The Psychologist July/August 2022 by The Psychologist

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psychologist july/august 2022

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psychologist july/august 2022

contact The British Psychological Society 48 Princess Road East Leicester LE1 7DR 0116 254 9568 info@bps.org.uk; www.bps.org.uk the psychologist and research digest www.thepsychologist.org.uk www.bps.org.uk/digest www.jobsinpsychology.co.uk psychologist@bps.org.uk advertising Display: Engage with 50,000+ psychologists across BPS communication channels 020 7880 6213 bps-sales@redactive.co.uk Recruitment: Promote your campaign to the largest audience of qualiﬁed psychologists 020 7880 6224 jobsinpsychology@redactive.co.uk june 2022 issue 48,374 dispatched cover Eliza Southwood www.elizasouthwood.com ‘The art of being outside’ exhibition at New Ashgate Gallery to 23 July Printed by PCPLtd

issn 0952-8229 (print) 2398-1598 (online) © Copyright for all published material is held by the British Psychological Society unless speciﬁcally stated otherwise. As the Society is a party to the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) agreement, articles in The Psychologist may be copied by libraries and other organisations under the terms of their own CLA licences (www.cla.co.uk). Permission must be obtained for any other use beyond fair dealing authorised by copyright legislation. For further information about copyright and obtaining permissions, e-mail permissions@ bps.org.uk.

www.thepsychologist.org.uk

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

The Psychologist needs you! We rely on your submissions throughout the publication, and in return we help you to get your message across to a large and diverse audience. For details of all the available options, plus our policies and what to do if you feel these have not been followed, see www.thepsychologist.org.uk/contribute The main message, though, is simply to engage with us. Contact the editor Dr Jon Sutton on jon.sutton@bps.org.uk, or tweet us on @psychmag.

Managing Editor Jon Sutton Deputy Editor Shaoni Bhattacharya, Anthony Kendrick (job share) Production Mike Thompson Journalist Ella Rhodes Research Digest Matthew Warren (Editor), Emily Reynolds, Emma Young

Associate Editors Articles Paul Curran, Michelle Hunter, Rebecca Knibb, Adrian Needs, Peter Olusoga, Blanca Poveda, Paul Redford, Sophie Scott, Mark Wetherell History of Psychology Candice Whitaker Culture Kate Johnstone, Chrissie Fitch Books Emily Hutchinson Voices in Psychology Madeleine Pownall Psychologist and Digest Editorial Advisory Committee Richard Stephens (Chair), Dawn Branley-Bell, Kimberley Hill, Sue Holttum, Deborah Husbands, Miles Thomas, Layne Whittaker

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Eliza Southwood - www.elizasouthwood.com

july/august 2022

Letters Neurodiversity in HE; your new President; and more

Obituaries

News #MakeIt10 and more

Political psychology Kesi Mahendran ‘If we are serious about the pursuit of equality and fairness for all, it is essential that we recognise and protect class’ Ella Rhodes

How social class is reﬂected in our psychology Matthew Warren digests the research ‘I viewed it as an unreachable, elite career’ Emily Reynolds hears from working class people who have struggled to make their way in Psychology

The myth of meritocracy Celine Brookes-Smith, Elizabeth Henshaw, Will Curvis and the late Ben Campbell on ‘pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps’

Which rung are you on? Emma Young digests the research on subjective feelings of class

Getting what you deserve? Simon Goodman, Philippa Carr and Jackie Abell on income inequality

‘We need reform, and class has got to be protected’ Bridgette Rickett meets Suriyah Bi

‘Improving the safety, quality and stability of people’s environments should encourage healthy behaviour’ Richard Brown talks with his supervisor Gillian Pepper

‘People like us…’ Matthew J. Easterbrook on the psychology of class-based identities, interventions and injunctions in education ‘What we eat, how we eat, how much, it’s all part of our class identities’ Maxine Woolhouse ‘It’s about creating environments where people feel that whatever position they are in society, somebody cares and wants to invest in helping them’ Paula Reavey speaks to Shaoni Bhattacharya

‘I no longer try to shape myself to fit’ Theresa Marrinan meets Margo Ononaiye ‘They talked about having two versions of themselves’ Lateesha Osbourne speaks to Ella Rhodes on Black students’ experiences of HE The underclass psychologist Punit Shah with personal reflections Middle-class reflections Martin Weegmann

This year’s British Psychological Society Senate-voted theme is tackling class-based inequality, seeking to add social class to the characteristics protected under the Equality Act. In this bumper edition, we collect contributions from members of the ‘Psychology of Social Class – UK Policy Implications’ group, and others. As ever, we’ve sought to mix the personal, professional and psychological. Dozens of psychologists have contributed to this issue, and we thank them. Later this summer, we’re due to launch our re-developed website and app. Do connect with us on Twitter and over email to let us know what you think! Dr Jon Sutton Managing Editor @psychmag

Jobs in psychology Featured job, latest vacancies

Books What to read on class

Class show and tells Ian Danton with his winning entry in our poetry competition

Culture ASMR exhibition, and more…

One on one We asked, ‘How can Psychology tackle class-based inequalities?’

Tim Sanders

Celebrating neurodiversity in Higher Education

Understanding the prevalence of neurodivergence in higher education is far from straightforward, but it’s estimated that 1 in 7 people in the UK is neurodivergent. With student numbers at their highest level ever, the number of neurodivergent students is, therefore, likely to be significant. Nonetheless, traditional perspectives on neurodivergence, as a deficit and barrier to education, continue to cast a long shadow on learning and working in higher education. Drawing on our experience as academics and students, we offer practical suggestions for an inclusive, neurodiverse approach to learning and teaching that would positively transform higher education for students and lecturers alike. Although in recent years increasing numbers of people have applied for, and successfully attained places at university, it nonetheless remains the case that pupils from the most advantaged areas are more than twice as likely to progress to higher education as those from the most disadvantaged areas. In addition, universities are spaces in which some individuals find it easier to demonstrate their full academic potential than others. This contributes to a narrow understanding of the relationship between neurodiversity, intelligence and achievement, which in turn reinforces the stigma towards neurodivergence which discourages disclosure amongst both students and staff. Approaching neurodivergence as a weakness rather than a strength also contributes to neurodivergent people being considered incapable and given academically inappropriate education and opportunities. Moreover, this intersects with epistemic injustice (ableism, racism, classism), which also negatively impacts academic

access awards, retention, progression and completion. At the same time, and while a legal requirement, reasonable adjustments can be perceived as giving ‘unfair advantages’ rather than mitigating proven, pre-existing disadvantages. We argue that it’s time to reconfigure responses to neurodiversity through the lens of inclusivity. Humankind is enriched culturally, and cognitively and is physically dependent on neurodiversity. The inclusion of more diverse individuals in the education system is fundamental to our growth. The social model of disability acknowledges that it is, at least in part, environmentally determined and that failure to mitigate disability is a cause of disability. Applying this to higher education, rather than offering prescriptive adaptations for specific profiles which are bound to demonstratable diagnoses, innovative and holistic approaches to accessibility are needed. The pandemic has highlighted how the application of technology can be used to support inclusivity. Indeed, innovative and nuanced approaches to accessibility have positively correlated with academic and workplace success and reduced isolation. Experts by experience can supply significant education and guidance both clinically and practically, and can support both neurodivergent and neurotypical people to craft academic environments that better cater to diversity more equitably. Entering higher education can be stressful for neurotypical people, but for neurodiverse people, it can prove particularly challenging if there is little or no understanding of their needs. Moreover, concerns about disclosure and fear of stigma and labelling can result in a significant gap in terms of required support and

the psychologist july/august 2022 letters what is provided. While the Equality Act 2010 requires that accommodations be made as soon as an institution becomes aware of an individual’s disability, or can be reasonably expected to become aware of it, a system based on inclusive practices would allow members of staff and students to work in the environment that does not disadvantage them and provides a more positive baseline experience. In our article on The Psychologist website, we set out 15 practical steps that can be taken to achieve a neurodiverse friendly university. These include changes to the general approach to teaching and assessment, to the physical spaces, to responses to requests for information and support, and for ‘peer buddy’ systems to help students and staff navigate their studies and workplaces. The overarching goal of creating neurodivergent friendly universities is to level the playing field, which needs a greater representation of diversity in higher education from both staff and students. The changing face of higher education in terms of increased participation and the hybrid teaching model opens up significant opportunities for an inclusive culture in which neurodivergence is better understood and celebrated. However, it is critical to understand that a more level playing field requires a cultural shift and concrete interventions, not just reasonable adjustments in terms of software and extensions. A greater representation of neurodiverse academics in the sector would be central to this cultural shift. Historically, the higher education environment for academic staff has presented several challenges, such as during the interview process, disclosure, and the implementation of reasonable adjustments. It is common practice to ask an employee what they need to perform their duties; however, it can be difficult for people to articulate what they need or know what can be put in place; a more balanced dialogue would be beneficial. Specific needs of neurodivergent employees in the workplace include social fatigue, autism burnout, and common co-occurring neurodivergent conditions. Autism, for example, affects social functioning, it is also essential to recognise that there may be specific barriers due to processing difficulties. While neurodiversity has a number of notable strengths, including creativity, a sense of social justice, hyperfocus, and innovation, there is an expectation in academia to perform in a competitive world, which has historically placed a premium on specific aspects such as networking and output in a highpressure environment. It is important to rethink this model, prioritise the whole person, and recognise that what is needed in higher education is a supportive and nurturing culture. Finola Farrant Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Arden University Emma Owen Psychology Lecturer at Arden University Fawn Lavina Hunkins-Beckford and Marta Sobilo Level 4 BSc Psychology students at Arden University Read the full version of this letter at thepsychologist.bps. org.uk/celebrating-neurodiversity-higher-education

Cultures turning into cults Work is a core part of our lives. We spend a great amount of time at work, challenging ourselves and making sure we do a good job. Thus, it is crucial to find your calling, follow your passion, because when you do, work is no longer just a job – it is a fulfilling experience full of meaning and joy, you will never work the rest of your life. So goes the mantra, but this is one of the largest frauds in modern societies. Traditionally, jobs have been a means of production with clear value that provide for the needs of a group. Thanks to the technological advancements and higher accessibility of education, this mentality has shifted into something that is more individualistic centred. Now we talk about careers – work is no longer just a means to put food on the table, it is the path of our professional lives. We can also see this in the current job-hunting market as well: employers are not only looking for experienced workers but also those that align with their values (standards of attitudes, behaviours, and principles) and are good ‘cultural fits’. We have reached a point where work cultures are turning into cults, especially for careers that are more ‘passion driven’ and their work output is less tangible (e.g. whitecollar jobs). There is social pressure to talk about work during leisure time, being busy is a prestigious status, and working overtime is celebrated. Derek Thompson, writing for The Atlantic in 2019, described this cult-like mindset as ‘workism’ – the belief that work is not just necessary for economic growth but is also the raison d’être of the individual, and more work is perceived as both an outcome and a reward. This is also more commonly known as ‘hustle culture’; work is embraced as a lifestyle where people ‘grind’ for a goal, except the grind itself becomes the goal, it never stops. Workism can affect anyone and

not just lower-level employees in small businesses, such as video game developers in large successful studios and Elon Musk himself, admitting having worked 120 hours per week and stating that if you want to ‘change the world’ you must work a minimum of 80 hours. Yet increasing the number of work hours does not increase productivity – according to OECD figures the most productive countries do not have the busiest workers. When employees are expected to have the attitude and responsibilities of a stakeholder but without any of the support and associated benefits, the workforce is bound to be burnt out (a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that is not well managed); indeed, we are already facing increases in burnout. Based on Dr Alok Kanojia’s research on burnout and experience as a business consultant, he states that most employers are reluctant to address the root causes of burnout, prefer to pretend to address them. The responsibility of fixing it is being solely placed on the individual, despite, ironically enough, employers seemingly not fully realising that burnt out workers are less productive. On the other hand, some workplaces do try to improve the wellbeing of their workers, such as by embracing uncondensed four-day working weeks for example. They are the exception. What can psychology do to prevent and stop this insidious problem? As clichéd as it sounds, I believe education is the best longterm solution, but this presents its own challenges. Simply producing and sharing scientific papers does not seem to be enough. Those courageous enough to take up this challenge must realise that they are tackling harmful work cultures which are deeply ingrained in many workplaces and societies. Ruben Ferreira Portugal References in online version

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Climate and religion In their letter titled Will we be bystanders? (The Psychologist, May 2022) XR Psychologists challenge us to take the climate crisis seriously. It is a challenge to which everyone should respond. My own interest is in the psychology of religion. I have been pleased to see the number of religious groups that have been

formed to address this and other environmental issues. In the UK these include: Green Christian, A Rocha, the John Ray Initiative and the Young Christian Climate Network. They may be heeding Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s often quoted words, ‘Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.’

from the president I am honoured to have been elected to be President of the Society. My thanks to those who voted for me, and perhaps I should introduce myself to those who aren’t familiar with what I do. I’m known to most as a writer of books on psychology, but I have been involved with the BPS for many years, from my first appointment back in 1986 to what was then the Membership and Qualifications Board, to the present day. My task then was to encourage what was at the time a rather stiff and elite professional body to face a number of developments in the real world, not least of which was to recognise and support the sharing of psychology with the wider population. I began teaching A-level psychology at the very end of the 1970s, and the popularity of psychology at pre-degree level was growing dramatically every year. I had been working with the Association for the Teaching of Psychology to establish much-needed support for psychology teachers, as there was then no official support and very little training available. We felt that we also needed involvement from the main profession, so with the support of John Radford, Steve Newstead, Colin Newman and many others, I became involved with the BPS, was asked to join the MQB, and spent many committee hours adjusting some entrenched ideas about the inadvisability of allowing the ‘great unwashed’ to know more about psychology! School-level psychology, by the way, is now one of the major subjects in the A-level curriculum, and the BPS and ATP both work to support it. That was all several decades ago, but my BPS involvement subsequently morphed into a number of other new developments, such as promoting CPD for psychologists (it seems weird now to think that at the time it was a new and radical idea!). I participated in a number of new developments, such as setting up what ultimately became the DARTP, and also stimulating concerns about psychometric test quality which ultimately resulted in the Psychological Testing Centre and the BPS Register of Qualifications in Test Use. I returned to BPS involvement after a career break in the 2000s, and in recent years I have chaired the Society’s Committee on Test Standards, seeing it through a period of massive transition, as the PTC adjusted to new personnel and administrative changes within the Society. 04

Climate change will affect us all, regardless of religion or profession. We must not be bystanders. John Steley London

Those changes have impacted many of us, and they have been tricky for some. In part, they have been the result of the Society tackling long-standing problems, dating back to the change in the Society’s status and responsibilities with the establishment of the HCPC. But most of all, they stem from the way that we have changed from a relatively small professional body to one that has grown enormously, and continues to grow. When I first joined the BPS, back in the 1970s, we had a membership of about 6,000 or so. Now we have ten times that many members, with over 100 different subsystems and professional groupings. That’s a huge change in management responsibility, and our old systems really couldn’t keep up. I recognise that there are many who would like to keep the Society the way that it was, and I understand that point of view. In some ways, I’d have liked it too. But we’re much too big for that now: we need collective responsibility for our overall policies, and professional administration and management if we are really to serve the needs of our huge and very diverse community. Organisational change is often rocky, but as we in the PTC have found, after a turbulent couple of years, we have emerged stronger and more professionally dynamic. It’s been a difficult time for many of us in the Society, and I’m aware that there are still a number of concerns among some members. I hope that my period as President will allow me to listen to and address those concerns, as we pass through this period of change. To be President of the BPS is both an honour and a responsibility. As I write, the rule changes you voted for this year are waiting to be approved by the Privy Council (there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be, but understandably the Privy Council has been a bit absorbed by the Jubilee celebrations this year which has delayed things a bit). If they go through during my term of office, I shall be your President for a two year period, rather than just the one. So all I can say is – I’ll do my best! Thank you for electing me. Nicky Hayes President The British Psychological Society Voting for President Elect, and for Elected Trustees, is open until 15 July. The two candidates for President Elect are Joanna North and Jimmy Petruzzi. For more information and to vote, see www.bps.org.uk/elections-2022

the psychologist july/august 2022 letters

I’m at the two-year mark of my Psychotherapy journey and translating the traverse into words feels important. I had all of the normal preconceptions of therapy beforehand. I thought it would help me understand myself and my world in a more wholesome way; it would help me build resiliency as I was struggling with post-natal depression; it would be somewhere I could vent all of my truths and they be held as real and valid. And this has been the case. Though what I wasn’t expecting, was to feel so much more wholesome, so much more grounded and real, that my pain and my fear became as present as my pleasure. I have so many moments in my days now, where I gaze at my son as he watches ants crossing a paving stone and I can physically feel the euphoria gush through my cells. Where I hug my partner and sink into his beautiful soul, like a pillow and think ‘magic’. So many present, sensational moments that I used to miss, time after time after time. And simultaneously, I feel the pain and the fear of realisations like, my parents aren’t going to live forever. My chest tightens like a giant hand has scrunched my lungs and stomach in one, sharp grasp. And perhaps, as a Psychotherapist in training myself, my journey has been fast-tracked. I am not only learning what my own cognitive and embodied processes are in therapy, but I am also on the road to understanding them in conceptual way. For example, I know, that my inherent itch to attend to another person’s needs above my own is a creative adjustment I made as a child to ensure attachment to my primary caregiver. I now know why this manifested, but more importantly, I recognise how it feels in my body. And how could I possibly hold my future clients safe, without this multi-faceted knowing? This is a whole integration process.

With increased exploration of self in the therapy journey, comes an integration of pieces of us that we may have lost contact with. Once we start meeting these lost parts of our whole self and we begin to explore them physically (how the body holds them), mentally and emotionally; the nuances start to appear. The pleasure and the magic; and the fear, sorrow and rage. The thing is, you cannot start to release the mute button and choose what becomes more illuminated. You either live your life slightly overcast and functional; or you push that a-jar door open and let the joy-andpain of life ﬂood in, like rapids at a waterpark, interweaving together in dancing waves. I used to hear those cliches of ‘Life is short’ and think ‘Indeed’; yet moments later, I’m lost again in my usual narrative. But through time, it becomes very hard to get lost when you begin to know your whole self. You cannot get lost at home. Psychotherapy is as pleasurable as it is petrifying. And my bias wants to ensure that it’s a requisition for all of us. But I am still curious, still wholesome-in-mind. And I wonder, what do you think? Is it best to ‘keep the sound down’, to snorkel at the surface? Or to free dive to the depths of those unfeigned waves? Jade Howe jadeleighhowe@gmail.com

Balance Life in the old psychologist yet Chartered Psychologist and British Psychological Society Associate Fellow Harry Gray with some recollections and reﬂections on turning 90. thepsychologist.bps.org. uk/life-old-psychologistyet

There was an interesting juxtaposition of articles on pages 78 and 79 of the June 2022 edition of The Psychologist. On page 78, an educational consultant told us about some professional development podcasts she had recorded so that teachers could listen to them ‘on their daily commute, when they are exercising, when they are cooking supper’. Opposite this, on page 79, was an article entitled ‘A novel work-life balance solution’. I didn’t read it, because I already knew the answer: don’t work while you’re commuting, exercising or cooking supper. David Mingay Faversham

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To snorkel at the surface or dive the depths?

The eye, not the spreadsheet It’s a Sunday morning and I’m doing research for an essay towards my Psychology MSc. I’m distracted. A letter in the June issue of The Psychologist mentions a quote from Sir Christopher Wren, which expresses the view that ‘Mathematical demonstrations, being built upon the impregnable foundations of geometry and arithmetic, are the only truths that can sink into the mind of men, void of all uncertainty.’ I suppose my professional engineering background should cause me to herald that sentiment, but my developing psychological mind quivers at the cold, unequivocal and masculine nature of it. Let me introduce myself and explain why I feel this way. I’m a 63-year-old transgender woman, who transitioned in 2018, 55 years after realising I was different to my childhood friends. Then, I would

have been seen as no more than a statistical data point close to the mean, rather than a young boy struggling to understand him-Self. But no-one was looking closely at me, not my parents, nor my wider family or my teachers. Despite some unusual gender manifestations, nobody saw anything to be concerned about. Jiddu Krishnamurti, philosopher, speaker and writer said, ‘once a parent tells a child the name of the bird, the child never sees the bird again.’ In my context, it meant no-one took time to look at what was causing the boy dis-ease. In the intervening 55 years, neither psychiatrists or psychologists looked deep enough to see who I was, what lay behind my troubled life. I suppose the question for psychologists in 2022 ought to be, am I now seen as a statistical outlier in a transgender out-group, or hopefully embraced within the bosom

of an increasingly accepting society, the in-group, seen as an authentic individual? My lived experience is one of being unseen for 55 years and today, I continue to experience the poor psychic-hygiene familiar with transgender people going unseen. When the BPS participate in the London 2022 Pride parade, it should be with meaning and an intention to be seen. To be seen to understand the psychological care needed by the LGBT+ community. William Blake expressed the gift of sight most beautifully in his poem, Auguries of Innocence, he says ‘We are led to Believe a Lie When we see with the eye, not Thro the Eye’. The formulation of analysis and theory is helpful in psychology, but the gifts of sight and curiosity are surely the most precious tools for all psychologists? Penny Catterick West Lothian

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the psychologist july/august 2022 letters

Professor Frank McPherson 1938-2022 Professor Frank McPherson, who has died after a brief illness, was the first Director of NHS Tayside’s Area Clinical Psychology Department whose career spanned research, publications, teaching and management, in addition to his pioneering clinical work in the field. Twice elected President of the European Federation of Professional Psychologists’ Associations (now the European Federations of Psychologists’ Associations), an advisor to the World Health Organisation, an elected Fellow of the British Psychological Society and Chair of both the Society’s Professional Affairs Board and Division of Clinical, he was one of the first clinical psychologists to be trained in Scotland, qualifying in 1962. Born in Aberdeen to Frank (a grocer) and Ethel (a seamstress), McPherson spent much of the War years as an evacuee with his mother in north Wales whilst his father was away on active duty with the RAF. McPherson won a scholarship to Aberdeen Grammar School, but his dreams of becoming a fighter pilot were dashed on medical grounds and he instead studied psychology at Aberdeen University, graduating in 1960. He studied under Rex Knight, the first professor of psychology at the University who along with his wife and fellow eminent psychologist, Margaret Horsey (joint authors of An Introduction to Modern Psychology, first edition 1948), was a huge and positive influence on McPherson’s views of the potential of psychology to improve people’s lives. McPherson worked as a lecturer at Edinburgh University from 1960 until 1971 when he left to set up what became Tayside Area Clinical Psychology Department, the first such area-wide service in the UK. Developed from a single member of staff in 1971, it became the largest clinical psychology department in Scotland, with services in adult mental health, primary care, child and adolescent services, learning disabilities, older adults, clinical health, neuropsychology, addictions, forensics and HIV. The latter two services were respectively the first prisonbased clinical forensic psychology service in Scotland and the country’s first clinical psychology service for HIV/ Aids patients. McPherson’s work at Tayside influenced recommendations of the 1977 Trethowan Sub-Committee Report on the role of psychologists in the health services, whilst he was instrumental in the delivery of psychology and mental health services which dealt with victims of the Piper Alpha and Ibrox stadium disasters, the Dunblane massacre and the anticipated arrival of service casualties from first Gulf War in 1990. During his 28 years at Tayside, McPherson maintained his clinical practice in adult mental health services and forensic work and developed a particular interest and expertise in eating disorders and his vision for a primary care-based and focused psychology services, advocating for- and facilitating service provision to a number of

client groups. In the 1960s whilst at Edinburgh University, McPherson had established the first psychology course for undergraduate medical students that was examined and was a fully integrated part of the medical curriculum. He subsequently went on to set up the first Royal College of Nursing-approved training for nurses in psychological therapies in Tayside in 1975. He maintained a keen interest in training, teaching on both professional issues and clinical topics and was active in facilitating developments within course structures that ensured closer partnership working between NHS and universities. McPherson also taught at the University of Abertay in Dundee and was appointed Professor of Clinical Psychology in 1990. As president of the European Federation of Professional Psychologists’ Associations (1982-1990), McPherson advised the clinical psychology associations of Spain and Portugal on the development of professional psychology as they emerged from years of repression under dictatorship and the EU on the implementation of the directive on the free movement of psychologists across the European Economic Area. Over the course of McPherson’s career, he was the senior grant-holder on seven major research programmes and published over 70 research articles and over 50 other publications (book chapters and articles in peer-reviewed journals) about psychology practice. On retiring from NHS Tayside in 1999, McPherson worked as a clinician in the area of occupational health, developing expertise in dealing with industrial accidents and, as psychology advisor to Scottish Coal, mining accidents. In 2009, when the Crown Office Sexual Crimes Prosecution Unit was set by Scottish Government (the first such unit in Europe), McPherson was invited to be their main psychologist expert witness, dealing with victims of sexual crime. During his eight years involvement with the unit, he prepared legal reports and advised on the prosecution in over 500 cases, giving evidence in court on many of them. McPherson was a keen rugby player in his youth and continued to enjoy hobbies such as hillwalking, reading, politics, aviation and supporting Aberdeen FC, whom he had first watched at Pittodrie at the age of four. He is survived by his second wife, Dr Frances Baty, the NHS director of psychology in Fife; a son, Colin, and daughter, Katrina, from his first marriage to Karin Langenheim; and five granddaughters. From his family

Celebrating psychology’s power to unite communities for a more sustainable world

Get set for the 18th European Congress of Psychology Brighton, 3-6 July 2023 “We’re extremely excited to be hosting this event, and for the opportunity to get together in the UK after such a long period of disruption and disappointment, with big events like this so often cancelled or postponed. The European Congress provides an opportunity for us to learn from each other, and to bring together the research, knowledge and innovation that is unique to each country on our continent. Psychology is a truly global science which has the power to unite communities around solutions to the biggest problems facing us right now. As one, we can build a fairer and more sustainable society, but we can only do it through sharing our expertise. We’ll have lots more news and announcements coming up between now and July 2023, so keep an eye out – we hope to see you by the shore for four exciting days of sun, sea, sand and psychology.” Sarb Bajwa Chief Executive

Hosted by:

These streams include: Interdisciplinary streams Psychological responses to the pandemic Climate change and sustainability Poverty and inequalities Conﬂict diplomacy and peace

We’ll also be running streams on:

Welcome to Brighton

Clinical psychology Occupational psychology Health, Sport and Exercise psychology

In 2023, the 18th European Congress of Psychology will focus on uniting communities for a sustainable world. We’ll look at what we can do to bring people together from a diverse range of backgrounds to create a future that works for everyone. There’s no better place to unite people than one of the UK’s leading cities for inclusivity - Brighton - as we prepare for sun, sea, sand and psychology on the East Sussex coast

Experimental: Cognitive, psychobiology and neuropsychology Teaching Coaching psychology General, conceptional and history of psychology Counselling psychology Forensic psychology Educational and developmental psychology Social, personality and individual differences

The hot topics in 2023 We’ve packed our programme with 18 streams across four days where you’ll hear from keynotes speakers, listen to presentations, soak up symposia and take part in workshops.

Students and early career psychologists Equality, diversity and inclusion Other

Visit ecp2023.eu for more speaker announcements, news and congress updates.

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‘It has become my nightmare…’ A group of psychologists came together at a recent webinar to discuss the British Psychological Society’s #MakeIt10 campaign, to have social class included as the 10th protected characteristic under the Equality Act. The webinar also saw the launch of new guidance on using community psychology approaches to reduce the impact of inequality. Ella Rhodes reports.

lthough the psychological evidence base which considers social class is relatively scant, a British Psychological Society Senate-voted campaign has been working to pull it together across four areas – education, health and healthcare, business and industry, and communities and housing. Head of Psychology at Leeds Beckett University, Dr Bridgette Rickett, is leading #MakeIt10 along with colleagues Dr Matthew Easterbrook (University of Sussex), Professor Paula Reavey (London South Bank University), Dr Jennifer Sheehy-Skefﬁngton (LSE), Dr Carl Walker (University of Brighton) and Dr Maxine Woolhouse (Leeds Beckett University). Their reports were due to be published in June. Rickett said she hoped this work would lead to people having the same legal protections as those with other protected characteristics, and encourage the systematic measurement of social gaps and ceilings. She said the group was also planning a series of seminars to stimulate psychological and interdisciplinary research in this area – Rickett said the UK was well behind other countries in examining psychological aspects of social class, and was hoping to create a coalition of likeminded organisations to support and share the group’s work.

