The Psychologist August 2018

the

psychologist august 2018

How selfish is your search for happiness?

Joe Smith with differing views on the 20th anniversary of positive psychology

www.thepsychologist.org.uk

the

psychologist august 2018

contact The British Psychological Society 48 Princess Road East Leicester LE1 7DR 0116 254 9568 mail@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

How selfish is your search for happiness?

Joe Smith with differing views on the 20th anniversary of positive psychology

www.thepsychologist.org.uk

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psychologist august 2018

Kan Lailey

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Letters The Stanford Prison Experiment revelations; mental health in schools; and more News Impact; trolling; Maslow; and more

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In search of the brain of Descartes What has psychology learned from the study of famous brains? G. Neil Martin investigates.

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How selfish is your search for happiness?

Joe Smith on the 20th anniversary of the birth of positive psychology

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Are neurodevelopmental disorders discrete conditions?

Emilia Misheva

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‘A rigorous way of dealing with some messy real-world data’ Madeleine Pownall meets David Clarke

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Books Bestselling author Matt Haig with Notes on a Nervous Planet

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Grandiosity, and functional stupidity Mats Alvesson with his ‘rated’

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Careers We meet Dion Terrelonge to hear about ‘style psychology’ and more; and Assistant Psychologist Chris Millar on female offender care

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Jobs in psychology

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Culture Liz Jenkinson visits a Grayson Perry exhibition; Q+A with Sharron Hinchliff; and the Arts in Mind Festival

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A to Z

In the opening chapters of his new book Notes on a Nervous Planet, bestselling author Matt Haig quotes the minimalism advocate Fumio Sasaki: ‘there’s happiness in having less’.

Haig realises that it’s a ‘more general overload…

A life overload.’ On p.48, he talks with us about ‘editing your lives so that they make sense again’.

But is our pursuit of happiness fundamentally selfish? Does the 20th anniversary of the birth of positive psychology this month make its early focus on wellbeing seem rather quaint, long since superseded by the pursuit of ‘virtue’? Joe Smith investigates on p.28.

Elsewhere, the ‘rated’ piece (p.50) is a personal favourite, as Mats Alvesson looks at both grandiosity and functional stupidity.

Don’t we all walk a tightrope between the two, in both our professional and personal lives? No? Just me then…

If you think you could help us with that balance, and take us to new heights, you may be interested in a rare opportunity to join our staff team: as a full-time Deputy Editor. See p.61.

Dr Jon Sutton Managing Editor @psychmag

Breaking free from Stanford Getty Images

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We all know the story of the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE). It has been a staple of introductory psychology textbooks and lectures for nearly 50 years (see Griggs, 2014). Ordinary young men were randomly divided into Prisoners and Guards; within a short time, the Guards become so brutal and the Prisoners so victimised that the study – originally scheduled for two weeks – had to be halted after only five days.

These findings seem to demonstrate the terrifying power of the situation over individuals. Philip Zimbardo has always insisted that he had to do nothing to produce such toxicity. The participants simply slipped ‘naturally’ – and perhaps unconsciously – into their roles as vicious Guards or broken Prisoners. But now, a half century later, dramatic new evidence has emerged that challenges Zimbardo’s account. Our textbooks and our lectures will have to be rewritten. The story of what happened in the SPE and why such brutality occurred will have to be retold.

Over the years, several scholars had expressed doubt over Zimbardo’s version. But the problem was that much of what actually happened in the SPE remained opaque and so the story in the textbooks went unchanged.

We knew that the study had been recorded but the recordings were not in the public domain. And since evidence from the SPE was never actually published in a peer-reviewed psychology journal, methodological details of the study were also not in the scientific domain.

This all changed recently when both video and audio tapes were deposited in Zimbardo’s online archive at Stanford University (tinyurl.com/ybf5amaa). It includes 994 items of which 49 are videos and 54 are sound recordings. Together, these materials show that the textbook account is even more misleading than we imagined.

The startling new evidence tells a tale of the experimenters treating the Guards effectively as research assistants. It reveals how disturbed the Prisoners were when Zimbardo told them they could not leave the study.

It raises profound intellectual, moral and even legal questions about what went on in that Stanford basement in the summer of 1971.

Many have reacted to this evidence by rejecting the SPE entirely. Thus, the most thorough analysis of the archive, by French author Thibault Le Texier is labelled Histoire d’un Mensonge – which translates to ‘Story of a Lie’. Our reaction is different. While it is undeniable that Zimbardo’s previous accounts of the SPE have been highly selective, the new evidence provides the opportunity to cast new light on just why some of the Guards turned so brutal.

We have had the same burning question since we tried to replicate aspects of the SPE in the BBC Prison Experiment some 20 years ago (see www.bbcprisonstudy. org) and found that, in the absence of leadership from us, participants were generally reluctant to adopt their

Philip Zimbardo has always insisted that he had to do nothing to produce such toxicity assigned roles. There are clearly many reasons why a research finding might fail to replicate. But we had always suspected that Zimbardo’s unusually interventionist leadership role in the SPE was central to understanding the results of his study. The newly available materials prove extremely helpful in addressing this issue.

Many of the tapes are relevant, but one stands out: a recorded meeting between Zimbardo’s Warden, David Jaffe, and a ‘reluctant’ Guard, John Mark.

You can listen to this interview via tinyurl.com/ SPEtape – start at 8.38 minutes – or read the transcript of the interview we have created (https://psyarxiv. com/b7crx). The tape shows conclusively that the experimenters did not leave the participants to their own devices, but intervened to try and shape their behaviour.

More specifically, it provides evidence of identity leadership. That is, Zimbardo and his colleagues sought to ensure conformity amongst the Guards by making brutality appear necessary for the achievement of worthy ingroup goals, namely science that would make the case for prison reform. ‘What we want to do’, Zimbardo’s Warden told the Guard, ‘is be able to go to the world with what we’ve done and say “Now look, this is what happens when you have Guards who behave this way”… But in order to say that we have to have Guards who behave that way.’

But you do not need to take our word for it – just listen

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to the tape and decide for yourself whether this supports Zimbardo’s argument that Guards slipped naturally into role, or whether it supports our argument that leadership was necessary to turn the Guards into brutes.

After hearing the tape, you may never think about the SPE in the same way again. We suspect that you will also agree how important it is for the Zimbardo and his research team to acknowledge their role as the leaders of the toxic social system that developed in the basement of the Stanford psychology department. We recently submitted our analysis of the Jaffe–Mark meeting for publication in an academic journal (Haslam et al., 2018) to see if peer reviewers agree with our identity leadership analysis of the SPE. The tape joins other evidence which indicates that the experimenters intervened to shape the study more than they acknowledged. For instance, there was video evidence of Zimbardo addressing his Guards before the study started. Then there were letters, magazine articles, interviews with past participants and Zimbardo’s associates (notably his ‘consultant’ Carlo Prescott) which made stronger claims about intervention. But they were little more than snippets, hearsay, rumour. Until now, these seemed of inadequate weight to overturn one of the ‘monuments’ of our discipline. Zimbardo could easily dismiss them. But the new evidence from the archives will finally allow readers to listen to the evidence themselves, rather than rely on the experimenters’ own story.

How has Zimbardo responded this time? He has posted a lengthy answer to his critics on his Stanford Prison Experiment website, has been interviewed by science journalist Brian Resnick for the online Vox magazine, and recently send an email to the Society for Personality and Social Psychology professional listserv.

Here he makes a range points which are focused on other issues, such as the authenticity of the participants, his volume of publications, and issues that are unrelated to identity leadership. Nonetheless, his key conclusion is that ‘none of these criticisms present any substantial evidence that alters the SPE’s main conclusion’.

In the case of the Jaffe–Mark meeting, Zimbardo tells Resnick: ‘Jaffe picks on this guy because he is doing nothing. He’s sitting on the sideline, doing nothing, watching.

He’s gotta earn his keep as a Guard. The point is telling a Guard to be tough does not mean telling a Guard to be mean, to be cruel, to be sadistic, which many of the Guards became of their own volition playing the role of what they thought was a prison Guard.’

The phrase ‘He’s gotta earn his keep as a Guard’ (and that earning one’s keep means being tough) represents a dramatic change to the story, even as Zimbardo denies that anything needs to change. It is a recognition that participants did not simply slip into role but were required to do so by the experimenters. In short, Zimbardo describes the Guard as one would describe a paid research confederate rather than a volunteer participant

whose behaviour we are observing to learn something about human nature.

Moreover, the fact that some Guards in Zimbardo’s experiment proved creative in playing their role, provides more evidence for the importance of leadership and authority in motivating such creativity. Indeed, it is a wellworn technique of leaders to set a general goal such that followers have to go the extra mile to gain approval.

Indeed, this is a process that the historian of Nazism, Ian Kershaw, referred to as ‘working towards the Führer’.

Here, then, it appears that the brutality of the guards was a matter of ‘working towards the experimenter’ (Reicher et al., 2012).

Zimbardo concludes his interview with Resnick by characterising his critics as: ‘a bunch of bloggers saying, “We’re gonna shoot it [the SPE] down”’. We cannot speak for every critic, but in our case he is entirely wrong.

We don’t want to take the SPE down. Quite the contrary.

We want to re-invigorate the investigation into why Zimbardo’s Guards turned brutal. We fully agree with him about the necessity of understanding why this happened in his study, and why it happens in the world at large.

It is for this reason that we are trying to determine exactly what features of the situation influenced participants’ actions and, more broadly, the way that authorities and leaders are implicated in turning people toxic.

