceptionalism’.

How does this relate to cultural differences in self-insight? And are there areas of human life where people may still know themselves better than they know other people?

questions resources

Vazire, S. & Wilson, T.D. (Eds.) Handbook of self-knowledge. New York: Guilford.

Pronin, E. (2008). How we see ourselves and how we see others. Science, 320, 1177–1180. http://cornellpsych.org/sasi/index.php

references

Balcetis, E. & Dunning, D. (2008). A mile in moccasins: How situational experience reduces dispositionism in social judgment. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 102–114.

Balcetis, E. & Dunning, D. (2013).

Considering the situation: Why people are better social psychologists than selfpsychologists. Self and Identity, 12,

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The holier-than-thou phenomenon The ‘holier-than-thou’ phenomenon in behavioural prediction perhaps best illustrates this paradox of greater insight into other people than the self. The phenomenon is defined as people predicting they are far more likely to engage in socially desirable acts than their peers. Across several studies, we have asked people to forecast how they will behave in situations that have an ethical, civic or altruistic tone. For example, we

or the past twenty-odd years, the main discovery in my lab has been finding out just how unenlightened people are, at least in the terms that Lao Tzu put it. People appear to harbour many and frequent false beliefs about their own competence, character, place in the social world, and future (Dunning, 2005; Dunning et al., 2004). If ‘knowing yourself’ is a task that many philosophers and social commentators – from both Western and Eastern traditions – have exhorted people to accomplish, it appears that very few are taking the advice seriously enough to succeed.

But here is the rub.

Although people may not possess much enlightenment, according to Lao Tzu’s criteria, they do instead seem to display a lot of wisdom. At least when it comes to making predictions about the future, people achieve more accuracy forecasting what their peers will do than what they themselves will do. Through their predictions, they seem to Do people believe too much in their better selves? possess a rough but valid

F

Why don't people learn from the past that they tend to be overly optimistic about the future?

In what other areas of life might people know themselves better than they know others?

wisdom about the general dynamics of human nature and how it is reflected in people’s actions. They just fail to display the same sagacity when it comes to understanding their own personal dynamics. As psychologists, they appear to be much better social psychologists than self-psychologists.

1–15.

Balcetis, E., Dunning, D. & Miller, R.L. (2008). Do collectivists ‘know themselves’ better than individualists? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 1252–1267.

Bass, B.M. & Yammarino, F.J. (1991).

Congruence of self and others’ leadership ratings of Naval officers for understanding successful performance. Applied Psychology, 40,

437–454.

Buehler, R., Griffin, D. & Ross, M. (1994).

Exploring the ‘planning fallacy’.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 366–381.

Borkenau, P. & Liebler, A. (1993).

Convergence of stranger ratings of personality and intelligence with self-ratings, partner ratings, and measured intelligence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65,

546–553.

Critcher, C.R. & Dunning, D. (2013).

Predicting persons’ goodness versus a person’s goodness: Forecasts diverge for populations versus individuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104, 28–44.

Dunning, D. (2005). Self-insight: Roadblocks and detours on the path to knowing thyself. New York: Psychology Press.

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ask whether they will donate to charity, or cooperate with another person in an experiment, or vote in an upcoming election. We also ask them the likelihood that their peers will do the same.

Consistently, we find that respondents claim that they are much more likely to act in a socially desirable way than their peers are (Balcetis & Dunning, 2008, 2013; Epley & Dunning, 2000, 2006).

But here is the key twist: We then expose an equivalent set of respondents to the actual situation, to see which prediction – self or peer – better anticipates the true rate at which people ‘do the right thing’. Do self-predictions better anticipate the rate that people act in desirable ways, with people, thus, showing undue cynicism about the character of their peers? Or do peer predictions prove more accurate, demonstrating that people believe too much in their better selves?

In our studies we find that people’s peer predictions are the more accurate ones. Self-predictions, in contrast, are wildly optimistic. For example, in one study, a full 90 per cent of students in a large-lecture psychology class eligible to vote in an upcoming US presidential election said that they would. They then provided another student with some relevant information about themselves, such as how interested they were in the election and how pleased would they be if their favoured candidate won.

Peers given such information predicted that only 67 per cent of respondents would vote. Actual voting rate among those respondents when the election arrived: 61 per cent (Epley & Dunning, 2000, Study 2).

Time and again we have seen such a pattern. For example, 83 per cent of students forecast that they would buy a daffodil for charity in an upcoming drive for the American Cancer Society, but that only 56 per cent of their peers would. When we check back, we found that only 43 per cent had done so (Epley & Dunning, 2000, Study 1).

In a Prisoner’s Dilemma game played in

Dunning, D., Heath, C. & Suls, J. (2004).

Flawed self-assessment: Implications for health, education, and the workplace. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 5, 71–106.

Epley, N. & Dunning, D. (2000). Feeling ‘holier than thou’: Are self-serving assessments produced by errors in self or social prediction? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79,

the lab, 84 per cent of participants said they would cooperate rather than betray their partner, but that only 64 per cent would do likewise. The actual cooperation rate was 61 per cent (Epley & Dunning, Study 2).

Accuracy as correlation

find significant, and if peers are familiar with the person in question, then peer prediction begins to outdo self-prediction.

Roommates and parents, for example, outpredict how long a person’s college romance will last, relative to self-prediction (MacDonald & Ross, 1999). Ratings of supervisors and peers outclass self-ratings in predicting how well surgical residents will do on their final surgical exams (Riscucci et al., 1989). Ratings of peers do better at predicting who will receive a promotion in the Navy early relative to self-impressions (Bass & Yammarino, 1991).

But wait, a careful reader might say.

People might prove overconfident about their own behaviour, but surely they know more about themselves than other people do. This accuracy just reveals itself in a different way. Namely, if we look instead at the correlation between people’s predictions and their actions, we might Misguided exceptionalism find a stronger relationship for selfTaken together, all this research suggests predictions than for peers. More that people tend to possess useful insight specifically, people may overpredict the when it comes to understanding human chance that they will vote. But those who nature. But this research also suggests that say they will vote will still be much more people fail to apply this wisdom to the likely to vote than those who say they self. In a sense, people exempt themselves will not. Forecasts from peers will fail to from whatever valid separate voters from psychological understanding nonvoters so they have successfully.

“We consider ourselves about their friends and This assertion free agents generally contemporaries. Instead, they is plausible, but it immune to the tend to think of themselves surprisingly fails constraints that dictate as special, as responding to empirical test. When other people’s actions” a different psychological we look at accuracy dynamic. The rules that govern from a correlational other people’s psychology fail to perspective, we find apply to them. We have come to call this that peers at least equal overall the tendency misguided exceptionalism. accuracy rates of those making selfWhat is it about their understanding predictions (see also Spain et al., 2000; of other people that respondents exempt Vazire & Mehl, 2008). In one of our voting themselves from? We contend, with data, studies, peers who received just five scant that people recognise that others tend to pieces of information about another be constrained in what they do. There are person’s view of an upcoming election forces, both internal and external to the predicted that person just as well (r = .48) individual, which are out of their control as did people predicting their own actions but that influence how they behave. The (r = .51) in correlational terms. Other smell of freshly-baked chocolate chip researchers report similar findings: All cookies does break people’s willpower. it takes is a few pieces of information for The opinions of the crowd place pressures a peer to achieve accuracy rates that equal the self. The behaviour can be a on other people to conform. performance in an upcoming exam (Helzer But these constraints are for other & Dunning, 2012) or performance on IQ people. When it comes to our own tests (Borkenau & Liebler, 1993). behaviour, we tend to emphasise instead And, if the action is one that people our own agency, the force of our own

861–875.

Epley, N. & Dunning, D. (2006). The mixed blessings of self-knowledge in behavioral prediction. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 641–655.

Fiske, A., Kitayama, S., Markus, H.R. & Nisbett, R.E. (1998). The cultural matrix of social psychology. In D. Gilbert, S. Fiske & G. Lindzey (Eds.) The handbook of social psychology (4th

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edn, pp.915–981). San Francisco: McGraw-Hill.

Helzer, E.G. & Dunning, D. (2012). Why and when peer prediction is superior to self-prediction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103, 38–53.

Koehler, D.J. & Poon, C.S.K. (2006). Selfpredictions overweight the strength of current intentions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42,

517–524.

Koehler, D.J., White, R.J. & John, L.K. (2011). Good intentions, optimistic self-predictions, and missed opportunities. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2, 90–96.

Kruger, J. & Gilovich, T. (2004). Actions and intentions in self-assessments: The road to self-enhancement is paved with good intentions.

Personality and Social Psychology

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character, and what we aspire, intend or plan to do. Relative to others, we believe that our actions are largely a product of our own intentions, aspirations and free will (Buehler et al., 1994; Critcher & Dunning, 2013; Koehler & Poon, 2006; Kruger & Gilovich, 2004; Peetz & Buehler, 2009). We consider ourselves free agents generally immune to the constraints that dictate other people’s actions.

Much recent empirical work reveals this differential emphasis for the self.

People think their futures are more wideopen and unpredictable, and that their intentions and desires will be more important authors of their futures than similar intentions and desires will be for other people (Pronin & Kugler, 2010).

When predicting their own exam performance, people emphasise (actually, too much, it turns out) their aspiration level, that is, the score they are working to achieve (Helzer & Dunning, 2012), but they emphasise instead a person’s past achievement (appropriately, it turns out) in predictions of others. College students consider their future potential – or, rather, the person they are aiming to be – to be a bigger part of themselves than it is in other people (Williams & Gilovich, 2008; Williams et al., 2012). People predicting who will give to charity consider the prediction to be one about a person’s character and attitudes – that is, until they confront a chance to give themselves, in which case they switch to emphasising situational factors in their accounts of giving (Balcetis & Dunning, 2008).

Misunderstanding situations Ultimately, this misguided exceptionalism and overemphasis on individual agency means that people fail to apply an accurate understanding of human nature to themselves, one that would make their predictions more accurate. People, for example, are surprisingly good at understanding how situational circumstances influence people’s behaviour. In one study, we described a ‘bystander apathy’ study to students.

Bulletin, 30, 328–339.

Lambert, T.A., Kahn, A.S. & Apple, K.J. (2003). Pluralistic ignorance and hooking up. Journal of Sex Research, 40, 129–133.

Latané, B. & Darley, J. (1970). The unresponsive bystander: Why doesn't he help? New York: AppletonCentury-Crofts.

MacDonald, T.K. & Ross, M. (1999).

Assessing the accuracy of

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College students harbour reservations about excessive drinking, but not recognising that others also feel this same reluctance, they go along with the crowd

Students were shown an experiment in which a research assistant accidentally spilled a box of jigsaw puzzle pieces.

These students were then asked the likelihood that they would help pick the pieces up relative to the percentage of other students who would help. Of key importance, participants were shown two variations of this basic situation – one in which they were alone versus one in which they were sitting in a group of three people.

Those familiar with social psychology will recognise that people are more likely to help when they are alone rather than in a group (Latané & Darley, 1970). In the

predictions about dating relationships. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 1417–1429.

Markus, H.R. & Kitayama, S. (1991).

Culture and the self. Psychological Review, 98, 224–253.

Miller, D.T. & McFarland, C. (1987).

Pluralistic ignorance: When similarity is interpreted as dissimilarity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 298–305.

group, people are seized by the inertia of not knowing immediately whether to help, and thus taking their cue to do nothing based on the fact that everyone else, lost in the same indecision, ends up doing nothing, too. But would our participants show insight into this principle? Not according to their self-predictions.

Participants stated that they would be roughly 90 per cent likely to help either alone or in the group. They did, though, concede that other people would be influenced, and that the rate of helping would go down 22 per cent (from 72 per cent to 50 per cent) among other people by introducing the group. Of key import,

Peetz, J. & Buehler, R. (2009). Is there a budget fallacy? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35, 1579–1591.

Prentice, D.A. & Miller, D.T. (1993).

Pluralistic ignorance and alcohol use on campus: Some consequences of misperceiving the social norm.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 243–356.

Pronin, E. & Kugler, M.B. (2010). People believe they have more free will than

others. Proceedings in the National Academy of Sciences, 107, 22469–22474.

Risucci, D.A., Tortolano, A.J. & Ward, R.J. (1989). Ratings of surgical residents by self, supervisors and peers.

Surgical Gynecology and Obstetrics, 169, 519–526.

Spain, J.S., Eaton, L.G. & Funder, D.C. (2000). Perspectives on personality.

Journal of Personality, 68, 837–867.

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1991). Far Eastern cultures, such as when we ran the study for real, we found Japan, emphasise instead that placing people in a group had a 27 per interdependence, social roles and group cent impact (from 50 per cent down to 23 harmony – that is, social constraints on per cent) on actual behaviour. Again, peer the self. Might those cultures, thus, be predictions largely anticipated this impact. relatively immune to the ‘holier’ Self-predictions did not (Balcetis & phenomenon?

Dunning, 2013).

Across several studies, we have found This belief that self-behaviour that people from collectivist cultures ‘floats’ above the impact of situational display much less self-error than did those circumstances and constraints can lead from individualist ones. For example, people to forgo decisions that would young children attending a summer school actually help them. Consider the task of on Mallorca were asked how many candies staying within a monthly budget. In one they would donate to other children if they study, participants were offered a service were asked, as well as how many candies that would provide them with savings tips other children on average would donate. plus a constant monitoring of their A week later, the children were actually finance. For themselves, participants felt asked to donate. Children from more the service would be superfluous. It would individualist countries (e.g. Britain) have almost zero impact on their ability to donated many fewer candies than they had achieve their budget goals. What mattered predicted, but those from more collectivist for them instead was the strength of their countries (e.g. Spain) donated on average intentions to save money (Koehler et al., just as many as they had predicted. Both 2011). groups were accurate in their predictions But, in reality, a random sample of about their peers (Balcetis et al., 2008). participants assigned to the service was roughly 11 per cent more likely to reach their budget goals. And, a group of Does the self have any participants asked to judge the impact of advantage? the service on other people estimated that Extant psychological research, however, the service would matter; that others does suggest one area where this general would be 17 per cent more likely to reach story about self- and social insight will their goals. Again, predictions about others reverse. People may be wiser when it better reflected reality than predictions comes to predicting the public and about the self, in that people could observable actions of others rather than recognise the impact of an important self, but they do appear situational aid on others, to have privileged but felt they themselves insight into aspects of were immune to those the self that are not influences (Koehler et al., “people from collectivist available for other 2011). cultures display much people to view. People less self-error” know that below the Cultural influences surface of their public This overemphasis on the appearance is a private self’s agency suggests possible cultural individual who feels doubt, anxiety, differences in the holier-than-thou effect. inhibition and ambivalence that he or And, indeed, such cultural differences she may not let wholly come to the arise. It is the individualist cultures of surface (Spain et al., 2000; Vazire, 2010; Western Europe and North America that Vazire & Carlson, 2010, 2011). Of course, this individual does not see this roiling emphasise autonomy, agency and the interior life in others. imposition of will onto the environment As a consequence, people may lack (Fiske et al., 1998; Markus & Kitayama,

Vazire, S. (2010). Who knows what about a person? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 281–300.

Vazire, S. & Carlson, E.N. (2010). Selfknowledge of personality. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4, 605–620.

Vazire, S. & Carlson, E.N. (2011). Others sometimes know us better than we know ourselves. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20, 104–108.

Vazire, S., & Mehl, M.R. (2008). Knowing me, knowing you. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 1202–1216.

Williams, E.F. & Gilovich, T. (2008).

Conceptions of the self and others across time. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 1037–1046.

Williams, E., Gilovich, T. & Dunning, D. (2012). Being all that you can be.

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 143–154.

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awareness that the what’s inside themselves is similarly churning and stirring within others. Thus, for example, people often consider themselves more shy, self-critical, and indecisive than other people (Miller & McFarland, 1987). College students harbour reservations about excessive drinking, but not recognising that others also feel this same reluctance, they go along with the crowd to excess on a Saturday night (Prentice & Miller, 1993).

In a similar vein, college students harbour much more discomfort about casual sex than they believe their peers do, with each sex overestimating the comfort level of the other sex when it comes to ‘hooking up’ (Lambert et al., 2003).

Concluding remarks Thus, current psychological research suggests that people may be wise, at least when it comes to understanding and anticipating other people, but they stand in the way of letting this wisdom lead to their own enlightenment. However, if research reveals this problem, it also suggests a potential solution to it. What we presume about other people’s behaviour and futures is likely a valuable indicator of what awaits us in the same situation – and may be much better indicator of our future than any scenario we are spinning directly about ourselves.

When predictions matter, we should not spend a great deal of time predicting what we think we will do. Instead, we should ask what other people are likely to do.

Or, we should hand the prediction of our own future over to another person who knows a little about us.

Whatever we do, we should note that perhaps we are, indeed, uniquely special individuals, but that it is too easy to overemphasise that fact. In anticipating the future, we should be mindful of the continuity that lies between our self-nature and the nature of others. It is in recognising this continuity that we realise the path that leads to our wisdom may be a pretty good path to our enlightenment, too. At the very least, that thought does remind one of another Chinese proverb that has survived the centuries, perhaps best indicating its worth – that to know what lies for us along the road ahead, we should be sure to ask those coming back.

David Dunning is at the Department of Psychology, Uris Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York Dad6@cornell.edu

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ARTICLE

Imagining the future – a bird’s eye view James M. Thom, Nicola S. Clayton, and Jon S. Simons on episodic future thinking Plan for the future because that’s where you are going to spend the rest of your life.

Mark Twain

The future is where we will live the rest of our lives, so we devote a lot of the present to planning for it. Psychological research has provided insights into such ‘episodic future thinking’, which can take several forms: maintaining delayed intentions to perform specific actions in the future, imagining future events as a way to help plan for possible eventualities, and thinking about the future to enable us to make better long-term decisions.

Understanding of how future thinking works must be complemented by the question of function: What is future-thinking for? We argue that comparisons of future thinking across species are a vital analytical tool. Animal models such as the Western scrub-jay highlight the evolutionary forces driving intelligence, and challenge our assumptions about the uniqueness of human futurethinking, and how good we are at it.

F

questions resources

Schacter, D.L., Addis, D.R. Hassabis, D. et al. (2012) The future of memory: Remembering, imagining, and the brain. Neuron, 76, 677–694.

references

What is episodic future thinking for?

Why has it evolved in the way that it has, and what benefits does it provide in everyday life?

Addis, D.R., Wong, A.T. & Schacter, D.L. (2007). Remembering the past and imagining the future.

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rom life’s big decisions to the more mundane, we are constantly imagining what will happen in the future. For example, when we plan a holiday, we may search a travel agent’s website for hotels, looking at the pictures, and imagining ourselves lounging by the pool. Later on however, we will have to consider the practicalities: What should we pack? What will we need? This process of trying to paint a picture of the future is called episodic future thinking (Atance & O’Neill, 2001).

Evidence suggests that this kind of future thought shares a number of processes with episodic memory, the recollection of specific events in one’s past.

Episodic memory is associated with a vivid re-living of a particular moment, and is distinct from general knowledge about the world. Both episodic memory and episodic future thought appear to be critically dependent upon brain regions such as the frontal lobes and hippocampus (Schacter et al., 2008; Simons & Spiers, 2003).