When discussing social class, people often point out the difficulty in defining it, Rickett said. ‘We think it’s clear what social class is: the evidence suggests that we know the difference between people based on class and we judge accordingly. In terms of our understanding of social class, we thought long and hard about this and what we were going to use as a working definition. We see social class as a category which people are socialised into, which affords different amounts of economic, cultural and social capital. People often talk about class in terms of economics and of course that’s crucial and real for people day to day, but there’s also conferred cultural and social capital, which carries with it power or a lack of power in certain contexts.’ Dr Matthew Easterbrook has been examining the impact of social class in education and Rickett shared some of his work ahead of the group’s report being published. Easterbrook has used free school meal eligibility as a proxy measurement for social class, and found that these children lag behind their peers by the equivalent of five months of learning on starting primary school. By the end of primary school this gap rises to nine months, and by the time children start their GCSEs it’s

the psychologist july/august 2022 news

18 months. Children on free school meals are also four times more likely to be suspended from school and ﬁve times more likely to be permanently expelled. Rickett explained that if discrimination on the basis of social class was against the law, then schools would need to measure social class using more standardised and comparable methods; they could look more closely at the intersectional impacts of class, race and gender; and increase awareness of social class among school staff. Rickett also shared some of Dr Maxine Woolhouse’s work on the role of social class and inequality in health, which has a larger evidence base than education. There is strong evidence that class determines health disparities, she said, and inequality reduces healthy and absolute life expectancies for lower and working class people. Research has found that perceived social class affects diagnostics and treatment pathways, leads to different treatment recommendations, more paternalistic maternity care, and even assumptions of individual blame in asthma treatment. What would success look like for the #MakeIt10? As well as the inclusion of social class as a protected characteristic under the Equality Act, Rickett said that during the campaign she hoped to showcase the impact of psychologically-informed evidence to improve policy and make meaningful change for people and their communities. Goals are for the BPS to be established as a best practice organisation in capturing data on class and to use that to improve its own diversity and opportunity, and to build long-term partnerships and coalitions to achieve impact beyond the campaign. Clinical and Community psychologist, and outgoing chair of the BPS Community Psychology Section, Dr Carl Harris, shared some of the insights from community psychology which are relevant for tackling the impact of inequality. Harris pointed out that community psychology is very different across countries and contexts, but shares many of the same principles. These include considering individuals in terms of their own context or how they develop within a given context and interact with it. A particularly important part of community psychology, Harris added, were values such as empowerment, liberation and social justice. Harris pointed to Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological systems theory which situates the individual at the centre of numerous contexts which surround a person, including the microsystem which includes friends and family, the exosystem, including the inﬂuence of the media and laws, and the macrosystem which includes the economy, dominant ideologies and culture. Harris said that when we consider the Bronfenbrenner Ecological Systems Theory the macrosystem could also include inequality and the impact of social class. He showed a graph which

demonstrated the relationship between mental health problems and inequality – countries which have higher income inequality also have higher rates of diagnosed mental illnesses. While it is difficult to make changes to these larger macrosystems, Harris said, community psychology could help psychologists to intervene in people’s lives beyond the individual. Sally Zlotowitz, a Clinical and Community Psychologist and CEO of the charity Art Against Knives, was joined by Aysen Dennis – a housing activist who is part of the Aylesbury Estate Campaign. This estate has been undergoing regeneration for 20 years, resulting in a great deal of uncertainty for the estate’s social housing tenants. Zlotowitz started by asking Dennis, who has lived in the Aylesbury Estate for 22 years, what type of housingbased oppression she had been subject to. She explained that during council meetings to discuss the future of the estate, working class voices were never heard. Speaking of the impact on her mental health, Dennis said: ‘It has become my nightmare… If we think about our community, BAME community, they don’t want to get involved with the local authorities, some of them don’t speak the language… they know that they’ve been always ignored, discriminated, and this is affecting their mental health.’ Dennis spoke of the demolition of Heygate estate, which now includes around 3,000 flats including 82 council flats. She explained in the playground of this development children from the council flats are not allowed to use the playground. ‘This is openly discriminating people because of our class, just being working class people you get humiliated and discriminated.’ Dennis said that, as an activist, one of her aims was to pass on important information to fellow people in the community to help empower them and inform them. She said her community in Aylesbury had been ‘incredibly colourful… Different colours, different music, everything is so colourful… but what are they trying to do? Maybe put some colour on the outside but internally all grey suited people, there is no colour at all.’ Zlotowitz finished by suggesting ways for psychologists to include social and economic justice in their own work. She suggested getting involved in policy campaigns through organisations such as the BPS, joining collective groups such as Psychologists for Social Change, and using psychological skills and knowledge to get involved in broader civil action to tackle inequality. To read the campaign reports, see www.bps.org.uk/ our-campaigns/tackling-social-class-inequalities For BPS guidance on using community psychology to reduce inequality see: tinyurl.com/4w28vu9w

Scottish report highlights poverty’s impact on the health and wellbeing of children and young people A Scottish parliament committee has recently published a report into the health and wellbeing of children and young people, making 99 recommendations across areas including poverty, care-experienced children, physical health and the mental health workforce. In its report the Health Social Care and Sport Committee referenced written evidence from the BPS and oral evidence from Heather Connolly from the BPS’ Scottish Division of Health Psychology. The report calls for the government to ensure that the long-term impact of the pandemic remains a key consideration in the future design and development of mental health services and support for children and young people – something the BPS previously said was vitally important, with future policies taking into account the impact of the pandemic on physical health, mental health, education, and social lives. There is also a focus on the need to expand and develop the psychological professions as a key part of the public sector workforce, with the report highlighting written BPS evidence on the importance of a properly resourced and sustainable mental health workforce

to meet the needs of the Scottish population. The need to mitigate the adverse impact of poverty on the health and wellbeing of children and young people was emphasised, with Heather Connolly quoted saying that, ‘poverty sits in the middle of all the wider determinants that impact our health and wellbeing’. She warned ‘that a failure to tackle poverty would have a knock-on impact on the use of services that support the health and wellbeing of children and young people’. The committee also highlighted the importance of investment in child and adolescent mental health services, the impact of poverty – which they say has ‘worsened considerably’ since the inquiry took evidence earlier this year. Proactive, targeted and preventative health and wellbeing support for care-experienced children was advised. ER To read the full report and recommendations see tinyurl.com/2xzfejrz

Psychologists recognised

Dr Penelope Leach CBE

Chartered members Dr Penelope Leach, Elizabeth King and Suzanne Tarrant have been recognised with a CBE, MBE, and British Empire Medal respectively for their services to education, to children and families and to health and wellbeing during Covid-19. Dr Penelope Leach CBE, recognised for her services to education, said: ‘I greeted this news with a mixture of disbelief and delight. I am especially pleased to have this honour acknowledged by the British Psychological Society – I’ve been a member for 60 years – as it has been awarded for my research work in early infant development and I hope it may emphasise this area of psychology and the need for a greater focus on our youngest children. In the meantime, thanks to the many colleagues who share this passion.’

Elizabeth King MBE, Principal Educational Psychologist in South Lanarkshire Council, recognised for her services to education, said: ‘I feel the award is not so much about me as an individual, but a reﬂection on the impact of applied psychology in the delivery of effective services to children and families. ‘I was given every encouragement and support from the leaders in Education Resources and Children’s Services, to share psychological knowledge and theories to the widest possible audience. It is to the children and families with whom I had the privilege of working, and to my colleagues within South Lanarkshire Council, that I dedicate this award.’ Suzanne Tarrant, Head of the Staff Psychological Wellbeing Service at Hywel Dda University Health Board has been awarded a British Empire

Medal for her services to health and wellbeing during Covid-19. Reﬂecting on her award, she said: ‘The mental health and wellbeing of our staff has always been important, but the challenges over the last two years have brought this into focus in a really poignant and urgent way. We have worked to listen, adapt and respond with compassion and as best we can, always mindful that behind each employees’ brave face at work lies a home story that can be ﬁlled with its own hidden tragedies. I have deep respect and admiration for the courage all our NHS staff have shown throughout the pandemic, it has been an honour to be able to contribute and to keep working with my team to make a difference where we can. I am truly grateful for this award and the recognition it gives to the importance of looking after our NHS staff.’

the psychologist july/august 2022 news

Academy of Medical Sciences elected fellows The Academy of Medical Sciences has elected 60 scientists to its fellowship – the highest number in its 24-year history. This year’s list includes two psychologists – Professor SarahJayne Blakemore (University of Cambridge) and Professor Cathy Creswell (University of Oxford). Professor of Psychology Blakemore researches the

adolescent brain using behavioural and neuroimaging methods and her work has inﬂuenced policy on education, mental health and criminal justice. Professor of Developmental Clinical Psychology Creswell focuses on the development, maintenance and treatment of anxiety disorders in children and young people and

has been working to understand the impact of the pandemic and lockdowns on children’s mental health. To read more about Blakemore’s work in our archive see: tinyurl.com/2p8tebft and for more on Creswell see: tinyurl.com/mwr8t8wt

Giving a voice to the voiceless This summer Dr Gavin Morgan, a Senior Educational Psychologist and Academic and Professional Tutor on UCL’s Doctorates in Educational Psychology, and Educational and Child Psychology, is hosting two British Psychological Society webinars. In July he will speak about qualitative research techniques and the importance of reflexivity, and in August he will discuss how to get research published. Ella Rhodes asked him about these events. What will your webinars cover? The qualitative research webinar will look at some of the problematic issues associated with three commonly used techniques in qualitative research. We will also have an opportunity for discussion around study design. Additionally, one of the big issues in qualitative research currently is reflexivity, and the webinar aims to develop and understanding of this important issue in qualitative research. Anyone who has undertaken psychological research can often overwhelmed by the prospect and challenge of publishing their research. This webinar will help to demystify the process and aims to make the process seem achievable. We will talk about why we should get our research disseminated and published. We will discuss how to go through the process of ensuring a lengthy dissertation or thesis can be prepared for publication, and then talk about what happens during the submission process. How did you first become interested in these areas? I have long been an advocate of qualitative research, from my days as an undergraduate and postgraduate student, and have always argued that this is a totally different way of viewing research, as opposed to more ‘traditional’ methods. Over recent years I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to teach qualitative research methods on the educational psychology doctorates at University College London, and have always been impressed by the enthusiastic reaction of my students when we discuss the importance of ensuring that we as psychologists are able tell people’s stories and to give a voice to the voiceless in our research. During my time at UCL I have supervised doctoral research on the educational psychology courses, I have seen many brilliant students putting so much work into their theses and dissertations, only for them to findings

never to ‘get out there’ and have the impact that their work really deserves. I want to help students ensure that their work has an audience and can really contribute to knowledge and to make a difference. Dr Gavin Morgan What still needs to change in these areas? Qualitative research can often be marginalised in psychology. I am keen to demonstrate the power of qualitative research – it is not about parity with other research techniques, but moreover a different and incredibly valuable approach to undertaking research. The process of publishing research can often be seen as quite intimidating and difﬁcult – and after a long journey of completing the actual research many students feel like they need a break from their work. I am hoping that the publication webinar will help participants see that the process is manageable and achievable What might surprise someone not familiar with these areas of work? Well, as psychologists, if you want to know how someone is feeling, what they are thinking and why they are behaving as they are, then surely we should just speak with them. Such approaches should come naturally to us as psychologists… we should like people, and should value talking to them, and ensuring that their voice is being heard. One of the key parts to success in getting research published is having an argument – something that someone can disagree or agree with. This is different to a thesis, which may well take a broader, more balanced approach. An article for publication needs an argument or position. What do you hope people will take away from the webinars? I would hope that the qualitative research webinar will

inspire psychologists to undertake this type of research and to see the value of it. Also recognising that we are active participants in research and being part of qualitative research impacts upon us too, and changes how we think. In the publication webinar I hope people realise that the process is achievable and doable, and not as intimidating or as off-putting as it may initially seem. It can be a time consuming and lengthy process, of course, but I would hope that this webinar will inspire more psychologists to get their research out there and begin to change and inﬂuence practice.

Dr Gavin Morgan’s webinar on qualitative research will be held on Monday 4 July at 11am. For more information and to book see: tinyurl.com/27ts2tym See also the Qualitative Methods in Psychology conference, 13-15 July, De Montfort University www.bps.org.uk/events/qualitative-methods-psychologyqmip-conference-2022 His webinar on getting research published will be held on Monday 8 August at 11am. See tinyurl.com/yjt3vzfc

The practice of sending people with a mental illness hundreds of miles away from home for weeks at a time continues in England, according to a new analysis published by the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Their policy brieﬁng ‘Eliminating inappropriate out of area placements in mental health’ (see tinyurl.com/ mpsub95m) highlights that despite Government pledges to end the practice, by March 2021, almost 206,000 days have been spent by patients out of area in the 12 months since the deadline passed. The Royal College of Psychiatrists is calling on the NHS to adopt a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to inappropriate out of area placements and to take urgent action to ensure all patients get the care they need from properly staffed, specialist services in their local area. Dr Adrian James, President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: ‘The failure to eliminate inappropriate out of area placements is a scandal. It is inhumane and is costing the NHS millions of pounds each year that could be spent helping patients get better. No one with a mental illness should have to travel hundreds of miles away from home

to get the treatment they desperately need. … We need to understand what is driving this unacceptable practice in different parts of the country and invest in local, properly staffed beds, alternatives to admission, and followup care in the community. Central to this is government backing to address the workforce crisis that continues to plague mental health services. We spoke with Dr Emily Turton, a Consultant Clinical Psychologist with South London Partnership Complex Care Programme who is tasked with bringing such people ‘home’. She said: ‘Overall, I thought the Royal College report was sensible, but that perhaps a more nuanced formulation of the difficulty is required. Why are people sent out of area in the first place? … It’s become apparent that these patients are often excluded from the psychological treatment on offer in the community, perhaps for being “too chaotic”, being unable to attend appointments, or having difficulties associated with violence or substance misuse. We are all well aware of the term “they slip through the gaps”. It was particularly stark to me that these patients are profoundly detained yet do not fit

News online: Find more news at thepsychologist.bps.org.uk, including: ‘Being an excellent practitioner, but lacking business skills, is a recipe for failure’. Chartered Psychologist Professor Robert Bor will be hosting a British Psychological Society webinar on working successfully in private practice this July, and then again in November. thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/being-excellent-practitioner-lacking-business-skillsrecipe-failure

For much more of the latest peer-reviewed research, digested, see www.bps.org.uk/digest Email potential news stories on psychologist@bps.org.uk or tweet @psychmag.

Royal College of Psychiatrists

Out of sight, out of mind?

into our categories. Overly stretched staff appear frightened for (or of) these patients and understandably desperate for help. There is often a fantasy that the patient will receive gold standard treatment in these units, perhaps informed by glossy pamphlets. Once the patient has been sent out of area, there are very few structures in place to keep them in mind. It has been difﬁcult to ﬁnd a clinical team who will take responsibility for these individuals should the placement break down. The patients effectively become out of sight out of mind.’ Dr Turton continued: ‘As psychologists, rather than looking outwards, perhaps we should look inwards. Do we really need all the exclusion criteria for our therapeutic services? If the patients are ‘too chaotic’ or risky for traditional treatment in the community, what are we doing to support the patients to get to a point where they can engage?’ JS Read Dr Turton’s full response at thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/outsight-out-mind We met Dr Turton to hear more about her work: thepsychologist.bps.org. uk/home-quite-frightening-placeoften-home-hospital

the psychologist july/august 2022 news

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‘The dialogue between citizens and their governments – that’s what I care about’ Dr Kesi Mahendran (Open University) recently took up the role of Chair of the BPS Political Psychology Section, which she co-founded. Having previously worked in the Scottish Government, Mahendran later moved back into academia to explore the dialogue between citizens and governments, and recently established the Public Dialogue Psychology Collaboratory. Ella Rhodes spoke with her about her work and hopes for the future of the Section.

How did you end up researching political psychology? I used to work in government, and that made me very alive to the political process. Before this I did my PhD in social psychology: specifically, I was a participatory action researcher. I even wrote in my proposal that I wanted to create change within the lifetime of the PhD and had no ambition to disseminate the findings of the PhD. I went into organisations concerned with youth unemployment. We redesigned the service and then successfully applied for the European Social Fund funding – a pretty good outcome of that PhD. I worked with the local government, the management of that organisation and the young people – it was really immersive ethnographic work. After that I realised that psychologists had a contribution to make to that kind of work. I then started working in the Scottish Government, which was a new devolved administration, in around 2003. For the first four years I was very driven by action and the potential to change things. At that time it was still the Tony Blair/Gordon Brown style government where everything was very evidencebased – that was the mantra. We were all trying to promote this evidence-based decision making that was less ideological. It does feel like a different era now… we’ve reached a point of high levels of partisanship and polarisation within decision-making. Later I got a promotion to international relations and then became a senior analyst, and I really enjoyed it. But I think one of the things which made me become a political psychologist was when I started working on the public’s relationship with the European Union on a project we called Building a Bridge Between

Europe and its Citizens – a collaboration between the European Commission and the Scottish Government. That project was really key for me. [At this point in our interview Kesi asks me what the three key EU institutions are. To my shame I can only remember two – the European Commission and the European Parliament. Kesi reminds me of the third – the European Council.] Yours was a completely normal response. And others would say ‘look, people don’t understand the European Union’. But they would just ask citizens what I call corridor questions – If you walk along corridors of power you know the answer to them, but nobody else does! It started to fascinate me. There was a sense they were asking people the wrong question and putting people on the spot – like I just did to you! If I was a Eurocrat in Brussels and I really wanted to understand what you want from me, asking you a whole bunch of questions about your cognitive knowledge of the European Union isn’t going to get me there. They were going about it in the wrong way, and I thought we could probably do it better. There was an opportunity in the Centre of Citizenship, Identities and Governance at the Open University… they wanted a psychologist who could go into the psychology department but also into this research centre, and I just thought that’s what I’m into – citizenship identities and governance. So I just applied for it and then got it. If I was to sum up my work in one sentence, it would be the dialogue between citizens and their governments – that’s what I care about. Could you tell me about some of the areas of politics

the psychologist july/august 2022 political psychology Steve Clayton

you examine in your own work and in the Political Psychology Section? I don’t think the dialogue between citizens and government has been studied sufficiently, and there are a number of reasons why that’s the case. The public, in the eyes of decision-makers, are ‘flattened down’… they’re often understood in the form of very rigid metrics, or in the form of public opinion and survey data. At the same time the perception of the state and political actors is the up in the sky. Our understanding of the state is there’s us and then there’s the government. That’s not always the case… in some countries people think of the state as part of the ‘we’. One of the key jobs of the Political Psychology Section is this de-reification of the state. To show it is quite accessible, that you can make change in the state. When I worked in the government we listened to people who came in the door much more than you might imagine. The government is full of human beings, which is something we need to remember… they don’t always think like human beings, but politicians are human beings. So that’s been a part of the work that we’ve done. On the public side, even just talking about individuals as citizens orients the conversation slightly differently. We need to make that perception of the public richer and more multi-dimensional, with the same happening with the government and other political actors. I’m also interested in the dialogue process. When it comes to quite polarised

hot political topics, we don’t understand our roles within those lenses. That’s where the polarisation comes from. A lot of the work we do is on how to deal with polarisation in conversations. People would say that Britain has a problem with polarised dialogue at the moment. Within the Public Dialogue Psychology Collaboratory we don’t focus on this idea of coming together in the middle. I think that’s fine, it’s a very diplomatic solution, but politics is a partisan business. The solution to polarisation is not that we all vote for the same party – that would be a worrying turn of events! Politics is oppositional and what we’re proposing within PDPC is that we need to be able to sustain oppositional thinking and sustain oppositional dialogue, without feeling the desire to destroy the other or close down the other or silence or overrule the other. I’m part of the DEMOS Horizon-Europe project where I’m on the advisory board which looked at the relationship between the democratic capacity of people and political efficacy. There’s an interesting relationship between how you do politics and democracy… when you think you can make a difference, compared to when you think ‘what’s the point?’ Where I was brought up, there was something scrawled on the wall that said ‘whoever you vote for the government wins’. You were kind of socialised into taking a disenchanted view of politics… that was definitely the culture that I was brought up in. Whereas within my home, I had a really politicised childhood, and you had to have a

view on politics if you were an alive human being – but I’m sure that that’s not always the case. Could you tell me more about the Section and its members? What we’re articulating is a quite innovative form of political psychology, a little bit different to the existing societies. We’ve got quite a mix in our Section. We’ve got people who are working on the de-reiﬁcation of the government, or looking at politicians, their values, how those values match the public’s values, the mental health of politicians, female leadership, the ﬂack that female politicians get for being in the public eye. There’s lots of work on leadership, and people working on compassion in politics. There are practitioners – a set of people who are running organisations which are at ground level, and academic psychologists within universities as well. Something I really enjoy about the section is its eclecticism. Getty images

The Good Friday Agreement ‘…was a constitutional referendum that was handled extremely well and we should probably be learning from it a lot more.’

What are some key areas where political psychologists can have an impact in the world of politics? One of the biggest changes in politics recently has been the move from representative democracy to direct democracy – it’s an enormous change in the state of politics. At one time, if you wanted to get things done you would have either gone on the streets to protest or you would have gone to your MP or councillor. But now the fact of direct democracy, and that there are means of direct democracy, is really reshaping politics. Now you can get something moving if you get enough traction and before you know it, everybody wants to know who Ella Rhodes is. They say ‘oh I know Ella Rhodes, she’s completely partisan’, then you have to defend yourself, and now it’s almost like you’re a politician. Citizens are shaping their profiles on social media as if they were politicians. Referenda are also key in direct democracy. We’ve had one big referendum recently – the 2016 UK-EU referendum. But in many ways we were clumsily inept at handling that. Referenda by definition are divisive, because you can nearly always just take one of two choices. What I think is interesting, having worked in this area, is that we didn’t really know how to do referenda very well. We like the idea of the people making decisions, but at the same time we don’t particularly have the capacities for making those decisions… for no other reason than that we’re simply unused to this kind of decision-making which is inherently divisive. There is an example where a referendum wasn’t particularly divisive, and that was the Good Friday Agreement. This was a constitutional referendum that was handled extremely well and we should probably be learning from it a lot more. It’s almost an ideal example, partly because it was so tough in the first place… they had to do so much work before the referendum so that everybody knew what they were voting on, which is why it’s described as a constitutional referendum. A constitutional referendum is when you and I both receive a big chunky document before we make a vote and it sets out everything, and there were smaller versions created for less engaged public so that when everybody voted in that referendum they knew exactly what they were voting for. The results were 71.1 per cent in favour in Northern Ireland, and 94.4 per cent in favour in the Republic of Ireland. That sounds altogether more legitimate than 52-48. People should have been given the EU withdrawal agreement that they could then vote on. Political psychologists play a really important role in areas where government capacity to do democracy meets public capacity to do democracy. It’s much, much more than behavioural indicators. There’s no doubt that behavioural indicators are the easiest way to get a capture on that, i.e. voting, but in the Section one of the strands we have is on narrative political psychology. A lot of our politics is the story we tell.

the psychologist july/august 2022 political psychology

Those stories we tell about ourselves, those stories that we tell about the world inﬂuence. I often think about this – social psychologist Serge Moscovici said the key thing is the public’s ability to hear each other. And that’s what’s really challenging – we have a model of what we think the rest of the public think, it’s quite often wrong. Either we think we’re ahead of the public, we’re in an avant garde position, or we think we speak on behalf of the public, so we’re in this advocating position. We have all these versions of the public, but very often I think our version of the public is that they’re not very smart and they’re easily duped… but I’m not! One of the things that keeps Political Psychology very exciting, is that it’s interdisciplinary. It only really works if you can bring together political scientists with psychologists. It’s in that interface that it thrives. When you go to the conferences it’s that mix that really makes it come alive. In terms of recognition we need to be careful, though. At the moment if you’re a political scientist and you suddenly get into public opinion, or populism, you can just declare yourself to be political psychologist, which is really problematic we think. Sometimes you can get a culture clash at conferences when you’re listening to someone who clearly has no psychology training whatsoever, they’ve just moved

into it, and there’s no requirement for them to have ethical training in particular. Our ambition obviously is to safeguard and build up accreditation, but I wouldn’t like anything that puts off really creative people who come from disadvantaged or marginalised backgrounds so it becomes this really high hurdle. But there does need to be a means where there’s a reﬂective, ethical training. There’s a real taste for political psychology, there’s an appetite for it, which is great. It’s interesting that the main questions I get asked from the media are either about political apathy or about how do we meet in the middle – and my answers are really unhelpful. One is we shouldn’t meet in the middle, it’s just let’s try not to kill each other. The other is that there’s hardly any evidence for political apathy really… we haven’t got a problem with political apathy, we’ve got a problem with this unruly political engagement. We’re all politicians now, and yet we’re not accountable to anyone and that’s a whole conversation in itself. Democratic accountability is another concept that is really key for getting working pathways through democracy. We need to hold ourselves and each other to account and we need to know how to hold our government to account, rather than getting into these unbounded slanging matches and polarised behaviour.

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what to seek out on the

psychologist website this month

No, wait, stop: Parents do make a difference David Hugh-Jones and Oana Borcan on the claims of Robert Plomin and others around parenting. Out of sight, out of mind? Dr Emily Turton responds to a Royal College of Psychiatrists briefing paper on ‘eliminating inappropriate out of area placements in mental health’. Extracting information with drugs An extract from Dark Persuasion: A History of Brainwashing from Pavlov to Social Media, by Joel E. Dimsdale. ‘Being an excellent practitioner, but lacking business skills, is a recipe for failure’ Chartered Psychologist and therapist Professor Rob Bor will be hosting a British Psychological Society webinar on working successfully in private practice this July, and then again in November. Ella Rhodes asked him about it. Find all this and so much more via

thepsychologist.bps.org.uk 20

TE ES V O O S LY U CL J 15

Voting is still open for President-Elect and an Elected Trustee ...who will you vote for? Elected Trustee nominees

President-Elect nominees

JULIA FAULCONBRIDGE

JOANNA NORTH

Independent, DCP Lead for Communications, Marketing and Publications, Deputy Chair BPS Member Board

Self-employed company director, Editor Psychotherapy Review, Chair Elect Safeguarding Advisory Group JIMMY PETRUZZI

DEJAN HRCAN Student

Lecturer, radio broadcaster, football coach, Co-Chair Elect of the North West of England Branch, Editor of The North of England Bulletin

MIA PAL In Cognition UK – self-employed, Co-Chair North West Branch, Committee Member DCP Northwest Branch

For more information

www.bps.org.uk/elections-2022

‘If we are serious about the pursuit of equality and fairness for all, it is essential that social class is recognised as a protected characteristic’ Ella Rhodes speaks with psychologists about ignoring class, and the potential impact of including class in the Equality Act

ur Conversations on Class feature from September 2021 (tinyurl.com/3zh4ueck) brought some of the issues faced by psychologists with working class backgrounds into the open while this year’s BPS senate campaign, to include social class as a protected characteristic in the Equality Act, has also shone a light on the impacts of class-based discrimination. I spoke to some of the psychologists from the original class feature, as well as experts in psychology, the measurement of social class, and law, to discuss what could happen if we bring working class experiences more ﬁrmly into the middle- and upperclass consciousness.

The impact of ignoring class Last year a report (tinyurl.com/nuffbps) by the Nufﬁeld Trust, supported by the BPS, explored the education and career journeys of psychologists. While the socioeconomic status of psychology graduates and students was not always clear, the ﬁndings highlighted the inequality in applications to psychology degrees, attrition rates at university and the accessibility of entry level positions for those wanting to pursue careers in psychology.

Last year we heard from clinical psychologists Dr Will Curvis and his colleague Dr Ben Campbell – who sadly passed away in late 2021 – who set up the Class in Clinical Psychology group to open conversations among working class people with ambitions to break into careers and education in clinical psychology. Curvis recently spoke to us about the broader impact of what happens when we don’t take social class into account. ‘It’s very well established that people from more deprived communities have a higher risk of developing health problems and are also less likely to get the appropriate help. I think Covid shone a light on this in a way that nothing ever has – when the ﬁrst lockdown happened, it was predominantly essential key workers and minimum wage roles that were affected. The same is probably true for mental health – we know that, whatever your philosophical position on what drives mental health problems, you can’t separate out that social perspective.’ Curvis said that during his career he had worked in mental health services where class and socioeconomic status were rarely taken into account. ‘To understand why somebody has come into a psychology service it is really critical to have class as part of your formulation – both in terms of ﬁnancial and practical issues.’ He added that services were not designed with the needs of working class or deprived communities in mind. ‘I used to work in IAPT so we would get referrals

the psychologist july/august 2022 equality act

from people whose anxiety or mood was a direct result of their life circumstances – they can’t just think differently about that! There may be things we’re asking them to do differently – doing more pleasurable activities or taking more time for themselves, that broad wellbeing stuff – that isn’t easy when people have got parenting responsibilities, caring responsibilities or when their financial situations are on an absolute knife edge. It doesn’t work.’ BPS Director of Knowledge and Insight, Dr Debra Malpass, said the bias against those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds could be seen in the selection processes in higher education, in employment, and in the experiences of working class people once they enter traditionally middle class spaces. ‘There is an issue of people not feeling that they fit in – people feel rather disjointed and they may feel that they don’t have the resources or connections to be able to navigate even that first selection process. Within your family and your community, if you haven’t got role models then you may not even think that certain opportunities are open to you.’ Malpass comes from a traditional working class family from the West Midlands. Her mother was a nursery nurse and her father was a semi-skilled factory labourer, and she was the first in her family to gain a university degree. ‘When I graduated in 1999 I didn’t feel that clinical psychology as a career was open to me, because the people that I saw doing that course and the lecturers did seem to me to be very, very middle class.’ Malpass said that, during her time working with the BPS, she had met young trainee psychologists who, similarly, felt they were ‘too’ working class for a career in clinical psychology. ‘That has been quite shocking to me – that in that 20-year period things haven’t really moved on. Some universities may argue that they do a lot to open access, but it is also about perceptions and I think there’s more that can be done there.’ Once a working class person enters middle class spaces, such as universities, Malpass said they can experience microaggressions, and feel as though they are not accepted. ‘I’ve certainly experienced microaggressions based on my socioeconomic status,

Dr Will Curtis – ‘I used to work in IAPT so we would get referrals from people whose anxiety or mood was a direct result of their life circumstances – they can’t just think differently about that!’

particularly around my accent. I have quite a strong Black Country accent which people associate with a working class background. When I was a PhD student I remember being in the bar at the university, and someone saying, “oh, have you seen where so and so lives? It looks like a council flat”, I said, “well I live in a council flat”, and three of the students who were at the table with me physically lifted up their chairs and moved away from me.’ How can we bring class in the light? Malpass has been exploring ways to bring class into the open within the BPS – not an easy task given the difficulties in measuring social class. As she tells me, unlike some protected characteristics, class may fluctuate across a lifetime – even if the working class identity remains stable. Malpass has faced the challenge of the best measurement for social class in previous research roles with the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority and the exam board AQA. She told me that many organisations ask people whether they were eligible for free school meals as a measure of class. However, the policy which determines who is eligible changes over time, and many parents may not be aware their children are eligible or may not claim free school meals due to the stigma associated with receiving them.