It is disappointing that Zimbardo (thus far) has tried to dismiss this debate. He dismisses his critics as peddlers of fake news rather than scientists who share his goal of understanding the darkest reaches of human nature.

Dismissal might have worked in the past, but now the necessary evidence is available to anyone who wishes to spend a few minutes listening to it. There is no longer any excuse for repeating a story which is so deeply flawed.

We need to get busy rewriting our texts and revising our lectures.

Stephen Reicher University of St Andrews S. Alexander Haslam University of Queensland Jay J. Van Bavel New York University Key sources Find links, including Zimbardo’s interviews and response, via www. thepsychologist.org.uk/time-change-story Griggs, R.A. (2014). Coverage of the Stanford Prison Experiment in introductory psychology textbooks. Teaching of Psychology, 41, 195–203.

Reicher, S.D., Haslam, S.A. & Smith, J.R. (2012). Working toward the experimenter: Reconceptualizing obedience within the Milgram paradigm as identification-based followership. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 315–324.

Haslam, S.A., Reicher, S.D. & Van Bavel, J.J. (2018).

Rethinking the ‘nature’ of brutality: Uncovering the role of identity leadership in the Stanford Prison Experiment. PsyArXiv Preprints https://psyarxiv.com/b7crx

From coercion to consent A

research project that aims to observe, and transform, police–community relationships is set to launch this autumn funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. Underpinned by theory from criminology and crowd psychology, and led by Professor Clifford Stott at Keele University, the three-year project will not only aim to gather knowledge in a crucial area but feed back into police practice and policy throughout the work.

Stott, Co-Director of the Keele Policing Academic Collaboration, said the project will involve a series of virtual-reality experiments exploring the roles of group identity on perceived fairness in police-community interactions and an in-depth set of observations of these interactions in the field. The project, named From Coercion to Consent, is based on his and his co-investigators’ many years’ work exploring the factors that can ease tense relationships between the police and football fans in particular.

In one project Professor Stott looked at the effects on fans of policing strategies used at the 2004 European Championship in Portugal. This new approach to policing was developed from his research on football riots, from which he suggested police may be seen as more legitimate if they took a friendlier approach with fans who were not causing trouble while maintaining capacity to respond to any serious incidents.

He conducted a survey of England fans prior to the tournament and measured the extent to which they Jess Hurd/reportdigital.co.uk

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identified themselves as England fans and how similar they felt to the police. He found a negative correlation between identification as an England fan and a measure of perceived similarity with the police. However once fans returned from Portugal, after experiencing legitimate policing based on principles from crowd psychology, those who defined themselves strongly as England fans now felt much more similar to the police as a group.

‘In effect, after experiencing legitimate policing… the police move from being an outgroup to an ingroup as a function of the way they policed that event. We thought that was a really interesting, pivotal, transformation not least because of the strength of it. Before, we saw a 0.5 negative correlation and what we see after is a 0.5 positive correlation – it’s very rare you get those kinds of correlations anyway but to see such a significant positive to negative transformation is really quite interesting.’

This led Professor Stott to start thinking about the intimate relationship between legitimacy in intergroup relations and the boundaries of group identity: ‘To perceive and experience legitimacy in intergroup relations was leading to a situation where fans felt bound together as part of the same ingroup with that group they’d previously seen as another. That was an interesting early finding that then grew into a programme of work… a longitudinal three-year study of the policing of a very high-risk fan group – fans of Cardiff City Football Club.’

This study was later published in the British Journal of Criminology.

Here he found there had been a transformation at the club’s matches with fan arrest figures and incidents of conflict both in decline. We also noticed that the police had moved away from using a heavyhanded or instrumental-compliance-based approach to a communication and normative-compliance-based perspective that was similar to community policing, which the fans saw as more legitimate.

‘They had a very similar experience to those we’d identified in Portugal. What we see coming out in that context is a process that’s often referred to as selfregulation. The conflict de-escalates because fans start to police themselves. What we recognised then was there is a relationship between the perceived fairness and legitimacy of the policing and this culture of de-escalation and essentially conformity with the law.

‘When trying to publish this work, criminologists who reviewed the paper pointed out similarities between procedural justice theory, a dominant model within the field, and our social-identity-based model. Procedural justice theory, for example, also discusses the role of perceived fairness in policing, which feeds into a culture where communities self-regulate and conform to the law.’

This led the research on a path to explore the two

the psychologist august 2018 news theories along with then PhD student Matthew Radburn at Leeds University. They began experimental work looking into how group membership affects whether policing is seen as fair. In one experiment they showed participants footage of police riding horses into a crowd of protesters and told them the group was either made up of students, TUC members or the English Defence League. When they asked them whether the police’s coercion actions were fair, people were more inclined to say they were if the group members were described as the EDL. ‘What we’re able to show is group membership has an impact on the extent to which we see the same interaction as fair or not. So, it starts to open up questions about the role of psychological group membership or identity in the very perception of police fairness. Police fairness isn’t some kind of universal thing you can just make the police do and people will see it as fair – actually group membership can be pivotal in understanding the social-psychological dynamics through which procedural fairness comes about and through which this then feeds into self-regulation.’

The current project will attempt to understand these social and psychological dynamics behind procedural fairness based on both procedural justice theory and social identity approaches and how this can influence policing practice. It will involve two strands – Professor Stott argues procedural justice theory has little underpinning experimental evidence, so the first strand will explore this in more depth. He and his colleagues Professor Jon Jackson at the London School of Economics and Professor Ben Bradford at University College, London are developing a virtualreality experience that will show participants interactions between the police and actors – with the ability to change group membership of the actor and the context of the interactions.

The second strand of the project is an ethnography in which two postdoctoral researchers will shadow police officers for 12 to 18 months making observations of police–community interactions. They will also attempt to follow the whole journey through the criminal justice system of those who are arrested right from the point of arrest.

The researchers will work in partnership with West Midlands Police, the Metropolitan Police and West Yorkshire Police throughout the three-year project. ‘We want to use both strands of the research to inform our theoretical development but we want to make sure that right from the outset we’ve got a framework of knowledge co-production. We’re working with our police partners to ensure the development of the knowledge has a direct pathway into influencing policy and practice in those police forces in ways that allow our theoretical work to produce beneficial social impact.

‘The police have regular, high-volume, high-level contact with certain neighbourhoods and certain communities. What we aim to do is to use our research and theory to understand how to transform that situation from one where they are, at this particular point in time, relatively reliant on coercion to one where they can move towards a relationship of consent.’ ER

Crowd research Dr John Drury (University of Sussex), one of Professor Stott’s long-time collaborators (see story opposite), was named as a finalist in this year’s ESRC ‘celebrating impact’ prize for his work on crowd psychology. His research has directly contributed to national and international policy on emergency preparedness within Public Health England, the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, the Department of Health, NATO, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction and over 200 policy makers across the UK government.

While crowds in emergency situations are often seen (and represented in the media) as a panic-stricken mass, Drury’s research has shown this is not necessarily true. His work with survivors of the July 2005 London bombings has shown that a sense of ‘common fate’ creates a feeling of shared identity that unites

people in crowds. Drury has shown that crowds can display a collective resilience that emergency services, policy makers, stewards and security teams have previously failed to appreciate or capitalise on.

To date, more than 2000 safety stewards employed at events ranging from the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Australia to the Glastonbury Festival have received training based on Drury’s research. His work is used in training materials for stadium safety officers, police match commanders and match stewards from UEFA’s 55 member organisations. Internationally, his research has resulted in safer queuing practices for festival goers at Denmark’s Roskilde Festival, and is included in Indian government’s crowd management guidance for local authorities and event organisers. ER

Women in science While women make up a majority of psychologists in the UK, they still remain under-represented and their achievements often under-recognised. The British Psychological Society, Royal Holloway, University of London and the British Neuroscience Association have announced a new online database of female academics in psychology and neuroscience to help tackle this problem.

The Women in Science Database (WISDATABASE) already has around 400 entries at the time of writing and is open to female psychologists and neuroscientists in academia, industry and the third sector. Narender Ramnani, Professor of Neuroscience at Royal Holloway University of London and chair of the project, said: ‘Women scientists are under-represented in positions of visibility, influence and authority in every area of scientific activity for example, funding panels, senior academic decision-making roles, and keynote speakers at conferences. Our project will play a part in levelling the playing field.

‘WISDATABASE will make the achievements and expertise of women scientists public and searchable so that they can be recruited into positions of influence quickly and easily. Increasing diversity impacts positively on science as it does in every other sphere.’ ER To join the WISDATABASE go to wisdatabase.com

A real-life trolley dilemma

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Would you wilfully hurt or kill one person so as to save multiple others?

That’s the dilemma at the heart of moral psychology’s favourite thought experiment and its derivatives. In the classic case, you must decide whether or not to pull a lever to divert a runaway mining trolley so that it avoids killing five people and instead kills a single individual on another line. A popular theory in the field states that, to many of us, so abhorrent is the notion of deliberately harming someone that our ‘deontological’ instincts deter us from pulling the lever; on the other hand, the more we intellectualise the problem with cool detachment, the more likely we will make a utilitarian or consequentialist judgement and divert the trolley.

Armed with thought experiments of this kind, psychologists have examined all manner of individual and circumstantial factors that influence the likelihood of people making deontological vs. utilitarian moral decisions. However, there’s a fatal (excuse the pun) problem.

A striking new paper in Psychological Science finds that our answers to the thought experiments don’t match up with our real-world moral decisions.