People with specific damage to the hippocampus can be densely amnesic for their own past, while retaining their general knowledge (Vargha-Khadem et al., 1997). This condition, amnesia, has been associated with difficulties in planning for the future, and patients report a feeling of blankness when asked to envision the future (e.g. Atance & O’Neill, 2001; Rosenbaum et al., 2005). Similarly, patients

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Boyer, P. (2008). Evolutionary economics of mental time travel? Trends in cognitive sciences, 12(6), 219–224.

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with frontal lobe lesions have frequently been documented to experience deficits in planning and in remembering to carry out intended actions (Burgess et al., 2000, 2005).

The hippocampus appears to facilitate episodic future thinking by providing a spatial framework for an imagined future event. This process is called scene construction (Hassabis & Maguire, 2007), and can be thought of as the first stage of assembling a jigsaw puzzle: finding the corner pieces, and those of the main details, and positioning them relative to each other. The rest of the puzzle can then be assembled with reference to this framework. Unsurprisingly, scene construction is greatly impaired in hippocampal amnesia (Hassabis et al., 2007).

Unlike a jigsaw puzzle, however, we can imagine any number of different versions of a scene. This is obviously important; it would be hard to choose the hotel for our holiday if they all looked the same in our mind’s eye. We can perform this feat of imagination because we have an enormous store of different puzzle pieces to call upon, which we can swap and move around at will. Schacter and Addis (2007a, 2007b) argue that this store is an accumulation of life’s memories, broken down into individual details. In other words, episodic memories form the stuff of imagination. They are stored in parts that can be distributed around a spatial framework to envision new possible future episodes. Indeed, people are able to generate a far more detailed imagined scene of a situation that they have some familiarity with (and which they can base on many possible memory elements) than they are an unfamiliar one (Szpunar & McDermott, 2008).

Once the basis of an imagined event is established during scene construction, this starting point undergoes a process called ‘scene elaboration’ (Addis et al., 2007).

Scene elaboration is more than just the insertion of the rest of the pieces into a jigsaw puzzle, engaging a variety of brain regions associated with episodic memory.

processes. In R. Morris & G. Ward (Eds.) The cognitive psychology of planning (pp.199–227). Hove: Psychology Press.

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overcome their current desires to anticipate two distinct future needs and plan for them appropriately.

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Processes governing ‘self relevance’ in this phase allow us to ‘experience’ the event in the shoes of our future self. It is this vivid sense of experience, dependent upon projections between the hippocampus and the frontal lobes (Addis et al., 2007), that allows us to give proper weight to the future when we make our plans.

memory might resemble our own episodic memory, which, as argued above, is essential for episodic future thinking.

Knowing that it is impossible to assess meaningfully the experience of an animal that can’t talk, Clayton and Dickinson (1998) developed a behavioural test based on the original definitions of episodic memory as involving recollection of the content and temporal-spatial relations Animals – stuck in the present? between events (Tulving, 1972). The Foresight and planning are essential to scrub-jays showed that they were able function properly in societies as complex to remember what type of food they had as human civilisations, and we tend to stored, where they had stored it, and when associate forward-mindedness with they had stored it. This ‘episodic-like intelligence. It is therefore unsurprising memory’ has since been shown in other that future thought has traditionally been corvids (Zinkivskay et al., 2009), as well regarded as a uniquely human trait as rats (Babb & Crystal, 2006) and (Suddendorf & Corballis, 1997). The chimpanzees (Martin-Ordas et al., 2010). assumption is that animals are stuck in In order to show that an animal is the present, unable to remember their thinking about the future, it is not enough past, and blind to what the future may to simply perform an action with future hold. Research in the last 15 years has consequences, the animal must do so with done much to challenge assumptions of the future in mind. For example, many human uniqueness. The most convincing mammals hibernate to survive the winter, case of non-human planning comes from but they are unlikely to do so out of fear of a member of the crow family, or corvids, the cold and hunger, particularly as they the Western scrub-jay. have never been awake during winter.

Scrub-jays may at first glance seem Instead, they are simply genetically a surprising candidate for future thought, programmed to become sleepy in response when compared with our closest relatives, to the environmental cues that ordinarily the great apes. However, predict winter. corvids, like the great Importantly, if these apes, have large brains cues are disturbed, relative to their bodies, so is the animal’s and engage in a variety hibernation. Basic of behaviours that rules such as this are suggest intelligence, far less flexible than including causal the sort of complex reasoning, deception, cognition seen in and tool-use. Indeed, it corvids and apes. has been argued that Scrub-jays appear corvid and ape to take into account intelligence evolved in what they will want response to the need to to eat later when they solve similar sociological store food. Like and ecological problems humans, the birds (Emery & Clayton, don’t always want the 2004). Perhaps most same sort of food. suggestive of future After eating lots of thinking in scrub-jays is savoury food we will Western scrub-jay the argument that their often prefer to eat

Aphelocoma coerulescens. Animal Behavior, 57(2), 435–444.

Correia, S.P.C., Dickinson, A. & Clayton, N.S. (2007). Western scrub-jays anticipate future needs independently of their current motivational state. Current Biology, 17(10), 856–861.

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memory. Psychology and Aging, 7(3), 471–478.

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Effects of experience and social context on prospective caching strategies by scrub jays. Nature, 414(6862), 443–446.

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something sweet for dessert. Correia and colleagues (2007) utilised this phenomenon to make sure that the birds wanted one type of food (e.g. pine nuts) in the morning, when they were storing food, but wanted something different (e.g. dog biscuits) in the afternoon, when they recovered their stores. Normally, scrub-jays store whatever they want to eat most at that moment (Clayton & Dickinson, 1999); on the first morning of testing the birds did just that, but on the second morning they preferred to store what they would want in the afternoon, even though they did not want any at the time. This reversal after only one learning experience suggests that the scrub-jays were able to anticipate what they would want in the afternoon, and ignore their current desires.

Similar anticipation has since been shown in Eurasian jays, another food-storing corvid (Cheke & Clayton, 2012). By contrast, there is no evidence of planning in mammals such as squirrels, which may be driven to store by simple inflexible drives.

Evolution of intelligence An obvious question arises: Why does food-storing appear to rely on flexible cognition in scrub-jays, but not in squirrels? More generally, why are corvids clever? Tinbergen (1963) argued that a complete understanding of any behaviour must incorporate knowledge of the evolutionary path that led to it.

Consider the big-brained corvids.

Large brains take a lot of energy to support, which means corvids need to eat a lot, making them more vulnerable to starvation. Natural selection would not favour expensive intelligence unless it bestows benefits that outweigh the costs.

For example, New Caledonian crows are capable of making and using tools (Hunt, 1996). This undoubtedly intelligent behaviour allows them to access insect larvae hidden inside logs, which would otherwise be out of reach to them.

The complementary relationship between mechanism and function applies

1903–1907.

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of hook-tools by New Caledonian crows. Nature, 379(6562), 249–251.

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(2011). Future decision-making without episodic mental time travel.

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to all aspects of human psychology too, such as episodic future thinking. In other words, it is insufficient to ask only how episodic future thinking works, we must ask why it works at all.

Thinking ahead allowed Correia and colleagues’ scrub-jays to make better decisions when storing food, so that they could eat what they wanted later. An obvious parallel in our own lives would be compiling a shopping list before a trip to the supermarket. However, unlike the scrub-jays, people are actually rather bad at ignoring what they want right now when making decisions for the future. When we go shopping while hungry, we tend to overspend on high calorie foods like biscuits and crisps (Nisbett & Kanouse, 1969). This lack of good planning suggests that our ancestors did not evolve the capacity for episodic future thought to make better decisions about food.

‘We are our choices’ – Sartre Boyer (2008) argues that episodic future thinking does help us to make better decisions, but mainly within a social context. Without our episodic future thought, he argues, we would be indifferent to the long-term consequences of antisocial behaviour, such as stealing.

Ordinarily, people give less weight to things that will happen in the future. For example, when offered a choice between $50 immediately and $100 in six months, many people would opt for the smaller sum. Boyer’s assertion is that imagining future rewards and punishments makes us more likely to take them into account when we choose.

If good decision making is dependent on episodic future thinking, we should expect patients who are unable to imagine future rewards to make atypical choices.

However, episodic amnesic KC, who has difficulty imagining future events (Kwan et al., 2010), makes similar monetary choices to healthy control subjects (Kwan et al., 2011). Perhaps this is because such decisions are devoid of the social context that Boyer focuses on.

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Martin-Ordas, G., Haun, D., Colmenares, F. & Call, J. (2010). Keeping track of time: Evidence for episodic-like memory in great apes. Animal cognition, 13(2), 331–340.

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Peters and Büchel (2010) found that salient details generated during scene thinking about a future social event, such elaboration, and represented the full value as a friend’s wedding, reduced people’s of the scene being pre-experienced by the preference for immediate rewards. A study subjects. Supporting this interpretation,

by Benoit and colleagues (2011) asked there was extensive functional coupling subjects to think about a particular event between anterior prefrontal cortex and the in the future, before making a choice hippocampal areas associated with scene involving money. Again, the events were construction. mostly social, such as a trip to the pub or The involvement of an anterior a picnic. The choice was between £25 prefrontal region is interesting from an available immediately, and a larger sum the evolutionary perspective because that area subject had to wait of the brain is thought to be for. In one disproportionately expanded condition, subjects in humans, even taking into “Scrub-jays employ a were asked to account our large overall brain variety of strategies to imagine the scene in volume. Despite this, humans protect their food stores great detail, which appear no more willing to wait from potential thieves” should tap episodic for rewards than chimpanzees future thinking. In when tested under similar another condition, circumstances (Rosati et al., 2007). subjects were asked to list the items they This cross-species comparison poses a could buy for a given sum of money in challenge to a basic, single-process account that scene, a different, non-episodic way of of this sort of decision making. Clearly, thinking about the future rewards, and an people can wait for more than two minutes evaluation that amnesic patient KC could for rewards, they just didn’t in Rosati and have made. Healthy subjects were most colleagues’ study. The problem is therefore likely to choose to wait for the larger unlikely to be a failure of episodic future amount of money after imagining an event thinking, but one of patience and using episodic future thought. In other motivation. For example, if a dieter words, episodic future thinking improved breaks their diet when tempted with their long-term decision making. favourite food, this doesn’t mean they Benoit and colleagues’ focus on the can no longer imagine fitting into their sort of social events that we encounter in favourite jeans at the end of their diet, or real life and that, Boyer argues, to be that they don’t want to. Rather, they have important for the evolution of our difficulty controlling their current desire intelligence has shed some light on how to consume tasty food. Such ‘executive episodic future thought influences our control’ will often play a crucial role, not decision making. Benoit and colleagues’ only in real-life situations like dieting but participants reported that episodically also in experimental tasks. imagined scenes were far more emotive than simply listing desirable items.

Remembering to remember Further, those individuals who One of the most widely studied examples experienced particularly vivid or of a multi-system task involving episodic emotionally salient imagined scenes future thinking is prospective memory: showed the biggest differences in decisionthe ability to remember to perform an making between the two conditions. fMRI intended action after a delay. This ability data indicated that these effects were is considered to require at least two underpinned by activity in part of the distinct cognitive components: cue anterior prefrontal cortex, which lies right identification, involving detection of at the front of the brain, just behind the the cue event (e.g. driving past the forehead. The authors argued that this supermarket) which signals that the region received input from emotionally

Obesity, food deprivation, and supermarket shopping behavior.

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Okuda, J., Gilbert, S.J., Burgess, P.W. et al. (2011). Looking to the future: Automatic regulation of attention between current performance and future plans. Neuropsychologia, 49(8), 2258–2271.

Peters, J. & Büchel, C. (2010). Episodic

future thinking reduces reward delay discounting through an enhancement of prefrontal-mediotemporal interactions. Neuron, 66(1), 138–148.

Rosati, A.G., Stevens, J.R., Hare, B. & Hauser, M.D. (2007). The evolutionary origins of human patience. Current Biology, 17(19), 1663–1668.

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person to memory theory.

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intended action should be performed; and intention retrieval, the subsequent recovery of the stored intention (e.g. remembering to stop to buy bread) from memory (Einstein et al., 1992). Another distinction that has been proposed is between such ‘event-based’ prospective memory situations and so-called ‘timebased’ tasks, in which the future action is not triggered by occurrence of an external event, but must be performed at a specific time (e.g. remembering to take medication at a particular time of day).

Based on this theoretical perspective, episodic future thinking is necessary, but not sufficient, for prospective memory.

Also needed is the ability to use executive control processes to coordinate attention (either consciously or automatically) between current and intended actions so that the cue event or time can be detected when it occurs. Much research has identified difficulties with prospective memory in healthy ageing, particularly when participants are required to switch attention between similar or overlapping current and intended tasks (Maylor, 1996).

The ageing process is often associated with neural degeneration in brain areas that include the frontal lobes, regions linked with executive functions such as attention, planning and multitasking. Consistent with this, evidence has been found for the involvement of frontal lobe regions in the various components of prospective memory (Okuda et al., 2011; Simons et al., 2006), in particular similar areas of anterior prefrontal cortex to those identified by Benoit et al. (2011).

At a glance, food-storing corvids like scrub-jays seem good candidates for prospective memory in a non-human animal. First, they appear able to anticipate the future, and to do so without being unduly influenced by what they want in the present, suggesting good executive control. Second, scrub-jays employ a variety of strategies to protect their food stores from potential thieves. For example, after another scrub-jay has seen where an individual has hidden their food, that individual will often remove their stores

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Schacter, D.L., Addis, D.R. & Buckner, R.L. (2008) Episodic simulation of future events. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1124, 39–60.

Simons, J.S., Scholvinck, M.L., Gilbert, S.J. et al. (2006). Differential components of prospective memory?

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Simons, J.S. & Spiers, H.J. (2003).

and hide them somewhere else when the observer is no longer looking (Emery & Clayton, 2001). In this instance, the storer may need to remember to come back later and move the stores.

An example of corvid prospective memory would beg two interesting questions: What sort of brain structure is required to support prospective memory?

And is the anterior prefrontal cortex special in this regard? Birds do not have the six-layered prefrontal cortex that mammals do, but they do have an equivalent region. As is true for the human prefrontal cortex, the avian equivalent – the nidopallium – is unusually large in corvids, even taking into account their large overall brain volume. Although appearing to serve some of the same functions, the ‘avian prefrontal cortex’ is nuclear, meaning that it is structured in a clustered pattern, unlike the familiar pattern of folded layers that makes up our own six-layered cortex. Second, what evolutionary forces drove the evolution of prospective memory? Is it restricted to use in food-storing, or could it be tapped for other tasks, such as tool manufacture?

Ape and corvid evolution seem to have produced similar arrays of intellectual abilities to solve complex problems (Emery & Clayton, 2004), but an artificial world throws up many challenges that would have held no relevance in our evolutionary past. The degree to which corvid prospective memory processing can adapt to alien challenges may indicate how flexible our own planning behaviour is.

have a broader relevance. Our minds have evolved to work in the environment of our evolutionary past, not modern life.

This may lead to behaviour that our contemporary social and legal standards would consider unhealthy or undesirable.

An obvious example discussed above is dieting. Obesity is a burgeoning health crisis in many countries. The reasons for this change are many and varied, but one issue is particularly important: the structure of our minds and bodies did not evolve in an environment with effectively limitless access to high-calorie foods and in which little physical exertion was the norm. Tailoring weight-loss programmes to focus on what our imagination is good at engaging with, like social consequences, could better motivate a healthy lifestyle.

Good examples are exercising as a group to discourage missed sessions, or group weigh-ins that provide social feedback to a healthier lifestyle.

In conclusion, the concurrent study of episodic future thinking and decision making in multiple species promises a greater understanding of a plethora of socially important real-world phenomena; from unhealthy habits such as over-eating and binge drinking, to the accumulation of personal debt.

James M. Thom is at the Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge jmt57@cam.ac.uk

Implications We believe the contribution of crossspecies studies should be seen as complementary to behavioural or neuroimaging studies, and case studies of brain-damaged patients. An evolutionary understanding of what our intelligence is for, informed by comparisons with other species, can help to answer the question psychologists are most interested in: How does the human mind work?

This endeavour does also, however,

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I Nicola S. Clayton

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is at the Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge jss30@cam.ac.uk

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INTERVIEW

Working at the cutting edge Kevin Browne (University of Nottingham) talks to Lance Workman about his international work on institutional childcare practices

Leicester Medical School, which was very progressive in terms of medical education, as it allowed me to introduce the concept of child abuse and neglect into the prebut you didn’t start out in that field. clinical and clinical curricula. At that Can you take me through the sequence point I worked quite closely with of events that led you into forensic paediatricians and epidemiologists on psychology? the development of screening tools for My PhD was on the ethology of parents considered a high risk for child aggression, using direct observational maltreatment. After a couple of years approaches like sequential analysis of training in psychodynamic counselling behaviour and cluster analysis to and teaching communication skills to investigate the biological function of aggression in animals. Child psychologists clinical students, I joined Clive Hollin and Kevin Howells in the School of started to get interested in these Psychology at the University of ethological techniques to look at parent/offspring interactions. So a number Birmingham as a senior lecturer in clinical criminology and developed one of the first of us started to shift from ethology and master’s programmes in criminological behavioural biology to child psychology, psychology. applying these techniques to parent/child During this time I worked part-time interactions and child behaviour in the at Glenthorne youth treatment centre in 1980s.

Birmingham, looking at the consequences My first introduction to forensic of childhood histories of abuse and psychology was when I was awarded neglect. We found a Medical Research Council that four out of fellowship in 1983, to look at five young interaction in aggressive and “anyone who has shown offenders had a non-aggressive families with the child love can make a history of child a view to detecting families at big difference” abuse and neglect risk of child maltreatment. The before the age of five. project was carried out at the Also 80 per cent of University of Surrey, which them had had eight or more care was my first post-doc position.

Interestingly the funders insisted we go in placements before they arrived in blind to the aggression status of the family Glenthorne with an average age of 14 years. Indeed, 55 per cent of them had (high risk or low risk). I managed to been assaulted by more than one person avoid any untoward experiences except in their lives. We began to see a pattern one where a live-in boyfriend set the from victim to offender. Interestingly, we Alsatian on me. I managed to get the laptop into the dog’s mouth as it bit. I still found that those who had at least one parent that wasn’t abusive could break the have the laptop but it’s got tooth marks cycle… those who had two parents that where the dog broke its teeth and ran off! were abusive were the ones that went on This experience enhanced my sense of to perpetuate the cycle of violence. They respect for the difficult work of social had no one to turn to. workers and health visitors. our current position is Professor Y of Forensic Psychology and Child Health at the University of Nottingham,

I can see why! Where did your interests take you next?

In the mid-1980s the existence of sexual abuse in the family began to emerge. In 1985 I secured a position as lecturer in health psychology at the University of

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You’re saying that if they have one person they are strongly attached to then they can break the cycle. So are you saying that people like Bowlby got it right?