‘I don’t think it’s just about having a more diverse The BPS has started to gather members’ workforce, but also how we actually support people socioeconomic data on the society’s new membership to do well and thrive in those roles when we get them database system using measures recommended by the in, and this is true of race, culture, age, gender – and Office for National Statistics. Members are now asked a lot of these things will intersect with class. If we’re about the highest qualification gained by a parent or bringing people into these professions, we need to guardian by the time a member was 18, and the type think about how we look after and support people to of work the highest income earner in a household actually go on and do good stuff in these jobs. There’s did when the member was 14. ‘All of our diversity always a challenge in any type of positive-action data will be locked down on the system, so it won’t recruitment strategy that people will feel they only got be available to view. When extracted for analysis the job because thresholds have been lowered, but that it will be fully anonymised – and when it is shared shouldn’t be the case – the thresholds should be set at it will be at a group level so individuals cannot be the right level in the first place.’ identified. But the importance of While Curvis said he did not us collecting that data is so that we can effectively monitor the “…psychology should not expect psychology to have an answer to all these issues, but he BPS’ activities – we can look at be adding more barriers did suggest that psychology should things like how many people with for people and should be not be adding more barriers for certain characteristics are engaging people and should be engaging with us on different activities and engaging with issues at with issues at the political level. whether our committees, working the political level” ‘Why aren’t the big organisations groups, task and finish groups, and like the BPS challenging some boards are representative. Then of this stuff around energy bills? we can compare it with the wider Where’s the role of psychology as a profession in BPS membership, but also with the wider population, actually putting that pressure on the government to because, as psychologists, we should be representative think about this from our point of view? Similarly, of the populations that we serve.’ where’s the training for practitioners who are in the Curvis said it was important to acknowledge social class, but with caution, and without conflating class with financial circumstances. ‘There’s an identity people have of being from a working class background, it’s part of your make-up, it’s part of your DNA… that might change with your financial circumstances, but a lot of people never let go of that.’ When discussing working classness, Curvis said there was often an implication that all working class people strive to be middle class, or should strive to be middle class. ‘One of the first things that got me started ranting about these issues was an article in The Guardian, it was an obituary for an academic and said they were from a deprived working class background, but they always really tried to “better” themselves by reading the broadsheets. My reaction was, so what? Not everyone who is working class has this desire to be middle class!’ This implication taps into meritocracy myths, Curvis said: ‘…that if you work hard you can reach the upper echelons of society, which is nonsense. It’s a myth that all people want to do that and that it’s feasible for people to do that – it’s a very neoliberal idea that keeps people striving away.’ Curvis said the working class identity can cause people to feel out of place in middle class environments, and that should be considered when trying to encourage more people into careers including psychology. ‘You feel like you’re muddling through, you feel like you’re trying to navigate these worlds. For people who are stepping out of traditionally working class environments you can feel like you don’t fit in either camp any more – you feel like you don’t fit in in a work context, but also you feel a bit different from Jennifer Nadel, co-founder of Compassion in Politics: your family and your friends and the way you grew up. ‘class discrimination is about more than just social mobility’

the psychologist july/august 2022 equality act

therapy room with a person who’s really struggling to pay the bills or manage financially, what tools have they got at their disposal to help people cope with that beyond saying “that’s really tough isn’t it”?’ Should social class be a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010? I spoke to Jennifer Nadel, a trained barrister, journalist, and co-founder of Compassion in Politics about the legal implications of class being included in the Equality Act 2010. ‘This country is one of the most socially and economically unequal countries in the world… We know that the occupation of your parents has a far greater impact on your prospects than the type of degree you earn.’ Nadel pointed to the impact of socioeconomic disadvantage on health, life expectancy and educational attainment – as well as the added effects of being from multiple marginalised groups – something highlighted during the Covid-19 pandemic. ‘Now we have rising inflation and a brutal cost of living squeeze which will inevitably hit those with least hardest.’ Nadel said that while including social class as a protected characteristic would be a positive step, there would be issues with defining social classes. ‘For example, the Office of National Statistics uses a definition which is based on types of work. But class discrimination is about more than just social mobility. You can have social mobility but still be exposed to rampant classism and stereotyping. We only need to look at the insults that are levelled at Angela Rayner, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party [see also thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/social-class-matters]. Abuse centres on her working class accent despite the high status of her working achievements.’ While including social class in the Equality Act would not be legally impossible, Nadel said it would require wider cultural changes to accompany it. ‘During the pandemic we saw very starkly that those we often relied on most in a crisis were the least well paid. How can we have an economic structure that fails to adequately reward those who do the jobs that are most needed whilst over-rewarding those who often contribute far less to society?’ Nadel’s organisation Compassion in Politics campaigns for measures to tackle inequality and hardship. ‘It’s totally unacceptable that in one of the world’s richest nations benefit levels and wages are so low that growing numbers of people are forced to rely on food banks or go hungry. There are structural inequalities that must be addressed alongside action on discrimination. True equality, which is at the heart of compassion, means that we are all of equal value, irrespective of educational attainment, lifestyle choices, geography etc. A compassionate society is one in which everyone can live free from hunger, homelessness and constant financial insecurity.’ While supporting the BPS’ campaign for ending discrimination on socioeconomic grounds,

Compassion in Politics also campaigns for a living income and for Section One of the Equality Act to be introduced. ‘That section, which is already on the statute book but not yet enacted, would put a positive duty on all public bodies to work to reduce socioeconomic disadvantage. It’s a positive and proactive duty. Versions of this have already been implemented in Scotland and Wales and if this government wants levelling up to Dr Laura Kilby: ‘the challenges be more than just a slogan it could of how we define social class are enact this measure which is already not insurmountable and it is in the on the statute book immediately.’ interests of social justice that we seek I caught up with Dr Laura Kilby solutions’ (Sheffield Hallam University), who featured in our original class feature, to ask her whether she felt social class should be a protected characteristic. She said she would strongly support this move to help tackle class-based discrimination in the workplace and education. Whilst acknowledging that there was no simple way to measure or define social class, she argued that ‘the challenges of how we define social class are not insurmountable and it is in the interests of social justice that we seek solutions’. She further added that ‘social class intersects with many of the existing protected characteristics, recognising social class will enable more nuanced considerations of how forms of prejudice and discrimination are multi-layered and intersecting. If we are serious about the pursuit of equality and fairness for all, it is essential that social class is recognised as a protected characteristic.’ Curvis told me that, while he thought it would be positive to include social class as a protected characteristic, he also raised concerns over defining social class without being exclusionary to some groups. ‘It would potentially be quite controversial because I think class is so embedded within people’s identity and sense of who they are and it’s not very well defined. But I think it would be a positive move, especially if it created more opportunities for people who come from more deprived parts of the country or more working class backgrounds. The challenge is how do you do that in a fair and supportive way?’ It took around 10 years for the Equality Act to become law – Malpass tells me – driven by Harriet Harman. ‘I think it’s a very important measure to be included, but I’m not sure the government appetite is there at the moment to be able to get that included or it may well be replaced by a new Bill of Rights. But it’s important, it should be looked at, and not just class in isolation because of its intersection with so many other protected characteristics.’

Eliza Southwood - www.elizasouthwood.com

How social class is reﬂected in our psychology Matthew Warren digests the research

Find our Research Digest at www.bps. org.uk/ digest Editor: Dr Matthew Warren Writers: Emily Reynolds, and Emma Young Reports, links and more on the Digest website

sychologists have increasingly come to recognise the role that social and cultural factors play in shaping how we think and behave. While some human experiences may be universal, research has shown that the society we come from can have a profound influence on everything from our perception of music to the way we interpret emotions. There has been less of a focus on how social class is reflected in our psychology. And yet, a growing number of studies finds that much like our culture, our class background also influences our thoughts and behaviour. What’s more, research suggests that in a society where middle class norms and ways of thinking are prioritised, these differences can end up further disadvantaging individuals from lower-class backgrounds.

Class: A form of culture? In some ways, class is a form of culture: people from different class backgrounds grow up in environments with particular norms and values, and this shapes their behaviour and sense of identity. For instance, note Michael W. Kraus and colleagues in their 2019 book chapter Social class as culture, for working class individuals the ‘self’ tends to be tied more to others, and there is an emphasis on strong social bonds. In contrast, middle class individuals tend to deﬁne themselves as separate from others and more focused on their own uniqueness. Young children are taught these identities from early on, the researchers write: middle class parents are more likely than working class parents to encourage their kids to speak up at school, for instance, or choose their own hobbies. Other work emphasises the direct role played by

disparities in resources such as wealth or education. Being from a higher social class, with more material resources, can buffer against potential threats such as job loss, and opens up more opportunities. This gives people from these backgrounds a greater sense of control and agency. By contrast, people from lower social classes often experience less of a sense of control, and a stronger feeling that external factors constrain their lives. Their greater emphasis on interpersonal relationships may partly be a means to deal with this ‘threatening’ environment. A related concept is subjective social class. This concerns how people see their own social rank in relation to others in society, and is associated with – but also distinct from – objective measures like education and wealth. Again, subjective class is associated with differences in identity and social connection, and low subjective social status has particularly been linked to stress and worse health (see Emma Young’s feature in this issue).

How class inﬂuences everyday thoughts and behaviours Our ways of viewing the self and the wider of world are of course inﬂuenced by all kinds of other individual differences too, and no social class is a homogenous group of people. Nevertheless, in the past couple of decades studies have shown that these overall classbased differences do manifest in our day-to-day psychological processes and behaviours. Social class can affect how we perceive our own abilities. Compared to people from a relatively low social

the psychologist july/august 2022 digest class, those of a higher social class tend to have a more favourable view of themselves, for instance, showing higher self-esteem and a greater degree of narcissism. And, crucially, a 2019 study suggests that this comes down to overconfidence. Peter Belmi from The University of Virginia and colleagues asked more than 150,000 small business owners in Mexico to complete a task that involved viewing a sequence of images and indicating whether or not they matched; participants then rated how well they thought they performed on this task compared to others. By comparing participants’ actual scores on the task with ratings of their own beliefs about their performance, the researchers calculated a measure of how (over)confident participants were. The team found that participants who were of a relatively high social class were more overconfident than those of a relatively low social class. That is, these people tended to have a stronger degree of confidence in their performance that was not reflected in their actual performance. Further online studies with American participants suggested that this overconfidence was partly motivated by this group’s desire to maintain a high social status. Class also appears to influence some emotional processes. Research from 2010 led by Kraus found that lower-class individuals were better at recognising the emotions of facial expressions presented in photos, as well as the spontaneous emotions of another participant taking part in a mock interview. In a further study, the team actually made participants feel of higher or lower rank, by asking them to compare themselves to people at the very bottom or top of the socioeconomic ladder. Those made to feel of low rank were again better at recognising emotions than those made to feel of high rank. The researchers say that lower-class individuals are better at recognising others’ emotions – an ability know as ‘empathic accuracy’ – because of their tendency to focus more on the external environment and social context, compared to the more inward-looking focus of higher-class individuals. The fact that making people feel low or high rank influences this ability lends support to the idea that class has a causal effect. Another series of studies in PNAS found that higher-class individuals behave more unethically than people from lower-class backgrounds. Paul Piff from UC Berkeley and colleagues found that upperclass individuals more frequently cut off other cars and pedestrians while driving, for instance, and were more likely to say that they would engage in behaviours like plagiarism or pirating software. The team points to several factors that could explain these differences, including higher class individuals’ feelings of independence and entitlement, lack of concern for how others perceive them, and financial means with which to deal with consequences of their behaviour. On the flip side, a number of studies have found that lower-class individuals behave more pro-socially, offering more help and donating more money to others in need. In a 2017 review, Piff and Angela Robinson suggest that this

is an adaptive strategy that helps lower-class individuals cope with threat and develop strong social networks . More controversially, being from a lower class has also been linked to greater prejudice against ethnic minorities and immigrants. But as Antony Manstead from Cardiff University makes clear in a 2018 review, there are lots of nuances here. Research suggests that people from a lower socioeconomic background show negative attitudes towards immigrants because of their own precarious economic situation: immigrants themselves are generally of lower social status, and are more likely to be competing for jobs and housing with people from lower-class backgrounds. When immigrants are portrayed as highly educated, or when there is a high degree of economic instability, then higher-class individuals also show prejudice.

Understanding cultural context There are plenty more examples of how class can influence psychological processes. But there’s an important caveat: the vast majority of this work has been carried out in Western countries, particularly the United States, so the findings may not necessarily apply elsewhere. As Yuri Miyamoto from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and colleagues note in a 2018 paper, cultural traditions likely shape the way in which class influences our thoughts and behaviours. For example, Western cultures tend to emphasise the needs and development of the individual, and so it’s not surprising that people who hold high status in society are more focused on the self. But would the same be true in a more collectivistic culture? In a series of studies, the team used data from surveys from the United States and Japan, which included both objective and subjective measures of socioeconomic status. Participants were also asked questions tapping into ‘self-orientation’ (e.g. how much they strived to achieve personal goals) and ‘other-orientation’ (e.g. how much support they gave to family and friends). The team found that people who scored higher on the various measures of socioeconomic status tended to have a greater self-orientation, regardless of which country they were from. But in Japan, higher socioeconomic status was also associated with a greater otherorientation, while in the US there was a much weaker, or in some cases negative, link between the two variables. Similar patterns were found when comparing other Western and East Asian cultures too. More work is needed to compare other countries, as well as different racial or ethnic groups within countries (the authors note that most of the US respondents were White, for instance). But still, the authors write, the work shows ‘the importance of considering psychological correlates of social hierarchy within a cultural context’.

Implications of class-based differences Cultural considerations notwithstanding, why do classbased differences in the way we think and behave matter? For one, they may end up reinforcing existing classbased inequalities. Take the paper on overconﬁdence,

for instance. The researchers found that the (unjustified) sense of confidence displayed by people from a relatively high social class led to them being seen as more competent in a mock interview. As the team concludes: ‘Our findings suggest that class-based inequality may also reproduce, in part, because class contexts can imbue advantaged individuals with an exaggerated belief that they are better than others, and outside observers may conflate this miscalibrated confidence with evidence of competence.’ Class-based differences in social norms and selfconcepts can also reinforce inequalities, particularly in areas which have traditionally been informed by middle class ways of thinking. Take universities, for instance, which have a strong focus on independence. This may suit people from middle class families, but can result in a culture clash for those from working class backgrounds, who tend to place more value on interdependent norms. As a result, working class students may feel that they don’t fit in at university, or choose not to attend in the first place. This same ‘cultural mismatch’ likely exists in other workplaces dominated by middle-class values, writes Manstead in his 2018 paper. This ‘mak[es] it harder for working-class individuals to benefit from the kinds of educational and employment opportunities that would increase social mobility and thereby improve their material circumstances,’ he concludes. These differences also raise questions about the generalisability of psychology research. It’s wellknown that psychology has a ‘WEIRD’ problem, focusing largely on Western, Educated populations who come from Industrialised, Rich and Democratic societies. Psychologists increasingly acknowledge the importance of including participants from non-Western countries and racial and ethnic minority backgrounds. But it seems likely that people from working class backgrounds are also underrepresented in research. It’s hard to tell how much of a problem this might be, because studies hardly ever report measures of class such as socioeconomic status. For instance, a 2018 PNAS study led by Mostafa Salari Rad found an overwhelming lack of demographic information in papers published in a prominent psychology journal. Most studies reported participants’ gender, but less than a quarter reported on their ethnicity or race – and socioeconomic status was barely ever mentioned. There was usually little acknowledgement in the text about the cultural context in which the research was conducted. Given that social class is related to differences in values, ways of thinking, and behaviour, it’s vital that samples include participants from diverse class backgrounds. How do we know that findings based on studies of undergraduates – who are likely to be disproportionately middle class – apply to people from other social classes? If psychology is going to help combat class-based inequalities, it needs to ensure that people from different classes are represented in research in the first place.

Which rung are you on? Emma Young digests the research on subjective feelings of class If you ask people in the UK which social class they belong to, nearly half are, as one British Social Attitudes report puts it, reticent to pick. But this survey data also shows that (after some prompting) about a third report being middle class and about 60 per cent report being working class. These percentages have not changed much over decades, despite a massive reduction in the number of typical ‘working class’ jobs in the UK. This is just one of the reasons why coming up with objective measures of ‘class’ isn’t easy. So, when exploring links with mental and physical health, researchers often instead use objective measures of socioeconomic status (SES), which take into account income and level of education, as well as type of job. These studies have revealed all kinds of interplays between SES and health. But over the past decade or so, research has also highlighted the importance of subjective measures of social status. Studies from a range of countries have found that objective SES doesn’t always correspond to where people feel they sit on the social ladder. And these subjective ratings really matter: they too are linked to a number of differences in physical and mental health.

Early impacts The MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status is one of the most popular tools to measure people’s own perception of their position in society. It’s very simple: a person views a drawing of a ladder with ten rungs and is told that at the top are the ‘people who are the best off, those who have the most money, most education, and best jobs’, while those at the bottom have the least. With an X, they mark where they feel that they sit on this ladder. This scale has been used around the world. The wording has also been adapted to explore perceived social status in more speciﬁc environments, such as workplaces and schools. Using the MacArthur ladder, Margaret Sheridan at Boston Children’s Hospital and colleagues found in a 2013 study that your mother’s perceived social status

the psychologist july/august 2022 digest might have affected your own development. The children of mothers who reported feeling that they were of a low social rank were more likely to have raised levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and to show reduced activity in the hippocampus (which is important in memory) during a learning task. The mother’s actual level of education or family income had no bearing on these measures. ‘We know that there are big disparities among people in income and education. Our results indicate that a mother’s perception of her social status ‘lives’ biologically in her children,’ commented Sheridan in a statement issued at the time. Why should perceptions matter, when the objective measures did not? The team suggest that how people adapt to their situation in life has a bigger impact on their children’s development than the situation itself. If feeling that you sit relatively low on the social ladder is in itself stressful, this could have detrimental effects of its own.

Social status in adolescence Perceived social status matters for children as they grow up, too – but also in ways that go beyond their position in broader society. Evidence for this comes from a 2019 study in BMC Public Health on 705 Swedish teenagers, aged 17 and 18. The teens indicated their perceived social position within the school. To do this, they used a version of the MacArthur ladder, with terms such as ‘respect’ and ‘standing’ in place of jobs and income. The pupils also rated their own health. The researchers used their parents’ level of education as an indicator of family SES.

The team, led by Junia Joffer, found no links between SES and self-rated health scores. However, kids who reported higher school social status also reported better health. ‘Subjective social status in school seems to be a useful health-related measure of social position in adolescents,’ the researchers concluded. This finding was important because, traditionally, family SES is the ‘social rank’ measure used in most studies of wellbeing among teenagers. This work suggested that perceptions of social rank within school has a bigger impact on how well teenagers feel, at least. Still, there are a few different possible explanations for the findings. Variations in social skills and personality traits, including extraversion, are important in driving the ‘pecking order’ within a group of adolescents. It’s certainly possible that kids with poorer social skills find themselves lower in this order, and experience stress as a result. But poorer social skills would also affect a child’s ability to make friends – and social isolation is of course stressful, and linked to poorer health. It’s also possible that kids with health problems fall down the social ladder. Untangling exactly how these factors influence each other will take more research.

Adult subjective social status and health For adults, studies have linked standard MacArthur ladder-type scores to all kinds of health outcomes. In a large study in the US led by Allyssa Allen, for example, when income was taken into account, lower subjective status scores were linked to a higher risk of heart disease – though this was the case only for White, not Black, people. The reason for the race-based difference is not clear. But research elsewhere – in Greece, for example, led by Antonios Charonis – has also found clear links between lower perceived social status and poorer health, when objective SES was taken into account. A 2018 study of almost 10,000 people in England even linked lower subjective scores to a higher risk of dying in the 10-year study period (the link was stronger for people aged 50-64 than for those who were 65-plus). Why might this be? It could relate back to the study on mothers in Boston – feeling that you’re not doing as well as others around you is stressful, and chronic stress is linked to mental as well as physical health problems. A separate study on older adults supports this idea…

Eliza Southwood - www.elizasouthwood.com

How old do you feel? Older adults who perceive themselves to be less successful and well-off than others within their own community report feeling older, and also think more negatively about ageing, according to a 2018 study published in the European Journal of Aging. This effect held when objective SES, age, physical health, sex and race were all taken into account. ‘These ﬁndings suggest that perceptions of doing better than one’s neighbors (i.e., “the Joneses”) may matter more for understanding subjective perceptions of aging than objective indicators of social status,’ concluded the team (led by Alaina English). These studies all show that how people feel about their social position is at least, if not more, important

for their health and wellbeing than objective measures of how they rank. Exactly what causes mismatches between perceptions of status and objective SES isn’t yet clear. There are other potential explanations; perhaps, for example, people with a pessimistic view of their position in society are more pessimistic generally;

pessimism is known to link to poorer physical health as well as psychological wellbeing. But the most common explanation for why perceptions matter more is that feeling that you’re not doing well, or well enough, is stressful – and chronic stress is linked to all kinds of poorer physical and mental health outcomes.

‘I viewed it as an unreachable, elite career’ Emily Reynolds hears from working class people who have struggled to make their way in Psychology

pplied psychology has a class problem. From school to university to doctorate training programmes, working class people are underrepresented – and this has an impact not only on professionals but on service users, too. So what are the barriers to working class people thriving in psychology, and what can be done about it?

Paths to psychology Issues of accessibility can arise before someone even enters the ﬁeld. Matt Morgan, an assistant psychologist working in primary care, came to psychology later than most, and is currently applying for doctorates in clinical psychology in his late 30s. He grew up on a council estate in Swansea in what he describes as ‘abject poverty’; because of the struggles he experienced growing up, including being a carer for his parents, his career in psychology only started after a series of jobs in retail and call centres. ‘I wasn’t able to pursue a career [in psychology] like a lot of people could, because I did have those responsibilities,’ he says. ‘A lot of people go to uni when they’re 18, graduate at 21, do a masters, then follow a journey that way. I’ve come to it a lot later.’

Morgan acknowledges that many of the more afﬂuent aspiring psychologists will also have to care for their parents or juggle responsibilities. But he also points out that people from poorer backgrounds are statistically more likely to have to deal with such challenges. ‘Poverty exacerbates poor health: my family are not able to eat as well, live in houses as warm, live without the stress of worrying about money. All of those things contribute to ill health. I have to deal with that in a way people who have good diets and live in warm houses in nicer areas and

have money for therapy might not.’ These kinds of factors place young people from underprivileged backgrounds on an unequal playing ﬁeld before their careers have even begun. Early expectations about future career trajectories can also make it harder for young people from working class backgrounds to become psychologists. Dr Kerrie Lissack qualiﬁed from Exeter University in 2021, and now works as an educational psychologist in primary and secondary schools with children and their families. Like Morgan, Lissack was late to a career in psychology – largely because it was simply never offered to her as a possibility. Only after a career in education did she consider further training. ‘For me, psychology very much felt like an out of reach subject – one of those subjects that other people did,’ she says. ‘It was never promoted to me as a subject I could pursue or consider at degree level. I viewed it as an unreachable, elite career.’ Morgan agrees: ‘I didn’t even know about clinical psychology until later in life. As a working class person, there’s absolutely no sense that when you grow up you’re going to become a psychologist.’ Figures suggest that Morgan and Lissack are not alone in their experiences. According to data from the charity Clearing House, only 9 per cent of applicants to clinical psychology courses in 2020 came from the lowest socioeconomic quintile, compared to 25 per cent from the highest. Of this lower quintile, only 6 per cent were accepted to courses compared to 32 per cent for the highest.

Financial barriers Young people from working class backgrounds face ﬁnancial barriers as well. Lissack, for example, was only

the psychologist july/august 2022 digest Eliza Southwood - www.elizasouthwood.com

able to apply for her masters and doctorate programmes after saving for several years, and was heavily supported by loans and grants. Of particular concern are honorary posts, which provide training and experience but are unpaid. Honorary positions have long been criticised for their inaccessibility and their likelihood of entrenching inequalities. A Nufﬁeld Trust report notes that around two in ﬁve applicants for clinical psychology doctorates have held honorary or voluntary assistant psychology roles, potentially explaining why those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, as well as older applicants or those with dependents, are less likely to apply. ‘Honorary posts naturally limit who can apply,’ says Ste Weatherhead, who works as an academic, as a clinical

psychologist in the NHS, and in the third sector. ‘They need to go. We need to stop having an expectation that people can pay upfront for the career they are going to have. Whether that’s paying for travel, paying for courses – any element of the selection process that means you would have had to pay to get to these points, they should be gone.’ Fixed-term, low pay, and part-time roles also disadvantage without a family safety net, Morgan points out. ‘For some people on ﬁxed-term contracts, the worst case scenario is that they borrow money from their parents or move back in for a few months. My parents couldn’t give me money even if I was desperate, and they haven’t got any room. It really does impact the type of opportunities you can go for, which then affects your CV

and your desirability as a candidate.’

Feeling like an impostor Along with material barriers, working class people also experience issues of identity. ‘I continue to feel that, because of my background, I don’t fully identify with being a psychologist,’ Lissack says. ‘Being a doctor in psychology and earning what I earn pushes me into the middle class, but this continues to feel very conflicting for me.’ In sixth form, Lissack found it difficult to even identify with the idea of going to university because she was the first in her family to consider attending. And research shows that it’s common for first generation students to feel that they don’t fit in. One 2019 study, led by Elizabeth Canning and covered on our Research Digest (see tinyurl. com/digest090120), found that first-generation STEM students were more likely than their peers to experience impostor syndrome, or feelings that they didn’t belong or lacked the skills and intelligence to continue. This has a material impact, reducing engagement, attendance, and performance and increasing the intention to drop out – again, potentially reducing the pool of potential psychologists from marginalised backgrounds of all kinds. And this can have a long-term impact on someone’s career. ‘There’s an internal barrier in terms of people with a middle class background having an inbuilt sense of entitlement,’ Weatherhead says. ‘But those from a working class background feel we don’t deserve it, we step away from opportunities that people with a greater sense of entitlement will step towards.’ For Morgan, there has been a consistent sense that psychology is not for working class people. ‘We talk about impostor syndrome, but a feature of that is that you’re wrong about being an impostor. But we are impostors – we weren’t supposed to be there. It’s not what society intended for us. You feel like an impostor because you are an impostor.’

Beneﬁtting from experience

This is not merely an issue of representation. For psychologists themselves and those hoping to enter the field, struggling against discrimination and other barriers can take a mental toll: juggling different jobs in order to get by, working on fixed-term contracts, having language or accents demeaned by colleagues or superiors, or feeling pushed out or alienated can have a serious impact on mental health. More knowledge of class and more representation among clinical psychologists would also benefit patients directly. Poverty and deprivation are common experiences in all kinds of services – as Morgan puts it, ‘this isn’t a niche patient group’. Yet staff with a profound or firsthand understanding of these issues are still rare. Weatherhead agrees, pointing also to his sense of community and responsibility to others, a direct result of his background, as a benefit to his work. ‘I’m just a normal person and want to help people.’ But both feel that this isn’t sufficiently acknowledged

by the ﬁeld. For Morgan, there is a particular frustration in what he sees as hypocrisy within the profession. ‘When you start in psychology and you’re from a working class background or disabled or from another underrepresented group, you’re always told it’s going to be so valuable – “we need people like you, it will help you with patients”, things like that. But then you don’t see it in the process at all.’ Meanwhile, the preconceptions and implicit biases about class held by other clinical psychologists are overlooked, Lissack adds.

A more equitable profession? So what needs to change in order for clinical psychology to become more equitable and less middle class? Lissack, Morgan and Weatherhead all point to the financial barriers that need to be removed – no more honorary positions or paying upfront for training or travel. This, Weatherhead argues, is a basic issue of accessibility and should be treated as such. Suggestions from research also include creating a more welcoming classroom environment: the 2019 study on first generation students found that more competitive environments were more likely to foster impostor syndrome, so a more hospitable atmosphere may go some way to make a difference. There also needs to be greater acknowledgement that psychology is currently a middle class profession, says Lissack; frank discussions about class could be one way of starting to challenge this hegemony. She also argues that children and young people should be meeting with, seeing and interacting with psychologists in order to see clinical psychology as a viable career – though she notes that meaningful funding needs to be made available for young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds to actually access higher education. There have been some positive developments in this regard. Networks of academics and clinicians have begun connecting working class psychologists and, crucially, campaigning for real change. The ClassClinPsych Collective, for example, holds events and pushes for new practices within psychology; in their mission statement, they argue that psychology as a ‘responsibility... to acknowledge and address issues and barriers surrounding class’, not only for the benefit of professionals but for service users also affected by classbased discrimination. Actively addressing power imbalances can be uncomfortable, but is crucial. ‘You’re asking people, in order to fix this, to reduce their own chance of success,’ Morgan says. He suggests asking people not to apply for doctoral programmes or jobs or ring fencing more places for working class people; contextual admissions, where programme leads take into account contextual information like background, asylum status, or care experience, could also improve access. ‘But the psychologists who are in power now need to reflect on class, and that requires the privileged to lose some power,’ Morgan concludes. ‘If you make it more likely that poor people succeed, it necessarily becomes harder for richer people to succeed.’

the psychologist july/august 2022 digest

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‘We need reform, and class has got to be protected’ Dr Bridgette Rickett, from the British Psychological Society’s Senate campaign group on tackling class-based inequality, meets Dr Suriyah Bi, founder of Equality Act Review.

Bridgette: How has your background led to where you are now? Suriyah: I can’t separate my background from the work that I do. It really does drive me to work on improvements in the Equality Act, as someone from a working class background. I was born and raised in the Alum Rock area of Birmingham – high levels of unemployment, poverty, especially child poverty now. Around the referendum parts of Hodge Hill were compared with Richmond in London as the

Dr Suriyah Bi

stark contrast between the richest and the poorest constituencies in the UK, and I took part in that for BBC Radio 4. I experienced many different layers of inequalities, largely as a young Muslim woman from a South Asian background within the various systems, whether that was welfare, housing, healthcare. I saw that inequality from a woman’s perspective as well… for example, I didn’t want to be like my Aunties who didn’t know how to drive and had to take the kids to school in the snow and the rain, I had to get my licence. I didn’t get a car until 10 years after I passed, but I needed to make sure this was not another layer of inequality that I experienced. I was seeing these multiple forms of inequalities based on different aspects of my identity. The idea of the social mobility ladder was sold to me, as the only way out. I worked hard, I got my grades. Even though my sixth form careers adviser said I was going to get rejected by all of my university choices, I ploughed on and managed to get a place at Oxford. My education began there. I went from Alum Rock to Oxford, and the gap is so stark. Sometimes still I can’t quite grapple with that. From being on free school meals, to a college that has £17 million of Student Support Funds for 400 students at one college. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to come to terms with that, psychologically. Bridgette: How did you get on? Suriyah: At Oxford, they tell you you’re the bee’s knees. But I felt like a fish out of water. Everyone was miles ahead of me. I had to work extra hard to catch up. I didn’t know how to write an essay. When I graduated, I thought my education at Oxford would translate into greater opportunities, but I wasn’t finding that. After completing my Master’s degree, I was dismissed from my workplace because I raised a concern around child safeguarding, around the showing of a video of 9/11. They accused me of not being comfortable, as a Muslim woman, with 9/11 being put on the curriculum. I went to the employment tribunals, I fought my own case, and I won. All this while legal aid was denied to me, because they said I was qualified enough to represent myself.

the psychologist july/august 2022 equality act review

Dr Bridgette Rickett,

So throughout my life, I’ve seen these multiple aspects of my identity cherry-picked, and pitted against each other by different agencies at different moments. I’m still in the appeal tribunals in London, to get my case reinstated for compensation. I feel like the whole of my 20s have been taken up by this unnecessary fight. I’m in a better place now, but it’s been hugely scarring. However, fighting my own case has led me to realise that the Equality Act is not fit for purpose. We need reform, and class has got to be protected. I’m not alone in this. The Equality Act is landmark legislation, and we should be really proud of it, but in my case it has genuinely subjected me to more inequalities than it saves me from. Bridgette: That’s a potent example of how there’s an important characteristic that’s just not protected, that’s allowing cases like yours to fall through some net. In terms of my background, I was one of Margaret Thatcher’s ‘enemies of the state’ – a young working class Mum, at a time where we were seen to be a sign of moral collapse in society. My schooling experience was appalling, really. A few teachers tried really hard and have always made their impact on me, but it was very poor. I know that because I’ve had my children, moved around, and I know now the huge difference between the education that I had and what other kids were having from more middle class areas. It’s just a different world. Many working class kids, particularly girls, were let down… there was a sexist ideology about what girls could and couldn’t do. I was told I was going to

be a typist. I ended up going into hairdressing. I had low finances but a very supportive extended family, which is quite typical of the communities that I come from. So I went back to school in my early 20s… my child was still a toddler, but there were community colleges just a 20 minute bus ride away, and my little girl could go to the nursery there. It was 50p at the time. I took GCSEs. I was passionate, I loved it. I wanted to know more – did my A-levels, and then made a choice about going to university. A friend I studied with at the time did go to Oxford, but I just couldn’t have even thought about it. I needed to be somewhere where I felt a sense of community and belonging. It was off-putting for me, the very idea of Oxford. I think that’s a common experience. And so I went to the University of Sheffield. The curriculum at that point, the early 90s, was really hidden. Unless you’ve got some prior knowledge of what they’re expected from you, you have to kind of guess. I experienced a lot of classism. I remember going to a lecture and someone openly sneering at working class kids from estates, making caricatures. Academics boasted about plucking me from the factory floor. Like you said, there are different parts of your identity that sometimes get co-opted and used in some ways, and then sometimes in others. So I had a bumpy ride, but I got through it and still had a passion for learning. I realised quickly I wanted to work in teaching-based institutions, because I felt quite alienated from research-based institution – not just as a working class person, but as a woman in the department at the time. I got a job at what is now Leeds Beckett University, which has around 50 to 60 per cent of ‘first generation’ students. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to change curricula for students who don’t feel they belong, for one reason or another. Now I just want to focus on that. At the same time my life has changed. I got a job that was paid fairly well, moved to a bigger house and and started to experience services from a different perspective. I realised that doctors and medics were talking to me differently. I know now, how shortchanged people from working class backgrounds are. We’re judged. Research has found that for these so-called elite jobs, they’re using an implicit job specification, one that isn’t articulated. A kind of ‘poshness test’: signs of background, university, taste. The poor representation of working class people at any of these levels where people make decisions, is not protected in law. Neither is it protected in law that some health authorities can give differential resources based on the area people live. It can’t be legal, that any organisation could give differential resources to reproduce impoverishment in that way. Children face all sorts of class-based prejudice within the education system: again, not protected by law. It became quite clear to me that we need to

change this. But we’ve not been able to talk about social class explicitly for so long. Over the last 20 or 30 years the notion of class has been invisible… we are a ‘classless society’. You talked about being sold this model of social mobility… well, weren’t we all! But there are certain features which will get in the way of this ideal notion that if you work hard enough, you’ll get on. That’s clearly just not the case. With my research, people know what class is, they know that they are judged, but they struggle to articulate this. We’ve been disarmed by the language around class, even though our society is so fundamentally classed at almost every level. I think about class as a status that depends on social, cultural and economic aspects of our lives. The material disadvantage that people face is important, but there are also social advantages in the personal ties and networks that we can develop or inherit, and there’s cultural capital in the extent to which other people consider our interests and preferences as legitimate. Are our values respected? I’ve never wanted to become middle class, most of my life is connected with people from my background. I’ve just wanted that background to be valued. I don’t want to become someone else. I know people that work really hard to camouﬂage – change their accent, buy all new clothes – but the research shows we are found out, we are judged over and over again, particularly when we try to access some of these more powerful positions. So that’s where I’ve got to. And now, Covid has revealed the power of class, and especially intersectional relationships with BAME communities. We’ve seen increased deaths, but also lower vaccine uptake where it’s been clear that some societies simply do not trust the government. They feel they’ve been treated in a disrespectful and poor way, and have learned to fear. It was only when they got the vaccine centres down to a real community level, in mosques and churches, local social centres, that rates started to go up. So that’s put social class back on the agenda, and the government is talking about ‘levelling up’, which is code for a class but also region. The doors are open. Certainly not wide open, but ajar, and I think we can kick it open a little bit. I’m getting so much out of working with psychologists who have studied class, bringing all this together because psychology has been very poor at studying class. Sometimes it’s been involved in reproducing notions of inferiority in working class communities, for instance, just the same as the history of scientiﬁc racism. So to just stimulate research, to get that alive, it’s an exciting thing. It doesn’t just have to be about working class people. We can talk about everybody’s class. I want to invigorate the subject of class within in psychology.