Dries Bostyn and his colleagues at Ghent University recruited nearly 300 participants. All answered several hypothetical moral dilemmas derived from the classic trolley dilemma – for instance, in a building on fire, they had to say whether they would push a man through a locked window to his death in order to make an exit for the five children trapped inside. The participants also completed several questionnaires tapping psychological factors, such as psychopathy and ‘need for cognition’, previously identified as being associated with being more utilitarian in one’s moral decisions.

A fortnight later, just under 200 of the participants were invited to the psych lab, one at a time, to take part in a real-life moral dilemma involving live mice. The participants saw two cages – one housing one mouse, the other housing five – each

wired to an electroshock machine.

They were told that in 20 seconds, if they did nothing, the machine would deliver a very painful but nonlethal shock to the cage containing five mice. However, if the participants pressed a button in front of them, they could divert the electric shock to the cage containing one mouse, thus saving the other five from pain (in actuality this was an illusion and all participants were later informed that in fact no mice were shocked or harmed in the study).

The remaining participants went to the psych lab but performed a hypothetical version of the mouse decision. They heard a description of the same two-cage set-up faced by the others and they had to say whether they would press the button or not.

The participants who performed the real-life mouse task behaved differently from those who made a purely hypothetical decision – they were less than half as likely to let the five mice get shocked (16 per cent of them left the button unpressed compared with 34 per cent of the hypothetical group). In other words, faced with a real-life dilemma, the volunteers were more consequentialist/utilitarian; that is, more willing to inflict harm for the greater good.

But the most important finding

– at least for the validity of moral psychology, which so often relies on thought experiments – is that the participants’ preference for deontological vs. utilitarian responding in their answers to the earlier battery of 10 hypothetical moral dilemmas bore no relation to their decision in the real-life mouse task (in contrast, the decisions of participants in the hypothetical mouse group were related to their answers to the earlier moral dilemmas). What is more, none of the psychological factors, such as psychopathy or need for cognition, were related to decision-making in the real-life moral dilemma.

For so long, moral psychology has relied on the notion that you can extrapolate from people’s decisions in hypothetical thought experiments to infer something meaningful about how they would behave morally in the real world. These new findings challenge that core assumption of the field.

That is not to say people’s hypothetical decisions are meaningless. Although participants’ responses to the earlier moral thought experiments did not predict their later real moral decisions (i.e. whether or not to press the button to divert the electric charge), they were not totally unrelated. Among those who pressed the button in the

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real-life task, if they’d also earlier shown a preference for utilitarian decisions in the thought experiments then they tended to press the button more quickly; they also expressed less doubt and discomfort about their decision.

An obvious criticism of this research is that the trolley problem and its derivatives involve humans, whereas the real-life moral dilemma used in this study involved mice.

However, the researchers believe this is not a critical issue since the moral conflicts (deliberately harming the few to save the many) are the same in both cases. They also note that they used a questionnaire to measure their participants’ levels of empathy for animals, and how participants scored made no difference to the

pattern of findings (meaning it’s unlikely that participants’ levels of concern or not for the mice explains the results).

Bostyn and his team don’t know why people’s judgements on the moral thought experiments didn’t predict their choice in the real-life moral task. Current theory – based on the idea that emotional responding leads to more deontological decisions and rational thinking to more utilitarian decisions – isn’t much help because it would actually predict more deontological decisions in the more vivid and emotive real-life task, which is the opposite of what was found.

The researchers speculate that perhaps people are more inclined to virtue-signal when answering in

the hypothetical (i.e. signalling that they couldn’t possibly choose to deliberately harm another, even to save the majority), but one could just as easily make this case for the very opposite results.

‘Future research will have to investigate these and other possibilities,’ the researchers concluded. ‘[W]e advance the argument that we will be able to bridge the gap between moral judgment and moral behaviour only by exploring new research paradigms that bring more decision making into the real world.’

Dr Christian Jarrett for the Research Digest www.bps.org.uk/digest Read the article: tinyurl.com/ ycp3xzru

Antisocial media under the spotlight at Westminster Labour MP Jess Phillips recently revealed that in the space of one evening she received 600 rape threats on social media – as well as a barrage of threats of violence every day. The appalling abuse MPs and members of the public are exposed to online was highlighted at the British Psychological Society’s fourth All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Psychology meeting.

Scottish National Party MP for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow Dr Lisa Cameron and Chair of the APPG, who has experienced trolling first hand, opened the event attended by House of Lords peers, MPs and many others. The BPS acts as secretariat for the APPG and asked Professor Catriona Morrison and Dr Shazia Akhtar (University of Bradford) to explore MPs’ experiences of being trolled (see also June, p.21).

They surveyed 181 MPs both male and female – 100 per cent of whom said they had experienced trolling either daily or weekly. Morrison said the abuse ranged from death and rape threats to threats of vandalism and lowerlevel jibes. Akhtar pointed out the surprising finding that male MPs reported more abuse than women, though she added men mainly face defamatory comments that may cause reputational damage while females are exposed to more threats of sexual, racial and violent abuse.

Morrison and Akhtar also found a split in the response to and effects of this abuse – male MPs were more likely to respond to online trolls and were not affected much, psychologically or emotionally, by the abuse. Female MPs

in the other hand will usually ignore abuse and trolls themselves and tend to be more psychologically and emotionally affected by it.

Also from the University of Bradford, Professor Abigail Locke recently edited a special edition of the journal Feminism and Psychology that explored feminism and social media. She pointed to a paper in that issue reporting research on so-called revenge porn websites where (usually) spurned ex-lovers post sexually explicit photos of their former partners. This research showed 92 per cent of the victims on these sites are women, one site did not even accept photos of men.

Those photos that were tagged with extra information, for example pointing out that a woman had cheated on their partner, received more clicks and comments than those that weren’t.

Another paper looked into how high-profile rape cases are discussed on Twitter. The researchers found that those tweets that in some way blamed the victim of the abuse received the most retweets from fellow users, and the accounts that posted these victim-blaming messages also tended to have more followers than those that supported victims.

Locke said while movements such as #MeToo and Everyday Sexism show us the positives of the online world

Jess Phillips MP

for young women, cyberspace can lead to a magnification of gender inequality.

Dr Nelli Ferenczi (Regent’s University London) spoke about her findings published in Computers and Human Behaviour, which explored the personality variables that predict prosocial or antisocial Facebook use. In particular she focused on narcissism, which has been previously linked to a need for negative social power, and relational self-construal, which describes to degree to which someone defines themselves by their close relationships.

In her survey of 573 USA-based participants men reported greater levels of narcissism and women greater levels of relational self-construal. The former was related to antisocial motives for using Facebook, while the latter was related to more prosocial motives.

Ferenczi also surveyed UK-based participants on the degree to which they would endorse misogynistic online beliefs and behaviours. She found that, overall, men endorsed misogyny more than women, and that narcissism was related to greater endorsement of those beliefs. During the study Ferenczi also measured participants’ level of social dominance belief – the idea that society is made up of a hierarchy of people – revealed by agreement with statements such as ‘sometimes groups need to be kept in their place’; this was also found to be related to greater endorsement of misogynistic online behaviour. ER To find out more about the APPG for Psychology’s work see tinyurl.com/y9oq4nvu

Maslow – putting the record straight

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Abraham Maslow was one of the great psychological presences of the 20th century, and his concept of self-actualisation has entered our vernacular and is addressed in most psychology textbooks. A core concept of humanistic psychology, self-actualisation theory has inspired a range of psychological therapies as well as approaches taken in social work. But a number of myths have crept into our understanding of the theory and the man himself. In a new paper in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, William Compton of Middle Tennessee State University aims to put the record straight.

Maslow’s most penetrating idea is that we have a hierarchy of needs, proceeding from physiological needs like water or warmth, through safety, love, esteem and then self-actualisation. He argued that lower needs occupy our attention when they are unmet and make it more difficult to fulfil the higher ones – including selfactualisation, which is about becoming the self you always had the potential to be.

Compton first deals with the charge that this work is ascientific. He finds there is a lack of strong evidence showing that individuals transition from one level of the hierarchy to the next, as Maslow claimed. However, research on this point is complicated by the widely mistaken belief that Maslow considered needs must be fully satisfied at each level before progressing. In fact, Maslow stated that everyone has unsatisfied needs at every level – who feels safe 100 per cent of the time?

On the other hand, in favour of the idea of progression through the hierarchy is evidence from comparisons of national populations. Cross-cultural research shows that when more people in a population have their basic needs met, a greater proportion also tend to reach selfactualisation, as compared with populations that are preoccupied with scarcities.

Maslow also claimed that people are more likely to flourish when they hold self-actualising values like spontaneity, positive self-regard, and acceptance of paradoxes. There is supportive data associating these qualities with positive outcomes – including creativity,

lower anxiety or a personal locus of control, and also – and perhaps more surprisingly – higher instances of peak experiences, higher sexual satisfaction and less fear of death.

The hierarchy is sometimes presented with another element slotted in: cognition needs, placed just below self-actualisation. In fact Maslow opposed this, as he saw cognition as a tool that can serve every need at every level, whether in knowing self-defence techniques to help you feel safe, or knowing ourselves. For him, it lay outside the hierarchy. Another point often forgotten is that self-actualisation isn’t Maslow’s pinnacle. He broke out another stage for ‘peakers’ – self-actualised individuals who also experience peak or mystical experiences.