Bowlby initially thought the biological

mother was of paramount importance – but he changed his mind after Rutter’s work showed that any sensitive carer could promote the optimal development of the child. So the emphasis that I would place is that anyone who has shown the child love can make a big difference. You have to have been loved to show love to others. Those children who have shared an experience of a secure emotional attachment, whether it be to an aunt, an uncle or a grandparent, as long as it was unconditional love, then that seems to help break the cycle. Children that don’t experience this are quite vulnerable and often meet the wrong person that offers conditional love that may lead to an inappropriate sexual relationship. This confuses the child. So often when we work with children that have been abused they still may have confused feelings about the offender due to receiving affection at a cost. In one sense they split the good person and the bad person in the offender. According to Melanie Klein, this is quite effective as a psychological defence mechanism and for their own psychological stability.

Presumably this is an international issue?

Yes. I worked worldwide in the 1990s for the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect.

This led to an invite from the World Health Organization [WHO] to spend a sabbatical with them in 1999 and then half-time employment as a child care and protection expert.

We began to become interested in countries in transition and how they responded to children that had been abandoned, neglected or abused, which usually meant 24-hour residential care without a parent in a large institutional setting. I began to work very closely with the WHO looking at what harm these institutions were doing to children, and established the first WHO collaborating centre on child care and protection at the University of Birmingham. As Director of the centre I kick-started – together with Catherine Hamilton-Giachritsis – 10 years of EU funding to support programmes to identify good practices in the deinstitutionalisation of children across Europe.

These institutional childcare practices must vary considerably between countries?

In 2005 we produced a book and a number of journal articles that described institutional care of young children less than three years old across Europe, and we investigated eight countries in detail

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and surveyed the rest. This began to raise awareness about the issue, and we identified a myth that all of these problems of young children placed in institutional care were limited to Eastern Europe –when in fact Belgium, France and Spain have significant numbers of children in care.

clearly states that there is nothing wrong with international adoption providing it is in the best interest of the child. However, international adoption is all about finding the right child for the parents with little concern for child rights. Only domestic adoption promotes the concept of offering the right parents for the child. That’s why international adoption on the internet is wrong – for the child at least. With international adoption, the child is a commodity to be bought and sold in a large worldwide market. When I first began working in Romania in 2002, approximately two in every 1000 Romanian children were being internationally adopted at an average cost to the adoptive parents of £2500. These practices were stopped in 2004 with the introduction of new adoption laws in Romania, but the uncontrolled market just shifted to Bulgaria, Moldova and Ukraine. We have evidence of charities

standards. I spent two and half years (2003 to 2006) advising the Romanian Prime Minister on childcare issues, which was relatively successful. We managed to deinstitutionalise 4000 Romanian children and introduce 400 healthcare workers to visit family homes and help stop children being abandoned. This has led to my latest EU-funded study at the University of Nottingham, which has been mapping the extent of child abandonment and infanticide and looking at preventative measures, together with Shihning Chou and Kate Whitfield.

What about the UK then? How does childcare work in this country, and should we feel good about our systems?

For under-threes the UK as a whole has less than 0.1 per 10,000 in institutional care. The UK has a very sophisticated A lot of people would find the things social work network and foster care you have seen and dealt with quite system – although underresourced. The disturbing. I have to ask you, as you Children Acts 1989 and 2004 are an have children yourself, does what you excellent piece of legislation, one that have experienced ever get to you? has been copied by many countries. It Yes, very much so. What is interesting protects children and gives a structure to is that I worked with abused neglected the childcare services, which means that children for many years before I was very rarely will a child under seven a father. Now I have three be anywhere other than in a family boys 14, 11 and 7, it does home, with relatives or in a foster change things. You can home with surrogate parents in a always look at things one-to-one relationship. After seven objectively as a years, children may live in small psychologist – and that’s homes, but we wouldn’t call them a defence mechanism. But institutions – they are usually the ability to intellectually homes with fewer than 10 children defend yourself against in them. what you see erodes away So our small children’s homes once you become a father. are quite different to the sort of Especially when I came institutions we have seen in across a toddler in the Europe. However, after about the Czech Republic that was age of 12 things start to go wrong the spitting image of one in the UK. We have a punitive of my own boys, that was system to deal with young very disturbing. Of course, offenders. Unfortunately young Professor Kevin Browne delivering a workshop on what you want to do is offender institutions are beginning deinstitutionalising and transforming children’s services in exactly what Madonna did, to be privatised and are less the Ukraine and pick the child up and concerned with therapy than they take it home. But you can’t are with managing the behaviour of these do that with 4000 children. It is a very in Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova and the young people in need and in conflict with emotive response and you do need some Ukraine advising mothers to abandon the law. And we have more young people level of support when you get home. their children so that they could put them living in young offender establishments But what balances those emotions out up for international adoption. than elsewhere in Europe. is the successes. When Save the Children You have had a lot of success with your and UNICEF presented my evidence to I’d be interested to hear what you think work in helping to improve children’s the UN General Assembly, 192 member about celebrities adopting children lives – particularly in Romania. As states passed guidelines that no child from less developed countries – I’m a psychologist, how did you manage under three should be placed in thinking about people like Madonna to have that sort of influence in an institutional care. So now UNICEF has and Angelina Jolie.

Eastern European country? the responsibility of making it happen as While working with David Canter and As a WHO and UNICEF consultant I had one of their priorities when working with Lawrence Alison at the University of the privilege of working in Romania with governments to implement the UN Liverpool between 2007 and 2009, Baroness Emma Nicholson (as the EU resolution. This is big step forward and I Shihning Chou and I investigated rapporteur) and J.K. Rowling (as a am still involved as a UNICEF consultant. international adoption practices. We have sponsor of charity work). I was You say you are able to influence shown statistically that international recommended to the Prime Minister of various governments with these UN adoption does not reduce the number of Romania to chair the High Level Group resolutions. How did you get on with children living in institutions. In fact it for Romanian Children, the task being to the authorities in these countries – creates a market and promotes help close institutions for young children were they positive about your work? institutional care. Article 21B of the UN in the country and help to bring childcare We made lots of friends in some countries Convention on the Rights of the Child and child welfare services up to EU

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and enemies in others. I’m not very welcome in the Czech Republic, but very welcome in Romania.

Clearly you have achieved a lot in your work in real terms. If you could make one change to help children what would that be?

That’s a tough question. Well I recently gave evidence to Lord Mackenzie for the Child Poverty Bill – I outlined a number of things that I thought were important for children. In most countries there has been a shift away from social and community principles towards financial entrepreneurism and capitalism in child care. I have no doubt that children and families have suffered because of this. For example, there are now a lot more singleparent families because of economic migration for work. So I would like to see the pendulum swing back to re-establish the principle of the child’s right to grow up in a family, and health, education and social services, free at the point of access, to ensure that all children reach their optimal development and have their rights upheld as outlined by the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child,

children in such faraway places as Columbia, Ecuador, Thailand, and with mixed success. For example, when helping a charity rescue child prostitutes from tea parlours in Bangkok only to have them sent back by the same gang one month later.

When I look back on my career the thing I find especially important to me personally is that the UN Professor Kevin Browne meeting with representatives Secretary General asked me to of Our Kids Foundation and the Kiev Local Government be a lead author on his World Report on Violence against which includes the right to free education Children, published in 2006. This allowed and health care and help offered to me to identify problems with institutional parents in difficulty. care, and we were able to disseminate best practices to de-institutionalise children When you look back on your career, and promote foster care for the optimal with the sort of work you do, there development of children without parents. must have been both highs and lows There is no way I designed my career for you. pathway, a lot has been the result of Well, I’ve worked in over 50 countries chance. But as a psychologist, I’ve had worldwide and I have had varied opportunities that I never thought I’d experiences of trying to change things for have.

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METHODS

Network analysis David Hevey, Aifric Collins, and Amy Brogan on techniques to allow the mapping of belief structures I

ow do we make sense of the causes of events? Psychologists have long puzzled over this question, and increasingly researchers are availing of developments in network science to understand the complexity of our causal thinking. Complex causal attributions require connected attributes that have sophisticated dynamic pathways of action between them; such connections form networks, and network science offers novel theoretical tools and techniques to map such networks.

The growing interest in interconnectedness is salient for psychology as networks pervade all aspects of human psychology (e.g.

Borgatti et al., 2009); research has examined fundamental psychological constructs such as intelligence (van Geert, 1998) and personality in terms of dynamic network systems (e.g. Shoda et al., 2002). Dedicated journals and conferences testify to the importance of network analysis: notably, network analysis was a programme theme at the 2011 American Psychological Society conference. Network theory offers a broad framework to productively examine complex systems across disciplines; Barabási (2012) argues that theories cannot ignore the network effects caused by interconnectedness.

Network analysis comprises various techniques for examining both how people structure their causal beliefs and the extent to which the causal understanding is shared amongst

references

H

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Barabasi, A.L. (2012). The network takeover. Nature Physics, 8, 14–16.

Borgatti, S.P., Mehra, A., Brass, D.J. & Labianca, G. (2009). Network analysis in the social sciences. Science, 323, 892–895.

Borsboom, D., Cramer, A.O.J., Epskamp, S. et al. (2011). The small world of psychopathology. Plos ONE, 11, e27407.

Brogan, A. & Hevey, D. (2009). The

individuals (Reser & Muncer, 2004). Its application to modelling perceptions of causality in psychology was pioneered by Lunt’s (1988) examination of perceived causes of examination failure; subsequently it has addressed a broad range of research questions in various psychological disciplines. Network analysis examines the pattern of relationships between causal factors and the focal event to provide a model of the perceived causal structure. For example, we could examine people’s perceived causal structure for illness (focal event) using putative causes such as stress, health behaviours, personality, and exposure to pathogens.

According to Kelly (1983), the properties of a causal structure include: I Direction of causality: causes flow from the past to the future, but can also have reciprocal effects. For example, although people may believe that stress causes illness, they may also believe that being ill causes stress.

I Extent of a cause: whether causes have proximal or distal effects. In this example, both stress and health behaviours are proximal causes, whereas personality is a distal cause.

Furthermore, it is possible that another attribute may mediate the relationship between an attribute and the focal event. For example, in addition to having a direct effect on illness, stress may cause illness via its effect on health behaviours.

I Patterning: distinguishes between

structure of the causal attribution belief network of patients with obesity. British Journal of Health Psychology, 14, 35–48.

Cramer, A.O.J., Waldorp, L.J., van der Maas, H.L.J. & Borsboom, D. (2010).

Comorbidity: A network perspective.

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33, 137–193.

Epskamp, S., Cramer, A.O.J., Waldorp, L.J. et al. (2012). qgraph: Network

simple relationships, wherein a putative cause leads to one effect (e.g. exposure to illness causes the illness), and complex relationships, wherein many causes unite creating one effect (e.g. stress, exposure to pathogens, and health behaviour cause illness) or one cause leads to multiple effects (personality causes both health behaviours and stress).

Stability: whether causes are stable (e.g. personality) or unstable (e.g. exposure to pathogens).

The perceived causal structure produced may be sparse or dense, depending upon the number of causal factors identified and the complexity of relationships present.

Network analysis techniques Data for network analysis can be collected in a variety of ways. Although the diagram and matrix grid methods are the most widely used approaches in psychology (Knoke & Yang, 2008), more recent approaches apply formal mathematical modelling to examine both empirically generated and simulated data (e.g. Borsboom et al., 2011).

Diagram method The diagram method involves either the spatial arrangement of cards containing causes or the participant directly drawing the structure that captures the relations among the attributes. Participants may be given a set of potential causal factors or can self-generate causal factors; some approaches provide some initial set of causal factors but encourage participants to incorporate their own personally relevant factors into their network.

The matrix grid technique The matrix grid technique requires participants to rate the strength of (i) the causal relationship between each attribute and the focal event (e.g. ‘to what extent does stress cause illness?’), (ii) the causal relationship between each attribute and

visualizations of relationships in psychometric data. Journal of Statistical Software, 48, 1–18.

Kelly, H.H. (1983). Perceived causal structures. In J. Jaspars, F.D. Fincham & M. Hewstone (Eds.) Attribution theory and research (pp.343–369). London: Academic Press.

Kim, N.S. & Ahn, W. (2002a). Clinical psychologists’ theory-based

representations of mental disorders predict their diagnostic reasoning and memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 131, 451–476.

Kim, N.S. & Ahn, W. (2002b). The influence of naive causal theories on lay diagnoses of mental illnesses.

American Journal of Psychology, 115, 33–65.

Knoke, D. & Yang, S. (2008). Social network analysis (2nd edn). Thousand

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each other attribute (e.g. ‘to what extent does stress cause health behaviour?’), and (iii) the causal relationship between the focal event and each attribute (e.g. ‘to what extent does illness cause stress?’). The causal relationship is rated for every pair-wise combination of attributes and focal event. Such ratings can be on a binary scale (causal link either present or absent) or a continuous scale to rate the strength of each relationship.

A criterion is applied to the ratings to establish which of the causal links should be regarded as consensually endorsed (based either on the percentage of respondents endorsing the network or on the mean strength of the causal relationships).

Visualisation Although early research applied multidimensional scaling to represent the spatial structure of causal networks (Knoke & Yang, 2008), more powerful approaches have emerged based on complex algorithms to optimally represent networks; for example, qgraph (Epskamp et al., 2012) was developed in the context of the network approaches to psychopathology pioneered by Borsboom and colleagues, which is outlined in the next section.

Applications Network analysis has been applied to diverse areas (e.g. unemployment, heart attacks, and satisfaction with friendships) to analyse causal belief structures.

Research has also examined how such structures inform categorisation. For example, both clinical psychologists (Kim & Ahn, 2002a) and lay people (Kim & Ahn, 2002b) typically interpret symptom patterns for psychological disorders in terms of causal networks: disorders are characterised as clusters of causally

Oaks, CA/London: Sage.

Lunt, P.K. (1988). The perceived causal structure of examination failure.

British Journal of Social Psychology, 27, 171–179.

Reser, J.P. & Muncer, S. (2004). Sensemaking in the wake of September 11th: A network analysis of lay understandings. British Journal of Psychology, 95, 283–296.

Shoda, Y., LeeTiernan, S. & Mischel, W.

related symptoms in a network, with some symptoms treated as more important than others. Let’s turn to some examples.

Recent research from Borsboom and colleagues examined comorbidity among psychological disorders from a network perspective. By conceptualising psychological disorders as networks that consist of symptoms (e.g. depression consists of symptoms including insomnia, lack of interest, etc.) and causal relations between them, novel insights into the patterns of association among DSM-IV symptoms emerge (Cramer et al., 2010).

Symptoms can be conceived as being components in a network, and not simply isolated indicators of some underlying latent condition. Consequently symptoms can have direct links with each other to reflect an underlying condition (insomnia and lack of interest are both symptoms of depression) or can have indirect links to each other that cover different conditions: lack of interest and anxiety are not directly connected in the network as there are no DSM-IV disorders that feature both of these symptoms, but these symptoms are connected indirectly via insomnia, because insomnia is a shared symptom of depression (which also has lack of interest among its symptoms) and general anxiety disorder (which includes anxiety among its symptoms). Consequently comorbidity is hypothesised to result from direct relations between symptoms of multiple disorders. Such a network model presents explanations for established patterns in research, wherein

(2002). Personality as a dynamical system. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 6, 316–325. van Geert, P. (1998). A dynamic systems model of basic developmental mechanisms. Psychological Review, 105, 634–677.

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certain conditions have high comorbidity (because of the number and proximity of links between symptoms) and others have low comorbidity. Furthermore, network analysis offers insight into why the boundaries between diagnostic categories are fuzzy: if psychological disorder is best conceptualised as a network of symptoms and comorbidity is best viewed as a network of symptoms of two disorders, then boundaries are fuzzy because there are no boundaries, as the networks are connected.

Obesity is a complex multifactorial disease that is strongly associated with other chronic conditions and premature mortality. Brogan and Hevey (2009) used network analysis to examine obese individuals’ causal models for the condition. Putative causes were identified and obesity was included as both the focal event and a causal factor in the study. Respondents had a highly consensual yet complex causal model (see Figure, above).

Traumatic events, family problems, and addictive personality were distal causes and their effects were mediated through overeating or comfort eating.

More passive behaviours, less physical activity, overeating, and comfort eating were proximal causes and each had a direct bi-directional link to obesity; consequently obesity was regarded as having future effects on behaviours.

The results highlighted that the causal model elicited focused predominantly on behavioural origins of obesity. How one attributes the causes for obesity may influence one’s willingness to practise weight reduction techniques.

Conclusion Network analysis highlights the complex causal chains by which we make sense of the world and determines the extent to which our understandings are shared by others. It offers great potential for researchers; by considering psychological processes and outcomes from a dynamical systems theory perspective, new ways of conceptualising and answering important psychological questions are available.

Psychological processes reflect complex systems: to understand complex systems, we need to understand the networks that define the interactions between the constituent attributes.

I David Hevey, Aifric Collins & Amy Brogan are at the School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin HEVEYDT@tcd.ie

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SOCIETY

President’s column Peter Banister

President Dr Peter Banister

Contact Peter Banister via the Society’s Leicester office, or e-mail: thepresident@bps.org.uk

President Elect Dr Richard Mallows Vice President Dr Carole Allan Honorary General Secretary Professor Pam Maras Honorary Treasurer Dr Richard Mallows Chair, Membership Standards Board Dr Mark Forshaw Chair, Psychology Education Board Professor Dorothy Miell Chair, Research Board Professor Judi Ellis Chair, Professional Practice Board David Murphy The Society has offices in Belfast, Cardiff, Glasgow and London, as well as the main office in Leicester. All enquiries should be addressed to the Leicester office (see inside front cover for address).

The British Psychological Society was founded in 1901, and incorporated by Royal Charter in 1965. Its object is ‘to promote the advancement and diffusion of a knowledge of psychology pure and applied and especially to promote the efficiency and usefulness of Members of the Society by setting up a high standard of professional education and knowledge’.

Extract from The Charter

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highly successful Annual Conference has been and gone; many thanks to all who helped to make this happen, and to all who came to Harrogate.

Well I (and you!) have survived the year, and very interesting it has been too; thanks to all who got in touch, many of whom I had not seen over the years, including old colleagues, fellow and past students.

Thanks to all I have met in meetings, conferences or via some form of social media; the year has certainly reminded me of the enormous community that we are all part of. Thanks for all the support everybody has given me, especially my fellow Trustees, the Leicester office, colleagues in the Branches, Divisions and Sections, which has made my task much easier and helped the year go easily.

Time has flown past, and I have tried to take up as many of the invitations that I was presented with that I was physically able to fulfil. These Thanks… have sent me all over the country and to a number of overseas destinations. To some extent at times I could have done even more; I am sure that the new President will be delighted to attempt to take on as many invitations as you can ply him with (and I as Vice President for the year would be more than happy to fill in for him, if necessary).

I would recommend (if you have the time) taking up a role with the Society; I am sure you will find it (as I have over more than 20 years in all in serving in one role or another within the Society) immensely rewarding, not least because it opens up vast networks of interesting people and possibilities.