Suriyah: I’m trying not to get emotional now, because everything that you said I could think of where I also had a similar experience. I’m always myself. But in

different places, people will see me differently and perceive me differently. These inbetween spaces where you’re like, ‘who am I?’, ‘where am I?’, ‘what am I?’ In one of the tribunal hearings, I was an outspoken, feisty woman, fighting my corner. As soon as I said, ‘I don’t understand, can you help me with this?’, the judge gave me six different documents and a flowchart of all the resources available to me. It’s as if you spend your life working hard to escape stereotypes, and then people are forcing you back into them, into submission. I think back to university. In sociology modules we had a week or two on class, including ‘does class exist?’. And we had lectures from a demographer who openly published that Muslims will take over the white British population by 2050 because of the high fertility rate. His papers had racist connotations – it wasn’t presented as a good thing – and I question why I let some things just pass. Well, I don’t have the energy to put right every wrong that comes up in the spaces that I’m isolated in, because of my background, a large part of which is determined by class. It’s a lot. It’s a huge burden. Bridgette: It’s exhausting… and the blowback can be very difficult, you can end up further ostracised. Psychologists suggest that people don’t do that… they just try to survive, they won’t engage, they just get through intact. There’s good research coming through from clinical psychology, including from Victoria Clarke [see tinyurl.com/5n8cac37], which shows that at the same time that practitioners may say ‘I don’t see class’, they also engage in and repeat derogatory stereotypes about working class. Then the person experiencing class-based discrimination has no means to tackle that because it’s been set in this space where it’s not about class. We need to start a class consciousness campaign, giving people the words and the ways to consider and reflect upon class, including their own class-based prejudice. Suriyah: I think class consciousness is pushed aside because of this idea of social mobility. Social media is the new school playground, where everyone’s having fun and playing but some of the key things that are shaping people’s lives are outside of this bubble. There are more food banks in the UK than branches of McDonald’s. We’re seeing class divides more than ever before. Even the middle class, or the people who have achieved social mobility, are experiencing the pinch.

the psychologist july/august 2022 equality act review

Bridgette: Maybe that wide impact is an opportunity to move away from this notion that if you’re poor it’s somehow your fault. The bootstrap discourse, the meritocracy. Philippa Carr’s research has found that very wealthy people will say that they should have their wealth because they have worked hard. But nurses work really hard, care workers work really hard, and there’s still this rhetoric that if you don’t have the money, it’s somehow your fault. The cost living crisis may start to demolish some of that discourse. It’s no one’s fault that the food and fuel prices have gone through the roof. Suriyah: I guess London, or Westminster, can seem so detached from the rest of the country. Recognition of class within the Equality Act could go a long way in breaking down the north south divide, which is, which is openly talked about in academic articles. The haves and have nots, it’s not even about the north and south anymore. It’s one part of the city to another, in Edinburgh, Birmingham, London, so many different areas. I taught on the social determinants of health inequalities this term at Edinburgh, encouraging students to use this intersectional lens with gender, race, age, disabilities. With socioeconomic status or class I was struggling, partly because it still isn’t formally recognised.

forward to enrich experiences. It hasn’t translated into recognition, a promotion or even an extension of my contract. I’m an early career academic, and I’m on short-term contracts. Every March, April, I’m looking for new jobs – that application cycle again, and it’s exhausting. The report that you read, it’s not in a journal. I just don’t want to hear the term ‘impact factor’, it really rubs me the wrong way. We’ve got MPs working with us, we’re in the news, but it doesn’t mean anything in academia. Am I in a bubble, some LaLa land where I’m seeing impact but no one else is? Can I communicate this better, pitch it? Bridgette: Maybe there’s nothing wrong with your communications, there are just all these words that we’re supposed to be using but no one’s told us about. The problem that I’m facing is that none of us are getting any funding for any of the research that we’re doing. We’ve all got quite big jobs and then this on the side, into the evening and weekends. This work will need to be discontinued without direct funding, or support for what we see to be really important work. I’ve met PhD students who couldn’t get a PhD sponsored on social class, so they’re doing the actual PhD in the lab, and then on the side they’re doing work on class. The irony that this is what is happening to working class people in academia…

Bridgette: The fact that it’s not protected means that we’re not obliged to measure it, in a “Social media is the new This is my experience systematic way. With the concern school playground, where –Suriyah: the employment experience of about class and inclusion, the everyone’s having fun and Muslim women, on the side. The university has driven a raft of Equality Act review, on the side. measures that are a proxy for class playing but some of the We’re in a highly classed – postcode data, some on ‘first key things that are shaping industry. Access to these research generation’ to go to university, people’s lives are outside applications, knowing where they maybe just occupation. Measures posted, it’s a class thing. Knowing aren’t always comparable and of this bubble” how to write them, it’s a class thing. we’re not systematically capturing I think you’re right, we don’t have class. I do work on working class the language they want us to use. women academics, and we don’t know how many people enter the work, how many stay, how many are promoted, because it’s not captured in any systematic Bridgette: I’ve got a language, a great one, it’s just not valued. way. All we’ve got is people’s experience, and that tells a quite torrid story. If class was protected, that Suriyah: Exactly. I found a home in anthropology, could become a central part of discussion. As it is, more than sociology and academia more broadly, class is positioned as illegitimate in some way, as because some in the field, such as Lila Abu-Lughod unimportant, when actually the evidence speaks to and Antonio Gramsci, have long advocated for ‘inside the need for much more systematic assessment of anthropologists’ or ‘organic intellectuals’. The way we class, so we can track the journey. need to learn about communities is people from those Perhaps we could finish on the challenges you’re communities talking about them. And I think that’s facing with the Equality Act review? what me and you are, we are inside anthropologists. But even though that’s probably the term that has kept Suriyah: One of the major problems is a lack of me in academia and research, it’s not valued. recognition for the work within academic spaces. I really value talking to you, because few academics have actually appreciated and seen the amount of work Bridgette: I really like that term, and I’m going to be thinking about that for some time. Thank you so that goes on. My pet peeve is invisibility. I’ve got this much for talking with such candidness. policy experience, I’m bringing this academic activism

‘To the teachers at the school it probably looked as if they didn’t care enough even to turn up for Parents’ Evening … But we understood our mothers a little better. We knew that they, in their own time, had feared school, just as we did now, feared the arbitrary rules and felt shamed by them, by the new uniforms they couldn’t afford, the bafﬂing obsession with quiet, the incessant correcting of their original patois or cockney, the sense that they could never do anything right anyway … And so ‘Parent’s Evening’ was, in their minds, not so distant from ‘detention’. It remained a place where they might be shamed.’ Zadie Smith, Swing Time (2016)

Eliza Southwood - www.elizasouthwood.com

the psychologist july/august 2022 class in education

‘People like us…’ Matthew J. Easterbrook on the psychology of class-based identities, interventions, and injunctions in education

e all know that education is important. But just how important? People with higher levels of education have on average higherpaying and more fulﬁlling jobs, better physical and mental health, and higher wellbeing; they also live longer, are more trusting of other people, and are more engaged with – and so have a louder voice in – politics (Easterbrook & Hadden, 2021). Not only do those with lower levels of education miss out on these advantages, but they also face stigma and discrimination because of their education (Kuppens et al., 2018). So, if there are barriers to educational engagement and success for some groups of students, these can have deeply damaging consequences throughout their lives. If we can identify those barriers and use that knowledge to make education a more welcoming, inclusive, and productive place for all, then we have a moral duty to do so. I am a social psychologist who investigates the psychological, social, and cultural factors that contribute to inequalities in educational outcomes, as well as interventions designed to reduce those inequalities. My work investigates what it means, psychologically, to be working class within the English education system, something that the Zadie Smith quotation illustrates with a powerful, emotional clarity. Yet to fully appreciate the psychology that underpins social class inequalities in education, we need to understand society more broadly. We need to dissect the tacit messages in our social surroundings. These are the messages that fuel our expectations about who will ﬂourish and who will fail. Society’s tacit messages As we grow up, we try – both consciously and unconsciously – to work out what we should do

with our lives. We ask questions such as ‘what might I be good at?’, and ‘where might I be wanted and valued?’. Classic social psychological theories like Leon Festinger’s social comparison theory and Tajfel and Turner’s social identity theory suggest that the best way to find answers to these questions is often to look at what people like us – our family, members of our community, our neighbours, those in our social class and with our backgrounds – have done with their lives. The questions then become ‘What do people like me do for a living?’, ‘what are we good at?’, ‘where are we wanted and valued?’, ‘where do we belong?’. For someone who grows up in a working class community, what might the answers to these questions be? Society is full of cues that suggest possible answers, which people readily and often unwittingly absorb. Take occupations (and see also ‘A note on terminology’). Over half the British population identify as working class, yet the social mobility commission reports that just four per cent of doctors, six per cent of barristers, and 11 per cent of journalists are from working class backgrounds. And in politics, you might expect that the Labour Party, founded in 1900 to represent the interests of the working class, would be open to working-class members. Yet, the signs indicate that this is not the case. While 70 per cent of its parliamentary members were working class when they first achieved electoral success in the 1920s, that figure is now only 8 per cent (O’Grady, 2019). Such heavy overlaps between social class and social roles create stereotypes about what people with certain backgrounds should be doing with their lives (Eagly & Koenig, 2021). They signal that these high-status professions are effectively off limits for working class individuals, and that they should try to move their lives in other directions. But what are those other directions? People living in deprived neighbourhoods have fewer job opportunities, and the jobs that are available tend to be unskilled, insecure, and unfulfilling. They are more likely to be on zero-hour contracts, to be paid below

the legal requirement, and to have dismal working conditions (see the SportsDirect scandal). For many, this is what ‘people like me’ end up doing with their lives, and so they come to expect that a similar route is mapped out for them, too. Similar messages are prevalent in education. Schools with higher proportions of working class students tend to be more run down, have difﬁculty attracting the most effective teachers, and may have high teacher-turnover. These are the schools that

Key sources Blanton, H. & Ikizer, E.G. (2019). Elegant Science Narratives and Unintended Influences. Social Issues and Policy Review, 13(1), 154–181. Cheryan, S., Plaut, V.C., Davies, P.G. & Steele, C.M. (2009). Ambient Belonging: How Stereotypical Cues Impact Gender Participation in Computer Science. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(6), 1045–1060. Cohen, G.L., Garcia, J., Apfel, N. & Master, A. (2006). Reducing the racial achievement gap: A social-psychological intervention. Science, 313(5791), 1307–1310. Croizet, J. & Claire, T. (1998). Extending the concept of stereotype threat to social class. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24(6), 588–594. Doyle, L., Easterbrook, M.J. & Harris, P.R. (2022). The roles of socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and teacher beliefs in academic grading. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/u4z6n Eagly, A.H. & Koenig, A.M. (2021). The vicious cycle linking stereotypes and social roles. Current Directions in Psychological Science. Easterbrook, M.J., Doyle, L., Grozev, V.H. et al. (2022). Socioeconomic and gender inequalities in home learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Educational and Developmental Psychologist. https://doi.org/10.1080/20590776.2021.2014281 Easterbrook, M.J. & Hadden, I.R. (2021). Tackling educational inequalities with social psychology. Social Issues and Policy Review, 15(1), 180–236. Easterbrook, M.J., Harris, P.R. & Sherman, D.K. (2021). Self-affirmation theory in educational contexts. Journal of Social Issues, May, 1–19. Easterbrook, M.J., Nieuwenhuis, M., Fox, K.J., et al (2022). ‘People like me don’t do well at school’: The roles of identity compatibility and school context in explaining the socioeconomic attainment gap. British Journal of Educational Psychology. Goudeau, S., Sanrey, C., Stanczak, A., et al. (2021). Why lockdown and distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to increase the social class achievement gap. Nature Human Behaviour, 5(10), 1273-1281. Goyer, J.P., Garcia, J., Purdie-vaughns, V. et al. (2017). Self-affirmation facilitates minority middle schoolers ’ progress along college trajectories. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(29), 7594–7599. Hadden, I.R., Easterbrook, M.J., Nieuwenhuis, M., et al (2020). Self-affirmation reduces the socioeconomic attainment gap in schools in England. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 90(2), 517–536. Ikizer, E.G. & Blanton, H. (2016). Media coverage of “wise” interventions can reduce concern for the disadvantaged. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 22(2), 135–147. Kuppens, T., Spears, R., Manstead, A.S.R., et al (2018). Educationism and the irony of meritocracy. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 76, 429–447. O’Grady, T. (2019). Careerists Versus Coal-Miners. Comparative Political Studies, 52(4), 544–578. See, B.H., Morris, R., Gorard, S. et al. (2022). A conceptual replication study of a selfaffirmation intervention to improve the academic achievement of low-income pupils in England. Educational Research and Evaluation, 1–34. Social Mobility Commission. (2021). Navigating the labyrinth. tinyurl.com/4eu6y68v Steele, C.M. (1988). The psychology of self-affirmation: Sustaining the integrity of the self. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 21(2), 261–302. Steele, C.M. (1997). A threat in the air: How stereotypes shape intellectual identity and performance. American Psychologist, 52(6), 613–629. Walton, G.M. (2014). The new science of wise psychological interventions. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(1), 73–82. Walton, G.M. & Yeager, D.S. (2020). Seed and Soil: Psychological Affordances in Contexts Help to Explain Where Wise Interventions Succeed or Fai. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 7(6), 165–170.

many middle class families choose to avoid by moving house, but this is simply not feasible for many. Such inequalities signal to working-class students that their education is not something that society values. Diane Reay documents the emotional impact of being allocated to a failing, demonised school in her academic work and her book, Miseducation: Inequality, education, and the working classes. She describes with depressing precision how these environments can extinguish hope and optimism for the future. Optimism for the future may well be difficult to conjure for working class students when, beyond school, we find that 16 per cent of Oxford undergraduates are classified as disadvantaged according to the ACORN classification, compared to around 40 per cent of the UK population. Furthermore, 31 per cent were educated privately, compared to 7 per cent of the overall population. These structural inequalities can be thought of as tacit messages that indicate to working class people that educational success is not for people like them, that their energies are better placed elsewhere. Social identities in social contexts As working class youths try to answer important questions regarding what they should do with their lives, they learn that striving to succeed in education and to enter a profession associated with educational success is not an easy or even a viable option. Of course, some individuals make it, but the odds are stacked against people from working class backgrounds, and these structural inequalities place working class individuals at a psychological disadvantage. That might sound dystopian, but there are important consequences for how people perceive themselves and others. A paper that my colleagues and I recently published (Easterbrook, Nieuwenhuis, et al., 2022) reports the results of a survey of over 4,600 students aged 15-16. We found that students who were eligible for free-school-meals – who were from families that were in economic hardship – were less likely than their peers to agree with statements like ‘working hard at school fits with my social background’, and ‘people with my social background usually get good grades at school’. These are questions that form a concept that we term identity compatibility: the compatibility or fit of your own background and identities with doing well in school. Eight months after we measured identity compatibility, the students took their GCSE exams. Students who disagreed with those statements, which was more likely if they were eligible for free school meals, got significantly lower grades, even after we accounted for the students’ previous exam results. What was particularly interesting about these results was that students eligible for free school

the psychologist july/august 2022 class in education

Threatening stereotypes meals had lower levels of identity The sense that school is a compatibility only in schools in threatening place in which you which there were large attainment are unwanted, undervalued, and gaps in the previous academic year expected to fail because of your between students eligible for free background, regardless of your own school meals and those who were personal qualities, characterises the not. psychological experience known We theorised that this finding as stereotype threat (Steele, 1997). reflected that who you are and who Dr Matthew Easterbrook is Stereotype threat is aversive and others see you as depends not only Senior Lecturer in Psychology brought about by the knowledge on who you are as an individual, at the University of Sussex. that there is a negative stereotype but also on which groups and social M.J.Easterbrook@sussex.ac.uk about your group that you are in categories (such as gender, age, or danger of confirming in the current ethnicity) you belong to. These situation. Doing so could reflect badly not only on you social identities derive much of their meaning from but on your whole group. social cues in the local context. These cues indicate to Stereotype threat has been shown to use up you and to others the meaning of these identities, as cognitive resources, provoke anxiety, and instil a fear well as how much the group or category is valued or of not fitting in or belonging in education. Over time, stigmatised and expected to fail or succeed. If you are it can lead to defensive disengagement: reducing your a member of a group that has historically performed engagement with, and the subjective importance of, poorly in the context you are in, then that context is education, in order to protect the self from the negative likely to be psychologically threatening to you. And psychological repercussions of threat, rejection, and this hampers your ability to achieve your potential. failure. Stereotype threat, then, is a psychological Consider for a moment the context in which barrier caused by social cues that indicate there we live and the implications of this finding. As well is a negative stereotype about a group’s academic as all the discouraging cues described above, in performance. It is an additional barrier that only affects England, the largest attainment gap – based on the members of groups that are negatively stereotyped most inclusive student categories used by the English in the local context, and thus can contribute to Department of Education, and excepting students who educational inequalities. do not have special educational needs – is between Studies have shown that stereotype threat reduces students eligible for free school meals and their the academic performance of working class students peers. Although estimates vary, we have calculated (Croizet & Claire, 1998), and can be ignited by cues that the pre-pandemic gap in students’ academic as ubiquitous yet seemingly innocuous as completing progress at age 16 is two and half years’ worth of questions about your background and viewing posters learning (Easterbrook & Hadden, 2021). The gap has that are consistent with stereotypes (Cheryan et al., narrowed only slightly over the last decade, despite 2009). And, of course, stereotypes about intelligence tens of billions of pounds worth of funding allocated are highly relevant in educational institutions. to policies designed to reduce it, and it is almost Coupled with frequent evaluative testing, there are certainly going to increase because of the pandemic many opportunities for stereotype threat to reduce the (Easterbrook, Doyle, et al., 2022; Goudeau et al., educational performance of members of negatively 2021). stereotyped groups. It is important to note that, although the free But pernicious stereotypes do not just affect the school meal attainment gap is considerably larger than targets. Stereotypes also prescribe what people should the corresponding gaps between the major ethnic be like, as a recent experiment illustrates. Lewis Doyle, groups, there are also sizable ethnic attainment gaps in some geographical areas in England, as well as between Peter Harris and I gave an identical piece of written work to teachers in England to assess, experimentally more exclusive or specific ethnic categories across the varying only the apparent social class and ethnicity country. Students from Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller of the student who wrote it. We found that teachers communities, as well as Black Caribbean students, for identified the same number of errors regardless of example, have particularly low attainment and high who they thought wrote the piece. But teachers who rates of exclusions, especially if they are also boys and thought the piece was written by a student on free eligible for free school meals. Indeed, students with multiple, intersecting, stigmatised social identities may school meals indicated that the student had less feel particularly threatened in educational settings. For potential and that the piece was of lower overall quality than did those who thought the piece was written example, certain ethnic groups are overrepresented among groups of lower socioeconomic status, meaning by higher class students. We found no effect of the ethnicity of the student. These teachers assessed the that many students with low socioeconomic status work in ways that reinforced society’s messages about are also members of minoritised ethnic groups. working class students in education: that they do not These students may feel that school is an especially belong and deserve to fail. threatening place.

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This is not to say that teachers are culpable and blameworthy. Teachers are often those among us who hold most strongly values of equality and who work hard to help students from all backgrounds. Teachers are not biased; we are all biased. (Indeed, we have found similar results when university students instead of teachers assess the essays). We are all biased because we absorb the messages that society sends to us about the value and expectations we should place on different groups, while being exposed to a strong meritocratic rhetoric that tell us people get what they deserve.

Wise interventions We have seen that psychologists are developing a rich understanding of the psychological experience of those from working class backgrounds in education, and the biases, disadvantages, and discrimination they are likely to face. But are we at a point where we can use this knowledge to attempt to reduce educational inequalities and make education more inclusive for all? There are several types of so-called ‘wise’ interventions that have been shown to reduce educational inequalities. The term ‘wise’ comes from 1950s gay culture and was used to describe straight people who understood the full humanity of gay people despite the viciously homophobic culture at the time (Walton, 2014). It is used here to label psychological interventions that depend on a deep understanding of the psychological reality of their targets. The interventions are designed to address specific aspects of students’ subjective experience of education, for example by reducing their worries about fitting in and belonging, by promoting a growth rather than fixed mindset about intelligence, or by fostering positive relationships between teachers and students. Here, I want to focus on just one type of wise intervention: values-affirmation. Values-affirmation interventions, as used in education settings (Easterbrook et al., 2021; Steele, 1988), are brief writing exercises that prompt individuals to reflect on their most important values. If timed well – before an important test or before a stressful educational transition, for example – valueaffirmations can reduce the negative impacts of stereotype threat on academic performance. When we experience stereotype threat, our attention and cognitive resources get focused tightly on the source of the threat and we may become hyper-vigilant to any cues that might be relevant to the threat and disregard everything else. Seemingly innocuous events can become interpreted through this hyper-vigilant lens so that our whole environment can become threatening and hostile. Under such conditions, spending just 15 minutes writing about your most important values can have transformative power. It can remind you that you are more than just a negative stereotype. It can broaden your horizons, widen your attention, extend the cognitive resources

you can draw upon, and dilute the sense of threat. It can free you from the psychological chains of stereotype threat. Based on this knowledge, Ian Hadden, our colleagues, and I investigated whether valuesaffirmation interventions could boost the academic performance of students from low-income households in England (Hadden et al., 2020). The initial study that we published involved 562 11-14-year-old students who were randomly allocated to either complete three values-affirmation writing exercises throughout the year, or to complete a psychologically-neutral control task. The value-affirmation exercises asked students to pick their most important values from a list and write a few brief paragraphs about when and why these values are important. You can find some examples of the affirming essays (paraphrased for anonymity promised in ethical reviews) overleaf. I am always struck by how authentic the writing is, and how, if I was faced with a stressful situation and spent a few minutes writing such text, I would feel better and more able to cope. Among those who did not do the value-affirmation exercises, we found a large socioeconomic attainment gap in the end-of-year maths tests, with students eligible for free school meals performing much worse. Values-affirmation had no effect at all on the performance of students who were not eligible; this is because they were not suffering from stereotype threat as they are not subjected to negative stereotypes about their intelligence. However, for students who were eligible for free school meals, completing three valuesaffirmation exercises – each just 15 minutes long – throughout the school year boosted their maths results to the extent that the attainment gap reduced by 62 per cent. That’s a remarkable reduction considering how

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brief the intervention was. At the same time as this study was underway, I was leading a much larger values-affirmation trial, involving 29 schools and around 11,000 students in England. We recently published the main results, which suggest that the values-affirmation exercises had a small yet positive effect on the GCSE exam performance of students eligible for free school meals (See et al., 2022). More granular, but as-yet unpublished, analyses indicate that the valuesaffirmation interventions had strong and positive effects on the GCSE performance of students who were eligible for free school meals, but only if they wrote essays that indeed had self-affirming content. Based on these results, we are working with teachers to design more engaging forms of values-affirmation interventions. Although we do not yet know whether our values-affirmation interventions led to long-term improvements, work in the US has shown that the beneficial effects of values-affirmation interventions can last for years after the intervention; a published paper following up the first evaluation of a valuesaffirmation study in US schools (Cohen et al., 2006; Goyer et al., 2017) found that the 11-13-year-old African American students – in the US, it is African American and Latinx students who are subject to prevalent negative stereotypes about their intelligence – who completed the values-affirmations were more likely to go to college and, among those who did go to college, were more likely to go to more selective ones. These results were found nine years after the intervention. It’s not magic People are often incredulous when they encounter such findings. How can interventions that are so brief and ostensibly simple have such profound results? In amongst all their other writing assignments, how can a short written exercise on values lead to long-term changes in performance and educational trajectory? How can such brief and cheap interventions have such profound effects when expensive large-scale interventions – like Pupil Premium funding – often have only limited effects? It beggars belief. One of the leading experts on wise interventions – Greg Walton – describes them (2014, p.73) like this: ‘They aim, simply, to alter a specific way in which people think or feel in the normal course of their lives to help them flourish’. This is a rich description that is worth unpacking. Firstly, each wise intervention precisely targets a specific psychologically process. The process will have been robustly interrogated through years of empirical research and found to be related strongly to the outcome of interest. Secondly, this psychological process is integral to a person’s normal daily experience. This means that changing the tenor of that psychological process – say, from one of threat to one of safety – will transform daily experience and

A note on terminology Members of the Senate campaign team have had much discussion on how we should deﬁne, understand, and measure social class. Is class interchangeable with socioeconomic status? Can we measure them accurately and effectively? Do our measures predict important outcomes? My perspective is that social class is something we are socialised into from childhood – a cultural orientation that we then take with us throughout our life. Questions that ask about your schooling or the occupations of parents when you were an adolescent are trying to measure your social class (see for example, the ‘Navigating the labyrinth’ report on socioeconomic background and career progression in the civil service, by the Social Mobility Commission). We need to think of class like this if we are to meaningfully talk about class discrimination in certain areas; particularly those akin to glass ceilings or glass cliffs. A well-paid, educated, mid-position manager who grew up in economic disadvantage might no longer be stigmatised because they lack resources or money. But they might be denied opportunities because the institutions they interact with have unspoken rules that favour those from middle class backgrounds with the ‘right’ accents and cultural tastes. This is class-based discrimination. It is distinct from socioeconomic discrimination, which is based on people’s current resources, occupation, or education. A person might prefer a certain look because of their class, but they might wear a certain look because their socioeconomic status determines what they can afford. Socioeconomic status varies throughout life; social class is less malleable.

so be strongly reinforced. Thirdly, rather than teaching people new skills or offering new experiences, wise interventions aim to remove psychological barriers to success that are faced only by certain groups or individuals. The interventions allow people to flourish using their current skillset and the resources that are already available to them. They are not magic, but precise, targeted, evidence-based interventions that change people’s everyday psychological experience to lasting effect. Part of the reasons that wise interventions can lead to long-term effects is because they are embedded within schools that are, in most instances, reactive and sensitive contexts. If a student does slightly better than expected in a test (because, for example, they completed a values-affirmation exercise before the test), then the teacher may notice and slightly alter their expectations for the student and thus how much academic challenge they give them. If the intervention is well timed, these small initial boosts in performance and confidence might eventually lead to the student being placed in a higher-ability set, which is likely to be more academically-orientated and nourishing. Frequent assessments mean that performance increments are likely to be noticed and feed into the student’s educational experience. These processes can lead to long-term benefits, but

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certain conditions must be met for the intervention to be successful. Firstly, the educational inequality that the intervention is aiming to reduce must be, at least in part, a result of the psychological factors that the intervention targets. It sounds obvious, but it is not: the psychological factors that interventions target are often subtle, internal, and subjective and so hard to identify without vigorous methods. We have suggested a research process that practitioners can follow so that they can ascertain which, if any, psychological factors are holding back some groups of their students. This process – which analyses student outcomes in conjunction with surveys and focus groups for students, teachers, and parents – helps schools understand their context in detail and so implement an intervention that has a high probability of success (Easterbrook & Hadden, 2021). Secondly, the context in which the intervention is implemented must be sufﬁciently sensitive to allow the recursive processes to take root (Walton & Yeager, 2020). Intervening in a school that is in chaos – with high teacher turnover, poor management, or a disruptive climate – is unlikely to support the initial beneﬁts that students might receive from a wise intervention. These require interconnected

Examples from values-afﬁrmation exercises ‘I love the summer because I get to see my family from back home. They remind me who I am and where I come from.’ ‘My friends are like brothers and sisters to me. I can be myself around them and they make me want to come to school.’ ‘Football is a really important part of my life. I count every minute of the lessons before games.’ ‘When I’m stressed, I like to sing my problems at the top of my voice. It makes me feel really alive.’ ‘My mum and I always stick up for each other. We share everything – shoes, clothes, everything. She’s more like a sister than a mother.’ 44

social fabrics and effective institutional practices to be propagated, otherwise their effects quickly fade. It is only when these conditions are met, and the intervention is delivered with skill and in the appropriate way (Easterbrook et al., 2021), that beneficial long-term outcomes can result. A bitter remedy Are wise interventions the future of education? Can they effectively and cheaply reduce educational inequalities nationwide? There are several reasons to be sceptical of such hopes. Consider why values-affirmation interventions are effective. It is because some groups of students experience stereotype threat which impedes their educational success. But why do they experience stereotype threat? Because there are stigmatising negative stereotypes about their group that are prevalent in society. Values-affirmation can benefit students from negatively stereotyped groups, but only those who meet specific criteria: that they are experiencing stereotype threat, that they perform the intervention in the way it is intended, and that they attend a school that is sensitive enough for recursive processes to take root. For all the students from negatively stereotyped groups who do not meet these criteria, as well as all those who do not have the opportunity to do a valuesaffirmation exercise, their educational performance – and thus their life opportunities – are likely to suffer. To close educational inequalities at scale and in a lasting way, we need to reduce the negative stereotypes that produce stereotype threat. Wise interventions in education are often an individualised and short-term fix that tackle the symptoms of societal ills. They do not target the cause. What is more, communications about wise interventions can have unintended detrimental effects (Blanton & Ikizer, 2019). Studies have shown that media communication about wise interventions, and specifically about values-affirmation interventions, can reduce people’s concern about educational inequalities and increase the blame they pour onto the disadvantaged group members for their poorer performance (Ikizer & Blanton, 2016). If someone sees that a pressing social issue can be reduced by very brief and ostensibly simple interventions, they may believe that the issue must be simple and so easily fixed. This in turn can lead people to believe that those who do not do well in their exams are simply not trying hard enough. So, psychological interventions can help tackle class-based inequality by targeting very precise psychological processes that are symptoms caused by the message that society sends to our children and young people. But if we want to genuinely reduce inequalities in educational outcomes, we need to change society and the messages it sends, not the individuals who receive them.

the psychologist july/august 2022 class in education

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‘What we eat, how we eat, how much, it’s all part of our class identities’ Our editor Jon Sutton meets Maxine Woolhouse to talk class and food

How did your interest in class and food come about? It’s actually rooted in some standout childhood memories around food. When I was a teenager, in the mid-80s I went round to a school friend’s house and they offered me mayonnaise. I’d never had it, I hadn’t even heard of it. I came from a family that had salad cream. Mayo’s quite mainstream now, but back then it was almost a bit exotic. It suggested you had travelled a bit, that you had more of a refined palate. And then the other thing I remember is, as a much younger child, I got invited to another friend’s house for tea. We had fish fingers, chips and bread and butter. I immediately made a fish finger sandwich, and my friend’s Mum told me off – she said it was very rude. I remember feeling kind of humiliated… that really did upset me. The bread is clearly there to make a butty, whether it’s fish or chip. Yes! I guess the point there is that certain foods symbolise some kind of class distinction – whether that’s because they are expensive, hard to get hold of, a bit exclusive. There’s cultural capital. And then things around etiquette and manners are also very classed. It’s obviously also very culturally specific: I’m talking very much a British perspective.