Compton moves on to address allegations about who and what the theory is for. He disputes the idea that it encourages self-centredness: many of the selfactualisation qualities Maslow emphasised are actually

the psychologist august 2018 news centred on others, like fairness, service, and adherence to a universal framework of values. Moreover, two of Maslow’s favoured reference points when talking about self-actualisation were Alfred Adler’s Gemeinschaftsgefühl (the psychological health that follows from caring about others) and the bodhisattva (the Buddhist notion of one who strives for compassion towards others).

What about the related charge that self-actualisation is elitist, a preoccupation reserved for the privileged? This criticism needs some thinking through. There is a case that Maslow didn’t pay enough attention to how sexism or racism could impede self-actualisation, although his writings did show a more vague sensitivity to life throwing you a trickier hand. It’s true many of his self-actualised examples are white men, but he also cited figures such as Jane Addams, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman.

And while it may seem like self-actualisation requires plenty of disposable income and leisure time, what Maslow meant by self-actualisation is bringing your full self to the moment, which includes dedicating yourself to work, how you treat others in daily interactions, and holding yourself to the highest standards. You can do all that from wherever you are standing.

Finally, Compton deals with the references in Maslow’s copious writing to the self-actualised as ‘more fully human’ versus the ‘less evolved persons’ who are lower down the hierarchy – at the very least, this is a case of bad optics. In his defence, Maslow repeatedly emphasised that he did not believe anyone was innately superior, just that some people made more of their potential. Compton argues that some of the criticism around this is motivated by defensiveness: that some people are apparently stung by the claim that someone can work on their personality and thus make it excellent, just as they can become an excellent gymnast or painter. I disagree – I think there is a case that Maslow’s language unhelpfully conjures a sense of individualistic exceptionalism that would probably feel right at home in a TED summit or posthumanist away-day. Not, I think, what he would have wanted.

Clearly, Maslow’s work is not without flaws. But his reframing of psychology to look at upwards possibilities rather than constantly into pathology sparked a shift that anticipated the positive psychology movement by decades.

His ideas deserve to be better understood, so we can use them more effectively to better ourselves, and so they can be developed and built upon for professionals who are seeking a ladder to help humanity reach greatness.

Dr Alex Fradera for the Research Digest www.bps.org.uk/digest Read the article: tinyurl.com/y7ncflcp

News online Find all our latest news at www.thepsychologist.org.uk/reports For much more of the latest peer-reviewed research, digested, see www.bps.org.uk/digest Do you have a potential news story? Email us on psychologist@bps.org.uk or tweet @psychmag.

Research digest Frequent aerobic exercise holds promise as an intervention to reduce the hard-to-treat ‘negative symptoms’ of schizophrenia, including apathy and loss of emotional feeling, according to a new trial. Patients diagnosed with schizophrenia who undertook 30 minutes of vigorous exercise five times a week for 12 weeks showed allround symptom improvements, and in the case of their negative symptoms these benefits were maintained and even continued three months after the study. (Frontiers in Psychiatry) Researchers have used the ‘day-reconstruction method’ to investigate how personality trait scores correlate with how people choose to spend their time. Participants recalled in detail what they’d spent the previous day doing. Many correlations were as expected – for instance, higher scorers in conscientiousness spent more time working and studying – while others were less obvious, such as the highly neurotic spending more time on household chores. (Collabra) People who believe their opinions are superior to others also tend to have the least insight into their relevant knowledge, overestimating what they know. These folk are also more likely to pass up opportunities to learn more about the topics for which they feel their opinions are better than others.

On a positive note, people with belief superiority become more open to learning when informed that people who share their beliefs tend to lack appropriate knowledge. (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology) Incorporating physical activity into academic school lessons may help to combat children’s increasingly sedentary lifestyles. Researchers trialled a six-week intervention of eighteen 10-minute active maths and English lessons in which pupils performed physical exercises to indicate their answers to quiz questions.

Children displayed more ‘on-task’ behaviour during the active lessons; they were also more physically active than in normal classes, although this didn’t translate into more overall daily activity – in future, a more intense ‘dose’ might help achieve this outcome. (Health Education and Behaviour)

By Dr Christian Jarrett. These studies were covered, along with many more, by him, Dr Alex Fradera and Emma Young on our Research Digest at www.bps.org.uk/digest

‘They’re so focused on the symptoms-checklist view’ Our journalist Ella Rhodes spoke to Professor Andrew Przybylski, Director of Research at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford, about the inclusion of ‘gaming disorder’ in the ICD-11

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n June the World Health Organization this week published the ICD-11 (the International Classification of Diseases), including gaming disorder as an addictive behaviour disorder for the first time. In the run-up to its publication researchers in psychology and beyond have spoken out against this decision – pointing especially to the low quality of research the disorder is based on.

Gaming disorder is described by the ICD-11 as a persistent pattern of gaming behaviour, online or offline, to the detriment of a person’s everyday life. For a diagnosis, someone must have been showing a lack of control over gaming, priority being given to games over other interests and an escalation of gaming within the last 12 months.

Professor Andrew Przybylski is a researcher who has written extensively on the reasons against including gaming disorder in the ICD-11.

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Can you tell me a little about the research base in the area?

The research literature has largely been from survey studies, and the great majority of these fall into one of two camps. In the first camp most of the studies have used what we would call ‘samples of convenience’: so for example a researcher will create a scale that’s meant to tap into disordered gaming or gaming addiction or MMO addiction or online game addiction.

There’s upwards of 50 video game addiction scales used in the literature… in the absence of the ICD or APA draft guidance on internet gaming disorder, what researchers did was use checklists from disordered gambling or substance-use research, take out the word gambling or alcohol and put in the word ‘game’. The questionnaires usually also include some other measure that’s anchored to disordered gaming. So this can be demographics, to find the prevalence of disordered gaming within certain groups; it could involve specific game titles; and another category is measurements of wellbeing, physical or mental health. Some inference is drawn about gaming addiction or disordered gaming having a possible negative effect on psychosocial functioning of some type.

The second camp of studies use more controlled samples and try to collect panel data which is representative of the population. But in most cases convenience sampling makes up a majority of the studies, nearly all of it is cross-sectional. People try to build statistical models to draw, from correlational data, some kind of inference about gaming and disordered gaming in terms of demographics, games, or wellbeing and mental health. In almost all cases it’s self-report measures,

not a teacher or caregiver providing feedback or insight.

This is the main body of work that people look at when they’re trying to describe whether or not gaming is a problem. That’s easily 90 to 95 per cent of the research.

The thing that has alarmed me most about this body of work isn’t that it’s based on self-report or the sampling issues – it’s the general lack of transparency.

Researchers don’t share their data, the analysis code isn’t available and it’s not clear whether or not these are the only measures of wellbeing or gaming addiction which were used. But a lot has changed in terms of what we think of as gold standard research in psychological science. My methodological bugbear is we’re creating a new disorder that can be so far behind the ball in terms of what counts as good science.

the psychologist august 2018 news From your point of view can we conclude much, reliably and of use, from the literature?

Absolutely not. From my perspective what we can conclude is the research is done quite poorly and the evidence for this abounds. First – video games are seldom defined, in the US context a lot of the research is guided

by Internet Gaming Disorder (included in the DSM-5 as a topic for further study), but I’ve yet to find a psychiatrist or psychologist or games industry expert who can tell me what an internet game is! Gaming is an activity, and we would run into some very similar definitional problems pretty quickly if we were talking about food addiction or sex addiction. When we learn about the nuance and primary roles of sex and food in people’s lives it would be really hard just to study the pathological aspect of it without understanding the primary phenomenon.

What’s happening is there are all of these logical shortcuts people are taking to avoid having to defend the basic definition. If we were to talk about a game being addictive we’d have to talk about the mechanics of a game. We’d have to talk about something really boring and hard to understand like ‘how different reinforcement schedules in loot boxes relate to people spending more than they want to spend when playing the game Overwatch…’! You’d have to specify a very niche hypothesis.

The problem is because the topic is so flashy and because many of the people who study the topic have a limited methodological toolkit – when you’re a hammer the whole world is a nail, right? So they’re not actually philosophically or methodologically equipped to study the thing the correct way. The correct way to study it is probably working with games companies, doing big data analysis, looking at problematic patterns then working back to find individuals who are in distress. But that’s not the way these researchers ask research questions.

They’re so focused on the symptoms-checklist view because that’s easy to understand.

I hear people invoking the dopamine-reward pathway in the brain often when discussing gaming addiction or disordered gaming – is that just nonsense?

It’s nonsense in a few ways, but it’s important to break the nonsense down. The first and most concrete way it’s nonsense is whenever you hear someone talking about anything rewiring the brain that’s an immediate red flag – that’s not how the brain works. The next one is typically people will talk about squirts of dopamine. In the first instance we’d genuinely hope dopamine was involved, because dopamine is part of the learning system and is part of food and sex and socialising. But you’ll hear people say, ‘It activates dopamine so it’s just like cocaine!’, but the thing to keep in perspective – and my colleague Chris Ferguson has done some work on this – is the realm of dopamine you’re talking about. If you’re talking about dopamine that’s available for reuptake if you have an activity like eating or sex or video games, we’re talking levels which are 50 to 100 per cent higher than the normal levels of dopamine in the brain. But if you compare that to something like cocaine or Ecstasy or methamphetamine

you’re talking 14 to 15 times the amount of free-floating dopamine. It’s true that it’s 1.5 times higher in the series of small-scale studies which have been done, but the magnitude of the difference is really huge.

To play devil’s advocate – is there any benefit to have gaming disorder in the ICD-11?