For me, the highlights have been some of the interesting conferences that I have been to, the myriad of people met, the feeling that I could help with some of the inevitable problems that will occur with such a complicated Society as we have. I have been struck by the enthusiasm of our students and young people for our discipline, and for the dedication of our professionals and academics, pushing forward

A

the frontiers in terms of research and practice.

There is a huge variety in what we do, and we should be proud of both The Psychologist and our Research Digest, which serve admirably to tell us some of what is going on in our diverse discipline.

I have come to realise that at times there are many different interest groups, and the President must attempt to stay neutral; I must say that I have been alerted to some interesting controversies during the year.

To some extent a year is too short a time in which much can be achieved, especially in a member organisation that relies on volunteers, but I realise that there are good historical reasons for the current arrangements.

Although the position is to some extent one of a figurehead I hope that my year as President has helped to lay yet another brick on a long road to the future; we have continued to make important changes in the Leicester office to help our future direction, we are revisiting our Strategic Plan, we are developing more of a public profile and influence, trustees have received some training, we are improving our international impact, we are continuing to ensure our financial stability, we have appointed new office staff at the director level and we are responding to the many changes that are going on all around us.

The future is always changing, and we do not always know what it may bring; I would suggest that we should remember our history and build on it. In this context I feel that I ought to mention in passing that my grandfather Harry Banister (who died before I went to university) was also a member of our Society and worked with Bartlett in Cambridge. What effect this may have had on me I know not.

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Lifetime Achievement Award Dennis Child Professor Dennis Child OBE FBPsS is to receive this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society’s Psychology of Education Board.

Described by one of his nominators as ‘a true educator who speaks directly to the student and always begins the educational encounter “where the student is at”‘, Professor Child has made a significant contribution to psychology applied to education over many years.

Professor Child said: ‘I was very surprised, but delighted to accept this prestigious and rare award. It was a fulfilling climax to many years of association with the British Psychological Society.’

Dennis Child was born in Cumberland in 1932 and after service in the Royal Air Force worked as a teacher in Yorkshire.

While teaching he took a first degree in Physics, Zoology and Psychology and then in 1962 he moved to Leeds College of Education (a teacher training college) as a lecturer in physics and mathematics.

Here, already engaged in research into personality and school achievement, he was invited to transfer to the education department to teach psychology of education. He moved on to a lecturer’s post at Bradford University in 1967 before taking up professorial chairs at Newcastle upon Tyne and then Leeds, where he is Emeritus Professor of Educational Psychology.

A key event in his career occurred when Dennis Child Raymond Cattell invited him to work as a research fellow at the University of Illinois in 1972–3. Together they embarked on a revision of Cattell’s motivation test and wrote a book on Cattell’s theory of motivation, Motivation and Dynamic Structure (Wiley, 1975).

Recalling this episode in his career, Professor Child said: ‘Ray

Cattell was well into his sixties, but he was a workaholic as well as being keen to get necessary physical exercise. Walks in the park were always done with notepads and pencils at the ready. We were both sidestroke swimmers and, as good fortune would have it, I led with my left hand and Ray with his right. This meant we could swim facing each other and continue discussions about the current project.

If that isn’t economy of effort, what is?’

Professor Child was editor of the British Journal of Educational Psychology from 1979 to 1984 and was general editor of the Blackwell series Theory and Practice in Education for a decade from 1981.

To mark his contribution to the profession a Festschrift entitled Directions in Educational Psychology, with contributions from 20 of his contemporaries in psychology, was published in 1998.

At Newcastle, Professor Child developed a keen interest in deaf education, particularly in promoting the use of British Sign Language, and chaired the Council for the Advancement of Communication with Deaf People – now called Signature. Later he encouraged Leeds to establish its Advanced Diploma in the Education of Deaf Children and in 1996 he received an OBE for ‘services to the deaf’.

His interest in professions of which psychology is a component led him to serve on various national educational and examination committees for professions supplementary to medicine, his work there including the design of the DC Test for entry to the nursing profession.

Outside psychology, Professor Child helped form the education and community unit of the London Festival Ballet (now the English National Ballet) and was instrumental in Leeds becoming the first British university to offer a degree of Bachelor of Performing Arts in Dance.

In 1994 he published Painters in the Northern Counties of England and Wales to encourage the study of northern artists.

I am reminded of what erroneously (it One of my favourite quotations comes apparently only dates from the 1930s) is from Neil Postman’s 1982 book The called an ancient Chinese proverb (some Disappearance of Childhood, where he says say ‘curse’) – ‘May you live in interesting ‘children are the living messages we send times’. This phrase appears frequently, to a time we will not see’. Just as children including in Star Trek and in Terry are a message we send into the future that Pratchett, and to paraphrase Robert we will know not of, the Society is Kennedy in 1966: ‘Like it or embarking into futures we not, we live in interesting can only dream of (and as times. They are times of danger past visions of the future and uncertainty; but they are often demonstrate nothing “seize the also more open to creative more than variations on opportunities as energy than any other time in contemporary themes, they come your history.’ The same is as true in these dreams are probably way” 2013 as it was then. Talking doomed to failure). We can recently to a colleague about only hope that those yet to engineering psychology, I come are able to build on what realised how things had changed from we have done. the knobs, levers and dials of my I feel that Psychology is in good health, undergraduate ergonomics course to but we do need to do more to attempt to human–computer interaction, including engage our students and young people, our consumer electronic goods. academics and our practitioners. We can

read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk

never please all, but it is our Society, and we all need to play an active part. I was intrigued to learn recently that only 1 per cent of our members are retired, whilst benchmark figures for other learned societies is 6.4 per cent; what might this be reason for this?

In terms of a homily at the end, I reflect that the year has flown by (which happens increasingly as one grows older), and my message to you is to seize the opportunities as they come your way; certainly initially never say ‘no’, but do try in addition to make those opportunities happen. Talk to others, do things together.

Psychology has endless potential!

So in the immortal words of Douglas Adams ‘So Long and Thanks for All the Fish’, and over to Richard Mallows – I hope that the year goes well, Richard.

I am looking forward to my year as Vice President (whatever that entails!).

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society

Postdoc conference bursaries Seven successful candidates have been awarded bursaries as part of the Society's Postdoctoral Bursary Scheme. The scheme, run by the Research Board, makes conference bursaries available to support the attendance of UK psychology postdoctoral researchers and lecturers at any academic conference, either in the UK or internationally, relevant to the applicant’s work.

The award winners are: I Lyndsay Hughes (Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London) – British Society of Gastroenterology Annual Meeting 2013, Glasgow I Helen Richards (University of Southampton) – 7th World Congress

I

I

I

I

of Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies, Lima, Peru Sarah Williams (University of Birmingham) – North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity Conference, New Orleans, USA Andrew Jones (University of Liverpool) – British Association for Psychopharmacology Summer Meeting, Harrogate Jennifer Murray (Edinburgh Napier University) – 15th International Conference on Human–Computer Interaction, Las Vegas, USA Emma Sumner (Oxford Brookes University) – 16th International

I

Graphonomics Society Conference, Nara, Japan Caoilte O Ciardha (University of Kent) – 32nd Annual Conference of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Offenders, Chicago, USA

Each bursary consists of up to £150 (UK) or £300 (international) to contribute towards the costs of registration and travel to attend the full conference.

I The Postdoctoral Bursary Scheme operates twice a year. The next round of applications will open in July with a deadline of 1 October.

See tinyurl.com/bu9g3j3 for more information

The future of A-level psychology In April the Society published its briefing paper The Future of A-level Psychology. The authors of the briefing paper also presented a symposium at the Society’s Annual Conference to outline the findings of the paper and the recommendations.

The document is the latest review in a longstanding involvement of the Society with policy making and teaching of A-level psychology. The project was led by the Society’s Standing Committee on Pre-Tertiary Education, Chaired by Phil Banyard of Nottingham Trent University.

The briefing paper raises five key issues: preparing students for higher education; perceptions of A-level psychology; variability in the current A-level curricula; practical work; and building the community of psychologists involved in psychology education. The paper also looks in detail at A-level curricula and forms the basis of the Society’s mandate in engaging with the DfE, Ofqual, the Joint Council for Qualifications and awarding bodies in the A-level reform and curriculum review, of which psychology is one of the first to be redeveloped. The Society is

RESEARCH DIGEST NEWS April saw the Society’s Research Digest, and its editor Dr Christian Jarrett, feature on BBC Radio 4’s All in the Mind. Dr Jarrett joined presenter Claudia Hammond to discuss recent Digest items.

Now in its 10th year and reaching a bigger audience than ever, the Research Digest is the Society’s awarding-winning blog providing original and authoritative reports on the latest psychology research papers. It aims to provide accessible, authoritative reports on psychological studies which are timely, novel, thought-provoking and relevant to real life.

Currently the Digest has 30,000 subscribers to its fortnightly e-mail (subscribe via www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog). You can also follow the Digest on Twitter (www.twitter.com/researchdigest) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/researchdigest).

Claudia Hammond was the recipient of the Society’s 2012 Public Engagement and Media Award.

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providing significant input to the consultation process.

Developed from a number of questionnaires and a two-day stakeholder focus session, participants developed a number of recommendations around the curriculum, whether A-level psychology is fit for purpose, transitions between A-level and higher education, and supporting teachers and teaching. The recommendations include a number of actions for the Society which will be taken forward in the coming months by the Standing Committee and the Psychology Education Board working in partnership with the Division of Academics, Teachers & Researchers in Psychology.

I Copies of the report are available to download from the Society’s website www.bps.org.uk/publications/policy-andguidelines/general-guidelines-policy-documents/generalguidelines-policy Requests for hard copies and any other queries should be directed to the Society’s Policy Advisor (Public Engagement & Education) Kelly Auty (kelly.auty@bps.org.uk)

Society vacancies Research Board

Responsibility Holder for Animal Welfare in Psychology See advert p.412 Ethics Committee

Chair See advert p.429 Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner Accreditation Committee

Chair and Members See advert p.437 Psychologist and Digest Editorial Advisory Committee

Chair See advert p.439

vol 26 no 6

june 2013

society

Cheltenham Science Festival Using touchscreen technology to help people living with dementia, and the latest developments in sport psychology will both be discussed in sessions the Society is sponsoring at the The Times Cheltenham Science Festival in June.

On Tuesday 4 June cognitive psychologist Dr Tim Jones from the University of Worcester and Tim LloydYeates, founder of Alive!, a charity that provides interactive activity sessions in care homes across the South West, will explore how modern technology can improve quality of life and build bridges between generations.

A recent study by Tim Jones has shown that touchscreen technology, such as the iPad, can help to improve quality of life for people living with dementia. iPads

SOCIETY NOTICES Qualitative Methods in Psychology Section Conference, University of Huddersfield,

can inspire creativity and reminiscence and also help improve communication with families and carers, leaving a positive emotional impact.

Later the same day, Marc Jones, reader in sport and exercise psychology at Staffordshire University, will look back at London 2012 and give the latest on research about enhancing sport performance using psychology alone.

The Society will also be running a stand in the exhibition area which will include the Origins exhibition on the evolution and impact of psychological science, and interactive exhibits the Society is developing with the University of Worcester.

I See www.cheltenhamfestivals.com for more details

4–6 September 2013 See p.396 Division of Sport and Exercise Psychology Conference, Manchester, 16–17 December 2013 See p.426 2013 CPD workshops See p.436 Funding for Study Visits (Postgraduate and Postdoctoral) See p.440 Research Seminars Competition 2013 – invitation for submissions See p.441 Leaving a legacy See p.441

Organised by BPS Conferences 2013

BPS conferences are committed to ensuring value for money, careful budgeting and sustainability

CONFERENCE

DATE

VENUE

WEBSITE

Paediatric Psychology Network

21 June

Newcast;e University

www.bps.org.uk/ppn2013

Division of Forensic Psychology

26–28 June

Queen’s University, Belfast

www.bps.org.uk/dfp2013

DECP 1-day DSM-IV event

28 June

Manchester United Football Club

www.bps.org.uk/decpjune28

Psychology of Women Section

10–12 July

Cumberland Lodge, Windsor

www.bps.org.uk/pows2013

Division of Counselling Psychology

12–13 July

The Angel Hotel, Cardiff

www.bps.org.uk/dcop2013

Social Psychology Section

28–30 August

University of Exeter

www.bps.org.uk/social2013

Reading University

www.bps.org.uk/cogdev2013

2014

Joint Cognitive and Developmental Psychology 4–6 September Qualitative Methods in Psychology

4–6 September

Huddersfield University

www.bps.org.uk/qmip2013

Division of Health Psychology Faculty for Children, Young People and Their Familes

11–13 September

www.bps.org.uk/dhp2013

24–26 September

Holiday Inn, Brighton Mercure Bristol Holland House Hotel and Spa

Psychology 4 Students (North)

21 November

Mecrure Hotel Sheffield

www.bps.org.uk/p4s

Psychology 4 Students (South)

4 December

Kensington Town Hall

www.bps.org.uk/p4s

Division of Clinical Psychology

4–6 December

The Royal York Hotel,York

www.bps.org.uk/dcp2013

Division of Sport & Exercise

16–17 December

Midland Hotel, Manchester

www.bps.org.uk/dsep2013

CONFERENCE Division of Occupational Psychology

DATE 8–10 January

VENUE The Grand, Brighton

WEBSITE www.bps.org.uk/dop2014

read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk

www.bps.org.uk/cyp2013

435

2013 CPD Workshops Professional development opportunities from your learned Society Expert Witness: Family court proceedings (Level 4)

4 June

Diagnosing and leading culture change workshop (DOP)

6 June

After Winterbourne: What do clinical psychologists need to do now? (DCP Faculty of Learning Disabilities)

6 June

Definitions and context – Future directions in defining learning disability (DCP Faculty of Learning Disabilities)

7 June

Supervision skills training: Workshop 2 – Enhancing supervision skills

7 June

Applying Cognitive Analytical Therapy to working with staff teams: A practical approach (DCP SE Branch) (Guildford)

7 June

Effective clinical supervision skills for health psychologists (DHP)

10 June

Mindfulness Based Conversations (MBC), an evidence based approach applying mindfulness to consultation with teachers, parents and children (DECP)

10 June

A clear idea of innovation: A practical approach to being creative and making sure your ideas stick (NEEB) (York)

12 June

Understanding quantitative analysis (DFP)

14 June

Psychopharmacology and therapy – An uneasy relationship (DCoP)

17 June

Leading change and managing group relations (DCP)

21-22 June

Expert Witness: Criminal court proceedings (Level 4)

25 June

Psychophysiological techniques: Measurement and application in sport and exercise psychology (DSEP) (Manchester)

27 June

Trauma and domestic violence (DFP)

2 July

The psychology of loneliness and belonging in school (DECP)

3 July

Leadership in tough times: Leveraging performance through engagement (DOP)

4 July

Developing leadership skills: Presence and resilience (DCP)

8 July

Supervision skills training: Workshop 4 – Ongoing development – Supervision of supervision

12 July

Designing, delivering and disseminating pragmatic randomised controlled trials of ‘complex’ interventions

15 July

Qualitative research methods, quantitative research methods and how to read a journal paper (qualititative and quantitative) (DCP)

17 July

Working with depression in older adults

17 July

Victim impact assessment – Promoting mental health recovery while tackling crime (DFP)

19 July

How to set up and market your own business (DOP)

22 July

Working with interpreters in mental health

23 July

Through the eye of the trauma storm: EMDR in the treatment of trauma (DCoP & DCP)

26 July

Mind the gap – Making the most of a multi-generational workforce (DOP)

3 September

Expert Expert Witness: Essential knowledge of being an expert witness (Level 1)

9 September

For more information on these CPD events and many more visit www.bps.org.uk/findcpd.

Follow us on Twitter: @BPSLearning #BPScpd

www.bps.org.uk/learningcentre

436

vol 26 no 6

june 2013

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Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner Training Committee Chair and membership vacancies The British Psychological Society is the accrediting body for PWP training programmes across England. We will begin our next round of accreditation visits to these programmes in the coming academic year, and as a result we are looking to expand the membership of our PWP Accreditation Committee.

RODNEY STREET LIVERPOOL Occasional and Sessional Rooms

We are looking for colleagues with experience of either training, supervising or managing PWPs to join the Committee. For a copy of the Committee’s terms of reference and more information on the role and how to apply, please contact Lucy Kerry (0116 252 9596; Lucy.Kerry@bps.org.uk).

We are also looking for a new Chair for the Committee who has experience of developing and delivering PWP training.

Please contact either Lucy Kerry or the current Chair, Professor Graham Turpin (g.turpin@shef.ac.uk), for an informal conversation about the role and for further information.

Applicants for membership of the Committee will need to hold membership of either the Society or the BABCP. Applicants for the post of Chair need to be Society members.

read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk

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CHAIR OF THE PSYCHOLOGIST AND DIGEST EDITORIAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE 2013-2016 CALL FOR NOMINATIONS Nominations are invited for the Chair of the Psychologist and Digest Editorial Advisory Committee (PDEAC). Do you have?

• An appreciation of the multiple roles, diverse aims and unique characteristics of The Psychologist and Digests.

• Significant experience of publication and editorial work.

• Demonstrable interest in the dissemination of psychology to a diverse audience.

• The drive to see The Psychologist and Digests evolve in both print and digital media.

• Experience in leading and managing committees.

• Previous involvement in Society affairs (e.g. serving on a member network Committee or a Society Board).

This is a varied and key role that involves leading a committee that is responsible to the Board of Trustees for all matters of policy development, maintenance and coordination regarding The Psychologist, the Research Digest and its offshoots, and that will support and monitor the performance of the publications in all media.

The PDEAC reports direct to the Board of Trustees and its Chair is appointed by the Trustees of the Society.

If you wish to become Chair of the PDEAC and would like to find out more about this important role then please initially contact: Professor Pam Maras (Honorary General Secretary) Pam.Maras@BPS.org.uk.

Applications should be made on a Society statement of interest form which can be obtained along with additional information and the person specification for the role from Peter Dillon Hooper petdil@bps.org.uk..

Closing date for receipt of the statements of interest is 24 June 2013. Applicants must be members of the Society.

Delivered by HPC registered Practicing Psychologists

read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk

439

Calling all Postdoctorates and Postgraduates...

FUNDING

FOR

STUDY VISITS The Postdoctoral Study Visit grant scheme provides funding for UK based psychology Postdoctoral researchers and lecturers to undertake research study visits in the UK, Europe and internationally.

These are offered alongside the Society’s Postgraduate Study Visit Scheme which provides grants to support research students who are registered for a doctoral degree in psychology at a UK university to acquire skills directly relevant to their research training above and beyond that required for the completion of the doctoral degree.

Six grants will be available under each Scheme, two in each of the following categories: G Up to £250 for a visit to an institution in the UK G Up to £400 for a visit to an institution in Europe G Up to £600 for a visit to an institution elsewhere in the world The closing date for applications is 27 September 2013.

For further information, the full eligibility criteria and an application form please contact liz.beech@bps.org.uk Note: The schemes do not provide funding for conference attendance or to present conference papers.