It’s also quite historically speciﬁc… most people I know would have those stories about going to a friend’s house and they’ve got proper Coke, or fondant fancies, and it’s just different. Whereas these days, young people perhaps connect more online, so they might miss out on those experiences around food and class differences. Absolutely. When I got into academia, I was initially interested in eating disorders, which are quite classed and gendered… perhaps not to the degree that the statistics suggest, but white, middle and upper class women are more likely to be diagnosed with something like anorexia. I quickly got more interested in everyday eating practices, those that aren’t considered ‘disordered’. I actually think that’s a slightly false distinction, that strict binary between disordered than normal. But an interest in mundane eating practices, with a particular focus on class and gender, made me

reflect back on some of those childhood memories, things that happened that made feel embarrassed or not cultured enough. You’ve gone for the narrative, discourse analysis approach – is that largely because you saw those emotional themes, of blame and control, and thought that language was the way to really dig into them? When we talk about food and eating, we are drawing upon culturally shared discourses. If you interview parents, mothers, there’s a great emphasis on health. They’re very keen to talk about how they have tried to make sure their kids have healthy food, and that’s across working class and middle class mums. That’s such a powerful and popular discourse these days, isn’t it? It’s part of your identity as a good parent or a good Mum. It’s presented as a bare minimum you can do really, isn’t it? To ensure that your kids have a healthy diet? Yes… I think you would be seen as a bad parent if you just said, ‘well, I let my kids eat wherever they want’. But for mothers in particular, it’s finding that balance – on the one hand, we’ve got this healthy eating discourse, but on the other hand, there’s also a strong awareness of eating disorders, particularly for mothers of girls. When I interviewed Mums, I found they were trying to find this balance between wanting them to eat healthily, but also not coming across as too strict and placing too many restrictions on what their kids can eat. They didn’t want to appear to have this punitive regime, this household where snack foods were too restricted. They thought that could encourage disordered eating – children having to be sneaky and hide what they’re eating and be secretive. So for parents and perhaps mothers in particular, it’s quite tricky terrain to navigate. It’s like parenting in a nutshell, isn’t it? Control versus freedom. Food is just a quite prominent and regular battleground for that. Do working class parents in particular have to negotiate or resist those narratives? If you’re a working class parent, there’s an awareness

the psychologist july/august 2022 class and food

that you are culturally stigmatised. Often working class parents are held up as not good enough parents, you’ve got all those tropes around single mums on beneﬁts, and there’s been a lot of coverage of child obesity. Often when we see images in the media, they often focus on working class or poor families. Again, mothers in particular – it is known that they do most of the ‘food work’, of planning meals, shopping, preparing, clearing up after. So I think working class mothers are aware of that stigmatisation around their status and are keen to emphasise that they do try to feed the kids healthily. What we eat, how we eat, how much, it’s all part of our class identities. We can construct class identities through our eating practices. For example, carbohydrate heavy meals are associated more with people on low incomes, because they ﬁll you up quite cheaply. And then, obviously it’s not true right across the board, but with other classes it’s perhaps more

about ﬁne quality without worrying ‘will I feel full after eating this meal?’ Research suggests that with working class parents, one of their prime concerns is ﬁlling their children up – putting food on the table they can be pretty sure their kids will enjoy so they’ll eat it, and then there’ll be no waste, and that the child will feel full after they’ve eaten. Obviously, you’re constrained by budget too. And time? George Orwell, in The Road to Wigan Pier, talked about how pressures on the working class impact the food they choose. ‘The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn’t. … When you are

unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don’t want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit ‘tasty’. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. I think that would still hold today. Probably more so in terms of the availability of kind of cheap and tasty, tasty foods. Yes, we talk about the obesogenic environment of the working class… there’s a much higher number of fast food outlets in poorer areas. We’re touching on the public health side here, and one of your papers caught my eye with the phrase ‘apocalyptic public health’. What do you mean by that? That research focused on the national child measurement programme, where they weigh and measure kids when they ﬁrst start school, and then when they’re just about to leave primary. What we can observe through analysing the policy documents around the programme was that childhood obesity was talked about in that apocalyptic terminology – ‘the current generation of children, they’re all going to die young’. We had a number of problems with it, but one is that at the end of the day, it’s counterproductive. That kind of fear message doesn’t tend to work in public policy. Also, there’s this intense focus on weight

as opposed to happiness, well-being, enjoyment, pleasure. So there are several things I probably advocate for in terms of policy. The first one is obvious – making sure that everybody has enough money to buy tasty, nutritious food, and that it is easily available accessible to everyone. The second is to focus more on pleasure, the enjoyment of food, and how that contributes to people’s overall well-being and happiness, rather than food being seen as something you have to fight against, a battle, constantly watching what you eat. In countries where food is more family orientated, meals are not just about the food, but about families getting together and that social aspect of eating. I’m not saying that being very excessively overweight doesn’t cause any health problems. But the link between weight and health is a contested area, yet it tends to get presented to us as if the two are directly related. Larger people can be very healthy and fit. I wish there could be more emphasis on the pleasure and the enjoyment that people can have from eating, without people being made to feel like they’ve got to be under surveillance all the time – always watching what they eat, thinking about the calorie content and the fat content and so on. You’ve called it a ‘grotesque discourse’ around food. It’s interesting that you’re not saying that obesity isn’t a clear public health issue, it’s that we’re talking

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the psychologist july/august 2022 class and food

about food in a way that is blaming and potentially just not effective anyway. People feel shameful. Dr Sarah Gillborn, for the second study for her doctoral research, she interviewed mothers about the national child measurement programme. For the Mums in particular who received the ‘overweight’ letter, they felt really guilty, ashamed, thought they had done something wrong and didn’t know whether to change anything because they didn’t want to cause the child to have problems around eating, by encouraging self-restraint and that dieting mentality in children who are quite young. So it did cause them a lot of a lot of anguish and upset. In line with a lot of government policies around obesity, it’s not only counterproductive, I think it’s quite harmful to the children being weighed and measured. They’re not oblivious, they’re aware of it. I’m sure it’s something that gets talked about amongst kids themselves at school. I know your focus is mothers, but as a father I think my reaction to those letters was a bit more ‘what are you telling me for?’ I think just because they’re growing in all sorts of ways when you get those letters, it’s pretty easy to just think, ‘well, they’ll get taller and it will all average out’. Again in terms of fathers, I think the role is quite different at mealtimes… mine is basically the human dustbin, ‘give that to Dad, he’ll finish it off’. Not sure that’s modelling good practices. Again I’m making some generalisations, but fathers tend to do the more special events like the barbecue, the Sunday roast, carving the meat. But getting back to policy, the other thing that came to my attention recently is putting calories on menus. Again I think that will be counterproductive. It’s ruined going to watch Leicester City for me… do you know how many calories there are in a sausage and Red Leicester roll? Exactly! And again it has a gender dimension. It’s known that women generally feel less entitled to food than men do. They feel like they’ve got to exercise more self-restraint. There’s this pressure to watch their weight and the calorie consumption, and that’s a source of stress and anxiety for a lot of women – not just women with eating disorders, and again I think that sharp distinction is a bit of a misnomer. In terms of class, there’s two things here. One is that you do get an intersection of gender and class, in terms of self-restraint. It is, generally speaking, middle and upper class women that tend to feel that pressure more to watch their weight. And if money is tight, then doing the weekly food shop is a source of stress. I’ve got personal experience with this – when my kids were young, I was a single parent and was on and off benefits for some time. The first thing you want to do is make sure your kids are full – you’re certainly not bothered about calories. On a tight budget, you’re not going to opt for the salad.

In some ways, it becomes a target. On rare occasions you do get to eat out, say you’re at Wetherspoons and you see on the menu ‘the average adult needs to consume 2000 calories a day’, and you see something with 1200 for a fiver, you think ‘that’s good value’. It’s funny you should say that… I remember going to Wetherspoons with my kids, and I ordered the five bean chilli, and my eldest son was freaking out: ‘you can’t have that, it says it’s under 500 calories, this is more!’. It does just show that you can’t necessarily apply the goals and targets of the middle and upper classes to what working class people are doing, in generating policies like that. You’ve got to talk to those communities about what they’re looking to get out of eating. Any policies, around food or anything else really, has to be community-based: from the roots up, and involving people who have a stake in that community rather than imposing national broad stroke policies in a top down fashion. At best they won’t do any good, and at worst they can be counterproductive and harmful. You’ve mentioned intersectionality… I guess race is important too in relation to eating practices and body image? Yes. I’ve got a student, Oluwatoyin Bewaji, who’s looking at Black women and body reshaping practices. She calls it thickspiration, the Coke bottle body shape. She’s looked at YouTube videos that promote ways to get this body shape, analysed all the comments, and interviewed Black women about what they do to try and achieve this particular body shape. One of the interesting things is that the majority of the research on women and eating, dieting, exercise, eating disorders, tends to be with White women. There tends to be an assumption that the thin or very slim body is a universal ideal. But actually for a lot of Black women, that body is disparaged… it’s a very white body, and they strive more for this curvaceous shape. What we eat is really culturally specific. It’s a big part of our cultural identity. It’s a powerful indicator of lots of things: class, gender, culture, race, historical period. It speaks volumes about who we are and where we’ve come from. ‘You are what you eat’, that’s a phrase for a reason. So to finish off, what would you hope to achieve from the Senate campaign? We’d like to get social class as a protected characteristic under the Equality Act. But also, addressing classism not just within the healthcare system, but also more generally all the things that impact on people’s health – poor housing, lack of green spaces, lack of safe spaces, access to healthy food, all the things that allow or constrain us to live healthy lives. We need to reduce that life expectancy gap. For me, that will be the number one priority from the health perspective.

‘It’s about creating environments where people feel that whatever position they are in society, somebody cares and wants to invest in helping them’ Professor Paula Reavey speaks to Shaoni Bhattacharya about how someone’s class, context and environment inﬂuences their mental health

How can someone’s environment and context shape their psychology? This is where my interest in social class comes into the picture. The literal material settings – the housing people live in, the urban kind of environment that gives shape to our experiences – can themselves communicate value in society. I edited and wrote a book in 2018 with Laura McGrath called The Handbook of Mental Health and Space, showing that the environments that people live in can lead to mental health challenges per se because we know that urban environments are less positive for people’s mental health. But also, the living conditions that people are situated within do not just lead to poor mental health per se, but also affect the way that the person interprets their mental health. If you’re living in really poor housing conditions and your mental health is suffering, how you make sense of that distress is shaped by the context in which you live. It communicates things like how valued you feel, how able you feel to escape from that situation. And we know from the mental health literature – George Brown and Tirril Harris conﬁrmed this in their seminal work in the late 70s – that if people feel trapped, if people feel that they’ve lost something valuable like their sense of identity, their sense of self, a sense of purpose, then that’s really detrimental to their mental health. So for me, the setting, the environment – literally the sort of materiality of somebody’s living circumstances – contribute to that psychological process. And class is of course, central to that.

You mention George Brown’s work in the 70s – could you tell me more about that? He was a social psychiatrist and Harris was a

psychoanalytic psychotherapist. Together they conducted a study with several hundred working class women in Camberwell in London. They wanted to understand what life events and living conditions preceded episodes of depression. Using the Life Events and Difﬁculties Schedule – a qualitative interview protocol – they measured what had happened to these women 12 months before, with certain women going on to develop depression. They found that life events and stress always preceded depression, but there was a further component – loss. That doesn’t mean just bereavement, but loss of a purpose, loss of a role, loss of identity. They were key factors in the development of depression, as was entrapment. The women that went on to experience depression following a stressful life event often had young children, they didn’t have a means of working outside the home, they didn’t have any independent income. The feeling that they weren’t valued could lead to feelings of shame and humiliation. Entrapment was a really important factor here, pointing to environmental factors, to a large extent. Brown got me interested in class because he was really bringing into view this idea that depression wasn’t just an individualised problem, it was a problem that was born out of real deprivation and an inability to escape from difﬁcult and stressful circumstances. And obviously, that’s more acute for working class people, especially working class women who might not have the same access to independent means. He found that those women who didn’t have a job outside the home were more vulnerable to those kinds of problems, compounded by their early histories. He found child sexual abuse and trauma came up in the histories of those women whose risk of developing depression was doubled if their current life circumstances were also

the psychologist july/august 2022 interview

Professor Paula Reavey is a Professor of Psychology and Mental Health at London South Bank University and a member of the BPS’ Psychology and Social Class: UK Policy Implications committee.

not ideal. What I really love about that study was the whole focus on what’s happened to these women, the context, the living conditions, the ongoing stresses. How have things moved on since Brown and Harris’ work? How is psychology generally doing on sort of these things? I think it’s better than it was in clinical and community psychology practice at least, and indeed in psychiatry to some extent in the UK. You know, we’re meant to have a biopsychosocial model of mental health these days – whether that actually happens in practice is sometimes debatable, but I think community and clinical psychology is very good at acknowledging contexts. A formulation approach, where rather than just diagnosing you try to formulate an idea of the problem with the client with a whole picture of their circumstances and context in mind, that’s a huge shift. And it is kind of paying homage to this idea of the importance of context and lived experience and life history and how they intersect with how we respond to life and relationships. I would also want to make very clear that service users themselves, their strong voices and activism have had a massive role to play in that development.

Is your own work looking at some of these things? We developed the Master’s degree, MSc Mental Health and Clinical Psychology, that I direct [at London South Bank University] with experts by experience consultants, and they also deliver an entire module laying out lived experience perspectives. .We treat that as just as important and theoretically coherent as we do other professional approaches. What I’ve learned about how things have changed has come directly via that kind of expert by experience channel. On the Master’s course, what we try to do on a speciﬁc module is show how that lived experience perspective has really sound theoretical as well as empirical foundations. And actually, I get the students to really unpick that… what does that mean, and how far can we take that? For me that that really is an indication of how things have improved and changed. I’m also Director of Research and Education for the Design in Mental Health Network UK. That network of people comprises architects, designers, experts by experience, and clinicians, and their whole mission is to improve environments for people with mental health challenges. Mostly in inpatient settings, but not just that – thinking about how we can improve cities and communities to better support people with mental health difﬁculties. We’ve also produced a book series called ‘Design with People in Mind’. I came up with the idea of producing research materials for designers and architects who want to create something with service users right at the heart of the building project. The idea is that when you’re thinking about what the physical constraints might be, for example ‘how can we design

a door that is anti-ligature, so somebody can’t harm themselves or die by suicide as a result of that design?’ – we’re saying ‘actually, architects and designers need to think about psychological safety as well – what makes people feel valued, safe and supported?’ Going back to your question earlier, about what an understanding of the environment has to offer… right down to the way that we design doorknobs and doors and windows, that can communicate something really important. A lot of patients that we’ve spoken to have said things like ‘you sit in your room and it’s like a prison cell’. And what that communicates is ‘I’m being detained, punished rather than treated for this mental health problem’. Again, thinking about social class: you go into some services in deprived areas and the paint’s peeling off the wall and the chairs are all broken. To me, that sense of ‘we don’t give a shit about you’ comes across in the materials themselves, in environments themselves. And I think that’s really important to get right – it’s about creating environments where people feel that whatever position they are at in society, somebody cares and values and wants to invest in helping them through a difﬁcult time and out the other side, towards a better future. Your own work has used visual methods in these contexts. Yes. When we tried to introduce visual methods into the NHS studies of mental health service use, with people in secure care and inpatient services, the ethics committees were really not very encouraging of this methodology at ﬁrst. But we’ve managed to persuade them that working with people in a more cooperative, participatory way is actually good for the research. So, we’ve been successful in being able to do around 15 NHS-based studies using visual methods right across the spectrum, from CAMHS [Children and Adolescent

‘Actually, architects and designers need to think about psychological safety as well’

the psychologist july/august 2022 interview

You also work on memory and a social remembering approach. Yes, that also feeds into this focus on context. Social remembering is not just what people remember, it’s the meaning and the interpretations they bring to those memories, and how that enables them to make sense of who they are in the present. It’s also an ecological approach because it’s interested in context. But it’s also interested in how the setting, the environment itself, affords us ways of remembering. So the research that I’ve done with Professor Steve Brown at Nottingham Trent University has been around developing a different kind of approach to memory, which ﬁts neatly with my mental health approach. It’s a psychosocial, ecological approach that brings the environment – the setting – into how we understand context, and how people make sense of that context. It’s quite similar in some ways to the kind of extended cognition work that goes on in psychology, but it’s more from an experiential, qualitative, contextual perspective.

example – shows that the the link between social class, social inequalities and mental health is irrefutable in affecting the way we understand ourselves, the way that we even think about our own sense of value in society, which is organised and reinforced via social comparisons and hierarchy. If we are of a lower/ working class position, we know that’s going to affect our self-esteem, how we understand our ability to communicate our feelings and thoughts, whether we feel ashamed and humiliated by the position we are in. I do think it’s about how we express ourselves as well, and whether that is valued. We know that, for example, in talking therapies, working class clients don’t often have the same access and do not necessarily connect with what is largely a middle class profession. We also know that private clinical practice is unaffordable to most working class people. Often the practitioners themselves are from different, more middle class backgrounds, so sometimes there’s a problem with communication and the ability to relate to one another… and we know that in therapy the relationship itself is often more important than anything else. On Brown and Harris’s point about people’s feelings of being trapped in a particular position that doesn’t offer them the opportunity or the sense of freedom to move out of something that’s difﬁcult for them – that’s obviously a problem. And that’s intersectional, as well. Of course, it’s not just about class, it’s about race, it’s about gender, disability, and sexuality, all of those really important other positions that we have to acknowledge in building a contextual picture of the person’s living circumstances. Going back to the point I made about professionals though, there is classism that we really need to think about in relation to mental health. Being discriminated against, or having a lack of access to services because of one’s class position – that has to be made unlawful. So when it comes to class, that centrality of context is absolutely vital. But also acknowledging that the living conditions in which people come into the world and move through the system can be detrimental to their mental health. So can classism – and classism is a real form of discrimination – which is why we want to have it included as a protected characteristic of the Equalities Act. The link between social inequalities and mental health is just so watertight, it’s so robust. Especially in more unequal societies.

Coming back to the Senate issue, how does your research feed into this year’s campaign? For me, going back to the centrality of context and thinking about where people are situated – often in a hierarchy of relations where some people’s voices are valued and other people’s voices are not even heard in services – is so important. Class has not even really been acknowledged in that debate around context, and power relations and hierarchies. And yet all the research that we know of, which is growing in volume – Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson’s work, for

What do you mean? Where you get a bigger gap between the middle class and the working class, that affects all sorts of things, including education and mental health. In those societies where that inequality is worse – in the UK or US, for example – it has much greater impact on those at the lower end. Austerity, for example, supports inequality. It keeps people in their place. It keeps people discriminated against. So that’s why I would say that unequal societies unfortunately end up supporting that disparity between

Mental Health] inpatients, to communities, to forensics secure services. What we found is that visual methods really enables participants to open up about the space and the experience itself. People in an interview room saying ‘right, what do you think of x, y and z?’ isn’t necessarily a very productive way of doing things. Young people are very used to using visual material, and the photo production studies have really opened up their ability to talk about their experiences. It’s about starting with them showing us their world. It’s them being the author of that world, rather than just the more passive recipient of the researchers’ interview schedules. We’ve also used drawings with forensic patients where we’ve asked them about sexuality whilst in hospital. Again, getting people to talk about the issue of sexuality is really tricky. So we invited people to use different kinds of art materials. It wasn’t literal representations of sex or sexuality, it was more metaphorical and symbolic. And again, we found that really helpful in organising the interview so that their experiences were the starting point of the conversation. The metaphors, the textures of the visual really helped open up that that level of engagement and conversation.

the rich and the poor and ultimately that will have a I come from a working class background, and I detrimental impact. I’m not saying that people from all made my way up through the university system, then social classes don’t suffer with mental health challenges got a PhD, and now I’m a professor. You could argue, – they really do, but one has to be realistic about how ‘well, that’s evidence that it can happen’ that you were those effects are seen more acutely at the lower end. resilient enough to overcome barriers. I can’t stand More specifically the link between, for example, that explanation because it individualises it. And it’s even severe forms of mental distress such as interesting that along the way the remnants of my psychosis, schizophrenia, and poverty… the evidence working class background still feel troubling to me at is absolutely robust. And that’s not incidental – in certain times, and sometimes a real barrier in terms of societies where the distressed are supported into feeling valued, confident or feeling that I don’t fit in or employment, supported by the community, they belong in academia or other professional contexts. tend to recover more quickly… as Richard Warner, The evidence that we’re putting together in the a psychiatrist and cultural reports is really speaking to that anthropologist argued, they feel psychological and social aspect of part of society, they feel valued. how we define and measure class “unequal societies We, as psychologists, need to and the impact of class on our unfortunately end understand that link between sense of self. To look at the impact up supporting that poorer mental health, power and of class status on our emotions, inequality and social class in order how we compare ourselves, how disparity between the to provide better services. This is valued we feel, our self-esteem. And rich and the poor” what the Clinical Psychology and it’s a really complicated picture. Community Psychology sections You look at a society like are writing about doing at the Finland or Estonia where you don’t moment. have hierarchies in the education system, you don’t have grammar schools, you don’t have private schools, The Senate is asking for class to be included as a funnily enough, everybody rises. Finland is a great protected characteristic in the Equality Act. Are there example of when you don’t have that hierarchy built precedents in terms of, say, race and gender, to show into the fabric of society in the form of education for this has made a difference? example, people thrive more readily. There’s that sense The evidence is strong, it’s clear, and just as much that everybody’s education is valuable, not just for the as other forms of evidence relating to race and few deemed ‘bright enough’ – or those whose parents gender are clear. If practitioners, or educators, or can afford a personal tutor or private school place. In people delivering housing services, or workplaces, the UK, we have grammar and private schools, and discriminate against an individual as a result of their you gain social capital by being part of that system, social class, then that should be against the law. And that is then more transferable in certain higher paid that’s what we would hope is that visibility, that legality, professions. And even though people could argue ‘oh, would back up and support the kind of evidence that well, working class kids can go to grammar school’, we we’ve been collecting… the detriment experienced know that the proportion of working class kids going more frequently by those of lower working class to grammar school is really low, and certainly even less backgrounds. so for private school because they can’t bloody afford it, or don’t have the means to be prepped to apply for a Class in Britain is a very specific thing isn’t it? In scholarship. some countries it seems you can rise and fall in If you have a society that supports or enables class with money, but perhaps less so in Britain. Is certain people at the top end of the system to thrive, class tangibly different in Britain – how do class and then inevitably there will be discrimination and a lack economics relate together? of opportunity for others. I think they do relate. But one of the things that we’re trying to work on as part of our Senate Campaign is Is there anything else that you think is important to how to define class in the first place, as it has to be say on this issue? more than measuring socio-economic status. Class A lot of this work has been conducted already – goes beyond economic capital. When the committee the World Health Organization has acknowledged last met we were talking about a sociologist called the importance of social deprivation and social Pierre Bourdieu. He talks about how class isn’t just inequalities in relation to mental health. And health about money. It’s not just about total economic capital, services acknowledge it left, right and centre. What it’s about cultural capital and social capital, who you psychologists can contribute to is the sense of how that have ties with, whether the cultural kind of capital impacts on how we feel about ourselves: right down to that you acquire via your class background is valued, how we think, feel and communicate. And that’s where what your preferences are, your tastes, your modes of I think the real contribution can come, but only if we expression, whether the dominant society values that are thoroughly grounded in context – using robust or doesn’t. evidence and sophisticated theory.

the psychologist july/august 2022 interview

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The myth of meritocracy Celine Brookes-Smith, Elizabeth Henshaw, Katie Place, Dr Will Curvis and the late Dr Ben Campbell on ‘pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps’

Dr Ben Campbell had a lot to say about the myth of meritocracy and bootstraps. It is a privilege to be able to share the piece he was working on with the ClassClinPsych collective, at the time of his passing. Thank you, Ben, for bringing us together. Through your hard work, we will be able to continue highlighting the experience and impact of class on the career journey through Psychology, and beyond. After your piece, we seek to do that through our own stories.

Dr Ben Campbell

ociety has bought into the romanticised idea of ‘bootstrapping’, introduced by American author Horatio Alger around the turn of the 20th century. Sheer ‘hard work’ can, the theory goes, lead a person out of hardship and up the class hierarchy (Littler, 2013; Weiss, 1969). If you have ‘pulled yourself up by your bootstraps’, you have achieved success by your own efforts, starting from difﬁcult circumstances and without help. Bootstrapping infers we live in a society whereby intelligence + effort = succeeding by merit (Young, 1958). If you are bright enough, conscientious enough and dedicated enough you can prove yourself ‘worthy’ enough to, for example, attend university or enter professional careers. People who do not ‘make it’ must lack intelligence, skills, effort: they simply ‘did not try hard enough’. They themselves are to blame for their ‘failures’. But pulling oneself up by bootstraps is a romanticised idea, disregarding structural, political, and societal level inequalities. Social, ﬁnancial, and cultural barriers include poor-quality education, lack of access to opportunities and socio-economic deprivation (Friedman & Laurison, 2020). The myth of meritocracy overlooks how caregivers from more privileged backgrounds can provide their children with an upper hand – paying for extra tuition, and using social capital to obtain jobs, experience, or advice. Haralmabos and Holborn (2013) found class to be a better predictor of academic achievement than IQ level, suggesting the role of structural/ societal inequalities for people from a working class background. The 2020 A-level scandal, which showed that the poorest students were awarded the lowest grades, is further evidence of this. The myth also ignores how individuals may use parts of their identity to affect their power to ‘make it’ e.g., being male, able-bodied, and neurotypical. Meritocracy ignores how different parts of our identity can intersect with class (Jury et al., 2017) to create further barriers and challenges e.g. race, sexuality

the psychologist july/august 2022 meritocracy

‘Pulling oneself up by bootstraps is a romanticised idea, disregarding structural, political, and societal level inequalities’

(Taylor, 2012), and gender identity (Cotton et al., 2016), which can feel insurmountable. In short, societal systems are to blame for people’s ‘failures’. The false escape In societal narratives, pursuing higher education and getting a professional career is seen as an ‘escape hatch’ from being working class. The idea that being working class is something to aspire away from is shaming and a way of alienating working-class individuals from their ‘roots’ when they have entered professional careers. This further perpetuates the myth that one cannot be working class and have a professional career (Crew, 2020). That’s despite the fact that ‘working class’ is more than your career and salary – it encompasses a life of experiences. More working-class people are going through the ‘escape hatch’ and accessing higher education since the Higher Education Act in 2004. The act was part of a political aspiration to send half of the population’s young people to university but the number of workingclass students entering and succeeding at tertiary level education remains lower than their middle-class counterparts (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, 2014; Reay, 2021). Barriers faced by workingclass people continue to exist and are consistent across higher education, academic, and professional careers (i.e. psychology, medicine, and law: Gardner, 2011; Lühe, 2014; Sifuentes, 2017). These include practical challenges, such as housing, ﬁnances, and the necessity of part-time employment, which have been shown to decrease the likelihood of working-class students embarking on higher education. Rates of stress and burnout are much higher compared to students from

more afﬂuent backgrounds (Moreau, 2006). Working-class students are also less likely to achieve the highest degree classes and even less likely to continue education beyond an undergraduate degree (Hutchings & Archer, 2001). Reduced access to professional scaffolds like career guidance, mentorship, and support, coupled with a sense of alienation, mean an even smaller proportion of working-class students will access professional careers after graduating (Crozier & Reay, 2011; Jones & Nangah, 2021). Class as a protected characteristic The formalisation of measures of class-related disadvantage is ongoing (Day et al., 2020). Psychology’s input into these measures is vital, to capture the holistic and complex experience of working-class individuals. With formal recognition of class as a deﬁned, measurable, protected characteristic, myths such as bootstrapping and meritocracy can be dismantled. As class-related discrimination attracts more attention, it is imperative, now more than ever, to work with universities and employers to provide support for those from a working class background who are alienated in the environments pitched as their escape to the middle-class world. Too often, obtaining that golden university ticket is seen as the end of the struggle, but there are continuous psychological, social, and economic barriers when accessing higher education and professional careers. Class consciousness Being aware of the myth of meritocracy has been referred to as ‘class consciousness’, whereby working-

class people become aware of the societal oppression they have experienced historically and currently (Kelsh, 2006; Social Mobility Commission, 2021). Promoting class consciousness for working-class people is important, and it is recommended that therapists promote this in their work, to enable people to accurately locate problems within systems rather than themselves (Trott & Reeves, 2018). This can only take advocacy so far; it is our belief that promoting the consciousness of class in middle- and upper-class people is just as important. By recognising our own privilege/s, or lack of, we can collectively challenge societal beliefs such as the myth of meritocracy. See also the ClassClinPsych position statement on the impact of class in Clinical Psychology (tinyurl.com/ yhjn8ya5). The myth of meritocracy keeps class oppression alive. Myths can only be dispelled when they are seen, heard, and spoken about. As a collective, we believe in the power of stories from those affected by experiences related to class. We can feel vulnerable when sharing personal experiences, but we offer some of our own experiences in the hope that they bring the issues discussed to life. This is how the myth of meritocracy has manifested for us, in our personal and professional journeys so far.