I think yes, but there are downsides – it’s going to be very embarrassing when people realise how poor the evidence base is, it’ll be pretty embarrassing for the WHO. When somebody figures out that, say, half of 1 per cent of players are addicted, that’s still tens of millions of people on the planet. It will also be stigmatising. There’s a lot of people who play games to relax, to de-stress, and if they’re struggling with other things this will just be another one.

On the positives – I think individuals in the games industry are receptive to studying these kinds of topics, but I don’t think there’s any institutional appetite for it. Perhaps a carrot and stick of formalised diagnosis may be just the thing that the trade bodies need to get serious about open and robust scientific evidence. I don’t think the games companies should be able to pick their researchers and vice versa. I think that in the same way we apply for grants, researchers should apply for data.

There’s a profound asymmetry between the amount of data video games makers hold on players and the kinds of data academic scientists have access to. Really great initiatives like the Understanding Society Project and the Institute for Social and Economic Research are just dipping their toes now into linking social media data with these huge cohorts. They’re spending tens of millions of pounds on this and they’re great projects, but if we could link participants’ play behaviours and their identities across this data we could learn much, much more.

What will happen now the ICD-11 has been published?

I think the thing that’s important to understand is this is another step in an ongoing process. You’re not going to turn up at the doctor’s tomorrow and have your GP ask you the four questions suggested by the WHO (which may suggest someone has the disorder) – there’ll be an ongoing period of consultation that will last about two years between WHO member states and feeding back data. At this stage we need to do really, good basic research and we have to be very wary of people who will try to sell us things.

While there’s this ambiguity there’ll be people with clinics, people selling books and people trying to sell this need and take advantage of the fact this hasn’t all been vetted… we need to be on guard. There are entrenched interests that will either try to make this all go away or try to make a pound off it. The WHO stamp legitimates the whole process and so people, bad actors, and some who think they’re doing good, are definitely something we need to be wary of. If there were 10 books about gaming addiction published last year you can expect that number to quadruple in the next year.

In search of the brain of Descartes What, if anything, has psychology learned from the study of famous brains? G. Neil Martin investigates…

Psychology has its own famous brains – Leborgne, Kim Peek, Henry Molaison, Phineas Gage, EVR, NA, Shereshevsky, HJA. Extensively studied before and after death, they have sometimes provided a theoretical scaffold to support the data. But studies of other, more publicly celebrated brains have sought to shed light on the association between talent or trait and brain geography.

This is their story.

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‘I

am a brain, Watson,’ declared Sherlock Holmes in The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone, ‘the rest of me is a mere appendix.’ Holmes’s cephalocentrism (and his narcissism) is no secret; he was not shy about promoting his cerebral credentials and comparing them favourably with his more pedestrian companion. It doesn’t take a detective to work that out. But our story, of brains and fame, starts not with double-crossing aristocrats but with Descartes.

Lund, Sweden, 1650, was the location of the burial of the Frenchman, mathematician, logician, Renaissance man. But the body did not rest there for long, and the history of the brain (and skull) of René Descartes since his death is chequered and extraordinary. In 1666 his body was disinterred and relocated to the office of the French Ambassador to Sweden, Hugues de Terlon, and guarded by an army captain, Isaak Planstrom. Terlon was allowed to keep the index finger before the body was returned to Paris for re-burial. During the French Revolution, the body was retrieved again and the skull kept in a local museum. Some have questioned whether the skull did leave Sweden: in 1818, for example, no skull was found inside the coffin. But this was the least extraordinary aspect of the journey of brain and skull of Descartes. A brilliant account of its necroscopic journey was published by Charlier Philippe and colleagues in the Journal of Neurological Sciences in 2017.

In 1821, in an auction of the chattels of the estate of Anders Sparrman, among the items listed was ‘the skull of the famous Cartesius’. There is evidence that the discarded skull was sold by a Swedish casino operator to a Swedish chemist called Berzilius, who sent it to the Académie des Sciences in Paris. An archivist at the Academy, who tried to determine provenance, discovered that a school headmaster had spotted the skull in the house of a colleague, Jonas Olafsson Bang. Bang’s father was a merchant and brewer to whom a debt was repaid in the form of the skull.

The debtor was the man who was entrusted to look after the remains for Terlon: Isaak Planstrom. On the forehead of the skull was written (in Swedish): ‘The skull of René Descartes, taken by J Fr Planstrom, the year 1666, and the same time when the body was being returned to France.’

Bang Jr supplemented the inscription with a few verses of Latin. Both are still on the skull. It is probably the most vandalised famous skull in history.

In 1751 the skull was inherited by a government official, then by an ‘economic superintendent’ in Stockholm in 1796. It then passed on to a tax assessor, in an auction, then to the official’s son-in-law and then to a Professor of Surgery. The Académie des Sciences, when it came into possession of the bones, concluded that they must be those of Descartes.

The skull now rests in the Musée de l’Homme in Paris. It is, by all published scientific accounts, quite normal for a human. An endocast reconstruction of the brain of Descartes by Philippe and his colleagues, using CT scans of the skull, was compared with those of 102 individuals

the psychologist august 2018 famous brains

PAUL D STEWART/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

from the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. It displayed cerebral variation consistent with that of modern brains but with some exceptions: some parietal gyri were wider and the inter parietal sulcus was more apparent on the left side. But did this cerebral expansion signify anything more profound than a neuroanatomical abnormality? Was this a neural expression of his mathematical giftedness and polymathy? In the sober, scientific light of day, probably not, given that the brain was largely no different to a ‘normal’ brain. But this exercise, and others like it, have not stopped scientists from trying to match anatomical anomalies with special talents.

The brain of a genius Einstein’s is one of the few brains to have been extensively studied at the histological and neuroanatomical level. Einstein died on 16 April

1955, aged 75. His wish was to be cremated but his pathologist, Thomas Harvey, saved his brain – the ownership of which has been disputed ever since.

The first study of Einstein’s brain was published 30 years after his autopsy. Of the four sections of the brain donated to the study, a lower neuron to glia ratio was found in his brain compared with ‘less gifted’ brains.

The parietal cortex contained more glial cells. But, inevitably, the age of the study, as well as the method of execution, raises obvious problems: members of the control group were younger than Einstein when they died and were from a different socio-economic group, none of the controls had died of a neurological condition, and only one in four of the statistical tests was statistically significant. Other measures had been excluded: the number of neurons, for example, and the number of specific types of glial cells. A second study, published in 1996, found a higher density of neurons in the right prefrontal cortex.

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to be too. Hines also remarks that differences have More superficial studies – literally, photographs of been found in the white and grey matter of bilingual Einstein’s brain – have found that the inferior parietal speakers compared with monolinguals, in areas which lobule is larger than in controls and that the gyrus the corpus callosum studies ascribe to Einstein’s behind the Sylvian fissure was undivided by a sulcus. genius. Einstein was bilingual. The morphological Sandra Witelson and her team, in a study published and histological features in his brain may reflect his in 1999, noted that the latter feature was absent in 91 bilingualism, rather than his genius. controls and that Einstein showed a more symmetrical parietal cortex. At this point, Albert Galaburda enters the fray, arguing that no such differences could be observed. To which, Witelson and her group countered Killers and composers Other famous brains studied are just as eminent, or that Galaburda was looking in the wrong place. They notorious. For example, of the four US presidents who say that science progresses through contradiction. have been assassinated (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Other photographic studies reported a ‘knob’ in Kennedy) only two of the assassins have been tried the right postcentral gyrus which was attributed to and executed – the killers of Garfield and McKinley, the scientist’s violin-playing (violinists have been Charles Julius Guiteau and Leon found to exhibit this feature).

Franz Czolgosz. Edward Anthony A subsequent analysis based “On the day of Haydn’s Spitzka, a student in his fourth year on new photographs and by the same research group also burial a gravedigger was at medical school but already the author of several papers on neurology, found differences in the length paid to remove the head conducted an autopsy of Czolgosz. of sulci, thickness and size and return it to a group His father had testified at the trial of gyri and differences in the of Guiteau. Spitzka Jr is particularly configuration of gyri. Additional of keen phrenologists interesting because he also published findings included a ‘knob’ in the in Eisenstadt” a study of the brains of six eminent right frontal lobe, an enlarged scientists, and scholars from the left motor cortex in the face American Anthropometric Society, a area, and a large sulcus in the learned society established in 1899 whose chief object right occipital lobe. The symmetry of the brain was ‘was the preservation of the brains of its members’. not confirmed. The authors attributed the larger Spitzka was one of five founding members. areas devoted to the face and tongue to Einstein’s His paper, published in Transactions of the American view that thinking was muscular. ‘The extraordinary Philosophical Society in 1907, is extraordinary in that expansion of the lateral part of Einstein’s left primary it provides an account of the brains, at autopsy, of 130 somatosensory and left primary motor cortices’, they ‘noble’ men and four women. Walt Whitman’s was one write, is curious given that ‘Einstein brain whose donation might have provided Spitzka wrote that thinking entailed an with interesting study material. However, this was not association of images and feelings, Key sources to be. In Spitzka’s words, ‘the brain of Walt Whitman, and that, for him, the elements of together with the jar in which it had been placed, was thought were not only visual but Bentivoglio, M. (1998). Cortical structure said to have been dropped on the floor by a careless also muscular.’

But, as Terence and mental skills: Oskar Vogt and the assistant. Unfortunately, not even the pieces were Hines has pointed out in a review legacy of Lenin’s brain. Brain Research saved’ (p.176). of the Einstein’s brain literature, Bulletin, 47, 291–296.