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vol 26 no 6

june 2013

RESEARCH SEMINARS COMPETITION 2013 The Research Board invites submissions

Community Psychology MA (PGDip/PGCert) Community psychology is one of the most exciting and important developments in contemporary social sciences. The use of value-based inquiry to focus on marginalisation and inequality allows the introduction of critical, liberation and human rights perspectives into psychology.

This programme is one of only a handful of courses of this kind in the UK. Relevant for anyone interested in or currently practicing psychology in community settings.

Build on your knowledge of applied approaches to promoting wellbeing and social change.

Specialise in areas of personal interest through optional modules.

Themes and topics: social inequalities, marginalisation, mental health, human rights, environmentalism, social movements, community practice, empowerment, discourse, embodiment, participation, democracy, welfare and sexuality and organisations, networks and partnerships.

Graduates are equipped with skills relevant to a range of careers in community and voluntary organisations, social and health services, marketing, public administration and research among others.

Full-time and part-time study options available.

For more information about this course or to apply please contact: sassenquiries@brighton.ac.uk 01273 643494 www.brighton.ac.uk/sass.

Aim â&#x20AC;&#x201C; to enable a minimum of two institutions in co-operation with each other to hold a series of at least three scientific seminars, involving a minimum of 10 people, within a period of about two years.

Grants â&#x20AC;&#x201C; four grants are available, each worth up to ÂŁ3000, to meet the travelling and accommodation expenses of those attending the seminars. Institutions should be able to arrange and meet the costs of the rooms.

Criteria â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the seminars should have tangible goals, explicitly focused upon extending and developing the understanding of psychological processes in any field of scientific psychology.

Applications â&#x20AC;&#x201C; As a minimum of two institutions will be involved, submissions should be made by a primary applicant and a co-applicant, at least one of whom should be a Society member.

For further details and an application form please contact liz.beech@bps.org.uk.

The closing date for applications is 27 September 2013.

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CAREERS

‘If we don’t get beyond triviality, funding will dry up’ Ian Florance talks to Professor Dame Glynis Breakwell (Vice Chancellor at the University of Bath)

axi drivers usually claim to know the inside story on any issue you mention, and my driver is no exception. As we leave the train station for the University of Bath, she details the huge amount of university building, its key role in training competitors for the 2012 Olympics and its high position in university rankings. ‘It’s a major employer round here,’ she says proudly.

Since I’m early for my interview, I pop into a campus coffee shop, where the atmosphere is busy and friendly. Dame

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Glynis Breakwell, the university’s Vice Chancellor, is similarly welcoming when I arrive at her office. She is a social and health psychologist and Chartered Psychologist, and in 2006 became one of the 25 Honorary Fellows of the British Psychological Society.

simply fortunate enough to arrive when the university was coming into its own.

The community here is very strong.

When I came for my interview I walked round the campus and, like you, sensed its friendliness – the fact that it’s a palpably different kind of place. The trick as VC is to foster growth, accept that organisations change as they grow but not to lose the good things about it, like that atmosphere we both noticed.’ Any chief executive must have to make difficult decisions. ‘Yes. But I really enjoy making things happen and to do that you have to take other people’s views into account. As far as I’m concerned, you don’t look for conflict but face up to choices, look at priorities, accept that you can’t do everything you might want to.’

I enjoy making things happen

A thought-through arrant eclecticism

My first question is one I’ve always wanted to ask: ‘Exactly what does a vice chancellor do?’. ‘He or she is the chief executive responsible for all areas of activity in a university.

To put this in perspective, the University of Bath covers 200 acres, has 2500 employees and around 15,000 students. It’s the size of a small town, so being its vice chancellor is a sizeable, complex job.’ I tell Dame Glynis what my taxi driver had said and suggest she must be very proud of what she’s achieved.

‘I can’t take credit for the success we’ve had – I was

‘I grew up in the West Midlands, just outside Birmingham. At first I wanted to be a historian because I thought the subject was about people, but I quickly realised it wasn’t, whereas psychology was. As I’ve mentioned before in The Psychologist [see ‘One on one’, January 2013], Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams was the first psychology book I read, and it had a huge influence on me.’

Dame Glynis became fascinated with social psychology, citing such questions as ‘How do people construct identities for themselves?’ and ‘ What do people do when their identities are threatened?’ as central to her early thinking, writing and researching. She’s still clearly enthusiastic about the field though critical of aspects of it. ‘A weakness of social psychology is that it has been failed by its methods, and too often researchers become fixated with one method. My advice to new psychologists is never to be afraid to use the many different analytical tools available. Use any technique or method available to find an answer to the question you’re asking. I have a deliberate, thought-through approach to psychological work which could be

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For more information, see p.448.

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typified as arrant eclecticism. A desire to proselytise that approach has led to me writing widely on methodology.’

Dame Glynis studied at Leicester, then Strathclyde, and took her PhD from Bristol. As she talks about this period in her life it becomes clear that ‘my choices were largely defined by the people I wanted to study with rather than particular places I wanted to live in or a particular course. I would read certain authors and want to meet them and study with them. I think this is reasonably common in psychology, which, at times, seems to run an apprenticeship model.

For instance, at the time I did my PhD, Bristol was the centre of the universe for European social psychology, filled with people whose work had enthused and intrigued me. My supervisor was Henri Tajfel, whose work on prejudice and social identity theory is still influential, but whose wider view of the aim of social psychology pervaded the department.

It was a melting pot of ideas, and the emphasis was not on “experiments within a vacuum”. What we did had a social purpose and was not divorced from ideology, politics or recent history.’

Dame Glynis criticises aspects of social psychology specifically because she believes it should contribute more than it does. ‘Social psychology could have developed to be as important an influence on thinking about society as economics, but a combination of inadequate theory and methodology, coupled with an emphasis on internecine battles rather than practical outcomes, prevented this.

I’d love to see social psychology gain a position of greater influence but that’s going to difficult to achieve.’

The experience at Bristol was formative and remains influential since so many leaders of social psychology now passed through Bristol. After Bristol, Dame Glynis was very briefly a lecturer in the Bradford School of Social Analysis, alongside sociologists and political scientists, before she won a Prize Fellowship at Nuffield College Oxford, which again ‘was full of people I learnt from, some of the great economic, social and political theorists of the day, including Amartya Sen and Chelly Halsey, and in the psychology department I found support from Michael Argyle’. Then she worked at the University of Surrey from 1981 until 2001, starting out as a lecturer, and ending as both Pro-Vice Chancellor and Head of the School of Human Sciences. Dame Glynis is keen to challenge some misconceptions about these roles. ‘It’s often assumed that a provice chancellor moves away from an academic life to an administrative or

management one. In fact, in researchintensive universities, you usually take the role with responsibility for one area of university activity in addition to your academic post, rather than instead of it.

As I became a more senior manager, I stopped teaching, but, I suspect, my publication profile increased and I got even more involved in research. I don’t think I would want to do my present job if I couldn’t also do research. This isn’t possible or appropriate for all vice chancellors in all disciplines, but I think being research-active gives me greater credibility with the academics I lead and a greater understanding of the pressures they face.’

Time is running out Her perspective gives Dame Glynis strong views on where she thinks psychology as a discipline is and what challenges face working psychologists in the future.

‘There are now huge numbers of people with psychology degrees, comprising an educated audience for what psychologists have to say.’ I suggest the situation is even more receptive than that. My taxi driver, who has become a running character in this interview, commented ‘I’m not educated in it but I’m fascinated by psychology’ when I said I was working for The Psychologist. Glynis continued, ‘We’ve got a hugely receptive audience and it is going to grow. But the flip side of this is that the more people know, the more they will expect. Other sciences have taken the need to engage the public seriously and have worked hard in dealing with the media and through other channels. Look at the life sciences and physics as examples. Yet ironically the very interest in psychology has created a problem for us. We’ve been able to get away with communicating soft psychology and our challenge is to get beyond triviality, to communicate complex, tough findings which will impact on policy to an increasingly demanding audience. If we don’t get beyond triviality, funding for our research will dry up. The time is running out for psychologists to prove they’re indispensable.’

A social purpose We returned to the range of Glynis’s role towards the end of our interview. ‘I’m happy in my research. A new book on identity process theory I’ve edited with Rusi Jaspal comes out this year. But my work for the university has broader nonacademic aspects. I’ve worked hard with others to build good relations between the university and the city of Bath, which

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are crucial for both sides. Universities must have a strong role in their local communities and VCs therefore need to be active in them. I was Chair of the Bath Festivals Trust for instance, and I am Deputy Lieutenant of Somerset. The reputation of Bath as a UNESCO World Heritage City helps the university to attract great students. Applications to the university are increasing year on year.

My focus for the next few years as Vice Chancellor is to develop even better facilities for our students. Of course we need great academics and great programmes within a university but nonacademic experiences are also important.

That’s why we built our state-of-the-art sports training village, and that’s why we’re about to build a new Centre for the Arts on campus. These non-academic facilities encourage people from outside to come into the university and help students to get a rounded, enjoyable university experience, which also helps to make them extremely employable.’

This seemed a good point to close the interview (maybe to re-meet my oracular taxi driver) when Dame Glynis raised two issues which were obviously important to her. The first is the issue of women in a man’s world. ‘I am the Chair of Trustees of the Daphne Jackson Trust. Daphne was the first woman Professor of Physics in the UK, and the Trust supports people who are returning to an academic career, particularly in engineering or science, after a career break. These are often, but not exclusively, women returning after caring for a family. If we want equality and diversity in academia we have to find ways to support re-entry to the career ladder.

‘And this is the second point I want to make. Vice chancellors as I’ve typified them are CEOs of organisations but they have a huge, often unacknowledged role, in wider society. The Daphne Jackson Trust is an example. Being a VC helps you to ensure things happen and that issues across the HE sector are addressed. VCs can and should have an impact on society.’

And it’s this final discussion that stays with me as I visit the university’s magnificent new sports village, prior to meeting a different (less opinionated) taxi driver. I’d arrived at the interview intent on finding out how an academic psychologist makes a transition to the very different role of university leadership. Dame Glynis’s thoughtful comments had changed my assumption: her initial experience of social psychology and its aims seemed to lead directly to her work in ‘getting things done’ within the university and outside it.

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Work on a Ugandan mental health ward input. This is a great way to work in a culture where there is a bias to see the self as part of a community, rather than have pain in my head, chest and the leafy green outskirts of Kampala. The an individual. back.’ The 42-year-old Ugandan word butabika translated literally means In this initial assessment, Doreen woman sitting opposite me is ‘to run crazy’. This hospital has enough arrives with her son. The warm air creeps dressed in a bright red and blue gomesi, beds for over 700 patients. There are in as the sun heats up outside. The clinic the long traditional Ugandan dress. The currently two clinical psychologists room is small and basic with white walls. bright sunlight comes through the ironemployed here – that’s roughly 350 Each clinic room has three old wooden barred window behind me, illuminating patients per clinical psychologist. They chairs, which have lost their backs or her dark skin. Her name is Doreen.* She are the only clinical psychologists arms over time, and one wooden desk in looks at the floor and speaks in a whisper. employed by the Ministry of Health the middle. Her son sits on a wooden I ask her about her mood, she remains (rather than universities) in Uganda chair that lacks arms, dressed smartly in quiet for a minute and replies, ‘I don’t and hence the only clinical a white shirt and get you.’ Remembering that clients here psychologists working for the state black trousers. I wipe typically cannot name their emotions, whose primary job is to see some of the brown “that’s roughly 350 I ask her about her thoughts. ‘I am clients. I have found Butabika dust from my notes patients per clinical thinking too much,’ she says, whilst more difficult than Mulago. The and ask the son what psychologist” waving her right hand in circular motions patients are given simple green he believes caused to this side of her head. I have come to uniforms to wear, and the wards the problems. ‘We learn that these are the typical presenting are surrounded by big metal thought witchcraft, but symptoms of depression in Uganda. ‘My fences and security guards. Meals are we took her to traditional healers who neighbour despises me, You know meagre, so many patients come begging gave her herbs to take. After three months witchcraft? They put for food; and because we saw no improvement, so took her to a spell on me. My tranquilisers are frequently the pastor to pray for her, but she still has crops were doing too administered, the patients this pain. Someone told us to go to the well this year.’ A flash are often stiff, dribbling local health centre, which referred us of anger comes cross and find it difficult to talk. here. I am not very sure.’ her face.

However, things do appear Most people who attend the mental I moved to to be rapidly improving, health clinic do so as a last resort.

Kampala to because some interest Symptoms interpreted in the UK as experience working from the East London mental health problems are much more for the Ugandan state NHS Trust has ensured likely to be linked to witchcraft or spirit one year ago. Like the that, amongst other things, possession. This is reflected in the ratio three other clinical levels of staff–patient of traditional healers to Ugandan citizens, psychologists at the violence have greatly which is 1:200, compared with that of General National decreased on the wards.

Western practitioners to Ugandan Referral Hospital, Traditional and faith citizens, which is 1:25,000. Currently Mulago, my working healing are also readily there are only 32 psychiatrists and five j.mhall1986@gmail.com contract is with the available. However, the stigma clinical psychologists practising clinically state-run University, of being admitted to Butabika in the country.

Makerere, under the Department of remains for life.

Trying to piece together the puzzle, Psychiatry. But my contract is slightly I prefer working in Mulago hospital.

I asked Doreen if there is anything which different – I am not paid. This gives me For all wards, a pre-requisite for being may be causing her stress. ‘Just the pain,’ the freedom to work where I wish. The admitted is that you bring a caregiver, she states. Her son tells me that her others do not have this luxury. The high often a family member or a friend, who is husband is treating her badly by beating levels of prestige, demands and emphasis admitted with you. This person will her at home. Doreen confirms this is true. put on lecturing and research rather than attend to your basic needs, such as meals, Hearing about domestic violence in clinical work means that the other clinical washing clothes and sheets and the mental health clinic is extremely psychologists rarely have the time to visit sometimes administering medication. For common. However, the feeling of the mental health wards for clinical work. the mental health wards, having a chosen hopelessness that arises in me every time When there is time, the lack of clinical caregiver admitted with the patient I hear about it does not change. I have supervision or structure means that appears to be, in most cases, beneficial. not seen any form of social services in motivation for clinical work is low, and Having this company seems to help Uganda. This makes domestic violence burn-out rates are high. patients with problems of loneliness and extremely difficult to handle. Given that There are two state-run health options boredom, as well as reducing stigma or Doreen and her son have travelled far to for persons with mental health problems abuse from other patients or staff Mulago, I realise that it is unrealistic to in Kampala. The first is the mental health members. From a practitioner’s expect them to raise the funds to travel ward at Mulago, built in 1943, where I perspective, this ease of access to family here again. Instead of continuing with have spent most of my time working; and members is a luxury. I rarely do an initial a thorough assessment, I turn my energies the second an inpatient hospital dedicated assessment, or indeed therapeutic towards discussing the impact of to mental health called Butabika, based in interventions, without some caregiver domestic violence on mental health, and

Clinical psychologist Dr Jennifer Hall shares her experiences

‘I

* A fictitious name. Case details are a composite of actual cases.

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the associated bodily symptoms which can result.

The clinic door is opened and another case file is put on my desk. This represents another patient waiting to be

Lectur Senior Le er / c in Psycho turer logy (Forensic ) M

seen. Patients arrive at the mental health clinic early in the morning to be seen by mental health practitioners and wait on long, dusty benches. If the clinics are busy, then some will have to wait until

the next day to be seen. As there are no appointment times given, I am never sure how many patients are being referred to me. The numbers that I have seen in a morning range from two to eight. Any more than five patients and I find it hard to remember my own name afterwards!

There is only one clinical psychologist on duty at a time in the clinics so I am sent anyone who the other practitioners feel could do with psychological input – patients of every age and mental health diagnosis.

Doreen quickly accepts the link between her bodily pain and the domestic violence. I try to help Doreen come up with a ‘safety plan’ for when her husband is being violent. We agree that she would go to her next door neighbour’s house for refuge. Unsure if I will ever see them again, I bid them farewell and give them my work mobile number. I feel confident that we have found the reasons for her pain. It is now in the community’s hands to find a way to help her with the domestic violence, and hence to carry out the therapeutic intervention to help decrease her pain and ‘thinking too much’.

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The post holder will provide specialist psychosocial assessment and intervention to individuals with complex psychological presentations in a timely fashion. Teaching and training are essential components of this post and a willingness to work flexibly is essential.

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post following appraisals. A job plan will be drawn up with the successful applicant as part of an initial induction period and will reflect the band to which the person is appointed.

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Closing date: 14 June 2013 Interview date: 27 June 2013 To apply please go to www.jobs.nhs.uk quoting reference number 403-HR867 Previous applicants need not apply.

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Job Title: Senior Consultant – Assessment and Development Employer: GatenbySanderson ‘Talent will trump geography when we decide who to employ’, says Martin Tucker, Senior Partner at GatenbySanderson. ‘We have around 60 staff across our three offices in London, Birmingham and Leeds so we look for the very best people across the country, regardless of their location. Our clients are nationwide, so we need to be mobile and enjoy getting out of the office.’

GatenbySanderson was founded 10 years ago and offers recruitment, assessment and development solutions, largely for public sector, not-for-profit and regulatory organisations. ‘We help our clients find, assess, select and develop chief executives and directors as well as chairs and non-executive directors. Public appointments also make up an increasing amount of our work.’ Martin manages the assessment and development team. ’It comprises three psychologists. We’re looking to add one or two more this year. The team does a number of things.

It helps our executive search team to assess candidates for senior roles, and it works directly with our clients to run assessment and development centres. Some of these can be large, and work with government departments and agencies will see us assess several hundred people. Some of these projects are one-offs, others require an ongoing involvement. Typically, we work with organisations undergoing change and restructuring. In recent times, many have been reducing the size of their top team, so we act as advisers fitting the right people to the right jobs in the new structure. After that, we’ll use assessment as the basis for development to help those organisations bring out the best in that new team.’ ’We’ll support someone who is on their way to chartered status and in rectifying skills or knowledge gaps such as training in new tests and in assessment centre design.’

Personal qualities and skills seem paramount. ‘Yes, that’s exactly right. This person must have the knowledge, experience and communication skills to be credible with senior people. Without that they’ll struggle. Other qualities stem from the fact that this is a consultancy type job and that makes different demands compared with an in-house position. The person must be fleet of foot and must be able to cope with workload peaks and troughs. And there’s another critical issue.’

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CONSULTANT CLINICAL NEUROPSYCHOLOGIST Swindon

full time or part time: Salary negotiable Chalkdown House is a brand new purpose built independent hospital providing specialist neurobehavioural assessment and postacute rehabilitation hospital for people with a non-progressive acquired brain injury. It forms part of the nationwide network of specialist rehabilitation centres provided by The Brain Injury Rehabilitation Trust (BIRT).

Our clinical expertise and high staff-to-service user ratios allow us to offer exceptional levels of care and support for people with challenging behaviour and complex needs, and we are able to take referrals for those detained under the Mental Health Act. This is an exciting opportunity to lead the clinical team in a new service whilst at the same time being part of the wider network of 13 consultant clinical neuropsychologists across BIRT. The post holder will be a member of the BIRT Clinical Executive which oversees clinical governance and developments. Training and research are actively encouraged and supported.