‘There were so many more ﬁnancial barriers than I ever expected’ I identify as being working class, and the ﬁrst person in my family to go to university and pursue a professional career. For years I bought into the idea that I got where I am today through sheer hard work. That’s a story we often tell ourselves. Now I acknowledge the barriers I have experienced with being working class, especially a lack of economic capital. I worked multiple jobs from the age of 14, often leaving me one day off a month. Then at 24, I worked full-time alongside a part-time MSc. I always volunteered to work over bank holidays, Christmas, New Year and extra hours. I knew my parents would not be able to pay my way. I needed money for driving lessons, for having and running a car (often a requirement for Assistant Psychologist roles), to pay for food at university (my housemates joked about plain pasta). I needed to pay for higher education – this was before loans were introduced for masters degrees – so when I hit 16, I worked and saved. A lot. I also knew I had to stay at the university I did my undergraduate at to do my MSc, because that meant I got 20 per cent off the fees. I did all this because I knew that was how I would get what I was told I needed to ‘make it’, via the ‘escape

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the psychologist july/august 2022 meritocracy

hatch’ of higher education and into a professional career. There were so many more financial barriers than I ever expected, including only being able to apply for permanent and full-time roles and having to pay hundreds of pounds to present and attend conferences. I also contend with additional barriers that come with being dyslexic, which wasn’t confirmed until after my undergraduate degree. For years I thought my learning difference (in particular struggling with pronunciation, spelling, telling the time and grammar) was because I was working class… I must just be a bit ‘stupid’. I was initially placed in lower to middle sets in school and was predicted to get low to average grades. Somewhere along the line I found myself in the top sets, wondering how on earth I ended up here with all the ‘posh kids’. Having a confirmation of dyslexia completely shook up a fundamental belief I had about myself that was so intertwined with my working-class identity. The report said I had a high IQ. Yep. Me. A high IQ! I also want to acknowledge the parts of my identity and experiences that have given me an advantage. Although my family and I are working class, the area we lived in is now relatively affluent, so there are good primary schools, high schools and an excellent grammar school in the town. The quality of education I was able to access because of where I lived was paramount in providing me with an advantage. If I had lived in one of the other nearby towns it might have been a very different experience. I attended the grammar sixth form which gave me some cultural and social capital that I relied on to access university. I made friends with affluent peers, and learned how to present myself as less working class. I knew that the less working class I appeared the more I would fit in with peers also pursuing professional careers, which meant I would then fit in better with colleagues in professional careers, as well as people on my interview panels (for jobs or higher education). I was heavily supported by teachers and encouraged to write my UCAS form. I have no doubt that the guidance in presenting myself in the ‘right way’, and being able to put that I went to a grammar school, all contributed to me going to a top 10 university even though I didn’t get the minimum grades required. University further added to my social and cultural capital in ways I never imagined. I continued to shape myself to appear less and less working class, which did not go unnoticed in my family and peer groups. I altered my dress, my accent, my mannerisms, my interests. I felt that if I was going to get where I wanted to be, I needed to leave my working-class identity and self behind. If someone saw me as working class in a world not meant for working-class people, I feared they would write me off and judge me as being ‘stupid’, ‘common’, ‘incapable’ and ‘incompetent’. It was not until I joined the ClassClinPsych

collective a few years ago that I started to feel a sense of belonging in this career. I reconnected with parts of my working-class identity and recognised the strengths it gives me, both personally and professionally. Now I’m here, soon to be a qualiﬁed Clinical Psychologist, I want to be part of shifting unhelpful narratives about working-class people – like the myth of meritocracy and shame people feel. We have to continue these conversations in the hope of change towards equity in the profession. Katie Place ‘I dreaded “wasting” the opportunity of university…’ Class consciousness has pervaded most of my life. As someone who grew up on a council estate, I knew my home situation was a little different to the other kids at the primary school I attended despite being out of the catchment area. Things that may seem small – a friend confessing their parents forbid them from playing out nearby to my childhood home, or not being able to afford to go on the upcoming school trip – amalgamated into a sense of shame that was born out of microaggressions towards working-class individuals. As I got older, I tried to push through the shame I was feeling by allowing others into this space. A comment that stuck with me was ‘This house really isn’t what I expected from someone like you’. What I think they meant is that a student with straight A’s surely could not live here. This comment reminds me frequently of the narrative that individuals without economic privilege are not conscientious enough or bright enough to succeed. At university, class consciousness really came into focus for me. I turned down an offer to study at a top university as the applicant’s visit day left me feeling alienated. I did not have sporting or musical accomplishments – how could my mum have offered that when sometimes we struggled for the basics? I remember a teacher standing at the front and asking the class ‘Is anyone here on free school meals? You can have a copy of the textbook for free.’ I did not raise my hand. The shame of being working class, and the pressure to mask my working class-ness, kept me quiet. Confronted with the stark differences between me and my peers at the university I attended, my mental wellbeing suffered. I became further overworked. Instead of long summers travelling it was long shifts – partly for the monetary value, but mostly out of the fear of ever

being without enough again, and for the dread of ‘wasting’ the opportunity of university and not being able to secure my ‘escape’ from the working class. I too believed that the harder I worked the more likely I was to succeed. But looking back I can see that ‘hard work’ is not rewarded equally. Rewards are not promised to those that lack social and economic capital, or have disadvantages due to other minoritised social identities.

Key sources Crew, T. (2020). Higher education and working-class academics. Cham: Springer International Publishing. Crozier, G. & Reay, D. (2011). Capital accumulation: working-class students learning how to learn in HE. Teaching in Higher Education, 16(2), 145-155. Gardner, S.K. & Holley, K.A. (2011). “Those invisible barriers are real”: The progression of ﬁrst-generation students through doctoral education. Equity & Excellence in Education, 44(1), 77-92. Jones, C.S. & Nangah, Z. (2021). Higher education students: barriers to engagement; psychological alienation theory, trauma and trust. Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education, 25(2), 62-71. Jury, M., Smeding, A., Stephens, N.M. et al. (2017). The experience of low-SES students in higher education. Journal of Social Issues, 73(1), 23-41. Reay, D. (2021). The working classes and higher education. European Journal of Education, 56(1), 53-64. Sifuentes, A.F. (2017). Blockades, barricades, and barriers: accessing and navigating academia from a multi-marginalized positionality. Journal of Working-Class Studies, 2(2), 108-119. Trott, A. & Reeves, A. (2018). Social class and the therapeutic relationship. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 18(2), 166-177. Full list available in online/app version.

When I share my experiences with those less burdened by the weight of class-based discrimination they often congratulate me for ‘making it’. But it’s a dangerous trope to use those who have broken through the class-ceiling as an example of how meritocracy is working just ﬁne. The danger comes in feeding the narrative that escaping the working class makes difﬁcult experiences worthwhile, the idea that being working class is in-itself a bad thing, and the idea that those who have not graduated to the middle class did not work hard enough. Now – conscious of my social and economic class – I face new barriers. I am confronted by those who will not regard me as working class due to doing well academically, the job I have, the way I talk or the social circles I am part of. I would like to acknowledge that these things give me some privilege, and that I have been fortunate enough to be able to ‘pass’ as middle class. However, stripping away my class identity, and the class identity of those who have accessed enough social power to speak out against the myth of meritocracy, silences those affected by class discrimination and allows these myths to continue. I hope that by sharing some of my personal story I can validate the experiences of other working-class people. Celine Brookes-Smith

‘It always felt like I was playing catch up to those around me’

When I started university I really struggled to connect to my peers. There was probably a combination of factors that contributed to this, such as being autistic and coming from a working-class background, the transition of leaving home and the local sixth form and moving to a new city, and then navigating higher education and the people within higher education. Other people just seemed to ‘know’ what they were doing – how the systems worked, or a friend of a friend or a family member who might be able to help – whereas I knew nobody. It always felt like I was playing catch up to those around me. There were times during my undergrad when I thought about dropping out. However, I also knew there was nothing to fall back on if this didn’t work out. My family very much bought into the idea of university as being the ‘escape hatch’. I tried to do as much as possible in order to make my CV stand out. I thought everyone in my

cohort would be in a similar position. It was when I started to speak to other members of my cohort that I became aware of class consciousness because of the opportunities others had through their social capital – for example, because they had connections who already worked in the profession. I found myself wondering why these options were not available to me despite my additional award programmes and volunteering. I hoped this would enable me to get my foot in the door and prove to family around me, and potential recruiters, that I really was trying. Online application forms would flag that I had input the hours and dates wrong on the ‘past experience’ section, as I was working 60+ hour weeks. I don’t remember being particularly aware of this at the time, but I think somewhere I knew I needed to go ‘above and beyond’. These reflections aren’t meant to meant to minimise some privileges I hold, with being a white cisgendered woman pursuing a career in Clinical Psychology. As class is spoken about more and more within the profession, it’s important we don’t fall into the trap of having a ‘single story’ about class. People should reflect on their own background and privilege throughout training and post-qualification. Liz Henshaw

the psychologist july/august 2022 meritocracy

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TRIAL

Getting what you deserve? Simon Goodman, Philippa Carr and Jackie Abell on the psychology of income inequality

Against the backdrop of Brexit, a pandemic, war in Ukraine, a costof-living crisis, and the UK Government’s 2019 manifesto promise to ‘level-up’, income inequality should be at the forefront of psychological research…

Key sources Carr P, Goodman, S. & Jowett, A. (2018). ‘I don’t think there is any moral basis for taking money away from people’: Using discursive psychology to explore the complexity of talk about tax. Critical Discourse Studies 16(1): 84–95. Carr, P., Goodman, S., Jowett, A. & Abell, J. (2021). ‘You come back fighting. That’s what gives you the drive to achieve’: The extraordinary psychological construction of the super-rich in entertainment documentaries. Discourse & Society, 32(5), 559–574. Gibson, S. (2009). The Effortful Citizen: Discursive Social Psychology and Welfare Reform. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology 19, 393–410. Goodman, S. & Carr, P. (2017). Belief in a Just World as an argumentative resource in debates about unemployment benefits. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology 27(4), 312-323. Graafland, J. & Lous, B. (2019). Income inequality, life satisfaction inequality and trust: A cross country panel analysis. Journal of Happiness Studies 20, 1717–1737. Wilkinson, R & Pickett, K (2017) The enemy between us: The psychological and social cost of inequality. European Journal of Social Psychology, 47, 11-24. Full list available in online/app version.

he UK is a particularly unequal society, with the richest 0.1 per cent of households having as much wealth as the poorest half of all households (Equality Trust, 2022). Wilkinson and Pickett (2017) have shown that such elevated levels of income inequality damage society, negatively impacting on physical and mental health, social cohesion, women’s rights, crime, and educational achievement. It renders people unsatisfied with their lives and mistrusting of others (Graafland & Lous, 2019). Despite this, there is a paucity of current psychological work looking at explanations for income inequality, especially amongst the super-rich. If we revisit Lerner’s (1980) ‘Belief in a Just World’, one explanation is that people get what they deserve. The concept of meritocracy, first introduced by Young (1958), proposes that success and rewards are a result of intelligence plus effort. We can see the rhetoric of meritocracy reflected in people’s explanations and justifications for income inequality in the UK (Goodman & Abell, 2019), yet it is often forgotten that the concept was introduced by Young as an ironic comment on the foolishness of working hard in the hope of just reward (Allan, 2011). In our exploration regarding how the public account for income inequality, Goodman and Abell (2019) conducted focus groups and identified four key arguments they used. These are that: • inequality is seen as inevitable and avoidable – ‘It’s not right, but we’re a capitalist society’; • inequality is unfair – ‘I find it grossly unfair that in a so-called developed nation we have people that have to go to food banks’; • inequality works as a motivation to work hard – ‘You’ve got to have something to strive towards. If we all have the same amount of money the world wouldn’t work’; and • inequality is the result of individual characteristics – ‘We’ve got different levels of intelligence, different levels of, you know, education and drive’. Hence our explanations for income equality may serve to support the status-quo, with psychological ideas of motivation and individual differences being key drivers in arguments that support it. This suggests that measures to overcome inequality may be hard to sell. The media contributes to our language about income inequality. For example, dressed up as popular entertainment, income inequality has become a spectacle for us to enjoy. One popular genre of media broadcasting are documentaries about the super-rich. In 2015, the BBC2 had a ‘super-rich season’ of programming (e.g., Rich Russians, The SuperRich and Us). Carr (2020) has examined how this mass media display of the super-rich in domestic settings can serve to normalise extreme wealth and consumption, as well as drive aspirations. For those who have

the psychologist july/august 2022 income inequality

Who are the super-rich? Defining the super-rich is complex, as individuals can place their wealth in various assets, investments and complex financial trust arrangements, making them hard to identify. The source of their wealth is also heterogenous. They have contributed to a redefining and broadening of the traditional ‘upper social class’ category, to embrace wealth achieved from a myriad of means (Featherstone, 2014). HMRC considers people with a net worth of over £20m to be of interest for their High-Net-Worth Unit (HNWU), devoted specifically to deal with the tax affairs of the super-rich. Tracking the ownership and movement of wealth is notoriously difficult (Beaverstock and Faulconbridge, 2013; Urry, 2014) as we have seen in recent efforts to enforce sanctions on the assets of Russian oligarchs based in the UK.

inherited their wealth, the focus is on their efforts to deserve such rewards and their charitable deeds. Heirs present themselves as workers and emphasise wealth as family acquisition rather than a personal one (Carr, 2019). So, whether your wealth is acquired through your own efforts or your family’s, both the media and the super-rich treat your ‘deservedness’ as the accountable issue. Deserving your good fortune is important if the status quo is to remain untroubled. Accusations of ‘poverty porn’ have also been levelled at UK broadcasters, where television programmes such as Benefits Street are perceived to reify stereotypes of the poor. Goodman and Carr (2017) explored the positioning of the unemployed as ‘just’ in televised debates. In a UK society that views itself as meritocratic, this is the lens through which we portray, explain, and understand income inequality. For the super-rich, it can be a vehicle for legitimising vast wealth. Having more drive and resilience than less wealthy others, their wealth is deserved (Carr et al., 2021). This capitalist and democratic ideology fuels aspirations for others to become wealthy; they just need to put the effort in. On the flip side of the coin, ‘effortfulness’ is used to question the legitimacy of benefit claimants (Gibson, 2009). Why reward the lazy?

Philippa Carr, University of the West of England. Philippa2.Carr@ uwe.ac.uk Jackie Abell, Coventry University. Jackie.Abell2@ coventry.ac.uk Simon Goodman, De Montfort University. simon. goodman@dmu. ac.uk

One way to increase equality and ‘level up’ is through tax and public spending. In April 2022, National Insurance Contributions were increased by a 1.25 per cent levy to provide additional funding for health and social care services. For economic psychologists, tax presents a ‘tragedy of the commons’ (Hardin, 1968) quandary where individuals decide whether to act in their own interests or for mutual beneﬁt (Alm, 2017). Using a discursive approach to analyse a radio debate about tax, Carr et al. (2019) notes how people grapple with collective and individualist arguments to negotiate the dilemmas of tax. On the one hand, tax funds essential public services and supports people in need, whilst on the other it is perceived as theft from those who work hard for their money (also see Goodman and Abell, 2019). Across psychology we need more investment in understanding and challenging poverty, wealth, and the practices that effectively keep people in their places. We have the knowledge and tools to do this. As well as looking to the politicians and their practices that support an unfair distribution of wealth, we also need to look at and change our language and the values embedded within it. People do not get what they deserve.

‘Improving the safety, quality, and stability of people’s environments should encourage healthy behaviour’ Richard Brown, a PhD student at Northumbria University, talks with his supervisor Dr Gillian Pepper

Why are those who are more likely to die due to factors beyond their control less motivated to take care of their own health? That’s the question at the heart of the Uncontrollable Mortality Risk hypothesis, and of my own PhD project. I’ve been inspired by the work of Dr Gillian Pepper, a psychology lecturer at Northumbria University and my supervisor. Her research focuses on socioeconomic disparities in health, investigating how structural inequalities affect human behaviours, and go on to impact health and longevity. Gillian uses evolutionary theory and observational and experimental data to examine differences in psychology, health and social behaviour. We sat down to discuss the origins of Gillian’s approach, and how she feels this line of research could help to tackle class-based inequalities in health.

How did you become interested in studying health inequalities? I’ve been interested in biology and in health since I was an undergraduate student. My ﬁrst ever academic paper, which came out of my undergraduate thesis, was about the possible protective function of morning sickness. After graduating, I spent some time working for the Department of Health, where I learned of some of the practical challenges of health improvement. During that time, I read The Spirit Level, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, and also Status Syndrome by Michael Marmot. Both books make convincing cases for tackling inequalities in power and wealth in order to improve public health. They raised my awareness of the importance of tackling inequalities, not just for the health of those who are victims of inequality, but also for the wellbeing and prosperity of societies more generally. I started working on this topic in my own very small way by investigating the psychological impact of perceived inequality as part of my MSc thesis,

and my interest grew from there. Then, I was lucky enough to get a PhD scholarship with Daniel Nettle at Newcastle University. He does some excellent work on health inequalities and is using novel theoretical and methodological approaches to try to untangle the causes and effects of inequality. During those PhD years, my work focused on the effects of perceived risk on behaviour, which is relevant because there are social class inequalities in exposure to numerous health risks. Examples include violent crime, pollution, poor housing (think damp, mould, and flammable cladding), and even Covid-19. Since then, I’ve also worked on understanding the biological mechanisms underpinning inequalities in health and ageing, as well as some of the other aspects of health inequalities, such as food insecurity. What are some of the class-based health inequalities in the UK today? What do you think are the causes? People living in more affluent areas of the UK can expect to live significantly longer than those living in the least affluent areas. They can also expect to live for much longer in a good state of health. The Office for National Statistics has found that, in recent years (2017-2019), an average man in one of the most deprived parts of the country could expect to live 9.4 years fewer than an average man in one of the most affluent parts of the country. For women, the gap is 7.6 years. The inequality is even bigger when we consider how long people can expect to live in good health: the healthy life expectancy gap for men is more like 18 years, with the gap for women being close to 20. These health inequalities are a result of broader inequalities in wealth, power, education and living standards. Just think about the extent to which having money buys people control over their health. If you have more money, you can afford to live in a better, safer neighbourhood. You can afford to eat better quality food, and to pay for all sorts of comforts and

the psychologist july/august 2022 mortality risk

conveniences to keep yourself well and reduce the stresses of life. Education can have a similar effect as it opens up job prospects and also because, as the saying goes, knowledge is power. If you have more education, that might allow you to secure a job with better working conditions and better pay (which, of course, would mean that you have more money). It may also mean you can navigate complex health and social care systems with greater ease. Though it’s not necessarily a direct effect of wealth or education, people from wealthier and more educated backgrounds also tend to be connected to more powerful people, who may be able to help them in various ways. If you aren’t lucky enough to grow up as part of a well-off family, it is harder to achieve a good education and to become an affluent adult. You will likely have to accept living in poorer quality housing in a less safe neighbourhood. You may also end up working in a less secure job or one where you’re exposed to more hazards. In short, higher social class affords you a safer and more predictable living environment, with a greater degree of control over your life. This has been the focus of a lot of my work because, as psychologists, we’re interested in behaviour, and people’s behaviours are strongly affected by their environments. So what behaviours do we see emerging from those environments? Unhealthy behaviours are thought to account for a reasonable portion of the social class gradient in health – up to half, depending on which estimates you look at. Certainly, lifestyle diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and certain forms of cancer are responsible for a high proportion of deaths each year – around 70 per cent globally according to the World Health Organisation. So, it’s important to understand what drives the behaviours linked with those diseases. According to the Uncontrollable Mortality Risk hypothesis, an accumulation of unavoidable risks in our environments should be one of those drivers. This perspective gives us a helpful reminder that behaviour doesn’t occur in isolation. Informational health campaigns that target key health behaviours, such as diet, exercise, smoking and alcohol use, will only have limited effects if structural inequalities aren’t also addressed. However, by identifying which elements of people’s environments have the biggest impacts on their behaviour, it might be possible to reap double benefits. First the initial benefit of the environmental improvement itself, but also the benefits of resulting improvements in health behaviour. In short, understanding how people’s environments influence their health behaviours can help us to identify where best to focus limited public health resources to produce the maximum impact. What’s your approach to explaining health behaviours? A key focus has been to explore the role that

perceptions of control over risk might play in determining health behaviours. The idea is that it may be reasonable to expect that those from deprived backgrounds should be less motivated to take care of their health compared with those who are better off, because of the environmental conditions they experience. The reason for this is that looking after your health takes effort. We believe that there is a trade-off between investing in your long-term health, and doing other things. The more time and money you devote to the gym and following a healthy diet, for example, the less you have for other activities, like socialising, ﬁnding a partner, or working your way up the career ladder. The approach stems from behavioural ecology. Previous work in evolutionary biology has often discussed the inﬂuence of environmental conditions on how an organism might allocate energy throughout its life. This typically suggests a trade-off between growth and reproduction, with the ideal timing, and amount of energy spent on each, depending on the conditions of the environment. However, instead of

explaining the investment of energy in terms of the physiological interests of growth and reproduction, our work suggests a trade-off between the behavioural investment in health versus any other activity that could improve an individual’s ‘fitness’. Here we mean ‘fitness’ in the Darwinian sense, reflecting how well adapted an organism is to its environment for the purpose of contributing the most offspring to the next generation. Activities that might compete with investing in your long-term health might include increasing one’s social status or dominance, accumulating necessary resources, or looking for a partner, all of which might help someone to optimally adapt to their environment.

health. As you once put it, Richard, ‘If you believed there was nothing you could do to avoid being the victim of a stabbing in the next few years, would eating your ﬁve a day seem that important?’

Have you tested the Uncontrollable Mortality Risk hypothesis? Yes, a lot of the work that Daniel Nettle and I have done together has been about testing the Uncontrollable Mortality Risk Hypothesis. Initially we developed a measure of perceived uncontrollable mortality risk. The idea was to capture the extent to which people think they can avert a premature death by changing their behaviour. It makes sense that believing your So can you say more about how actions won’t make much of a dent “… perceptions of that might feed into class-based in your overall health and mortality uncontrollable mortality differences? risk might lead you to deprioritise risk have a considerable All of this comes from a theoretical healthy living. We found evidence model by Daniel Nettle, in which effect on the likelihood of consistent with this prediction. he took some of these evolutionary In our first survey, we found that choosing a healthy food life history principles and thought less wealthy people felt that their option, when presented about how they could be applied to risk of premature death was much explaining social class differences less within their personal control. with an unhealthy in health behaviour. Those same people also reported alternative” The negative effects of lower making less effort to look after social class may reduce the their health. A good part of this potential payoff of investing association between affluence and in healthy behaviours. This means that, assuming healthy behaviour was, statistically speaking, explained the trade-off between investing in long-term health by this measure of perceived uncontrollable mortality and other activities, the ideal amount of health risk which we’d developed. effort may be reduced for those in lower socialWe followed this up with a series of experiments class positions, which causes the secondary effect of to see if making people think that their personal risk reduced motivation to follow a healthy lifestyle. We was more controllable would affect health behaviour. argue that humans may have evolved to be sensitive We used fake life expectancy calculators to alter to environmental cues of risk, such as the levels of perceptions of control over longevity and then offered violence or potential danger that people experience people a simple choice: a box of organic fruits, or a in their surroundings. We suggest that we might box of chocolates of equal monetary value. When expect psychological mechanisms to respond to these people had been primed to believe that they faced cues of risk by determining the level of investment in uncontrollable risks that would affect their longevity, preventative health behaviours. This helps us to offer they were more likely to take the chocolate. When an explanation for the differences we see in the extent they were primed to believe that individual health to which people prioritise their long-term health. behaviours were the main risk to their longevity, they To sum this up, the Uncontrollable Mortality Risk were more likely to choose fruit. (Don’t worry, we did Hypothesis states that those who are more likely to tell them that it was a fake life expectancy calculator die due to factors beyond their control should be less once the experiment was over!) motivated to take care of their health because they Of course, countless environmental and individual are less likely to live to see the long-term benefits of factors may combine to influence food choices. a healthy lifestyle, and their efforts could be put into However, the results of these experimental studies other more immediately rewarding activities. Classsuggest that perceptions of uncontrollable mortality based inequalities in health are therefore in some risk have a considerable effect on the likelihood of part related to the fact that less affluent people tend choosing a healthy food option, when presented with to experience more uncontrollable risks than more an unhealthy alternative. affluent people. For example, people from poorer backgrounds experience greater risk of violent crime As you know, I’ve looked to add to this picture in their local area, are exposed to greater levels of air with work during the early stages of the Covid-19 pollution, and even higher Covid-19 infection and pandemic. That showed associations between fatality rates. Believing you are likely to die due to perceived uncontrollable mortality risk, which had factors that are beyond your control may make you less increased due to the pandemic, and self-reported motivated to invest time and energy in your long-term diet, exercise and smoking behaviours. I’m now

the psychologist july/august 2022 mortality risk

looking at what sorts of risk are perceived to be least controllable by people here in the UK, and how those perceived risks differ by social class. I’m really looking forward to seeing what you find… these are really important and interesting questions. A key implication of our research findings, and those of many other researchers, is that improvements in the safety, quality, and stability of people’s living and working environments should encourage spontaneous improvements in health behaviour. So, if we focus on improving people’s living conditions, they should reap that double dividend. This implies that we shouldn’t need to spend money on behaviour change campaigns if we were to focus on reducing inequalities in wealth and power. The challenge is that health communications and behaviour change campaigns are often presumed to be cheaper and easier to implement than the measures required to tackle structural inequalities. I would argue, however, that this is a false economy when those campaigns aren’t effective. Indeed, some well-intentioned public health campaigns targeted at changing individual behaviours have been shown to widen inequalities. Despite that, our work has yielded some insights that perhaps could be used to guide public health messaging. For example, your findings during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic suggested that increasing people’s sense that the virus was a threat would improve compliance with Government advice around controlling the virus, but it could also have had the unintended consequences of increasing perceived uncontrollable mortality risk and thereby reducing people’s motivation to eat well, exercise, and not smoke. Further insights come when you think about people’s time horizons. When communicating with people who face a larger burden of uncontrollable risk, they might not believe that they’ll live long enough to see the deferred benefits of healthy behaviour. In this case, focusing on the shorter-term benefits of healthy behaviour (e.g., more attractive skin) rather than the longer-term ones (reduced risk of cancer in later life) might be more effective. Nonetheless, such communications-based approaches should still be secondary to actually reducing disparities in exposure to risk. Given the current cost of living crisis, many households are struggling to put food on the table. What have you learned from your recent research into food insecurity? There are many reasons why food insecurity is bad for health. Most obviously, it can mean inadequate nutrition. Even where people don’t face a calorie

deficit, they may find themselves eating cheap, ultraprocessed foods, which tend to contain an excess of fats, salt and sugars and often lack important micronutrients. This is likely to be one of the reasons why the less extreme type of food insecurity, that occurs in high income contexts, seems to be associated with obesity. However, evolutionary theory also suggests that the experience of unpredictability in food supply may drive weight gain as an adaptive response to food insecurity. This is known as the Insurance Hypothesis and my colleagues Daniel Nettle, Clare Andrews, Jackie Shinwell and Melissa Bateson have done some interesting work to investigate the idea. Food insecurity can also be thought of as a stressor. Think about how essential food is for our survival and how stressful it must be to not know where your next meal is coming from, or to struggle to figure out if you can afford to eat lunch today. The effects on wellbeing alone should be a concern, before we even think about the longer-term health consequences. My colleagues at the Healthy Living Lab at Northumbria University are doing some very important work on food insecurity, which they started long before I joined the team. However, I recently joined Greta Defeyter, Paul Stretesky and Emily Mann in a project on food insecurity, stress and wellbeing during the Covid-19 pandemic. We looked into the role of food insecurity in the association between economic hardship and stress and wellbeing during the pandemic. Watch out for more on our results! How do you hope your line of research might be implemented to help tackle class-based inequalities in health? As I’ve already mentioned, a key implication of some of our findings is that our health behaviour is affected by those things which are beyond our personal control. Obviously, a core role for governments is to manage collective goods. This means that governments do have the ability to tackle those things which are beyond the reach of the individual. It feels like it should be obvious that managing such things should be the role of governments. However, there are also a lot of government-led projects, particularly in public health, that aim to intervene at the individual level. Perhaps this is because ‘nudging’ and behaviour change campaigns which can be targeted at individuals have a certain allure. They’re perceived as cheaper, easier and ‘lighter touch’. But I think some work needs to be done to identify those things that people find hardest to tackle for themselves, so that we have an idea of the areas in which governments could have the most impact. Ideal targets would be things that people think are highly uncontrollable for them personally, which are known to have a meaningful impact on health and longevity. Some of these things may be challenging to tackle, but we’ve got to at least aim for that double dividend – the value of the intervention itself, and the secondary effect of the improved health behaviour we would expect in response.

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This is your opportunity to connect with other passionate and dedicated psychologists in your ﬁeld.

Are you a passionate and visionary advocate for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion? The British Psychological Society is seeking applications for members of the new Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Board chaired by Dr Adam Jowett The Board will be empowered to hold BPS governance structures to account to ensure the principles of equity, equality, diversity and inclusion are embedded in the society’s strategic objectives and all of its activities. Taking an intersectional approach, the Board will champion EDI delivery, monitor progress against strategic aims and provide oversight of all EDI work, supporting a range of BPS strategic boards and advisory groups. Board members will ensure EDI awareness, scrutiny, anti-discriminatory practice and impact sits at the heart of our strategic agenda. The board has 15 spaces available including two ring-fenced spaces for an undergraduate and postgraduate student.

The society welcomes applications from the following groups of people who are under-represented within our committees: Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people, people with disabilities and people who identify as LGBTQ+. CL O SING DAT E F OR A PPLICATIONS 31 August 2022 For more information visit www.bps.org.uk/about-us/jobs

or email inclusion@bps.org.uk

‘I no longer try to shape myself to ﬁt’ Theresa Marrinan meets Margo Ononaiye, the ﬁrst Black woman to head up a Clinical Psychology Doctorate Programme in the UK

Firstly, congratulations on your appointment as Programme Director for the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology at Southampton University. We’ve worked quite closely over the past few years in our respective roles as clinical directors and it’s been lovely to see you progressing in your career. You were interviewed by Adrian Whittington for the Psychological Professions Network in January, shortly after your appointment. In that interview you talked about your mixed-race heritage, being brought up in a very white area, growing up in single parent family with limited financial resources, and experiencing racism from an early age. You also described your journey into the profession, retraining after a successful career in the tourism industry, and some of the barriers you faced… particularly the implicit and explicit racism. What was the response to that interview? Amazing and overwhelming. I’ve had hundreds of emails, all with such positive comments, and I’ve had the incredible privilege of hearing how my story has resonated with other people. I tried to answer every email because it felt like people were sharing really painful, personal aspects of themselves. The majority of emails were from people of colour, but I also heard from people who’d been brought up in one parent families and in similar financial situations. How have you found your first year as Programme Director? Has it been what you expected? Yes and no. Yes, in that I knew my team already. I work with a great group of people and we’ve really supported each other so that’s been amazing, but there’s been a lot of learning. We also had one incredibly sad event where a member of the team passed away.