Frayling, C. (2006). Mad, bad and Some of the famous brains Spitzka describes in whether anyone would have taken dangerous. Harlow: Reaction Books. his paper, and the features observed by those who this reflection of Einstein’s and Hines, T. (2014). Neuromythology of predicted that his brain would show studied those brains, are intriguing. Beethoven’s brain, Einstein’s brain. Brain and Cognition, 88, according to Johann Wagner who performed the comparatively larger tongue and 21–25. composer’s autopsy, showed that ‘the convolutions face areas is moot.

Kaufman, M.H., & Basden, N. appeared twice as numerous and the tissue twice as The corpus callosum also (1995/6). Items relating to Dr Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (1776–1832) in the deep as in ordinary brains’; Karl Friedrich Gauss’s appeared to be different in Einstein.

Henderson Trust Collection. Journal of brain was ‘remarkable for the multiplicity of fissures Nine of 10 measures in one study Neurolinguistics, 9, 301–325. and the great complexity of the convolutions. Richness showed differences – the corpus Philippe, C., Isabelle, H.C., Philippe, of fissuration is particularly notable in the frontal callosum was larger than that of F. et al. (2017). The brain of René region’; Robert Schumann showed whole-brain atrophy the elderly and larger than that of Descartes (1650): A neuroanatomical and distended blood vessels at the base of the brain the young in six areas, for example. analysis. Journal of the Neurological Sciences, 378, 12–18. and new irregular formation of bone mass; William The authors of the study suggested Spitzka, A. (1907). A study of the that this demonstrated the extensive Thackeray had ‘a very large brain weighing no less than brains of six eminent scientists and fifty eight and a half ounces’, according to one report; connections in Einstein’s brain scholars belonging to the American Charles Babbage, whose brain is preserved in the compared with normal brains.

Anthropometric Society. Transactions of Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, had a brain Hines, again, has pointed out that the American Philosophical Society, 21, weighing 1403 grams and showed a ‘well-developed if one part of the corpus callosum 175–308. sulcus frontal medialis of Cunningham and a special is larger, another one is likely

the psychologist august 2018 famous brains

pathologists sought to determine richness of the anterior part of the whether this skull was that of the inferior frontal convolution’; Ivan musical paragon. DNA from two of Turgenev’s brain showed symmetry the skull’s teeth was compared with of convolutions; Friedrich Smetana, DNA taken from the thigh bones who died of paralytic dementia and of Mozart’s grandmother and niece was described as being of ‘delicate on his mother’s side. The scientists frame’, showed the atrophy typical were unable to conclude that the of dementia, and atrophy of the skull was Mozart’s. auditory nerve (he became deaf) Professor G. Neil Martin Joseph Haydn’s brain was – his brain also weighed 1250g, is Head of Programmes: another that was sought after for which is heavy for a brain in this Psychology at Regent’s study, but its acquisition was more state of degeneration; George University London nefarious than that of Mozart’s.

Gordon (Byron) had a brain neil.martin@regents.ac.uk On the day of Haydn’s burial a weighing 2238 grams which was Twitter @thatneilmartin. gravedigger was paid to remove ‘exceedingly congested’ with two He has offered to donate his the head and return it to a group ounces of blood discovered in his brain to science, but science has of keen phrenologists in Eisenstadt. ventricles. yet to return his call.

By the time it was presented for Even one of neurology and study, it was apparently already psychology’s well-known figures, green. The skull has since been reunited with the Franz Josef Gall, co-creator of anatomical personology body and is, by all accounts, buried at a mausoleum or phrenology with Kaspar Spurzheim, was included in Eisenstadt. (as was Spurzheim). Four to five ounces of fluid Gall’s student, Spurzheim, inspired a collection was found at the base of Gall’s skull and the right of his own. Following disagreement over how cerebellum was larger (and contained a tumour). phrenology should develop, the scientists split in Spurzheim’s brain weighed 1559 grams. Gall himself 1813 and Spurzheim engaged in a series of European was a notorious skull collector: it is thought that by tours espousing his flavour of anatomical personology. around 1802, he had amassed around 300 of them. In One venue was Edinburgh and one of Spurzheim’s 1800 one observer remarked in relation to the skull of Mozart that ‘Everyone in Vienna is very concerned and staunchest advocates, George Combe, set up a alarmed lest his head might end up in Gall’s collection.’ Phrenological Society there and established the first Gall was particularly taken with musicians, concluding Phrenological Journal in 1824. Combe was a passionate phrenologist and probably did more than any other from his viewing of various paintings that Gluck, Haydn, Salieri, Beethoven, Mozart and others exhibited scientist in Great Britain to popularise the philosophy.

The Society stored over 2500 skulls. On Spurzheim’s ‘an organ of music’, a phrenological feature. death, the scientist bequeathed his collection of around The fate of Mozart’s brain and skull is as peculiar 300 casts and 100 skulls to the Society’s museum. as that of Descartes. A skull thought to be that of These came under the custodianship of the Henderson Mozart was curated at the Mozarteum in 1901. In 2006, the composer’s 250th birthday, a team of forensic Trust in 1855 and now form one of the most curious

Flying over a landscape Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Bolshevik Party founder, leader of the Russian Revolution and subsequent head of state, died in January 1924, probably due to strokes, and seizures brought on by them. At autopsy, infarcts and atherosclerosis were found in many blood vessels.

His brain was studied by a German neuroscientist, Oskar Vogt, who as part of an arrangement with the Russian government directed a new brain research institute set up in Moscow.

Over two and a half years, Vogt took tens of thousands of sections of Lenin’s brain and studied them, delivering his report to the Soviet Union in 1929. According to

Marina Bentivoglio in a review in Brain Research Bulletin, this is the only known report on Lenin’s brain to have been written by Russian investigators.

Vogt found some distinctive features.

The pyramidal neurons in Layer III of the cortex were large and numerous; the layer was also wider and Layer IV

thinner. Given the assumed role of the neurons in this layer as association neurons, Vogt concluded that Lenin was an ‘athlete in associative thinking’, a neurobiological correlate of the Russian’s well-documented mental agility.

Vogt himself was aware of the superficial nature of the exercise. In his report, he remarked that ‘It is like flying over a landscape, when one seems a number of towns; only the talented investigator of architecture can readily spot characteristics (like peculiar buildings) to identify individual towns.’

Vogt naturally regarded himself as a talented pilot.

Getty Images

Brain box Cinema has had a fruitful, if slightly bonkers, relationship with science (see Frayling’s 2005 book Mad, Bad and Dangerous for a superb survey of this eccentric world). Perhaps the most seminal, cerebral (literally) influence on films and TV, particularly those from the 1950s onwards, but the legacy flows through even to today’s creations, is Curt Siodmak’s novel Donovan’s Brain (1942) where a very wealthy tycoon (Donovan) dies in a plane crash but his brain is kept alive by a mad (naturally) scientist. It inspired the films The Lady and The Monster (1944), Donovan’s Brain (1953) and The Brain/ Vengeance (1962). The latter involved a brain in a jar controlling a doctor to track down the killers of the brain’s body. Throughout all these efforts is the recurring theme of revenge and retribution, a dish served best via a disembodied brain, sometimes in a jar, sometimes not. The film of the book was parodied in the more famous The Man with Two Brains (1983), in which Steve Martin’s Dr Hfuhruhurr invents ‘the cranial screw top method of entering the brain whereby a large section can be unscrewed without having to shave the head.’ He later falls in love with a disembodied brain called Annie.

The brain in the jar motif echoes one of psychology and philosophy’s most famous ‘thought experiments’, so-called because little thought appears to have gone into them. The most common version is the ‘Brain in the Vat’ poser in which a mad scientist (of course) removes the brain and places it in a vat of life-sustaining liquid. The brain’s neurons are attached to a supercomputer. The brain functions, and it exists. In what way, therefore, can we be sure that our brains are not simply brains in a vat? It is a variant of an old conundrum – Descartes posed the same question with his Evil Demon concept, as did Plato with the Cave Allegory. All of the brains in the films above cope very well in a vat, in a jar, in fact, in any receptacle the mad scientist (him again – and yes, it is usually a him) has chosen to keep it in. The most dramatic example of brains having a life of their own is found in Fiend Without a Face (1958) in which the thoughts of scientists are given material form by several volitant brains with antennae that terrorise several of the US Army’s finest warriors. Once seen, never easily forgotten. Other brain-related horrors from the 50s onwards include Creature with the Atomic Brain (1955), The Brain from Planet Arous (1957), The Brain Eaters (1958), The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962), in which the brain died, The Atomic Brain (1964), and They Saved Hitler’s Brain (1968), in which they saved Hitler’s brain.

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collections of skulls and casts to have survived the phrenological frenzy of the mid-19th century.

It includes Gall’s life mask, his wife’s death mask and a cast of his own skull and brain.

As an indication that ideas in psychology and neuroscience never die – they just retire and re-appear at sporadically unpredictable intervals – Oiwi Parker Jones and colleagues at the Oxford Centre for Functional MRI of the Brain, in the UK, have recently published a direct test of the phrenological hypothesis.

They took MRI scans of 5724 ‘skulls’ (the head was imaged and the contour measurements of the skull extracted) and correlated the undulations and bumps with the types of faculties described by Gall and Spurzheim. They found no significant associations, concluding ‘according to our results, a more accurate phrenological bust should be left blank since no regions on the head correlate with any of the faculties that we tested’.