We are looking for an energetic and innovative psychologist to take on this challenge of recruiting, developing and leading the clinical team.

For an application pack, please download the documents from the BIRT website at http://www.thedtgroup.org/brain-injury/our-services/chalkdown-house/work-for-us/consultant-clininical-neuropsychologist.aspx.

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Principal Clinical Psychologist: Specialist in Addiction Band 8B – £45,707 - £56,504 pa Base: Paget House, 2 West Street Leicester LE1 6XP 37.5 hours per week Ref: 313-LPT-0473-EE The Leicester Recovery Partnership is a new and innovative, recovery-focused partnership commissioned to deliver substance misuse services in Leicester City from 1 July 2013. The partnership comprises Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust, Phoenix Futures and Reaching People. Our core aim is to promote, encourage and engage service users to achieve recovery, building on their recovery capital and providing opportunities to make positive, sustainable changes in their lives.

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Clinical Psychologist specialising in addictions to take a leading role in the new service.

We will favour candidates who have previous experience in working with individuals who have substance misuse problems.

You will be able to work autonomously and creatively to provide clinical leadership, contributing to the on-going quality and governance of the service.

You will take a lead in the effective delivery of standard and enhanced, evidence based psychosocial and psychological interventions for people with substance misuse problems, including training and supervising a range of staff within a multi-disciplinary service.

You will also hold a specialist case load, providing assessment, formulation and psychological therapy for service users with multiple and complex areas of need, including cognitive assessments. You will be encouraged and supported to design research to answer local treatment questions.

For further enquiries please contact Karen Rees on 0116 2256400.

Please apply on-line at www.jobs.nhs.uk quoting the appropriate vacancy reference in the keyword search.

Closing date: 16 June 2013.

seek and advertise at www.psychapp.co.uk

The Huntercombe Group is the largest independent provider of Brain Injury Rehabilitation and Neurodisability services in the UK. Hothfield Manor Acquired Brain Injury Centre is a specialist Neuro Rehab Unit near Ashford, Kent, providing both Inpatient and Outpatient Rehabilitation.

CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST £45K PA – FULL-TIME POST

This exciting post primarily concerns working as part of a multidisciplinary team delivering neuropsychological assessments and treatment programmes to service users who are receiving post acute rehabilitation. However another key aspect of the role is to provide neuropsychological input into the other long-stay social care units that make up the centre. We are committed to staff training and continued professional development. Applicants should be a Chartered Clinical Psychologist and have at least 3 years experience in the field of acquired brain injury/neurology.

For an informal discussion or to arrange a visit regarding this position please contact Rob Bunting, Centre Manager on 01233 643272 or to receive an application pack please contact Lynn Morris on 01233 643272 or email: hothfield.manor@fshc.co.uk Closing date for applications: 14 June 2013 The Huntercombe Group is committed to the development of its existing employees If you would like the opportunity to develop further in your career with The Huntercombe Group and feel that you can demonstrate the appropriate skills, knowledge and experience to carry out the above role, we will be pleased to receive your application.

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REVIEWS

Psychology on the back seat?

Maureen Lipman: If Memory Serves Me Right Britain’s Biggest Hoarders BBC One A couple of recent offerings from the BBC had me pondering the use of psychological expertise in programme making. I can’t be alone in noticing that TV these days is all about the personal back story, the transformation, the ‘journey’. Are psychologists on board for the ride, or simply being taken for one?

Consider Maureen Lipman: If Memory Serves Me Right.

The clue’s in the name: this was going to be very much a personal account of the topic. Yet expectations for a seriously scientific take were raised by a considerable buzz on Twitter before the documentary aired. An impressive cast of contributors had been assembled, the real crème de la crème of UK psychologists involved in memory research.

The programme did indeed begin pretty well, and it included authoritative and engaging contributions from Professor Martin Conway (City University), Dr Catriona Morrison (University of Leeds), and Dr Hugo Spiers (University College London). But my own abiding memory will be of the ‘journey’ taking an unfortunate diversion to Paul McKenna’s house, so that he could hypnotise her into not crying when she talked about her late husband, playwright Jack Rosenthal. There was also a point that felt like ‘OK, enough of the experts – let’s get Michael Mosley in, viewers know him’.

I found this particularly hard to bear because I knew that on the cutting-room floor was enough material to make a really decent standalone documentary about memory. Dr Catherine Loveday (University of Westminster) was one of those who didn’t make the final edit. She said: ‘It’s always a difficult decision when you are invited to contribute to a TV or radio piece. I am passionate about public dissemination of science but I’ve had mixed experiences so have learned to be wary. It’s very easy to be taken advantage of, especially in terms of time commitment and receiving due credit, plus you often have to fight hard to maintain both scientific and ethical integrity. In the case of this programme, I knew many of my colleagues were involved and the producer was persuasive and appeared sincere so it seemed worth doing. I put a lot of preparatory work into the shoot that we did and we had some 60 older people who did a fantastic experiment that worked so it was very disappointing that it was not used, especially since I felt I had an important message to convey. The producer seemed to really like what we’d done but she went on maternity leave and the new producer obviously had different ideas. The experience was certainly still useful and fun, as well as hard work, but has only increased my level of caution about agreeing to get involved in future.’

Dr Catriona Morrison did make the programme, but she was not best pleased either. ‘If I’d known that Paul McKenna was going to be in it I wouldn’t have done it,’ she told me. ‘You don’t know what you're getting into. They’re just making a television programme, it’s just whatever fits. I’m sure I only stayed in it because my bit involved kids!' So would you do it again, I asked? ‘It’s so tricky,’ Dr Morrison replied. ‘You do it through loyalty to psychology, the BPS, the Uni, but you have no control. We don’t put a value on it, we don’t expect to get paid, we’re doing it to uphold credibility. But we expect credit where credit is due, and some decency.’

This issue of control seems to be key. I don’t think psychologists working with the media expect editorial control, but neither should the final product come as a complete surprise. And some, for example Professor Tanya Byron, have managed to find the middle ground. In our pages (December 2005), she told me: ‘I don’t have any editorial control over any of the programmes I make, but my relationship with my producers is the key. Because they respect that

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they’re portraying what I do, they do run things past me. There’s a healthy respect both ways. I know what I need to deliver for them to make their programmes – they need viewers, it’s not just a bit of charity education here – and they know they need to respect my integrity in order for me to give them what they need.’

The second example was Britain’s Biggest Hoarders. It began with the claim that this year has seen ‘hoarding disorder recognised as a distinct psychological condition’. It’s certainly the case that documentaries about hoarding disorder are stacking up like, well, hoarded stuff in a hallway. It’s obviously an extremely complex condition, with ‘up to three million suffering from it in the UK’.

Television presenter Jasmine Harman, whose own mother was for many years a hoarder, set out to try to help others in a kind of mix of documentary and Extreme House Makeover.

Harman met 87-year-old Olive, who has to be at the extreme end even for an extreme hoarder (although there were shades of my wife in her response concerning the marmalade that was 15 years out of date: ‘Course it’s alright, it’s only sugar!’). For Olive, hoarding is inseparable from the recycling she began in the Navy during the war – ‘I don’t hoard, I keep stuff that will be used again’ – and when she donates the £29.50 from 165 kilos of cans to St John Ambulance, you have to admire her. Clearing becomes as much of an issue as hoarding, as Olive struggles to dispense with memories from nearly 80 years in the same house. She deserved better than Harman’s speculations as to likely causes and solutions.

Unfortunately clinical psychologist Dr Caroline Wells was busy tackling the relationship between Janet, another hoarder, and her teenage daughter Vicky. Even then, there was very little professional input – on screen at any rate – and at times it seemed Dr Wells was just there as another pair of hands to shift stuff. However, Dr Wells told me: ‘It became clear that it was not going to be ethical, if possible, to explore the full picture of Janet’s story; it was so deeply buried and protected within her, exposing it for the sake of our understanding was not fair, as it was not possible to offer her longterm work and her history of engagement with local services was extremely poor. For this reason, our work focused more her behaviour; I wanted her to have the experience of clearing her belongings and to have the opportunity to realise that she could do it and that it was beneficial to her and her family.’

As psychologists, we need to be aware of the potential back story to the programme itself, and wary of becoming too precious about our involvement. If the audience need so much of the back story to engage, and only then will they understand the issues, then perhaps the producers have got it right? But I can’t help feeling we’ve got more to offer. If we’re along for the ride, then maybe we can learn from those who’ve managed to clamber up into the front seat.

I Reviewed by Dr Jon Sutton who is Editor of The Psychologist

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reviews

A classic that continues to improve Pioneers of Psychology (4th edn) Raymond E. Fancher & Alexandra Rutherford Pioneers of Psychology is one of the classics in the history of psychology. The first edition appeared in 1979. It was followed by a second edition in 1990 and a third edition in 1996. Now a fourth edition has appeared.

The main difference between this edition and the ones that preceded it is that its author, Raymond Fancher has produced it in collaboration with his former student Alexandra Rutherford. Rutherford is well known for her feminist-oriented work, and one of the intended consequences of the collaboration is that the book contains more material on women and gender issues. The fourth edition also contains new chapters on personality and applied psychology, while the chapters on social and cognitive psychology have been significantly expanded. Other than that, the book continues with its winning formula of intellectual biographies of important figures in the history of psychology.

The biographies are entertaining and well written. We learn, for example, that Hermann Helmholtz came from a poor background and was only able to go to university because of a scheme that the Prussian government had introduced to meet a shortage of army doctors. It paid for the medical training of poor but talented students on condition that they served as army doctors for a minimum of eight years.

We also learn that Charles Darwin originally intended to follow his father into the medical profession but decided that it was not for him after watching surgery being performed without anaesthetic on a child.

Among the stories connected with women in the history of psychology, one of the most poignant is that of Mary Whiton Calkins who completed the requirements for a PhD at Harvard University. Her supervisor, William James, considered her to be the best student he had ever had. In spite of this, she never received a PhD for the simple reason that Harvard University refused to award a PhD to a woman. These stories help to bring the history of psychology alive. I have used the book in courses over many years and have always found it to be popular with students.

While its popularity with students and lecturers has undoubtedly been an important factor in the book’s longevity, popularity should not be the only consideration. Although the history of psychology is widely taught in departments of psychology, specialists in the field are relatively rare. One of the consequences of this situation is that some of the most popular textbooks on both sides of the

Atlantic have been written by psychologists with no background in the subject and consist of regurgitated material from other textbooks. I would therefore advise anyone who is considering a textbook in this area to look carefully at the qualifications of its author(s). There are no problems here in that regard. Fancher is a former head of the International Society for History of the Behavioural and Social Sciences and the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the APA’s history

of psychology division. Rutherford is an associate professor in the history and theory of psychology programme at York University in Toronto and the current president of the APA’s history of psychology division. They have a sophisticated knowledge of historiography (the theories and methods of history) and the book is based on the most recent research. It is thus one of those rare books that can be recommended both on scholarly grounds and in terms of its popular appeal.

I Norton; 2012; Pb £29.99 Reviewed by Adrian C. Brock who is at University College Dublin

Austere experiences of war Nineveh Theatre Témoin With the media so often focusing on issues closer to home, the daily struggle of people in war-stricken countries is often overlooked. A short-running play (16 April–11 May) consisting of in-depth, replicated dialogue of combatant experiences brought an enlightening and shocking reminder to London’s Riverside Studios.

Nineveh, by company Theatre Témoin, portrays aspects of director Ailin Conant’s ‘Return Project’ work in conjunction with the charity War Child. After running creative expression schemes with ex-soldiers and child fighters in Kashmir, Israel, Lebanon and Rwanda, Conant created this piece with writer Julia Pascal.

Drawing its story solely from combatant accounts, the play is set in the purgatory of ‘the belly of a whale’: simply staged in a small, darkened theatre space.

Nineveh presents physical and verbal demonstration of the austere experiences of war. The play features a small character cast of three adult ex-soldiers for its majority, arguing and fighting over their varying length of habitation in this purgatory and their associated superiority. A child-fighter with his mouth stitched together is found to be hiding at the play’s later stages, with an onslaught of suspicion and accusations thrown at him from the adult figures. The play depicts their mental anguish in the restricted, damp setting of the whale. In their entrapment, the four struggle with dreams of their violent fighter pasts and gain hope from ideals of their freedom and future.

At the play’s conclusion, most characters apparently come to terms with the struggles of their past and escape. A solitary member remains.

Featuring true accounts of violent, sexual and tender experiences, this one-hour play concisely delivers a breadth of post-traumatic reflection. Interspersed with dark comedy, this intense play is both uncomfortable and witty at times. Powerful dialogue, high-quality acting and proximity to simple staging combine to provide an intense, thought-provoking experience. Knowing the subject matter is grounded in true combatant experiences made this an informative, emotional and intelligent piece. It would be good to see a further run of this production – well recommended.

I Reviewed by Emma Norris who is a PhD student, University College London

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reviews

CHROMOSATURATION (1965-2013). CRUZ-DIEZ FOUNDATION. PHOTO: LINDA NYLIND

Bamboozling our visual systems Light Show Hayward Gallery, London Light Show at the Hayward Gallery from 30 January to 6 May curated work by 22 artists. Upon entry there was a glittering, hanging installation of lights (‘Cylinder II’ by Leo Villareal) which is mesmerising. The show includes fluorescent works by Dan Flavin, a beguiling misty installation by Anthony McCall, and strobe-lit fountains by Olafur Eliasson.

Is there something fundamentally visually exciting about this sort of art? I asked Dr David Kane, a visual psychologist from Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.

‘We like novelty’, David explained. ‘We are so well adapted to our everyday world that it no longer fascinates us. Lighting exhibits can place us in a novel, alien world… Art exhibits can push the visual system to the extremes and expose its limitations. Often it is when our visual system fails to correctly interpret the world that we are most fascinated.’

‘For instance the colour room,’ said David, referring to Carlos Cruz-Diez’s ‘Chromosaturation’. Here the same walls change colour depending on where you stand in relation to coloured bulbs. When you move from one room to the next, the walls’ colour seems to change, sometimes whitening, sometimes deepening in colour.

‘What’s happening here is a failure of colour consistency, which is the ability to see an object as having the same colour regardless of the background lighting conditions,’ said David. ‘In Carlos’s light room, the lights are monochrome blue, green or red. We can’t fully adapt, meaning that the walls take on the colour of the illuminant.

We do get some adaption, and this is where the fun begins.

Lingering in one room will cause partial adaption, and the walls will begin to whiten, but then move to another room and you have to readapt.’

For me, at Light Show, there was something I liked about extremes of light and colour. I also liked the darkness, especially in the misty installation, and I liked the idea (if less the execution) of Katie Paterson’s ‘Light Bulb to Simulate Moonlight’. Perhaps as well as enjoying the bamboozling of our visual systems, there is something about capturing familiar light experiences in unfamiliar ways. Sunlight, moonlight, starlight, reflection… all of these light experiences were represented in the artworks, but in a man-made, off-kilter fashion.

I Reviewed by Lucy Maddox who is a clinical psychologist in the NHS and Associate Editor for Reviews An extended review is available at Lucy's blog: http://psychologymagpie.wordpress.com

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What makes us human?

Being Human: Psychological and Philosophical Perspectives Richard Gross Is there something about our species that makes us ‘exceptional’ or ‘unique’ and distinguishes us both biologically and socially from the other creatures inhabiting the planet?

In this book Richard Gross presents an unbiased look at a variety of arguments for and against the ‘uniqueness’ of human nature from a number of perspectives. Whether your interest lies in genetics, cognition, language, time-perception, culture or more existential questions surrounding the meaning of life, you will be sure to find this book captures your imagination.

Despite being only 335 pages long this book is packed full of information. The comprehensive chapters are logically structured beginning with ‘key questions’, moving on to information and examples punctuated by diagrams of

difficult concepts and boxes highlighting key studies, frequently incorporating ‘time for reflection’ to encourage readers to think about and question the content presented, and finishing with a detailed summary of the chapter contents and suggestions for wider reading.

While the book is primarily recommended for students of psychology and perfectly complements Richard Gross’s Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behaviour, I would say it is equally enlightening for anyone who has ever stopped to think: what is it that makes us human?

Though don’t be surprised if the book raises just as many questions as it answers!

I Hodder Education; 2012; Pb £24.99 Reviewed by Amy Burton who is a Research Associate, Aston University

Truly excellent Clinical Practice of Forensic Neuropsychology: An Evidence-based Approach Kyle Brauer Boone This is a truly excellent book. In an era where private practice appears an increasingly appealing prospect to many psychologists, this book provides a comprehensive discussion of neuropsychology in a medico-legal context.

As a published professor and practicing neuropsychologist, the author provides a thorough evaluation of the literature alongside well-informed recommendations for practice. The book contains detailed discussion of methods of symptom validity testing, including free standing tests and indicators within standard cognitive tests.

The author also debates issues such as selection of normative data, maintenance of test security, methods of estimating premorbid IQ, and determination of the aetiology of lowered test scores.

As a clinical psychologist working in neuropsychology, my favourite aspect of this book is the ease of application to clinical practice. The chapter entitled ‘Seven common flaws in forensic neuropsychological reports’ provides some valuable recommendations for writing high-quality neuropsychological reports in any context.

I Guilford Press; 2013; Hb £33.99 Reviewed by Liane Hubbins who is a clinical psychologist

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reviews

Missing the mark as science communication The Salon Project Untitled Project Attempts at entertainment – a ‘gramophone DJ’ and a ‘tableau vivant’ of naked people, each with a different piece of technology, left me confused.

The event only really began to come alive towards the end, when the speakers gave their talks. Jenny Sealey’s talk about disability was heartfelt, and Professor Stephen McMahon’s discussion of pain was interesting, although as a psychology graduate I heard little that was new for me. One of the most difficult points for any science communication venture is pitching it at the right level. As this was aimed at the

looked on. I found this not only disturbing, but completely bewildering, and left the event with a feeling of having been left out – like there was some secret meaning that I should have understood but didn’t.

While the idea of dressing up and entering a world of intelligent conversation, performance and debate is wonderful, for me at least The Salon Project missed the mark.

It didn’t seem to know what it was – shocking art, designed to make us uncomfortable, or an entertaining evening aiming to get people talking about neuroscience? With more

rushed through costume, hair and make-up, with only a few minutes spent on each of us.

Although the costumes were stunning, and the stylists did a great job with the limited time available, an indulgent, pampering experience quickly became stressful, as we were herded into the Salon.

The ambiance in the Salon was wonderful, but once the initial impressions of the glamorous room and fantastic outfits wore off, we were left fending for ourselves – just a load of strangers in fancy dress.

art/science crossover I think Professor McMahon did a good job, but I would have liked more detail.

Towards the end, we were assembled for a photo, at which point two toga-clad girls sat amongst us. If this wasn’t baffling enough, they then stood in the middle of the room, staring at an older girl on a screen, before taking two swords off the wall and leaving the room. What followed was an unnecessarily grizzly film of naked actors, throats cut, lying in pools of blood, while children

experts and the hosts introducing people to each other and initiating conversations, it could have been a stimulating event. However, attempts to shock, distracted from the point of the evening, and made me less likely to spark up conversations with strangers.