We asked trainees from our respective programmes whether they had any questions for you. One was how much you feel your race has been central to discussions around your achievements. During training, it felt really central, which was quite a

shock after coming from a career where it wasn’t really discussed in such great detail. I think, to be fair, that every part of what you bring is scrutinised as part of the training experience. In qualified life it’s probably felt a little bit different. I was ambitious coming out of training. As a slightly older trainee, I didn’t have the time to meander and so I had to focus. If any doors were closed, I just looked for the next open one. I was given the opportunity by Dr Adrian Whittington to work on the Salomons programme, my first academic role after qualifying, and that really set the scene for my passion to help others learn and develop. Interestingly enough, the University of Southampton had no idea they were appointing the first black female programme director, which also feels incredibly important to me. When I made it public, I realised how important it was to share because of the way it can inspire and give hope to others… so now I shout it from the rooftops! I’ve also been asked if you feel that class has played a part in your journey, and how race and class interacted, if they did at all? Class, definitely. When I left school at 16, I had no A-levels so I had to re-educate myself. I did every single course I could, that was available at no cost, to make sure I was as skilled as possible when I started my degree. I was also aware of differences like the long words that people use and how fine wines are important to some people! Things that I just don’t have on my radar. And because I know what it’s like to be poor, I do get it when people are struggling financially, and I can truly empathise. It definitely made me thankful for the privilege of being able to train and contribute in so many ways within the clinical psychology profession. I think this feeling is amplified if you come from a poor background. How do race and culture and class combine together? It’s really hard to unpick. I can sit in certain work-related environments and feel like an outsider

the psychologist july/august 2022 interview

Dr Margo Ononaiye Programme Director/ Psychological Professions Network South East Widening Participation Lead Doctorate in Clinical Psychology University of Southampton. Interviewed by Theresa Marrinan, Clinical Director/Deputy Programme Director on the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology, Newcastle Uni

even when I’m being included. How the two are intertwined is too complicated to unpack in this interview. I can’t split the two, it’s all part of who I am. What sacriﬁces have you had to make to get to this point in your career? I wonder whether some of my personal life choices were affected by having to move around so much. Every job I went for was a strategic move to take myself up the ladder. I’ve been very lucky as my partner and I have loved living in different parts of the country and made great friends, but it also means that you don’t have a stable base, which as we know in psychology, is really important. You’ve been seconded by the Psychological Professions Network South East to look at how we can implement equality and diversity initiatives across the psychology profession. What is your vision for the role? The psychology professions need to represent the people they are helping. One of the things I like about this role is that it spans a range of underrepresented populations including culture, sexuality and social economic status. Currently, there’s a lot of goodwill amongst the profession to become more diverse and inclusive, but there’s a question of how you actually do it and what support is needed. My vision is to bring

together good practice. In terms of class, we need to support people in a variety of ways. This would include ensuring that there is an outreach strategy starting from school age and spanning the whole working age lifespan, so that everyone knows what is possible at every stage of their careers. There needs to be more rolemodels from poorer/low social economic backgrounds actively speaking out on their experiences to give others hope, guidance and information. I have learnt about the importance of doing this and I would urge others to do so. There need to be more paid job opportunities with positive action taken to recruit those from underrepresented populations such as race and class. There is also a need for research in this area, as we are all ‘intersectional’ beings… how do the different aspects of the self, interplay with employment prospects in the psychology professions? I sit on a variety of boards where everyone is trying hard to make a difference, but we need to pool resources, provide examples, and share frameworks to help Trusts and universities be more inclusive in a meaningful way, so it doesn’t feel like a tick box exercise. Looking back at your own journey into the profession, how have you navigated spaces where you haven’t felt you belonged within psychology? When I ﬁrst started, I took a watchful approach

because it was so obvious that I was different. At times, I was, and still am, the only brown face in a meeting. After one professionals meeting, where I felt different and not that welcome, I decided that things weren’t going to change unless I made the change, so I became much more proactive. After that I began to take up opportunities so people could see what I could bring. Initially, I couldn’t quite work out how I was going to ﬁt in but then I realised that’s not for me to work out, that’s other people’s problem. When I got to into that space, I got my conﬁdence back.

because that’s what life does. Don’t let other people deter you from your goals. If you need to improve aspects of you to reach your goal, work out how you can do it and never be afraid to seek help. If you could change one thing about the way that clinical psychologists deal with the race issue what would that be? To start dealing with the race issue!

Have you got any specific hopes/ideas of what a fairer psychology would look like in the future to be more What advice would you give to white trainees about representative of our diverse communities? what they can do to support colleagues who identify I truly believe that we’ve started on that process, as BAME, and how you would have wanted others in thanks to the various initiatives set by Health your cohort to support you during training? Education England and to the Programmes for taking I genuinely felt very supported by my cohort on board those opportunities, but also because of all throughout training. We were quite a diverse bunch, the aspiring clinical psychologists out there working so looking back now, although we hard to make a difference. I’ve been didn’t have that many cultural truly humbled by the hard work discussions and they always looked “How do race and culture that people are doing in their own to me when a cultural issue was time to make a difference within and class combine raised. That’s one tip I’d give to the profession. My hopes are that white trainees: try to contribute, there will be more diverse trainees together? It’s really hard don’t assume that the person of recruited onto programmes from to unpick…” colour is always happy to be the underrepresented backgrounds, person to answer those questions. that they will be appropriately What can white trainees do? supported throughout training Loads. This is going to sound harsh, and I don’t mean and appointed into posts where they’ll be given it to, but I find people talk the talk but don’t walk the the opportunity to develop and grow. The training walk. So be curious. Don’t sit back and think: ‘I can’t community needs to be more diverse and inclusive, ask that’. Take responsibility for reflecting on your with more people from under-represented backgrounds identity, your culture, your not knowing. You also see in senior roles. At Trust level, I’d like to see more quite a lot of segregation in terms of who people will people from underrepresented backgrounds in sit with, so take time to sit with somebody to learn consultant level grades and above because that’s where and just be there with them. Look out for, and report, we can make changes. When trainees qualify, they need discrimination… everybody needs to do their part. to look at taking on leadership roles both within and Make sure you’re asking about culture and difference outside of clinical psychology where they can make a within your clinical environment. When you’re on difference. placement, if you see somebody of colour who’s My other hope is that we can create safe spaces for aspiring to be a psychologist, offer to help, talk to them people from underrepresented populations because it about your journey and share your pearls of wisdom. does impact and affect us when we’re being taught and When you’re qualified, always negotiate paid assistant supervised by a majority white, middle class world. roles. When you recruit, have diverse recruitment I’ve introduced a safe space for trainees of colour on panels, look at the job specification and how you’re my programme and I should have done that years ago. shortlisting for people to make sure there’s no bias I’m seeing the beginnings of some amazing changes in in the language. Actively look to recruit people who our profession in terms of inclusivity, but we have a complement your team in a variety of ways. long way to go, and we all have a part to play in that, whether we’re aspiring clinical psychologists, trainees, Are there any important lessons that you’ve learnt qualified staff or consultants. throughout your journey that have helped shape your career and practice to date? How would you describe yourself in one word and Just be yourself. Don’t try to change who you are or why? conform to fit. If you’re gregarious, if you’re loud, if Phenomenal! That sounds arrogant and if you had you have a beautiful accent, if you have a different asked me that question prior to the blog, I don’t know colour skin, from a lower social economic status, have if I’d have said that but the phenomenal response from a disability, if you’re white, whatever it is, just embrace my blog has made me recognise that what I’ve done who you are and be the best version of yourself that is an incredible achievement. I no longer try to shape you can. Seek out every opportunity you can. If life myself to fit. I am just who I am, and I think that’s a throws you a knock, dust yourself down and go again, phenomenal place to be.

the psychologist july/august 2022 interview

Early Career Conference Bursary Scheme This Research Board bursary scheme supports the work of UK early career psychologists.

year, with submission deadlines on 1 April and 1 October. Get your applications in now for the deadline on Monday 3 October 2022.

Conference bursaries are available to support members of the Society, who are UK early career psychologists, to attend any academic conference (physically or virtually), either in the UK or internationally, relevant to the applicant’s work. Each bursary consists of up to £250 (UK) or £500 (international) to contribute towards the costs of registration and travel to attend the full conference.

Note: For the purposes of the bursary scheme, we deﬁne an early career psychologist as a person who is within eight years of completion of their doctoral degree or practitioner doctorate in psychology.

There are two rounds of the scheme each

To avoid unconscious bias, we select applicants through a process of blind assessment.

For the full criteria and a link to the electronic application form please contact awardsandgrants@bps.org.uk

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‘They talked about having two versions of themselves’ Researcher Dr Lateesha Osbourne (University of Bath) spoke to Ella Rhodes about her PhD research, exploring Black students’ experiences at a higher education institution in the south of England

How did you decide what to study in your PhD? My PhD brief was on underrepresented students’ sense of identity and belonging. Initially I wanted to look at gender identity, particularly trans students… I’d noticed there hadn’t been a lot of research at the time. I requested data from the university about gender and

attended a few meetings of the student union group for non-binary gender queer and trans students, and it was a really small group. I realised that there was a risk of outing students or being able to identify students, so I couldn’t with a good conscience pursue that. Later I was invited to a mature students’ induction to discuss the issues that were relevant to them – I got permission to observe their meeting and take notes. There was one Black student in that induction, and during the breaks she came up to me and tell me how glad she was to see me there. She said she’d only noticed a ‘sprinkle’ of Black people and asked how I’d been surviving. At that point I realised just how important it was for her that I was physically in that room, and I wondered how common this was among the other Black students at the university – so I requested the data for race and ethnicity. At the time, the university had collated the data as white versus BAME, which didn’t help me to get a clear picture! It took me a while to get the actual breakdown to see that Black students were less than 2 per cent of the student population at that time. There was also an understanding, among people who worked in university and the Students’ Union, that a big chunk of the Black students were also international: they said there were around 50 Black British students at the university which is incredibly low. I realised it was a bit of a no-brainer to look at Black students’ experiences in my research. Speaking to the woman at the induction, I realised that this was so much bigger than me. And if I could give the students a bit of respite and a safe space to discuss things with a Black person, then I would have done my job. What next? To get a feel for some of the issues, and whether these had been raised before, I spoke to the Race Equality Network student group and African Caribbean Society. I was told that there had been focus groups and interviews with Black students, but they felt this didn’t change very much – they were fatigued by having to

the psychologist july/august 2022 race and class in the university

including myself. I realised that the focus groups themselves made an impact – that this was quite a unique experience in this setting. To have a space where they could speak freely, advise each other… not necessarily agree, but to get to hear how other Black students were navigating life at university. That was a really affirming experience. There were some difficult disclosures at times, but it always felt worth it. What experiences did students discuss in your research? I did my PhD by publication and my first paper was based on the 17 interviews with students – the majority of participants were from London. They talked about arriving at university and they talked about the ‘overwhelming whiteness’ of the town and how this contrasted with their lives in London – they felt the shock of being a visible minority. One of my participants said something which I used as my first paper title, which is You never feel so Black as when dredge up traumatic experiences and then not see any you’re contrasted against a White background. change. I told them about the qualitative research I They also talked about a particular look being was planning and asked if they would like to take part. attached to not just a city, but its residents. They said We agreed that I would do everything in my power they felt they had to dress a certain way that was classto make sure this wasn’t just a thesis that went in the based. Some said they thought they’d be able to roll out library never to be heard of again. It felt very important of bed 10 minutes before a lecture, put on a tracksuit to honour their stories – they wanted their own voices and just be there and be comfortable, but that wasn’t in this, and they wanted to be humanised. the case. They found very quickly there was I did a pilot interview with the same an expectation to ‘look the part’. student who was at the mature induction. It On top of that, they said they didn’t just was very difficult in certain places, hard to “The students had thought need to look the part, they also needed to hear some of her experiences, but at the end of themselves as working sound the part. The standard accent was she said she felt so much better and thanked class before, but they felt ‘posh’ southern English, and they felt they me for doing it. It was another point in my couldn’t use any kind of slang or classmates PhD where I thought that even if I struggle, it really mattered would see and treat them differently. They I’m doing the right thing and it means at university” said this affected lots of working-class and something to someone other than me. Northern students, but they felt that also I reviewed my pilot interview transcript being one of the few Black students in the with my supervisory team and asked for room, it especially put a spotlight on them. They pointers about how to get better as an interviewer. I talked about having two versions of themselves. This then continued setting up interviews and interviewees was so evident that one of my participants said when referred friends… they talked about how important it she called home her brother asked ‘why are you talking was to be able to talk about their experiences. like that? It doesn’t even sound like you’. She told me she hadn’t noticed that she had changed her voice and Can you tell me more about the interviews? said there were two versions of herself – the university I was asking students to tell me about memorable version and the home version, and never the twain moments in their degrees – the good, the bad and shall meet! the neutral. For the most part they said their time There were big issues around class and how class at university was generally a positive experience, shows itself. The students had thought of themselves but within that they had experienced racism which, as working class before, but they felt it really mattered of course, detracted from the positivity and sense at university. There were also experiences of everyday of belonging. There were some issues they felt the racism and they talked about the shock of middle-class university could help by educating their peers and racism. They said this was a group of people who, for the student population. For my second study, which all intents purposes were educated… they had parents involved focus groups with Black students, I wanted to who are well off, who read The Guardian, yet still used ask how they coped with all of the issues they faced, the N-word when singing along to songs. They were how they managed, how they strategised. understandably quite taken aback… they explained I ran three focus groups and in each the first thing that when you picture an archetypal ‘racist’, that isn’t participants said was ‘I don’t know if I’ve been in a the face starring back at you. They gave examples of room with this many Black people since I’ve been how the racism they’d experienced was heavily based here’ – and these were groups of six people maximum,

on racialised, classed, and gendered assumptions about who goes to a prestigious university. Do you have any examples? One participant told me about a discussion she had with her flatmates about scholarships she had received. She was encouraging them to apply for the same ones when another flatmate entered the room and said, ‘you know the system’s broken if the only Black girl in our accommodation building has both of the scholarships’. This isn’t an ignorant comment in the way that we imagine it – but her Blackness and her class were used against her. When she spoke to me about it, it was clearly something that was still really painful. I said I could understand why. It was also interesting that he almost acknowledged there was an inequality – he noticed that she was the only one who looked like her in the building – and rather than think ‘god that must be hard for you’ or ‘what’s that like?’, he decided that was the reason she got the scholarships. One of the most pervasive types of racism my students spoke about was the prevalence of the N-word. They said they had never heard a white person in London use that word. In general people agree that it’s the worst word you could possibly use, it’s a word we rarely write out in full, so my second paper was about how that becomes an acceptable act on campus. When I spoke to the students about this, they told me they were often vastly outnumbered on and off campus. Some of my students said they would hear white students singing along to songs which use the N word in bars and clubs on student nights – but if there are 75 people doing it, how do you get them all to stop? Other times students heard it in more intimate and shared spaces, like their homes (shared accommodation). Again, they told me they were really shocked: your home is supposed to be a sanctuary, where you can relax, and yet they always had to be on guard. In my final paper I looked at the strategies students used to navigate university life, which we talked about during the focus groups. Their responses were heavily classed. For example, one woman, who had been on a placement and come back for her final year, said she felt the work environment had taught her that the best thing she could do was ‘play the game’. What I mean by that is strategically performing whiteness – flattening your accent, dressing the part, essentially not being yourself fully, instead learning to be yourself within the confines of whiteness and middle classness. There were moments where class really shone through – a lot of them had experiences of feeling they were from completely different worlds to their peers. One participant talked about peers having industry connections which made getting placements much

easier. The students talked about being from innercity neighbourhoods and having a lot of solidarity with white working class people. The difference they felt between white middle class people at the university and the camaraderie and understanding of white working class people at home was an interesting juxtaposition. Some of the gendered aspects also contained classbased assumptions. Most of my participants talked about the difference between Black men and Black women. They said with Black men there’s a fear of their physicality, they’re seen as a physical threat, whereas Black women are not seen as a physical threat in the same sense. For instance, some of my Black male participants said that people would cross the road to avoid them, and when they went shopping, whether in Sainsbury’s or a boutique, they would not only be followed around the store – which sadly they expected – but they would also be the only ones asked by security to show their receipt when leaving. It was that class-based assumption that they couldn’t possibly afford to shop in boutique stores. Black women talked about being marvelled at a lot… a fascination with Black women and Black woman’s hair and beauty in particular. The most prevalent form of racialised microaggression for Black women was hair and skin touching. There was this feeling they were under the microscope a lot. They also felt they were under the microscope from the university itself: during Black History Month there was pressure was put on them to organise events and give their opinion. They were being treated like experts rather than for what they were which was, for the most part, young people trying to get a degree – they don’t necessarily want to do (unpaid) EDI work on the side, they don’t necessarily want extra responsibility. It sounds like a lot of students found it exhausting just to exist? One of my participants said ‘sometimes I just want to exist. And here it feels like you have to exist with an explanation’. I used that as the title for my thesis because I thought that is the crux of the issue. You can’t take your humanity for granted if people want you to keep proving your worth and value. Blackness and working classness are used against people… ‘you didn’t get here on your own merit’, ‘you’re here because you tick the diversity box’, or whatever. There was this constant need to prove, to say, ‘I am here because I’m excellent’, ‘I am here because I got the same grades as you’, ‘I’m not here because they lowered or diluted any kind of criteria, I’m here off my own back’. It’s a human thing – everybody wants to feel they got here based on their own merit and not anything else. They felt they were always proving and pushing… ‘I am just as good as you’.

the psychologist july/august 2022 race and class in the university

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Eliza Southwood - www.elizasouthwood.com

The underclass psychologist Punit Shah with his personal reﬂections

The ‘underclass’ refers to minority groups in society, characterised by un(der)employment, with little chance of improving their situation. Our stories, sometimes expressed in stark terms to highlight the many challenges faced by lower class people, can also draw attention to opportunities in education and academia.

’ve spent years on Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) committees. The narrow focus on gender and ethnicity has been personally and professionally frustrating, leaving little space for the exposition of classbased inequalities. Where such inequalities are addressed, it’s at a superﬁcial level, with little consideration of people from the lowest classes. There is almost no focus on the ‘underclass’, the ‘lumpenproletariat’, which Marx referred to as the ‘dangerous class’ and ‘social scum’. As someone who belongs to (or arguably belonged to) the underclass, I am here to reﬂect on formative experiences – spanning my personal and academic life – that I have rarely discussed.

School and college We spent several years homeless after my father left. My mother – a non-english speaking dinner lady – my two younger brothers and I were in temporary accommodation in crime-ridden areas.

the psychologist july/august 2022 the underclass psychologist

I was knifed, and experienced racism (though never from white people). I spent much of my time finding accommodation and undertaking casual work, as we had little money or family support. Despite these early adversities, we never lost sight of the transformative value of education. Even ‘failing’ schools provided us with adequate provision and relief from the harsh realities of home life. ‘Personal responsibility’ are two words that tend not to be well received in EDI discussions. I get that ‘personal responsibility’ can be used to turn away from societal and structural issues – the ‘pull yourself up by the bootstraps’ narrative. However, I have an unwavering sense that personal responsibility was crucial for my growth. I have no doubt that a strong sense of personal responsibility, instilled by my mother, ensured that I made the most of an imperfect education system. Based on this experience, I propose that Widening Participation (WP) schemes in schools, colleges, and universities need not have grand aims. Instead, they should focus on the ‘basics’ (e.g. attendance and punctuality), whilst focusing on the empowering value of personal responsibility. Schools adopting these practices for underclass children are flourishing and universities could benefit from similar approaches. Despite a stellar academic record, I had little money to contemplate going to university, whereas for most ‘straight A’ students this was the default. Loans, grants, and bursaries were available, but the psychological difficulty of leaving my family was a barrier. The pressure to progress to university, from teachers and society, was also more harmful than helpful. Resisting this pressure, I took up low paid work in supermarkets and pharmacies. Whilst many of my academic equals went to university and/or gap years in Peru, I worked three jobs, >60-hour weeks, seven days a week, usually on my feet. Was this terrible? Not at all. It was a rewarding, formative, and resilience-building period. We should be wary of imbuing middle-class ideals onto underclass students, and rushing them into university. Avoid throwing cash at them, especially loans. Rather, WP schemes might benefit from supporting underclass students into meaningful employment. It would serve as a useful mechanism to generate income and build their confidence for progression to HE if or when the time is right for them. Undergraduate I built up financial and psychological resources to attend university. Rather than hastily choosing a course, like many of my peers, my underclass roots underpinned a genuine desire to study Psychology. Yet I arrived at an institution where I didn’t ‘fit in’. I was louder, brasher, and told I was ‘aggressive’. When I publicly challenged a poorly performing Lecturer, albeit inappropriately, I was ostracised by other students. I was asked by the Head of School to apologise. I refused.

Was I a ‘troublemaker’? Perhaps. But rather than trying to mould everyone to middle-class archetypes, skirting around problems with niceties, there is much to be learnt from a direct, lower-class approach to life. The ‘dead wood’ in academia represents a barrier to entry for under-represented groups. Rather than encouraging students, particularly from the lower classes, to sit behind a keyboard and mindlessly contribute to unit evaluations, we should train them to develop arguments and voice their concerns. Those two ‘dirty words’, personal responsibility, are pertinent again. When facing incompetent lecturers, I started doing my own research and achieved the highest mark in my cohort. There are opportunities to channel disgruntlement with middle-class systems, currently failing to hold poor academics to account, into bettering your own academic life. That said, I had some amazing lecturers who went out of their way to support me and others. For example, one academic supported my attendance at a prestigious summer school in cognitive neuroscience. I cried when I read the positive things in their letter of support – no one had ever done that for me. I loved that summer school, although I looked silly when I turned up to the conference dinner in a formal suit. I won a British Science Association prize after another academic nominated me for my dissertation. For that prize dinner, I should have gone with the suit – jeans and hand-me-down shirt were inappropriate. I wear that suit to this day, but I am getting better at knowing when to wear it! I was obviously ﬂoundering in a world, far removed from my childhood, which I didn’t understand. Instead of dwelling on class-based faux pas, I was heartened by support from these academic ‘strangers’ in my life. Supportive lecturers became the family I never had. Which WP schemes were invoked in these situations? None. It was the kindness and generosity of individuals, not the state or the university, that supported me. From these experiences, I propose that we cannot defer the tough, nuanced work of supporting lowerclass students to hollow university initiatives. It is about those two words again – personal responsibility – for all of us, as individuals, to support lower-class people in HE. Sadly, this important work is rarely rewarded. Promotion criteria are based on nebulous contributions to ‘university strategy’ rather than

my underclass origins. Relationships and friendships fell apart and I became a liability due to my own behaviour. Yes… personal responsibility. I was drinking too much and, after my partner left and I was unable to afford the rent, I faced homelessness again. As a homeless child, I had to run away from various dangers. Fight or flight. When faced with Postgraduate Finishing with a first-class bachelor’s degree, I attended being homeless again, it seemed like an automatic response that led me back to running. Running, I soon an interview for a funded MSc + PhD, again wearing that suit. I was successful and would have my fees paid realised, gave me the mental clarity required to deal with my friend’s death. I can’t emphasise enough the and a tax-free salary. Wow! (As a quick aside, it pains value that physical exercise brought to my life. Beyond me to see how many students don’t appreciate their any mindless WP initiative, I’d encourage students to funded PhDs). There were no WP schemes here but, again, the encouragement from an individual academic engage in physical challenges to help them overcome the mental ones. was crucial in my undertaking postgraduate study. Through running, I motivated myself to apply With their supervision, I started thriving. for jobs. I couldn’t risk the uncertainty of short-term I realised that I could intellectually compete with contracts – one of the biggest barriers for lower-class middle-class academics in the highest echelons of people in academia – so I sought a permanent post. psychology. My direct, ‘aggressive’ attitude also set After several rejections, I got a permeant Lecturership me apart from overly polite middle-class people who in a ‘low-ranking’ department and seemed to be stifled by the power casual teaching work at an evening hierarchies of academia. Regardless university (of course wearing that of how I dressed or spoke, most “I see biases embedded suit to all my interviews again!). academics treated me with into the hiring processes. Whilst my peers were respect. I encourage all students – This has a disproportionate completing their PhDs and particularly lower-class students applying for prestigious – to get over any qualms about impact on lower class fellowships, I worked three jobs, interacting with leading academics. people trying to enter >60-hour weeks, 7 days a week, Don’t wait for a ‘WP initiative’ or academia.” whilst completing my doctorate. a contrived ‘networking event’ to I look back on this time as the engage – just go for it. highlight of my career. It was a Despite successes during this pleasure to teach engaged lowertime, my background started class people rather than overly entitled middle-class catching up with me. After a boozy Christmas party, students who only cared about their marks. But I was a senior student told me that ‘someone from my living and working in different cities, and travelling background’ couldn’t appreciate Popper and Kuhn. across the unsafe city where I had grown up. It often I was keen to emphasise that they were mistaken felt traumatising. The situation was unsustainable. whilst taking them by the scruff of the neck. We were Then, a permanent Lectureship came up at a ‘highboth appropriately reprimanded. ranking’ university in one of the safest areas of the UK. My difficulties with doctoral life came to a head As I arrived for interview, my heart sunk thinking that when a fellow student and friend died by suicide. I would never get the job and live in such a beautiful When I started speaking against the university place. higher-ups, appalled by their efforts to cover up My fears played out as the interview panel were the situation, I was rebuked. My friend was not an unimpressed. One panel member found it implausible underclass student but they shared many of the struggles to ‘fit in’ that I experienced. Their family were that I could be teaching multiple modules whilst finishing my PhD. I wanted to scream that I was at a distance, and I think they experienced a profound working every waking hour of the day to manage sense of being lost in academia. Being an underclass my workload. When, asked about my approach to person gives me the gumption to admit that, as their EDI, I talked about personal responsibility and small friend, I failed them. Those two words, personal but meaningful acts in everyday life. They seemed responsibility, are relevant again: their death is partly unimpressed – perhaps they were looking for me to my responsibility. I hope that one day the (middlewaffle about university strategy and Athena SWAN. class) academics who also contributed to this death It was bruising, and I didn’t hear back for three will take a little more responsibility for their actions weeks. When I contacted HR, I discovered that I (or lack thereof). was a reserve candidate. It turned out some of the staff, including one member of the panel, had been impressed by my application. I wasn’t given one of Early Career Researcher two original posts, but I was offered an extra position After this sad event, nearing the end of my PhD, that opened up. I will forever be grateful to the person I was on a downward trajectory, heading back towards meaningful work to improve students’ lives. We need to give academics more time, incentive, and reward, to step up their efforts to improve the social-professional mobility of underclass students.

the psychologist july/august 2022 the underclass psychologist

seen a ‘good ﬁt’, despite objectively having a stronger academic record than other applicants. I now see some of the same academics on my hiring panel bringing the same bias to bear on others who ‘don’t ﬁt’ their clique. Einstein said, ‘Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds’. I see these mediocre minds, and we must challenge them. Robust, objective, and competence-based criteria must be introduced. Lower-class people will gain most from an overhaul of current procedures. Until we see this change, if you are involved in the hiring or promotion of staff, I implore you to challenge bias where you see it.

Dr Punit Shah is Associate Professor of Psychology. shahpq@gmail.com

involved in making this happen. Their individual course of action changed my entire life. I hope this inspires other university managers to do the same in hiring motivated, lower-class candidates that don’t ‘fit’ their teams. A ’good fit’? Have I ‘made it’ in academia? Well, there are ongoing challenges. I have felt ostracised and undermined by certain colleagues. And I see other, exceptional psychologists having a tough time, being overlooked for jobs and promotions, relative to weaker candidates. I see biases embedded into the hiring processes. This has a disproportionate impact on lower class people trying to enter academia. There is not overt ‘classism’ but a culture of favouring candidates who look and sound like existing, largely middle-class staff members. There is an insidious, cliquey mentality in support of candidates with links to existing staff, rather than a dispassionate evaluation of the applicant. Unsuccessful applicants are told that they are not ‘the best fit’ for the role. I now see why I was not

Reason for optimism Class-based inequalities are even clearer beyond academia, even for established academics. I am experiencing some of this as I start contributing to policy through my research. Recently, for example, my contribution to a discussion on climate policy – an area where lower-class people and academics are underrepresented – irked supposedly ‘liberal’ council leaders. Ultimately, this is all middle-class wrangling that I will be tackling head on. My underclass roots stand me in good stead for addressing these ‘first world problems’ and academic and political bullies. Unlike life as a teenager, I don’t need to run from keyboard academic warriors… I am up for the fight! I just hope that other, lower-class people feel empowered to do the same and, given political events in recent years, I think we are seeing this change in the UK. I will emphasise that for all the difficulties faced by lower-class academics, there are many wonderful people and opportunities. I have some amazing colleagues and students and I am lucky to have an academic partner. Together, I am part of an academic family that compensates for the lack of a conventional family. There are reasons for optimism for lower class people considering an academic career, and I hope I encourage rather than discourage their participation. On lighter note, that suit I bought as an undergraduate is now worn for giving prize lectures, appearing on TV, and when meeting MPs. I could even afford another if I wanted. I own my home. I sometimes even shop at M&S and Waitrose. Even this article has egotistical, self-congratulatory undertones that are characteristic of the middle-classes. Maybe I’m no longer a credible representative for underclass people. I’m the first to admit this is just one narrative, with my own biases and misperceptions. I may well have misattributed challenges and successes to my underclass identity, and there are numerous psychologically relevant mechanisms that I have ignored. So take my story with a pinch of salt and focus your time on small, individual acts of kindness, to support lower class people. You might just change their life.