Other brains described by Spitzka in his review include those of Gaetano Donizetti, Napoleon III, Paul Broca (‘no further records’ and nothing of note reported), Ludwig II of Bavaria, Hans von Bülow (the composer) and Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell’s case is unusual because it is thought he must have had three heads – at the time of the study, one skull was in the Ashmolean, one was on public display, and one was in Beckenham.

Spitzka found that, overall, noted individuals had heavier brains, echoing Arthur Conan Doyle (‘It is a question of cubic capacity,’ said he; ‘a man with so large a brain must have something in it.’). He also noted that ‘a period of decrease with age is deferred for a decade among the more intellectual persons’, a conclusion based on anecdotal data but lent some credence by more systematic and rigorous 21st-century studies of the relationship between education and risk of dementia (greater education is considered to be a protective factor). Spitzka also found individual differences at the career level: ‘Brains of men devoted to higher intellectual occupations such as material sciences involving the most complex mechanisms of the mind…are generally heavier still’ (p.251).

Specifically, the average brain weight of men from the ‘exact’ sciences (N = 9) was 1542g; natural sciences (N = 48) was 1453g; fine arts and philosophy (N = 24) was 1479g; and government, politics, law and the military (N = 23) was 1516g. At a national level, Americans had the heaviest brains (1519g), followed by the Brits (1481g), the French (1456g), then the Germans/Austrians (1439g).

The lure of the special While there are singularly interesting facts associated with many of the brains we have looked at (and see also ‘Flying over a landscape’), they’re little more than trivia. There are no statistics, there are no uniform and consistent methods, there are no theories. Why would there be? This was the turn of the century, a time

the psychologist august 2018 famous brains

Unlocking the secrets of the brain (by Christian Jarrett: see www.bps.org.uk/digest) The tales of historical characters like Phineas Gage, Louis Victor Leborgne (better known as Tan Tan) and Henry Molaison have provided generations of students with extreme examples of how brain damage is related to psychological functioning. These case studies have acquired an almost mythical quality – there is an air of mystery around exactly what happened to them, and over the decades each new cohort of psychologists (and increasingly neuroscientists) has used the latest technology to try to establish the precise brain damage or disease involved.

Phineas Gage – the 19th-century railway worker who changed personality after an iron rod blasted through his brain – presents the greatest challenge of the three because his brain was not preserved for posterity. Instead, researchers have used various techniques to try to estimate the damage he suffered, including taking CT scans of his skull.

Most recently, for a paper published in 2012, researchers at the University of California and Harvard used diffusion tensor imaging to map the connective brain tissues of 110 men, and then simulated the path of Gage’s iron rod through an average of those maps to estimate how Gage’s accident affected the connective networks in his brain.

The findings suggested significant damage to connective hubs in the front and left of his brain, which the researchers interpreted as being consistent with historical accounts of the initial dramatic changes to Gage’s behaviour (though the results can’t speak to the more recent historical analysis that has suggested Gage made a more profound recovery than previously realised).

A year after Gage’s death in 1860, Louis Victor Leborgne was being transferred to the Bicêtre hospital in Paris to be assessed by the French neurologist and anthropologist Paul Broca. He died a week later. Although Leborgne was far from being the first case in which left-sided brain damage co-occurred with a speech deficit (he could only utter “Tan”), he has become famous because later the same year Broca used his brain and case presentation to persuade other experts at the Paris Society of Anthropology that language function is localised in the brain.

Some even credit Broca and his study of Leborgne with launching the subdiscipline of cognitive neuropsychology.

when psychology was still called moral philosophy.

But studies such as Spitzka’s were the forerunners to those such as Peter Garrard and his team’s study of Iris Murdoch in 2005, Anna Cantagallo and Sergio Della Sala’s 1998 study of Frederico Felllini, and S. Dueguez and colleagues’ studies of Luchino Visconti (hemineglect) and Charles Baudelaire (aphasia), the latter published in one of two volumes of Neurological Disorders in Famous Artists in 2007.

Which brings us to where we came in, and to what the study of famous brains can reveal. It could be argued that this endeavour represents nothing more than modern phrenology: the seeking of causal relationships between function and structure when all that exists is illusory correlation, if correlations are

Broca made the decision not to dissect Leborgne’s brain, which means successive generations of scientists have been able to study it (but this also limited Broca’s ability to accurately discern the extent of the brain damage). For instance, in 2007 a team led by Nina Dronkers used high-resolution MRI to scan the brain and they concluded that Leborgne’s brain damage was far more extensive than Broca realised – potentially meaning that his speech deficits were not principally caused by damage to what’s become known as Broca’s area (the posterior third of the inferior frontal gyrus), as Broca had inferred.

The amnesiac Henry Molaison (known in the psychology literature as H.M. to protect his privacy while he was alive) is a more contemporary case – he died as recently as 2008 at age 82 having taken part in hundreds of experiments. When I reported on Molaison’s death for this magazine, the eminent memory researcher Alan Baddeley told me that ‘H.M. is arguably the most important single patient in terms of his influence on neuroscience’.

Because Molaison lived and died in modern times, we have extensive data and detail on the status of his brain, including insight into the precise tissue that was removed from his hippocampi and beyond as a radical intervention to reduce his seizures when he was a young man. In fact, in 2014 experts separated his brain into 2401 paper-thin slices during a painstaking 53-hour procedure that was broadcast live around the world on the internet.

However, it’s telling that even in Molaison’s case, for which the latest hi-tech methods have been used to preserve and study his brain, there is still intense debate and disagreement about exactly what damage his brain suffered during that earlier surgery, what other neurological abnormalities he developed through life, and how these do or do not relate to his memory deficits that were so thoroughly documented by legions of psychologists.

We have far more sophisticated scanning and slicing techniques than the neurological pioneers of the 19th century, but the myth and mystery that continues to surround the brains of psychology’s most famous cases suggests it may take more than shiny new equipment to unlock their secrets.

there to begin with. Post hoc ergo propter hoc and the perils of Heschl’s gyrus – just because one part of the brain is bigger or longer it does not necessarily follow that it is responsible for a specific function; it could simply reflect a fluke of development and of fitting into a confined, bony space. Special brains will always be special: their specialness, their eminence, the fame of the owner, will guarantee a special place in the laboratory, under the microtome, navigating the stereotaxic atlas. The result, however, may be as quotidian as a diary. Even psychologists are not immune to the lure of the special. The special may have no special secrets to reveal, but we will keep trying to uncover them, as talented investigators of neural architecture.

When father of positive psychology Martin Seligman was told by a co-author of the World Happiness Report that his goals were too selfish and that he needed to think more about other people, it must have stung. That was the accusation made by fêted economist and reformer Sir Richard Layard in his Guardian review of Seligman’s 2012 bestseller Flourish.

Surely these two giants of the wellbeing movement want broadly the same things; can their values really be so different? Are their visions of the human good actually antithetical?

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the psychologist august 2018 happiness Sofia Sita www.sofiasita.com

How selfish is your search for happiness?

Joe Smith on differing views over what we should strive for, and what they mean for positive psychology on the 20th anniversary of its springing to life

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n August 1998, with his presidential address to the American Psychological Association in San Francisco, Martin Seligman launched the positive psychology movement. In the two decades since then it has caused, according to its architect, a ‘tectonic upheaval’ in the discipline. Yale’s 2018 course on how to be happy is its most popular ever, with fully one quarter of its undergraduates enrolled. One million US service people, in a programme overseen by Seligman, are being trained in positive psychology’s techniques of resilience. In the UK, national happiness has since 2011 been measured along with GDP using questions proposed

by Richard Layard’s team from the London School of Economics. Layard was instrumental too in principles of psychological wellness being taught in scores of British schools. This wave of interest has precipitated, it is variously claimed, a happiness turn in academia, an industry for governments and a boom for publishers.

The wellbeing movement is based on scientific research. But the application of those findings has profound normative significance.

It is science that concerns itself not just with mental health, as traditionally understood, but also with people’s moral and spiritual wellbeing. It engages with fundamental questions of meaning and how we should live. In these ways it performs many of the functions of religion.

If, as Layard suggests, the teachings of perhaps the most active and paradigmatic school in that movement are selfish, then its adherents, and those that come into contact with them, should know why.

The two poles staked out by Martin Seligman and Richard Layard run deep into the strata of mind and morality. They represent two conflicting conclusions about what our normative response should be to dramatic advances in evolutionary and moral psychology. The clash between these two worldviews may become the defining ethical debate of the 21st century. It could change the way we relate to each other. So what exactly are Layard’s issues with Seligman’s project?

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benefits she perceives that will Virtue over happiness bring. This is Layard’s criticism: It needs to be clear first of all that ‘Reading ‘Positive psychology can come Seligman’s positive psychology is Jonathan Haidt over as very individualistic,’ he not about promoting happiness. and Daniel wrote euphemistically in that book It started out that way, with Kahneman review, ‘a strategy for each person happiness as its guiding principle. changed to find his own way to wellbeing.’

But, soon after positive psychology everything Although positive psychology hit its stride, Seligman relegated for me – recommends empathy, Layard goes happiness in favour of virtue.