For this reason, I think The Salon Project, while a great concept, was an unsuccessful science communication activity.

Fresh insights Eating and Its Disorders John Fox & Ken Goss (Eds.)

TOMMY GA-KEN WAN

As part of the Barbican’s ‘Wonder’ series on the brain in March/April, Untitled Project brought The Salon Project to London, promising ‘a new music theatre event inspired by the rituals of the 19th century salon… where performance interventions, music and guest speakers entertain and provoke conversation’. Excited by the idea of dressing up in period costume and experiencing an evening of challenging neuroscience-inspired conversation, I went along.

Our evening got off to a slow start, running half an hour late with no explanation. We were

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I Reviewed by Ginny Smith who is a psychology graduate and freelance science communicator

The simplicity of the title of this book does not do the content justice. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the authors focused on both a practical as well as an academic approach to eating disorders. The book largely explores the social, emotional and psychological influences that contribute to the development and maintenance of eating disorders. Therefore if you are more interested in the biological and neuropsychological processes involved in eating disorders, this may not be the book for you.

Despite this, I would argue that for most people interested in eating disorders this book is definitely a useful and worthy read. The authors manage to direct us through new research and ideas being applied to the psychological assessment and treatment of eating disorders, whilst also considering practical issues that practitioners face when treating this client group.

Overall, the book was well structured, thought-provoking and easy to follow. Therefore I would highly recommend this book, both to academic scholars and to practitioners wanting to update their knowledge and gain some fresh insights into these ever-evolving disorders.

I Wiley- Blackwell; 2012; Pb £34.99 Reviewed by Sarah Forrest who has a Health Psychology MSc and is a support worker at Fairfield General Hospital, Bury

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From doomsday to the Digest All in the Mind BBC Radio 4 All in the Mind, the award-winning Radio 4 programme, is back with a new series.

I listened to the first episode, which included an interview with The Psychologist’s own Dr Christian Jarrett, who pre-recorded his contribution at BBC Broadcasting House.

All in the Mind is great at getting a good mix of topics on its programmes. This episode had three main items: a feature on doomsday prophets and cognitive dissonance, one on whether reading the news is bad for our mental well-being, and the interview with Christian on some of the latest interesting research taken from the Society’s free Research Digest service (see www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog and www.twitter.com/researchdigest).

I asked Christian what the experience of being on the programme was like: ‘It was exciting visiting the BBC and both the producer Fiona Hill and presenter Claudia Hammond were very friendly and professional, which put me at ease and made it really enjoyable. After we'd finished recording they showed me round the recently refurbished building and I saw the open plan office that appears behind the news readers on the BBC's main TV news bulletins.’ Christian’s ‘best bit’ of the experience was ‘watching my wife’s facial expression when she listened to me on the radio’.

As a listener, I found the feature on doomsday prophesies really interesting, as

I thought the cognitive dissonance angle on why people subscribe to beliefs about the end of the world was a fresh take, clearly explained. Christian’s interview linked well with this too, as he commented on this but also went on to talk about other research.

One nugget he discussed was a study that shows having a picture of a motivational woman on the wall when women are giving a public speech makes them speak for longer and more confidently. Women: change your screensavers to Angela Merkel now. Or maybe Claudia Hammond.

I Reviewed by Lucy Maddox who is a clinical psychologist in the NHS and Associate Editor for Reviews

Flights of fancy A Box of Birds Charles Fernyhough ‘Plato said the mind is like an aviary full of birds, one for every thought or memory you've ever had. They’re all there, all these thoughts and bits of knowledge: the problem is catching them.’

This novel, psychologist Charles Fernyhough’s second, could be read as a glimpse into his own aviary, all vividly coloured flights of fancy on memory, identity, faith vs. science, thinking vs. feeling. There are a few other psychologists-cum-novelists – Frank Tallis, Dorothy Bishop and Ken Gilhooly spring to mind – who draw on their professional lives to varying degrees, but here Fernyhough heads straight for psychology’s big issues in something of a busman’s holiday.

The plot, which flies past at genuine ‘page turner’ pace, involves a race to map the (fictional) Lorenzo Circuit, ‘the deep root-system of the self... the basis of memory, emotion and consciousness in the human brain’. There’s a shadowy biotech company and a mysterious cult leader, some sizzling sex, and at the heart of it all is an academic (Dr Yvonne Churcher) and her students. Engaging in a bit of armchair psychology it’s hard not to see the book as a reflection of Fernyhough’s own divided life, part academic and part writer. Dr Churcher is scolded with ‘You’re given a choice between thinking and feeling and you choose brainpower every time’. A character is trying to ‘bring the sordid business science to its knees’, and I would say it’s clear Fernyhough is not a fan of conferences!

It’s hard to like Dr Churcher. Living her life as ‘a richly detailed sleepwalk’, forever abrogating responsibility, leaves her maddeningly open with her life and her students. ‘I’m half a person,’ she bleats, ‘ruled by linkages I have no map for. I’m a passenger in my own life, a hostage in a runaway car.’ ‘Stay,’ her lover says, ‘don’t go’. She looks at him sadly. ‘I was never even here’. Yuk. Like most 30-yearolds, she needs to grow up. But that’s just it: as the book progresses, you realise that Fernyhough’s will-o’-the-wisp is actually an everyday hero. Don’t we all, to an extent, feel like Churcher? ‘That feeling of centredness, of me-ness, that is supposed to keep you rooted in your life: well, it passed me by.’

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The ‘illusion of the self’ is very much in vogue at the moment, and Fernyhough does a great job of picking that apart in an individual and her interactions. Churcher is ‘some kind of zombie’, ‘the confection of a restless, pattern-seeking brain’, ‘a ragtag collection of self-obsessed processors, each of which is mostly blissfully unaware of what the others are doing’. ‘I don’t have thoughts, I have wildlife’, she says, ‘sparks of ghostly activity in systems that act without knowing, siren warnings from a storytelling machine.’

Fernyhough heeds those siren warnings as he grapples with faith – in science, in stories, in fairy tales. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ Dr Churcher says, ‘I’ve just read too much neuroscience.’ Materialism is ‘everything… It’s how a dumb lump of flesh can inherit a soul’. Yet in a tale that takes in connectomics, diffusion MRI and deepbrain stimulation it’s as if Fernyhough himself thinks it’s probably dangerous to care too much about this stuff. Ultimately, science can only take us so far.

I needed reminding of that. I tend not to read a lot of fiction, and early on in A Box of Birds I realised why.

Partly it’s petty jealousy… as an editor I’m a destroyer of words not a creator of worlds, and it frustrates me to see others managing it apparently effortlessly. But mostly it’s the idea that you expect me to invest, emotionally and intellectually, in this made-up world, characters and dialogue? When there’s so much I still need to understand about real life, about science? Fernyhough may have ended my face-off with fiction, as I realised – it really shouldn’t have been a surprise – that the two need not be mutually exclusive. We can, of course, learn about our world while our head’s in an imagined one, just as our experience informs our writing. ‘Stories are truth’, he writes. ‘Stories are the truest truth’. I’m grateful for the siren warnings from the storytelling machine that is Charles Fernyhough.

I Unbound; 2013; Pb £9.99 Reviewed by Jon Sutton, Managing Editor of The Psychologist

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Wide coverage and high quality The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of the Psychology of Coaching and Mentoring Jonathan Passmore, David B. Peterson & Teresa Freire (Eds.) approach to development within organisations.

The editors have gathered together a very strong collection of authors, many seen as experts in the field and representing views from across the globe. The topics covered are diverse with each chapter being a succinct literature review of an area whilst highlighting the gaps and future research needs. The topics are very up to date and reflect the latest approaches; including, for example, chapters on how neuroscience developments and mindfulness can benefit coaching.

The wide coverage and the high quality of the contributors makes this a valuable course text for any student of occupational or business psychology, or indeed of other

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qualifications related to coaching and mentoring. I have already recommended it for my students.

I Wiley-Blackwell; 2013; Hb

just in

This is part of a series of books from Wiley-Blackwell designed as course texts to support those studying and/or researching topics relating to industrial and organisational psychology.

There is a plethora of books available on coaching and mentoring from a range of authors (some more credible than others), but the vast majority are firmly focused on the practice of coaching and mentoring rather than on the research and evidence behind it. This is partly because this is still a relatively new field and research has been very much trailing behind the practice.

However, there is a growing body of research out there and this book fills a gap, pulling together the evidence behind what has rapidly become a common and widely used

£120.00 Reviewed by Emily Hutchinson who is Executive Coach at ejh consulting and Senior Lecturer at the University of Gloucestershire

Sample titles just in: Heroic Leadership Scott Allison & George Goethals Psychocinematics Arthur Shinamura Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking Douglas Hoffstadter & Emmanuel Sander 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 Remember, ‘Reviews’ now covers psychology in any form: books, films, apps, plays, web, TV, radio, newspapers, etc.

To contribute, e-mail psychologist@bps.org.uk or tweet your suggestions to @psychmag.

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NEW VOICES

An ecological approach to audio description Louise Fryer with the latest in our series for budding writers (see www.bps.org.uk/newvoices for more information)

At the moment the space is dimly lit and shadowy. Slowly the lights fade to total darkness. There’s a shaft of light from an open door as Gloucester walks in, rubbing his face wearily.

Kent, glancing nervously over his shoulder, follows.

his is how King Lear begins in a recent production at London’s Almeida Theatre. At least, this is how King Lear begins if you are a blind theatre-goer, listening to the audio description (AD).

AD is a verbal commentary providing visual information for those unable to perceive it themselves. AD helps blind and partially sighted people access audiovisual media and is also used in live settings such as theatres, galleries and museums (e.g. Diaz-Cintas et al., 2007). The practice was developed in the US and came to the UK in the late-1980s. I was amongst a small handful of people who were trained by the National Theatre when they first began an audio description service in 1992, and I still regularly describe productions. I was also a pioneer of TV description, working for the BBC as part of a European pilot project called Audetel.

Although AD is now a legal requirement (under the Communications Act 2003 and Equality Act 2010), its methods are largely untested (Gerber, 2007). As I train new describers, I wanted data to back up what I teach. As a discipline, AD is found in departments of

references

T

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Biocca, F. (1997). The cyborg’s dilemma: Embodiment in virtual environments.

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 3(2). doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.1997.tb00070.x Carello, C., Anderson, K.L. & KunklerPeck, A.J. (1998). Perception of object length by sound. Psychological Science 9(3), 211–214.

Carello, C, Wagman, J.B. & Turvey, M.T. (2005). Acoustic specification of object

audio visual translation (AVT). While there are interesting overlaps between translation and description, for me translation concentrates on the text, missing out the performance element and another crucial factor: the audience.

When going to the theatre or watching a film, you immerse yourself in another world, so a mediated experience appears unmediated (Lombard & Ditton, 1997).

AD adds yet another level of mediation.

Can an AD user experience ‘presence’, that ‘feeling of being there’ (Biocca, 1997), in the same way as a sighted person? How do the perceptual experiences of blind or partially sighted people affect how they engage with AD? My quest for answers led me not to a translation department but to the Psychology Department at Goldsmiths, University of London to research for a PhD. On one level, AD seems easy enough.

American guidelines provide an acronym: W.Y.S.I.W.Y.S. – ‘what you see is what you say’ (see www.acb.org/adp/ad.html). Yet if everything in the visual array were described, AD users would be overwhelmed by detail. In their comparison of AD guidelines in different countries, Rai et al. (2010) suggest that the greatest challenge is how to choose ‘what not to describe’. So how do sighted people avoid being bombarded by visual information; how do we select from what we see?

My first degree was in anthropology, so my supervisors, Dr Jonathan Freeman and Professor Linda Pring, had to

properties. In J.D. Anderson & B. Fisher Anderson (Eds.) Moving image theory (pp.79–104). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

Chu, S., Narayanan, S., & Kuo, C.-C.J. (2009). Environmental sound recognition with time-frequency audio features. IFEE Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing, 17(6), 1142–1158.

Davis, M.H. & Johnsrude, I.S. (2007).

introduce me to key concepts in psychology. I found the ideas of J.J. Gibson particularly illuminating. In the 1970s Gibson took issue with the prevailing model of vision as a series of objects projected on the retina, like pictures projected onto a screen. Instead, he developed what he called ‘the ecological approach to visual perception’.

We are not, he argues, passive recipients of a static, snapshot view of the world.

We look around and move around while we are looking. We compare what we see with what we have seen before, i.e. with what we know. And this varies: the AD audience is diverse. Some, especially those who have recently lost their sight, remain very visual. As they listen to introductions to theatre performances describing characters, costumes and set designs, or to descriptions of objects or paintings in galleries and museums, they build up a picture in their mind’s eye. For people who have been blind from birth, however, it is not possible to create a mental representation that matches what a sighted person sees. Even people who have lost their sight later in life may gradually lose their interest in the visual world. As part of my research, I have been conducting interviews with blind and partially sighted people regarding their experiences of AD. One participant, a 70year-old man who went blind at the age of 60, put it like this: I don’t consciously build pictures in my mind… I’m imagining action... And what I think I imagine is, is what I do in the rest of my life. That is to say I know you’re sitting there on the other end of the settee – because I’m intimately acquainted with the settee, I know you’re a woman and you’re sitting at that end of it and there’s just over a metre between us. I know what women are like, therefore I can imagine you. I don’t actually have a picture of you… One or two very old friends I can maybe sort of have a sense of he’s got craggy features or he’s tall and skinny or whatever, but that’s gone really, because I don’t

Hearing speech sounds: Top-down influences on the interface between audition and speech perception.

Hearing Research, 229, 132–147.

Diaz-Cintas, J, Orero, P. & Remael, A. (2007). Media for all: Approaches to translation studies. Rodopi.

Fryer, L. (2010). Audio description as audio drama. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology, 18(3), 205–213.

Fryer, L., Freeman, J. & Pring, L. (2013).

What verbal orientation information do blind and partially sighted people need to find their way around? British Journal of Visual Impairment, 31(2), 123–138.

Fryer, L., Pring, L. & Freeman, J. (2013a).

Audio drama and the imagination: The influence of sound effects on presence in people with and without sight. Journal of Media Psychology, 25(2), 65–71.

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experience people in that visual way... my reality is a reality without visual images and maybe one of the mistakes that [audio describers] make… is maybe they think we read the notes and listen to the things furiously creating visual pictures that a sighted person would see.

say’ (1986, p.261). He gives the illustration of a cat on a mat. What we see is a cat obscuring part of the mat; the mat extending on each side of the cat, the mat supporting the cat, the floor supporting the mat and the cat as it extends horizontally in each direction, the rigidity of the floor that affords support. We also see where we are in relation to the cat.

We see parts of ourselves, the shadow of our nose, and perhaps a strand of hair, our toes and hands and parts of our forearms. We see whether the cat is sleeping or awake, friendly or twitching its tail. We see what colour the cat is, and

Gibson provides a helpful distinction between qualities of objects and their affordances, i.e. what an object allows us to do with it. A twig, for example, affords us the opportunity to pick it up, to use as a tool or as fuel for a fire. A tree branch may afford grasping but not carrying. The tree itself cannot be carried, nor, if the trunk is wide, can it be grasped. However, it may afford climbing. If it is a fruit tree, the fruit may afford eating. As for qualities, Gibson’s list is extensive, including colour, texture, composition, size, shape, mass, elasticity, rigidity and mobility. The list goes beyond what we might consider to be purely visual, and all can be ascertained at a glance.

Yet much of that visual information fails to register at a conscious level. If I asked you to describe the chair you are sitting on, you would probably instantly look at it. You saw the chair before you sat on it, yet you almost certainly did not register its colour, The ball is not best represented by the qualities ‘round’, ‘orange’ and ‘rubber’ but by the fact it can its precise form or the materials of be thrown, rolled or bounced its construction. The fact of it being a chair was sufficient for you to enjoy what it affords: the opportunity to sit down. Gibson suggests perhaps an indication of its age and ‘we can discriminate the dimensions of whether it has been in a fight and is difference if required to do so… but the missing part of its left ear... I could go on. special combination of qualities by which AD during a play or film is limited by an object can be analysed is ordinarily not time constraints. It must be fitted in noticed’ (1986, p.134). between bursts of dialogue. If there is It is the role of the audio describer to only time for a brief description, it may notice what is ordinarily not noticed. But be better to ask not ‘what do we see?’ but how much detail should they provide? ‘what does the visual information afford?’

Gibson claims ‘however skilled an If the cat is twitching its tail, it is less explicator one may become one will likely to afford us the opportunity of always, I believe, see more than one can stroking it. So too if its coat is scabby or

Fryer, L., Pring, L. & Freeman, J. (2013b). Touching words is not enough: How vision mediates hapticauditory associations in the ‘ BoubaKiki’ effect. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Gerber, E. (2007). Seeing isn’t believing: Blindness, race and cultural literacy.

Senses & Society, 2(1), 27–40.

Gibson, J.J. (1986). The ecological approach to visual perception.

Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Grassi, M. (2005). Do we hear size or sound? Perception and Psychophysics 67(2), 274–284.

Lombard, M. & Ditton, T. (1997). At the heart of it all: The concept of presence. Journal of ComputerMediated Communication, 3(2). doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.1997.tb00072.x Murphy, S., van Velsen, J. & de Fockert, J.W. (2012). The role of perceptual

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crawling with fleas. A cat may afford information about its owner – in the film To Russia with Love the Persian cat stroked by the Bond villain Blofeld indicates his interest in prestige and appearance. That the cat is long-haired, white and wears a jewel-encrusted collar tells us much about Blofeld’s circumstances, both financial and environmental. By contrast, in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, the hairless sphynx cat adopted by the spoof villain, Dr Evil, affords comparison with Blofeld in terms of power and overweaning ambition, and humour in terms of abundant hair versus no hair.

Although neither cat affects the plot, the visual information arguably enhances our understanding of a key character and enriches our enjoyment of the film.

Gibson’s distinction between quality and affordance provides a useful rule of thumb: qualities are nice to know, affordances are what AD users need to know. Zahorik and Jenison (1998) use the example of a basketball, arguing that it is not best represented by the qualities ‘round’, ‘orange’ and ‘rubber’ but by the fact it can be thrown, rolled or bounced. In AD, the colour of a ball may be less important than the type of ball, e.g. golf ball, cricket ball, tennis ball. From this information we can infer details of size, weight and how bouncy it is so we can anticipate how it might be used.

Affordances draw our attention, even if we are not consciously aware of them.

When shown a target with a graspable handle on either the left- or right-hand side, observers respond more quickly and more accurately if the response hand is on the same side as the handle, than if it is on the opposite side (Tucker & Ellis cited in Murphy et al., 2012). This holds true even if participants observe a photograph, rather than an object that could be physically grasped. It suggests that in a play or a film, a sharp knife lying casually on a work surface, for example, calls out to us to expect cookery at one

load in action affordance by ignored objects. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 19(6), 1122–1127.

Rai, S., Greening, J. & Petre, L. (2010). A comparative study of audio description guidelines prevalent in different countries. London: Media and Culture Department/Royal National Institute of Blind People.