Middle-class reﬂections Martin Weegmann on ‘hidden injuries’ and advantages of class

his March I organised a conference on social class and psychotherapy, with the subtitle: ‘everywhere, nowhere’. Prompted by curiosity, and concern, about what we fail to register, even when it’s all around us, I guess that social class in our field resembles a negative hallucination – not seeing what is there! For many psychotherapists (still) the social stops in quiet obedience at the consulting room door, and for many analysts, social class lays, silently, under the couch, for years. Is psychology any better? I think not, for our history too is full of instances that assume a ‘contextless mind’ and an ‘isolated individual’. There are many examples of class bias as well – e.g. preferences for ‘articulate’ middle-class patients compared to their working-class counterparts, therapeutic tendencies which reinforce middles-class values of ‘expressive independence’, and research traditions which, for reasons of sampling, serve to reinforce middle-class norms (Manstead, 2018). There is worse, others arguing that psychology has contributed in various ways to the surveillance, regulation and pathologisation of the working-class ‘Other’ (Rickett, 2020). Social class and inequality are not the same thing, but overlap, and whereas class confers multiple advantages and disadvantages and affects wealth, inequality can be a threat to health. Half the conference consisted of reports of lived experience, illustrating the ways in which Key sources class weaves an influence over our growing years, colours our values Hanley, L. (2016). Respectable: The and determines opportunities Experience of Class. London, Allen Lane. or their absence. Economic Manstead, A. (2018). The psychology experiences are important and of social class: how socioeconomic under-emphasised and for many, status impacts thoughts, feelings, and behaviour. British Journal of Social class carries considerable ‘hidden Psychology, 57(2), p. 267-291. injuries’ (Sennet & Cobb, 1993; Rickett, B. (2020). Psychology and social hidden from whom, I wonder?). class: The working class as ‘Other’. In her exploration, Joanna Ryan In K. Day, B. Rickett & M. Woolhouse (2017) argues, ‘Class can evoke (Editors), Social Class: Critical Social extremely charged and difficult Psychological Perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan. emotions. It is a determining factor Ryan, J. (2017). Class and Psychoanalysis: in the life possibilities of many Landscapes of Inequality. Abington, people, a source of huge inequalities Routledge. or privileged that go back to our Sennet, R. & J. Cobb, (1993). The Hidden earliest experiences’. Injuries of Class. New York, Norton. Lived experience and biography

are rich sources for reﬂection and research, important alongside other approaches. Here’s mine, as the only speaker at that conference from a middle-class background. The three P’s My parents – and they were older parents – grew up in a world quite different to the world in which I was raised, and were nostalgically attached to theirs. It was a time when people – social superiors and inferiors – knew their place, looked to one faith (Christian; and for them, one denomination, the C. of E., although were more ‘church-going’ than consciously religious) and envisaged futures based on a profession and marriage. In short, they admired the Establishment and despised its critics, truly hating the 1960s for the permissiveness it unleashed. The era when, as they put it, ‘everything went wrong’. A status-conscious time, my upbringing was dominated by the middle-class aspirations that many held close. When we are young, we inhabit the world of our parents, their habitus, which is simply ‘in the air’. These are some of the values that we, as a family, prized, the ‘3 P’s: Property. We moved to Harrogate when I was three, as a ‘good place to raise a family’, into a house my architect father designed. I learned of a brick-andmortar hierarchy – from terraces (looked down upon, as in phrases like ‘grubby terraces’), semis (one step up, with the disadvantage of a shared neighbour) and, the ultimate prize, the detached house. Council estates were the most abject of places and my parents also admired stately homes, well above us, which we’d often visit. Sociologists talk of symbolic capital and homes certainly ‘said’ who you were. Privacy. Gardens were another outward sign of who you were and had to be well-maintained. Untidiness and untendered lawns were anathema. Privacy mattered and the omnipresent privet hedge (trimmed to perfection) reduced the prospect of being overlooked by neighbours. Properness. A wealth of meaning attaches to the word ‘proper’, in how groups and cultures create distinctions (see Lynsey Hanley’s account of respectability, describing her experience of class mobility). My folks had a lexicon of class-based words to describe its reverse, of which ‘common’ was used most to characterise the reverse of distinguished and wellspoken. Identifying with Queen’s or Received English

the psychologist july/august 2022 middle-class reﬂections

(greatly reinforced by the BBC) they disapproved of an increase in working-class voices on TV, from the world of sport or from politicians such as Harold Wilson. One of his cabinet, Barbara Castle, attracted even more ire, as a lone, assertive female, with amazing debating skills. My folk scoffed and labelled her strident, as if she were in the wrong place entirely. Years later, it was they who placed their hopes on another female, who in her way challenged the old-boy’s networks – Margaret Thatcher. They ‘felt’ working class voices, and regional accents, viscerally, as an abrasive presence violating the peace of their living room. I was considered for elocution lessons in Primary School, as my mum worried that I was ‘slovenly and sloppy’ in how I spoke. There too, we played an awful game, ‘the bugs’, and the losers – the last one to be touched – were invariably the poorest kids in class. It was the violent side of social class hierarchies. ‘…and then there’s Harrogate’ Gender intersects with class and my (older) sister identified with Princess Anne and wrote stories about palaces; she identified in her girlish way just as our parents identified in their adult way, with all matters Royal. The body and physical comportment are aspects of identification and judging from family photos, I glimpse that princess in my sister. She was trained in an art – to be demur, not loud. The wider family values were c (and ‘C’) onservative throughout and the idea of a ‘propertyowning democracy’ (Antony Eden’s trumpeted the term) music to their ears. The Scouts and Guides were central to leisure time, with their pledges to ‘God and the Queen’– my mother was active in Guiding for 30 years. They lived a secular version of the protestant work ethic, with a premium on application, saving and betterment. They disapproved of the pub, as it was associated with (working-class) wasteful, unproductive leisure- we never went near them. My mother cried when we (each) failed the 11 Plus exam. I cried more for her tears than understanding why. The ‘Secondary Modern’ we attended must have felt truly second best to her – ironically, the same school, nowadays, is greatly sought. My mother had a fond phrase when describing where she lived. ‘Well, there’s Yorkshire, and then there’s Harrogate’. Meant to amuse, in seven words and a well-placed comma, it encapsulates an entire social attitude. She still lives there and has held a consistent Harrogate narrative throughout her life. By contrast, as the one who ‘got away’, I changed the narrative, becoming the revolutionary student at radical Sussex University. For a while, when others asked where I was from, a ‘Yorkshire’, but no ‘Harrogate’, ushered from my mouth. Dis-identification is an interesting process. How come I changed my narrative identity, and so much, whereas my sister and brother did not, or rather fashioned their identities around modified versions

of our family values? Such values are crucial anchors to some, whilst others move a long way from such moorings. Narrative continuity, or discontinuity? Well, that’s a whole other story…. The nervous class Middle-class life conferred many advantages. Having my own room, in a large house, with a garden, in quiet cul-de-sac, are some of the physical ones. Whilst not highly wealthy (a relative term anyway) we were always comfortable, and, revolution or no revolution, my parents topped up my grant, as needed, at Uni. Education and middle-class speech confer other advantages. Knowing ‘the way’ in the world, speaking its dominant language, are a symbolic passport that makes social passage easier, from applying to University to negotiating the job market, to social and academic conﬁdence, essay writing, and many other things. Status anxiety, like the grass, requires maintenance, and was a less comfortable aspect to our class, comparisons always being over the shoulder (or behind the hedge). Maybe that’s why Sartre described the middle-class as the nervous class. My parent feared any deviation, with its political (e.g. communists) and sexual (they saw homosexual people as perverted individuals) versions, particularly marked. ‘Twisted’ was a word they applied to both. I close with three anecdotes. First, during the pandemic, when work was switched to Zoom, a colleagued advised their patient to use a spare room, if possible, the assumption being that people have spare rooms! Secondly, as a supervisor, I heard of two working-class patients, their lives scared by poverty and multiple disadvantages and noticed how readily they were labelled as ‘grievance-full’, rather than, say, as voicing legitimate protest about life-injuries. Finally, a colleague described their experience of conducting identity work with a young man, which was done in a sensitive and valued manner. My colleague was not sure, however, if the man could ‘hold onto’ such ideas, and that anxiety might pull him back. I asked about the young man’s circumstances to learn that he had little income, growing debt, and strong feelings of obligation to assist his parents, which certainly put the identity work into a more meaningful, and actual, context. Understanding social location I have found this form of personal research helpful, and cathartic, and one thing I’d like to see in psychology trainings is not only greater socialclass awareness, but encouragement to look at our biographies as a unique and critical resource – to better understand one’s social location in all its dimensions (class, gender, race, inequality, and many others).

Martin Weegmann is a Clinical Psychologist, Psychotherapist and Writer, who works in the NHS in London. weegmann. martin@gmail. com

Brighter Futures for Children (Reading Borough Council) Full-Time or Part-time posts available Job shares will be considered Permanent position - Salary: £57,544 - £60,690

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Good CPD opportunities e.g. Therapeutic Thinking Schools; VIG; Intensive Interaction; Motivational Interviewing; Dynamic Assessment; therapeutic interventions. A balanced workload, including managed statutory demands and time for projects. A modern office space and an established agile working policy including the ability to work flexible hours and a mixture of face to face and working from home.

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Forensic Psychologists £38,148 - £56,181 (depending on location) England and Wales HMPPS is looking for registered practitioner psychologists who want to make a difference in the lives of others. Our psychologists work across a broad range of different client groups and in different settings. As we’re the biggest single employer of psychologists in the country, we can provide a range of blended approaches and ﬂexible working patterns to help meet a healthy work life balance and enable you to perform at your best. We train our psychologists in a range of assessment and therapeutic approaches to ensure they can take a holistic approach to meeting the needs of clients and stakeholders, drawing on theory and research to deliver with individuals as well as advising on wider policy and practice.

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What to read… to learn about social class We asked Psychology of Social Class – UK Policy Implications (POSCUPI) members for their top books that psychologists should read to learn more about social class How Not to Be a Boy (Canongate Books, 2017) by Robert Webb This book speaks volumes about the intersection of class and gender, and in particular brings into sharp focus the psychological impact of classism, and how working-class people can be made to feel as outsiders in middle/upper class spaces. Webb’s account is funny, moving and deeply insightful. Difﬁcult to put down! Dr Maxine Woolhouse

The Spirit Level: why equal societies almost always do better (Allen Lane, 2009) by Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett The Inner Level: how more equal societies reduce stress, restore sanity and improve everyone’s well-being (Allen Lane, 2018) by Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett Written by leading epidemiologists, these two books present the irrefutable case for why social inequalities, played out through class hierarchies, negatively impact on the health, psychological well-being and life chances of those from lower/working class communities. Such inequalities impact at an individual level, affecting how we

think, feel and behave. Moreover, such inequalities appear to be toxic for everyone, as individuals in the higher social classes are also caught in unhelpful and toxic ways of behaving and self-evaluation which has adverse effects. A brilliant set of books and an absolute must read! Professor Paula Reavey Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) by George Orwell A brilliant insight into how living in poverty affects people. Orwell’s crisp writing documents the immense psychological toll that living in poverty entails, with its never-ending battle to make ends meet and its struggle for mere existence. A moving and visceral description of the sheer relentlessness of poverty. Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class (Verso Books, 2011) by Owen Jones A polemic account of how working-class communities became stigmatised in contemporary society because of the choices of politicians. Angry, insightful, and brilliant. Miseducation: Inequality, education and the working

the psychologist july/august 2022 books

classes (Policy Press, 2017) by Diane Reay Few know more than Reay about inequality in education. This book documents class-based inequality from all angles, using a mix of personal insight and robust academic investigation. Numerous quotations from Reay’s interviewees made this a compelling and often heartwrenching read. Swing Time (Penguin Books, 2016) by Zadie Smith This absorbing read might not seem like an obvious choice, but it contains some emotional descriptions of how ethnicity and class can intersect to, over generations, colour people’s relationship with the education system. Dr Matthew Easterbrook Union Street (Virago Press, 1982) by Pat Barker I read this as a late teenager from a northern town, with a new baby and it bonded me to other working class women from the past in such an unforgettable way. Powerful, hilariously indecent, and bitterly gripping stories of seven working-class women living in the North East, on Union Street in the 1970s as they strive to survive a precarious world engulfed in poverty. Posh Boys: How English Public Schools Ruin Britain (Simon and Schuster, 2018) by Robert Verkaik I couldn’t put this down. This book slowly and systematically dismantles public school values while telling the story of the production of masculinity and classed based privilege. I was left with little doubt that understanding power in Britain today requires an understanding of the centrality of elite education. Common People: An Anthology of Working Class Writers

(Unbound, 2019) edited by Kit de Waal Just tucking into this anthology. This is a breath of fresh air, ‘in celebration, not apology’, it’s a collection of unpublished working class writers’ essays and stories. It is packed with stories by consistently talented authors that immediately jar against commonly shared and lazy tropes about working class folk. Instead we hear splendidly complex, often very funny and vivid portrayals which have a potent and proud sense of place in working class lives in Britain. Dr Bridgette Rickett Poverty Safari, by Darren McGarvey (Picador) A brutally honest account of the lingering wounds from growing up in a deprived and disempowered neighbourhood in Glasgow, combined with a searing analyses of class dynamics in the UK and superficial efforts at community outreach. Poetic, unforgiving, authentic, and enough to upset assumptions on all sides. See also https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-34/ summer-edition/stranger The Class Ceiling, by Daniel Laurison and Sam Friedman (Bristol University Press). Clear and compelling write-up of a large mixed-method study of barriers to the advancement of working class professionals in elite fields, with a focus on accounting, architecture, acting, and television. Lots of psychological insight into the kinds of environments and social processes that make it difficult for working class people not only to ‘get in’, but also to ‘get on’ in elite professions. Dr Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington

The superpower of kindness Liz Bates on writing a storybook for children and accompanying guidebook for adults, published by Routledge. Plus, Janet Raju with a view from school, and Liz’s daughter Dr Sophie Bates with a clinical psychologist’s view.

As Henry James said, ‘Three things in human life are important: the ﬁrst is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind’. During many years of working with schools in the area of emotional health and wellbeing, I often supported their anti-bullying work. It became increasingly apparent to me that a shift was required in approach, language, mindset and understanding. Having introduced schools to the right to feel safe, kindness as a choice, kindness as a superpower and even encouraged some to replace the term ‘bullying’ with ‘unkindness’ and ‘anti-bullying’ with ‘the right to feel safe’, I coalesced my thoughts into what became the book set Cool to be Kind and A practical resource to negotiating the world of friendships and relationships. The resource took shape – a children’s storybook about Coco, Otto, Ollie and Ling as they negotiate the sometimes tricky world of friendships and relationships, observing unkindness and using their ‘superpower’, kindness, to change the lives of others. The storybook is accompanied by a practical guidebook that adults can use to help children explore what it means to be unkind, why that unkind choice is sometimes made and how usually there is another choice – to be kind. The adult can support children to see that kindness can be a cool choice to make and discover other ‘powers’ –friendship, difference and language. Having discussed the book with my daughter, Dr Sophie Bates, it was her clinical and therapy expertise that led me to include the ﬁnal section in the guidebook – to help children consider the other element of kindness which plays such a crucial part in the lives of some young people, self-compassion and being kind to themselves. Lack of self-compassion can lead to a drive to be

More online: Find exclusive book extracts and more book reviews at thepsychologist.org.uk including: Mud sticks… An exclusive chapter from Stop F*cking Nodding: and Other Things 16 Years Olds Say in Therapy, by Jeanine Connor, courtesy of PCCS Books Class and Inequality in the Time of Finance: Subject to Terms and Conditions, by Niamh Mulcahy (Routledge), reviewed by Jing Zhang.

perfect which can become a threatening and sometimes uncontrollable aspect of someone’s life. Comparing and measuring one’s own life by the apparent achievements of others and perceiving only failure if not successful, has to be talked about and explored. Only then can adults help children and young people have their own internal measure and recognition of self-worth. Professor Robin Banerjee from the University of Sussex and of The Kindness Test, has shared how work like this with children at schools can be a key way of fostering positive relationships and more generally a kind culture for the whole school community. There is no escaping the rise of unkindness in its most evident, explicit and toxic form. The internet has allowed an anonymous, no-rules onslaught of unkindness which is almost impossible to challenge. But that is no reason stop trying to overcome it; there is always more that can be done.

The school view, from Janet Raju of Stow Heath Primary School Drawing inspiration from Liz and her Frederick Douglass quotation to me, ‘It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men’, I was introduced to the Cool to be Kind resource during Liz’s wellbeing visit to my school. Many of my children’s behaviours were a survival instinct and affected not just staff but the wider community. The impact was a spiral of judgement and misconceptions about the child who was just trying to make sense of where and how they ﬁt into this very complicated world of school. They were not able to connect their thoughts and feelings to their wider responses and as a result, established a negative perception of those around them and themselves. Our school prepares children for adulthood from its earliest years. Underpinning the values developed by Piaget in cognitive and moral development, we follow the pathways of independence, physical and mental health and wellbeing, preparing children for employment and developing friendships, establishing themselves in the community. By connecting cognitive and moral development as a child’s ability to think and reason, our purpose to develop their ability to make moral and logical decisions is at the forefront of our personal development teaching. The Cool to be Kind resource ﬁts neatly alongside and within this model in a visual and functional way. It has a clear aim of enabling children to work their way through the often confusing and mind-blowing world of friendships and relationships at an age where acceptance and belonging is most important to them. It allows our children to incorporate new information and ideas about friendships and relationships into their existing thought

the psychologist july/august books

patterns and experiences. With ongoing, daily support from staff, they adapt their thoughts and responses into their daily experiences. They adapt more positively to new situations, can articulate events more effectively and reduce frustrations and negative emotions. Alongside our PSHE curriculum, the use of Emotion Coaching techniques and Zones of Regulation it complements what we are already trying to achieve in school. Cool to be Kind is supporting a particular group of Year 4 girls with a reputation of falling out. Through negotiation and compromise, they are retraining, looking at their peers and their responses through a different lens. They are developing their superpowers! I am particularly interested in using this resource for future planning for an individual child with social and emotional needs and for a group of pupils with Autistic Spectrum Disorder and seeing how it can be adapted to meet their needs particularly within the area of transition – between provisions within school and into secondary education. The resource upskills the staff delivering it and enlightens their perception of what might be happening. By opening dialogue and discussion between child and adult, you can see an increased understanding and empathy through a child’s lens. The aim to create the best version of themselves is only strengthened.

The clinical psychologist’s view, from Dr Sophie Bates As a clinical psychologist specialising in child and adolescent mental health, I am always interested in discovering and promoting resources that introduce children to psychological concepts and strategies aimed at promoting emotional wellbeing from a young age. The NHS still primarily focuses on acute need, and I mostly work with young people in crisis, when problems have become so critical they need urgent care. Covid has only compounded this issue by increasing demand and placing more pressure on an already limited resource. I am proud to promote my Mum’s books, which offer primary schools and other settings a range of resources targeting emotional health. Cool to be Kind focuses on promoting positive relationships and kind behaviour, whilst helping children understand what may be driving unkind behaviour. Bullying is widely understood as an adverse childhood experience which

increases vulnerability to mental health difficulties later in life. Approaching this issue in a proactive manner reflects a valuable preventative approach. Rather than treating the children with mental health difficulties due to bullying, we need to be supporting young people to grow up in safer environments. The book’s non-shaming approach will enable children to engage more openly and less defensively in the tasks, and reflect on their own behaviour and what might be driving this. Children can often easily be told what not to do, and this resource offers practical and clear examples about what to do. When working on behaviour change, this is key in supporting positive outcomes. Cool to be Kind, like all of Liz’s books, is informed by Narrative Therapy, an approach developed by Michael White in the 1980s. A narrative approach views problems as separate from people and helps them identify alternative stories, challenge old and unhealthy beliefs, and open their minds to new ways of living. Talking about unkindness in a non-shaming way and helping children make sense of such behaviour, as well as introducing the practical skills of kindness as superpowers, enables a child to feel more control over their behaviour, rather than being controlled by it. Such an approach engages with a child’s playful and creative mind to help them think more about the choice and control they have over their actions. Not only can kindness reduce harm to others, it can foster positive emotional wellbeing for the individual. Effectiveness in interpersonal relationships supports one’s own sense of self-efficacy and self-esteem. Making others feel good makes us feel good. Furthermore, my experience in child and adolescent mental health services has opened my eyes to the ever-changing world children are growing up in; with increasing pressures to be better or ‘more like them’, in the context of unavoidable comparison-making compounded by social media. The pressure to be liked and accepted, achieve, and strive for perfection is linked with embarrassment, shame, not feeling good enough and pervasive self-criticism – thoughts and feelings commonly occurring in mental health difficulties such as anxiety and depression. The final focus on self-compassion is one I hold close to my heart. I believe teaching children from a young age about skills for self-compassion and self-care, and why this is so important, will build children’s resilience in coping with the inevitable setbacks, challenges, and disappointments in the schooling years, and thereafter. As adults we need to model and celebrate the importance of self-care for the younger generation. It is not unusual for me to hear older generations talk about self-care as a luxury or see people rolling their eyes at such a suggestion that we take time to look after ourselves. These shaming and toxic beliefs need to be challenged and re-scripted from a young age. Not only should we treat others as we would like to be treated, we should treat ourselves as we would like others to treat us. Children who behave unkindly towards others likely feel badly about themselves. The better we treat ourselves, the better we can treat others – and this can become selfperpetuating in a virtuous cycle.

Class show and tells

Ian Danton, University of Derby. i.danton1@ unimail.derby. ac.uk Twitter: @ian_danton

Ian Danton introduces his winning effort in our poetry competition, around the theme of tackling class-based inequality

s a young, naive and idealistic teenager in the late 80s I believed that the world was on track to a more accepting future. Equality was just a matter of time. Skin colour, sexual orientation, social class would not matter, and misogynistic values were on the way to being a TV trope. So I ignored them, gratefully accepting the gifts of privilege that being male, white, heterosexual, cis-gendered and middle class provided. There was no moment of realisation, just a whiff of injustice at work, a sense of imbalance when being made chairman of a committee, the discomfort of realising my voice was so much more easily heard. However, gradually I realised something was not right, and it dawned on me that staying silent was actually part of the problem. There was no track, because we were already there. You can change the name of the station, and ensure the signage is sensitive – all cosmetic changes, but the foundations, bricks, cement and buildings have already been laid. It is difficult, expensive and painful to rebuild from scratch. But rebuild is what we need to do. As the beneficiary of a first-class berth my role is to be an ally, an anti-racist, anti-sexist, antihomophobe, and use my voice (in whichever room I happen to be in) to speak out. Writing this I know I can sound like a selfrighteous prig! It is uncomfortable conversation at the best of times. It also has to be said I did not reach this place alone – thank you Reni Eddo-Lodge, Bernadine Evaristo and others for helping me hear. I am still idealistic, not quite so naïve, and got to a point in my career as a retailer that I wanted to do something more alongside it. Two years ago I started a Masters in Psychology at the University of Derby online. It is an excellent course and working with the amazing people there has solidified my desire to work towards a PhD in Social Psychology (assuming I pass my degree!). My intended focus will be in looking

for interventions to minimise prejudice and bias, a weakening of the mortar, and increase the volume on voices not so easily heard as my own. Tiny interactions Class was for so long almost forgotten in arguments about bias and prejudice, yet there is good cause to see it as the most important of the intersections with other forms of inequality. Who you know, and how you are perceived by them, is crucial in the tiny interactions, often silent, that take place outside school gates, before job interviews, and as you walk round shops. Most of all, you grow up in a classroom. Confirmation bias has a field day in these situations and is both in the mind of the perceived as well as in the eye of the beholder. When writing the poem, I was back in the hall watching our children on stage, listening to the parents around me, hearing with a little more clarity in hindsight. In my opinion, tackling those inequalities always starts with us. Reflecting and recognising our own bias. This then needs to be followed through in practice and in research. In research, especially within our listening mechanisms, be they quantitative scales, or qualitative interviews, recognising and mitigating for bias is challenging. The good news is that every step forward is doubly beneficial, because truly listening and hearing give the basis for more reflective outcomes. The bad news is the most difficult people to reach are those who are so used to not being heard – precisely those people of a lower socio-economic class. No point reflecting our own image (again!) so we need to work even harder to listen in the right places. It is not only in politics that these individuals feel disenfranchised. Now the secret is trust, and that is hard won because we are already in deficit. Yet if we are authentic, honest and consistent we may still make a difference. Tokenism and gesture will continue to fail and just because it is nobody’s fault does not mean we should not be angry. We can use that energy to try listening again. So once again, it starts with us!

the psychologist july/august 2022 poetry

Words carry weight stealthily Damage upon impact (intent?) Considering what? Education? Accent? Comparative wealth? The third job, your mum holds down so you can heat? Consider this: Daddy provides Inequality divides Privilege survives eyes roll ”oh so sanctimonious” “just don’t get him started on race” (or sexuality, or ability, or gender, or….) That is an intersection best uncrossed “isn’t it awful daddy….” “Sleep well son, you needn’t worry Time is on our side” and we slumber on

Eliza Southwood - www.elizasouthwood.com

Polite applause “thank you children for those….. Entertaining entries” Parents muttering “They carried themselves well….. ….. considering”

What it means to ‘gather’ Jack MacLean reports from the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival

ow in its 16th year, the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival (SMHAF) has long been a platform for artists to wrestle with the concept of mental health and to find and convey meaning through their own experiences. The festival, which ran 4-24 May, invited viewers to explore what it means to ‘gather’. Having attended several of these events, it is clear that the 2022 SMHAF not only brought together people and their experiences, but also brought the impact of social inequality to the forefront. One such event was the short film series ‘Who Cares?’, which explored the detrimental impact of racism, discrimination and financial insecurity upon mental health, and how these factors impact our ability to ‘gather’ support. I am good at Karate (Jess Dadds) offers a surreal look

I am good at Karate

into the life of a young boy tormented by physical and verbal abuse from a demon made of tattered football shirts. It was hard not to feel the burden of the boy’s isolation and fear in the uncomfortable silence which was repeatedly broken by critical hallucinatory shrieks. The ﬁlm clearly wrestles with the impact of intergenerational poverty on mental health and highlights mental illness as a collective, social issue. Similarly, A La Folie (Léa Luiz de Oliveira) examines the burden that is placed upon families when state provisions do not meet the needs of those living with

A La Folie

the psychologist july/august 2022 culture mental illness. The documentary follows the daily life of the director’s brother and the loving yet overburdened mother who cares for him. At the event, de Oliveira highlighted the disempowerment her family has experienced within the mental health system in France and how this has ‘prevented [my] brother from growing up’. Uncle (Michelle Jones) delivered a moving recreation of the Director’s experience of losing her uncle, Kenneth Severin. Through retro video-game inspired visuals, Jones explores the confusion faced by her teenage self as she tries to make sense of his untimely death. The creative and light-hearted visual style starkly contrasts the subject and leads us to confront the harsh reality of a child attempting to come to terms with institutional racism. Her loving portrayal highlights the hardships faced by minority groups, as well as her family and community’s strength in coming together to fight for Uncle change. These films, along with Why Wouldn’t I Be? (Ella Greenwood), I’ll Call You in a Few (Carmen Sarieddine) and In Plain Sight – Part 1: In Erms of Clay (Heather E. Andrews) lovingly demonstrated the impact of social inequality on mental health across communities and beg us to ask the question(s) ‘who cares?’ and ‘who should care?’ Beyond film, Moving Minds brought together members from asylum-seeking and refugee communities to celebrate storytelling and community through photography, dance, music, poetry and beyond. In a wonderful display of solidarity and sisterhood, Maryhill Integration Network’s community members came together to perform poems from their booklet titled In Our Shoes which explored the delights, frustrations and dreams of their everyday lives through ‘bonds of sisterhood, despite their differences in language and culture’. The wonderful event brought light to the experiences of an often-underrepresented group and celebrated the power of community. The events of SMHAF beautifully and creatively beg us to question what it means to ‘gather’ and to challenge the systems which disempower and isolate marginalised and under-represented communities. Whether it be sharing stories , experiences or space with others, for the 2022 Mental Health Arts Festival ‘Gathering is something we do to make sense of our lives and experiences, and, explicitly or not, while creating art’. Reviewed by Jack MacLean, Assistant Psychologist at Gartnavel Royal Hospital, Glasgow

Weird and wonderful Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) is a pseudoscientific term. It was coined in 2010 to label an intensely relaxing, scalp tingling sensation elicited in specific situations such as getting a haircut, or by so called ‘ASMR triggers’ such as soft touch, whispering, and close interpersonal attention. ASMR is a feeling experienced by many since childhood, but with the rise of ASMR content creators (aka ASMRtists) on sites such as YouTube, ASMR has become much more than a feeling. It is an internet subculture, inspiration for musicians, filmmakers coloured, bean-bag pillow tubes, folded to resemble the intricate and advertisers, and enables easy structure of the brain’s surface. access to soothing sounds, sights, Inside this cocooning hug-like pillow, and simulations to help millions of there are screens with viewers to relax or nod off. headphones suspended London’s Design from pink hands that Museum new exhibition exhibition ‘WEIRD SENSATION FEELS Weird sensation encourage you to lie back, relax, and experience GOOD: The World of ASMR’ feels good invites visitors to become Design Museum ASMR in its various weird and wonderful formats. more aware of what ASMR Videos have been carefully is (and isn’t) and how it curated to capture the breadth of emerged from a previously unnamed ASMR content from meticulous dog feeling into public consciousness grooming and mesmerising pattern and popular culture. The basement of slow-motion paint splatters, to gallery of the Design Museum has the hushed tones of Bjork describing been transformed into an immersive how a television works and the multi-sensory ASMR-inducing peaceful mundanity of BBC Radio haven, with a spa-like atmosphere of Four’s daily Shipping Forecast. tranquillity aided by the directive to There are other intriguing remove your shoes upon entry. ASMR-inspired artefacts housed at The exhibition does what internet the exhibition. They include artist ASMR cannot by inviting you to Tobias Bradford’s disgustingly lifelike experience ASMR through touch. plastic tongue, which undulates and Visitors can co-create their own drips with synthetic saliva, screens ASMR soundscapes in an interactive displaying a wall of hypnotising 3D live studio space created by artist motion design nodding to visual and researcher Julie Rose Bower. ASMR trends, and an entire room Here, you are guided to interact with dedicated to the ‘Godfather’ of tactile materials, microphones, and fellow visitors across five installations unintentional ASMR, Bob Ross, featuring original paintings and that exaggerate and amplify the screened episodes of The Joy of sounds of touch. In this space, you can wear headphones while someone Painting. Weird sensation feels good: creates sounds with different The world of ASMR runs until 16 makeup brushes and experiment October at the Design Museum with amplified sounds of a studded designmuseum.org/exhibitions/weird‘mountain range’ of cloth. Perhaps the most impressive part sensation-feels-good-the-world-ofasmr of the exhibition is its centrepiece ‘The ASMR Arena’: a ginormous Reviewed by Giulia Poerio, University ground level seating structure of Essex fashioned from masses of flesh-

We asked on Twitter…

How can psychology tackle class-based inequalities? Jo Laura @JoaBooth The psychology peer review system needs to be overhauled to ensure diversity in the research pool we are working with. All journals should ramp up specifications to ensure equal class representation along with other underrepresented groups. Cara C @CCarapsych To start, admit there is an institutional resistance to make this inequality change happen and do it fast enough. For all universities to agree to use the Contextual Admissions that is currently being trialled. Finally, increase diversity in higher earning positions. Liz Jenkinson @DrLizJenkinson Fund practitioner training to break down the barriers to qualification and representation within our profession Dr Paul Marsden @marsattacks By producing impartial, independent and objective evidence based on scientific inquiry - rather than politics, prejudice and partisanship. Health Psychologies @HealthPsych2020 Actions speak louder than words. Admission of presence of inequality not enough. Fund practitioner psychologist training in applied settings, make them physically accessible for under represented groups particularly disabled candidates. P.S. do this yesterday.

Leila @leilaainge Robust inclusion of people who experience class based inequality in research design. Without understanding intersections we risk a body of research by privileged ppl for consumption by privileged ppl.

one on one

David A. Leavens @DaveLeavens In the UK, our discipline is highly elitist, and this goes almost entirely unrecognised by practitioners. Our scientiﬁc ‘norms’ describe the psychology of rich white people. Psychology is, thus, poorly constituted to meaningfully address class inequities.

Catherine Loveday @CathLoveday Improve representation both in academia & practice; lived experience is key. Fund psychological research that aims to understand and address the individual/group behaviours that promote inequality. Help develop public understanding of the breadth of consequences of inequality. Dominic Wrein @drwrein Recognising just how paramount class/ economic inequalities are in psychology services and how (and why) has class been left/shut out of the social justice zeitgeist of recent times. Jen Daffin @jendaffin There is a tendency to assume a class + economic link. Class barriers are not just about money. Prejudice is held in culture too. Not fitting or looking or sounding the part is a huge issue – for everyone who’s experiences are not ‘centered’ as well. We need to address othering.

coming soon… a collection of interviews around diagnosis, treatment, Power Threat Meaning and more... contribute… reach 50,000 colleagues, with something to suit all. See www.thepsychologist.org.uk/ contribute or talk to the editor, Dr Jon Sutton, jon.sutton@bps.org.uk, +44 116 252 9573 comment… email the editor, the Leicester ofﬁce, or tweet @psychmag to advertise… reach a large and professional audience of over 50,000 BPS members: see details on inside front cover maybe you missed… …Summer 2020, our bumper special, ‘Towards a new normal, and beyond’ …Search it and so much more via www.bps.org.uk/thepsychologist the

psychologist july/august 2020

Danielle Campbell @Dani_Cmbl 1) Offering evening and weekend appointments would certainly increase access, particularly amongst service users who can’t take the time off their work for appointments! 2) More working class clinicians! Although this would mean adopting more inclusive criteria for Doctorates. Eira @eiraform The educational psychology doctorate needs an overhaul in terms of funding, mileage costs and childcare, especially in light of the cost of living and petrol crisis. It’s unmanageable if you don’t have ﬁnancial support from family/ partner.

Towards a ‘new normal’ and beyond

www.thepsychologist.org.uk

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