Rosenblum, L.D., Paige Wuestefeld, A. & Anderson, K.L. (1996). Auditory

reachability: An affordance approach to the perception of sound source distance. Ecological Psychology, 8(1), 1–24.

Woods, A. & Newell, T. (2004). Visual, haptic and cross-modal recognition of objects and scenes. Journal of Physiology-Paris. 98(1–3), 147–159.

Zahorik, P. & Jenison, R.L. (1998).

Presence as being-in-the-world.

Presence, 7(1), 78–89.

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new voices

end of the spectrum and violence at the other. Other visually apprehended details may also be relevant: the length of the blade, the keenness of the edge, if the knife is gleaming or bloody. If time is short, however, simply describing the presence of the knife and by implication what it affords (stabbing) may be sufficient. The converse applies too. In mentioning something, that describer sets up an expectation of its importance.

Describing every object on a cluttered mantelpiece may convey the impression that each features in the action: the candle in the candlestick will be lit; flowers will be placed in the vase; a photograph will be examined; the clock will be wound or time is crucial to the plot. An AD user may be waiting for the moment these props are brought into the limelight and waste cognitive effort in doing so.

Gibson’s approach is not without its limitations. In particular, he ascribes perception of affordances primarily to vision, taking little account of non-visual modalities. Woods and Newell (2004) point out that while vision can successfully identify a glass of water affording the opportunity to drink, it may need touch to confirm whether the water

is too cold to drink comfortably. Similarly we can tell much about an object through sound: for example its length (Carello et al., 1998, 2005), its size (Grassi, 2005) and whether or not it is within reach (Rosenblum et al., 1996). We can identify natural sounds such as footsteps, applause, or a can being opened. We recognise voices, the spoken word and emotion in the voice of the speaker (Davis & Johnsrude, 2007). From this we can deduce much about the speaker including whether or not he or she is safe to approach. The affordances of sound have been utilised to improve robotic navigation (Chu et al., 2009). Perceiving affordances through non-visual modalities is important for the describer too, if they are to avoid supplying redundant information (Fryer, 2010).

Gibson’s most helpful insight is that the observer is not passive. That brings us back to the focus of my research. How does impairment impact on perception and experience? And how does that affect the user’s engagement with AD? So far my studies suggest that the spoken word is as evocative for blind people as non-verbal auditory stimuli (Fryer, Pring et al., 2013a); that navigation involves explicit

rather than implicit processing (Fryer, Freeman et al., 2013); and that word–shape associations that are robust in the sighted are significantly less strong for those who are blind (Fryer, Pring et al., 2013b).

Most importantly, my research has brought me into contact with many blind and partially sighted people who have reminded me of the pure aesthetic enjoyment that visual qualities can provide, regardless of whether the listener can ‘picture’ them. As one congenitally blind participant expressed it: ‘Because I’ve never experienced light in all its wonderful forms… I’m entirely fascinated… and I love to hear talk of what light looks like and colours of fireworks and I love it all… it doesn’t bother me because I can’t see it, I just love hearing about it.’

Louise Fryer is an audio describer and also a PhD student at Goldsmiths College, University of London l.fryer@gold.ac.uk

Postgraduate courses in Organizational Psychology The Department of Organizational Psychology at Birkbeck provides postgraduate education of the highest quality.

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vol 26 no 6

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Calling out for new voices When someone is making waves in psychology in years to come, we want to be able to say they published their first piece in The Psychologist. Our ’new voices’ section will give space to new talent and original perspectives.

We are looking for sole-authored pieces by those who have not had a full article published in The Psychologist before. The only other criteria will be that the articles should engage and inform our large and diverse audience, be written exclusively for The Psychologist, and be no more than 1800 words. The emphasis is on unearthing new writing talent, within and about psychology.

The successful authors will reach an audience of 48,000 psychologists in print, and many more online.

So get writing! Discuss ideas or submit your work to jon.sutton@bps.org.uk. And if you are one of our more senior readers, perhaps you know of someone who would be ideal for ‘new voices’: do let us know.

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LOOKING BACK

Freud and the British royal family David Cohen delves into some intriguing and bizarre connections

n 1902 an ecstatic Sigmund Freud throne of Greece. George wasn’t interested went to meet Queen Victoria’s in women as he had an unusual erotic grandson, the Kaiser. Three years after fixation; he was in love with his uncle he had published The Interpretation of Waldemar. His wife could not compete.

Dreams, Freud had finally achieved the Princess Marie took a succession of rank of Professor Extraordinarius. Only lovers, including one French Prime a fool would claim to know what Freud Minister. (Prince George does not seem was thinking over a century ago, but to have minded). Quantity did not make I shall have a guess at what he wasn’t for quality, though: Princess Marie never thinking. As he thanked the Kaiser, Freud managed to have a full orgasm. We know probably did not imagine he would be so much about her sex life because at involved with two members of the British royal family 30 years later – Prince Philip’s mother, Princess Alice and his aunt, Princess Marie Bonaparte.

Princess Marie was Napoleon’s great grandniece. Her mother died a month after she gave birth; her father left her in the care of her outrageously snobbish grandmother who did not think a Napoleon child should mix with ordinary children.

Marie was isolated, unhappy but formidably clever. When Marie was seven, she started filling notebooks with pictures and stories (Bertin, 1982; Bougeron & Bourguignon, 2000; Grosskurth, 1982).

A princess whose family owned the casino at Monte Carlo was highly eligible, so Marie’s father married her off to Prince George of the Hellenes. Marie had already had lovers; George had problems. On their wedding night, he apologised Freud believed Princess Alice’s religious for what their loins had to do, delusions were the product of sexual frustration which was to provide heirs for the

references

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Bertin, C. (1982) Marie Bonaparte. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Bonaparte, M. (1994). Topsy. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

(Originally published in 1938 in Belgium) Bougeron, J.P. & Bourguignon, A. (2000).

Marie Bonaparte et la psychoanalyse.

Paris: Honoré Champion.

Cohen, D. (2011). Freud on coke. London: Cutting Edge Press.

Cohen, D. (2012a). Bringing them up royal.

London: Robson Press.

Cohen, D. (2012b). The escape of Sigmund Freud. New York: Overlook Press.

Eade, W. (2011). Young Prince Philip.

London: HarperCollins.

Fichtl, P. (1981). La famille Freud au jour le jour. Paris: PUF. Grosskurth, P. (1982). The shrink princess.

New York Review of Books, December.

Markel, H. (2011) An anatomy of addiction.

heart Marie was an academic. When she realised she had sexual difficulties, she decided to study the female orgasm and, in 1924, using the pseudonym A.E Narjani, she published an extraordinary paper on the anatomical causes of frigidity, partly based on interviews with her acquaintances. One of her friends, a French psychiatrist, Rene Laforgue, told her that she was frigid because her mind was too masculine. He recommended she see Freud.

Princess Marie caught a plane to Vienna and arrived at Freud’s home at 19 Berggasse. She told Freud she had been let down by many men. The 70year-old analyst warned her that he was ancient and that not everything worked – and he wasn’t referring to his brain, which was still needle-sharp. Princess Marie held his hand as she explained her problems. Freud offered her something he never offered another patient – two-hour long analytic sessions. It was the start of a platonic love affair.

Freud told Princess Marie that her sexual problems were due to the fact she had witnessed the primal scene: she worked out she must have seen her nanny making love. Bonaparte hared off in her Rolls Royce, found the nanny and confirmed Freud had been right. That strengthened their relationship. Knowing she had seen the primal scene did not cure Bonaparte of frigidity, however. In an interesting variation on the Oedipus complex, she wondered if, as the rude rhyme puts it, incest is best. She asked Freud whether she should break the incest taboo and sleep with her son to achieve the elusive orgasm. Freud, fundamentally conservative, advised against. The Princess took his advice (Bertin, 1982).

Freud was very open in his discussions with Princess Marie. It was to her that he wrote that, after years as an analyst, he still had no idea what women wanted.

In the early 1930s Freud was involved with another member of the British royal family – Princess Alice, Prince Philip’s

New York: Pantheon.

Narjani, A.E. (1924). Considérations sur les causes anatomiques de la frigidité chez la femme. In M. Bonaparte (1985) Female sexuality. New York: Grove Press.

Much of the research on which this article is based comes from David Cohen’s book Bringing Them Up Royal, published in hardback by Robson Press and as a Kindle

by Peach Publishing.

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looking back

mother. She had married when she was Either psychoanalysis had helped her, only 20 years old and had four daughters or she had never been that disturbed. It before Philip was born on Corfu in 1920. seems very likely that Prince Philip was When he was just three, his father, Prince affected by his mother’s experiences. He Andrew of Greece and Denmark, was survived being abandoned by both his court martialled. The Greek army blamed parents and came to the conclusion that, him for losing a battle against the Turks. if he had survived without therapy, no King George V had to intervene to stop one needed it. He told Fiona Bruce in an Prince Andrew being executed. interview for the BBC that one just had Soon afterwards, Princess Alice began to get on with it, as he had done. to behave in a very disturbed manner. She Just after Princess Alice left the claimed to be in contact with Christ and asylum, Freud’s friendship with Princess the Buddha. Her mother was distraught Marie became even closer. Princess Marie but practical. She consulted a psychiatrist and Freud were both devoted dog lovers. who specialised in shell shock, Thomas At the end of 1936 she sent Freud the Ross, as well as Sir Maurice Craig who book she had just finished writing. He treated the future George VI, before he told her it was ‘moving and genuine’ and had speech therapy. Both diagnosed revealed the ‘analyst’s thirst for truth and schizophrenia and knowledge’. The recommended subject of the book psychoanalysis. was her sick chow.

“Freud told Princess Marie By the end of the Topsy is a touching her sexual problems were due 1920s Freud was and, at times, frankly to the fact she had witnessed world famous loopy memoir that the primal scene” (Cohen, 2012b; Eade, tells how the Princess’s 2011). Against her dog suffered from will, Princess Alice cancer. Some chapter was sent to the Tegel Clinic in Berlin headings sound like parodies – ‘Topsy and which was run by Ernst Simmel, a close Shakespeare’, ‘On the Frontiers of Your colleague of Freud’s. Simmel made little Species’, and ‘Implorations to the God of progress with a fundamentally hostile the Rays’. As his owner was fabulously patient. Princess Alice was then sent to rich, Topsy became the first dog to be the asylum at Kreuzlingen which was run treated with radiotherapy. Freud

by Ludwig Binswanger, another follower translated her book into German and of Freud’s. Binswanger also described her arranged for it to be published by his condition as paranoid schizophrenia. own publisher (Bonaparte, 1994).

Both Simmel and Binswanger Another test of their friendship consulted Freud. He believed Princess occurred when some letters that would Alice’s religious delusions were the harm Freud’s reputation were being product of sexual frustration and offered for sale. Freud had used cocaine recommended X-raying her ovaries in for some 20 years from 1884 to around order to kill off her libido. Princess Alice 1904. He had been encouraged to do so protested she was sane and repeatedly by an eccentric ear, nose and throat tried to get out of the asylum. She did surgeon, Wilhelm Fliess. Fliess believed not see Prince Philip for some years and the nose controlled all aspects of wandered round Europe incognito. behaviour. (Fichtl, 1981.)

Despite his royal connections, Freud When Fliess died in 1928, his widow was facing financial difficulties in the wrote to Freud. She wanted him to return 1930s Depression that followed the Wall the letters her husband had written to Street crash. His maid, Paula Fichtl, him and she also wanted him to buy back reported that he did not buy new suits his own letters for a substantial sum. as regularly as he did before. Few writers Freud did not have the money, so Marie on Freud have made use of her memoirs Bonaparte bought the letters. Freud which reveal, among much else, that he wanted them destroyed, but the Princess was a natty dresser. Freud’s money refused. They were of great historical problems were due to the poor sales of importance, she said. Freud was very the publishing house he had founded to annoyed but they made a bargain. She publish psychoanalytic books and promised not to read the letters and kept journals. Marie Bonaparte sent him $2000 her word. They were not published until to help (Fichtl, 1981).

1984, 22 years after she died.

In the mid-1930s Princess Alice In March 1938 Hitler invaded Austria. finally left the asylum and returned to Jews like Freud were at huge risk.

Athens where she lived in a modest twoBonaparte was a key figure in getting him bedroom apartment. She finally founded to safety. She arrived in Vienna and an order of nursing nuns and did much parked herself outside Freud’s apartment during the war to help a number of Jews. so the Gestapo would have to get round

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her to raid his apartment. She wore a blue mink stole wrapped around her shoulders – and was enveloped in ‘clouds of Stephanotis’, a fashionable perfume of the time. White leather gloves and a brown crocodile handbag completed her outfit. (Cohen, 2011; Markel, 2011.)

Escaping from the Nazis cost money – and Freud did not have anything like enough. Bonaparte helped and also arranged for some of Freud’s savings to be smuggled out in the diplomatic pouch belonging to the Greek embassy. Without that nest egg he would not have been able to buy the house in Maresfield Gardens in Hampstead which became his London home. Princess Marie also persuaded a Nazi called Anton Sauerwald to sign the documents Freud and his family needed to leave Nazi-controlled Vienna in June 1938. Sauerwald was flattered because Princess Marie befriended him. The two of them also worked together to remove part of Freud’s library from his home and place the books deep in the bowels of the National Library. There, they survived the war (Cohen, 2012a).

Finally, in June 1938, Freud boarded the train to Paris – and safety. Marie Bonaparte met him, took him to her home and pampered him before putting him on the train to London. She also arranged for his remaining books, his collection of antiquities and the famous analytic couch to be transported to London. They are all in the Freud Museum now.

Princess Marie visited him twice during the last 18 months of life. Their last meeting in August 1939 was a sad taking of leave as Freud knew he was dying. Given this history, it is no accident that when the Freud Museum was opened in London, Princess Alexandra performed the ceremony.

Princess Marie is remembered as a pioneering analyst. Princess Alice has been honoured as one of the righteous Gentiles because, when she went back to Athens, she helped save Jews from the Nazis. The two women met for the last time at the Coronation of Elizabeth II. Princess Alice appeared in a very elegant nun’s outfit; Princess Marie spent much of the ceremony flirting with the future President of France, Francois Mitterand.

I can’t helping imagining that Freud would have smiled as he peered down on them from the analytic heavens.

(This article is dedicated to the memory of Reuben Cohen (1975–2013), who helped me research Freud.)

I David Cohen is a psychologist, writer and documentary film maker. dcpsychologynews@gmail.com

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ONE ON ONE

criminal mind and the police mind and what insights can this provide which support the develop of more comprehensive theories of psychological wellness and ‘illness’?

…with Stephen Murgatroyd Professor of Management and Applied Psychology at Athabasca University in Canada, and Executive Director, Centre for Innovative Management

Stephen Murgatroyd stephen.murgatroyd@shaw.ca

One book all psychologists should read Paul Johnson’s book The Intellectuals (1998) in which he looks at the difference between what the great thinkers – Marx, Rousseau, Ibsen, Russell and many more – said and what they actually did. Insightful, inspiring, an exemplar of good historical research and profound.

One cultural recommendation Crime thrillers. When I read Joe Nesbo or Henning Mankell I am reading a psychologist at work – they happen to be crime novelists (and very good ones too).

What is their understanding of the psychology of the

resource

to secure compensation for black lung (pneumoconiosis).

He encouraged the research

team to be rigorous and to think in terms of systems.

His book Effectiveness and Efficiency – Random Reflections on Health Services (1971) is still regarded as a classic argument in favour of randomised control trials. The Cochrane Collaboration is named after him.

Murgatroyd, S. (2012). Rethinking the future: Six patterns shaping a new renaissance. Edmonton: FutureTHINK Press. Also available at lulu.com and on Kindle.

coming soon

One moment that changed your career When the Open University offered a ‘deal’ to anyone over 35. I took it and moved to Canada, leaving Britain as a Senior Counsellor and counselling psychologist and landing as the Dean of The Faculty of Administrative Studies and Professor of Management and Applied Psychology. Quite the flight!

One inspiration Professor Archie Cochrane, with whom I worked straight out of my undergraduate degree – a world leading epidemiologist and a hero of the Welsh miners for helping

A special feature on working as an expert witness; HIV and psychology; psychology in the operating theatre; and much more...

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

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contribute

One achievement of my own Counselling and Helping – a book written while teaching on a First Nations reserve in Saskatchewan during a sabbatical year in Canada – was my attempt to make psychology accessible and clear for a great many who counsel as part of their work.

It came about as a result of my work with others in founding the Counselling Psychology Section, which later became a Division of the Society. I was its first secretary. My BPS Fellowship recognised the work I undertook to help ‘birth’ this section.

One nugget of advice for aspiring psychologists ‘Power corrupts and PowerPoint corrupts completely’. Some of the most powerful presentations I have ever been present at are conversations and talks from the heart.

One challenge you think psychology faces Getting past our preoccupation with data to focus on understanding and theory.

In my 1970s–1990s work on the theory of psychological reversals the focus was always on deepening our understanding of structural phenomenology and motivational systems – data helped test ideas, but it was the ideas that mattered. We must move back to a more holistic understanding of the person.

One thing that makes you laugh Thing you overhear in public places. Alan Bennett tells this great story of something he overheard on a bus in Leeds.

An elderly woman, talking to a friend, said ‘and the doctor said that they would never be any use to me again as feet..’.

He had to get off the bus at this point. He said he had spent a chunk of his life trying to work out the whole conversation!

More answers online at www.thepsychologist.org.uk

Think you can do better? Want to see your area of psychology represented more?

See the inside front cover for how you can contribute and reach 50,000 colleagues into the bargain, or just e-mail your suggestions to jon.sutton@bps.org.uk

vol 26 no 6

june 2013

At a time when the NHS and independent healthcare providers are taking special care of their spending, the amount of training commissioned through APT has risen by almost 40% year on year.*

The Association for Psychological Therapies

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BIG PICTURE

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Personal space Photo by Peter Forster (University of Worcester), who wins our first ever photography competition. ‘Big picture’ ideas? jon.sutton@bps.org.uk.

‘I took this picture in May 2010, close to where I lived in Tiwi, in the Northern Territory of Australia. The students were waiting for the bus to their school and the student on the right of the picture was at the front of the queue where the bus would stop. The same students waited here every school day, and I never saw them speaking to each other.

‘We use proxemics or personal space as part of managing the balance between being closed or open to others. Our personal space is influenced by many things including culture, gender, social status, whether or not we have an intact amygdala… this

picture illustrates interactions between some of these factors.

‘Any psychologist who wants to work with Aboriginal Australians, for example, would do well to recognise the different uses of personal space as exemplified here, as well as related factors such as eye contact and not adopting an authoritarian stance.

‘All were aware of my presence… note their different use of eye contact towards an old, white male photographer.

‘I can’t say that I am a skilful user of proxemics but, as a welltravelled psychologist, I am at least aware of its power in becoming accepted in a new country and culture.’

BPS T Textbooks extbooks in P Psychology sy ychology c No other series bears the BPS seal of appr approval oval 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, fea e turing additional resource materialss fo or both instructors and students.

Special disc ounts discounts available available for BPS for members*

* FFor or fur further ther her inf information for o mation go tto o www. www.

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vol 26 no 6

june 2013