I dropped what I was doing on to complain that, in Seligman’s The official reason for this and travelled 6000 miles to telling, ‘we should cultivate shift was that happiness’s central go back to school and study empathy because it is good for us, meaning is too close to simple them. Haidt and Kahneman’s not because of what it does for positive mood, and this was too work on moral psychology and others’. narrow a goal for Seligman’s happiness shows what modern ambitions. But Seligman clearly had psychology is capable of; other misgivings. Positive mood, subtle, imaginative, seamlessly Inegalitarian, aristocratic he wrote in Flourish, was ‘the form incorporating what’s been and elitist of happiness that the ancients learned in evolutionary biology As well as being egoistic, as Layard snobbishly but rightly considered and neuroscience. It’s utterly suggests, positive psychology is vulgar’. riveting. I am grateful to be in also inegalitarian. To appreciate Instead of happiness, the the field as research like this this, consider that the Greek word new aim of positive psychology transforms our understanding arete, usually translated as virtue, would be to promote strengths of what everyone most cares also means ‘excellence’. This casts of character or virtues. Although about – how to live.’ virtue in a rather different light. To this was a radical suggestion for excel requires that there be a cohort psychology, Seligman was following of the mediocre to be outstanding the zeitgeist in moral philosophy Joe Smith is a researcher in relation to. It cannot be achieved where ‘virtue ethics’ had been in affiliated with the Wellcome by all, or even by most. vogue for 20 years. That system Centre for Cultures of Health Excellences of character in remains closely associated with at the University of Exeter Aristotle’s day included showing Aristotle, who posited that humans joesmith9090@gmail.com ‘magnificence’ in the disposition have a telos – a purpose, end or goal of one’s wealth, clearly not – determined by their biological something available to the masses. But then only welland social nature. Exhibiting the virtues realises this to-do gentlemen were candidates for virtue. Women telos, according to Aristotle, and achieves for the actor could not realise the full panoply of excellences, and the state of eudaimonia, often translated as ‘happiness’, certainly not slaves and the barbarians outside the city but which Alasdair McIntyre, in his 2013 After Virtue, gates. Virtue, says Peter Simpson in his 2001 Essays in gave the richer meaning of ‘being well, and doing well Moral and Political Philosophy, is ‘inegalitarian because in being well’. aristocratic’.

Lest positive psychology seem parochial in hewing Modern teleological accounts like Seligman’s too closely to ancient Greece, Seligman and colleagues have been shorn of these obvious iniquities. But the performed an audit of the world’s major philosophical cultivation of the virtues is still far easier for some and religious traditions, in which they discerned six than for others, with the difference having to do with ‘universal’ strengths of character endorsed in almost luck not merit. Take the first item on Seligman’s list every one. Positive psychology’s goal would be to of universal virtues: knowledge. The acquisition of nurture each of these virtues: wisdom and knowledge, knowledge depends in part on intelligence, which is courage, temperance, love and humanity, justice, and highly heritable. It also needs nurturing, a stimulating spirituality and transcendence. environment, parents who value education and have What could be blameworthy about a programme the time and money to invest in it for their children. that promotes these exemplary traits? The answer has It requires teachers, schools, and so on. All of these to do with the focus of virtue ethics on selves rather preconditions are very unevenly distributed. So it is than acts. Aristotle is careful to say that, for example, with other virtues; to realise them depends to some courageous people do not act as they do because extent, often to a large extent, on lucky circumstances they want eudaimonia. Rather, having achieved that of birth and upbringing. virtue, they act courageously for the sake of courage itself. But this cannot so easily be said of someone striving – for example by using exercises developed Is accomplishment a virtue? by positive psychologists – to nurture courage in As if to give real heft to the perception of exclusivity, themselves. In these cases, the practitioner engages Seligman added in Flourish a new character strength in the discipline in order to improve herself and for the

the psychologist august 2018 happiness

of personal and professional accomplishment.

Accomplishment does not sound a very moral pursuit to modern ears, although as we’ve seen it wouldn’t be out of place in a classical Greek treatment of virtue.

Also in Flourish Seligman enthused about the Positive Psychology Center he had established at the University of Pennsylvania – a modern interpretation of Aristotle’s Lyceum – where he instituted the world’s first master’s course in positive psychology. He said, ‘The students in this master’s program are really special: thirty-five successful adults from all over the world who fly into Philadelphia once a month for a three-day feast of what’s at the cutting edge in positive psychology.’

Considering the costs of flying to Pennsylvania every month from all over the world, this must rank as one of the most selective courses on the planet. But the participants, it seems, can afford it. Seligman singles out one in particular as ‘a poster child for positive psychology’, a 32-year-old woman who graduated from Harvard with the highest distinction in mathematics, is fluent in Japanese and Russian and runs her own hedge fund.

One of Seligman’s stated ambitions when he launched positive psychology was to foster genius, and that seems reasonable enough. His prescriptions, too, call for people to cultivate their best virtues whatever they are and however modest they are compared to those who excel. But it is doubtful that the figure of his poster child could be very inspiring to the mass of humanity who find themselves, despite their best efforts, with lesser talents. The fact is that accomplishment of this kind is a zero-sum game; we can’t all be top of the class.

later asked to explain the reasons for the replies they gave, people often could not, or gave contradictory or nonsensical answers. Further studies including neurological research apparently confirmed that our moral responses are pre-reflective and instinctual.

Conscious cognitive resources are employed only after the fact, in order to rationalise decisions that have already been made on other, intuitive grounds.

These phenomena could be readily understood in terms of Kahneman’s Nobel prize-winning work on heuristics and biases. He famously distinguished between System 1 and System 2 processes, where the former are unconscious, fast and effortless and the latter are conscious, slow and effortful. Our moral reactions, it seems clear from Haidt’s findings, are System 1 processes. Our System 2 machinery only gets into gear when we need to explain or defend them.

Haidt constructed a typology of the particular moral intuitions expressed by his participants. He found five types of intuitions, which he grouped into five ‘moral foundations’: • Care, the reflexive desire to protect others from harm; • Fairness, a desire to see justice, often triggered by its converse, cheating; • Ingroup loyalty, which might relate to a family, group or nation and is the opposite of betrayal; • Respect for legitimate authority, whose opposite is subversion; • Purity or sanctity, an abhorrence for things that are unclean, decayed or defiled, an intuition associated with feelings of disgust.

Brain-imaging evidence suggests that each of these moral responses results from distinct processes in different parts of the brain (Clifford et al., 2015). This Foundations – the ancient roots suggested to Haidt and colleagues that they might of moral feelings represent discrete psychological modules. Employing These are the criticisms that can be made of positive the evolutionary thinking on which the System 1/ psychology from the perspective of our everyday System 2 distinction is based, Haidt theorised that ethical discourse. We now take a dive to the deep and these five foundations evolved to negotiate specific ancient roots of morality to find out what might be recurring threats and opportunities discovered about the search for in humans’ prehistoric social happiness there. Fittingly, Seligman environments. For example, our signposts the way. In answering “soon after positive inclination towards fairness and how ‘strengths and virtues sneak psychology hit its stride, anger at cheaters evolved as a way in’ to a theory that promises to Seligman relegated of exploiting the adaptive potential be about happiness, he cites two of reciprocity and cooperation scholars who have provided a happiness in favour in groups. In a similar way, the compelling but disturbing account of virtue” suggestion goes, our respect for of the evolutionary sources of legitimate figures of authority morality. According to many evolved as a means of thriving in thinkers, the work of Jonathan hierarchical social structures.

Haidt and Daniel Kahneman changes everything.

Haidt used his theory to explain political Haidt began by presenting questions in a series polarisation in the US, showing in his 2012 book of outrageous vignettes, such as whether it might The Righteous Mind how fairness and care dominate be permissible to eat a family pet that was killed Democrats’ thinking while Republicans respond to accidentally, or, if it could be guaranteed that no one all five foundations. Virtue ethics such as those on was harmed, for siblings to have safe and loving sex. which Seligman’s positive psychology is based are Responses were instant, Haidt found… too fast to be also illuminated by his work. Haidt’s list of moral the products of deliberation. What was more, when

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foundations echoes Seligman’s list of universal character strengths and vindicates Seligman’s claim that people don’t pursue only happiness. Rather, our Utilitarianism, of course, has many detractors instincts about human goods are plural and various. and the list of objections to it is long and colourful.

But what of the normative significance of Haidt’s World-devouring utility monsters, just-barely-happy theory? If the sources of our moral judgements are as he described, how should that affect our everyday, first- bunnies in their trillions, anthropologist accessories to murder, and most familiarly, the trolley problem, order moral thinking? For Haidt, who once worked have all been used to undermine its claims. But these on Democratic ex-Vice President Al Gore’s election counter arguments are ultimately reducible to the campaign, the take-home is greater tolerance. Moral form ‘utilitarianism countenances such-and-such an foundations, diverse and non-reducible as they are, action (murdering an innocent to save many lives, have similar geneses and there is no objective basis for example) and this (we intuitively feel) is wrong’. for choosing between them. Each is equally valuable.

The powerful rebuttal now available to the utilitarian Others take precisely the opposite message. has already been articulated in our In a 2005 paper ‘Ethics and discussion of moral foundations. intuitions’, moral philosopher Peter “We all seek happiness; That is, the intuitions elicited by Singer argues that if such intuitions anti-utilitarian thought experiments are the ‘biological residue’ of as rational actors we are pre-reflective remnants of evolutionary processes aimed at wish to maximise it. ancient mental subroutines whose surviving prehistoric social orders, But we are moral goal is survival. They have no we should doubt their fittingness as purchase as moral data. a moral guide. The righteousness agents too, and as such Plenty of other criticisms or other emotion we instinctively committed to impartiality.” can be made of utilitarianism, feel towards war, say, or punishing which are grappled with by able criminals, arises, according to contemporary defenders like our new understanding, from ancient mental subroutines that were once adaptive for neuroscientist and moral philosopher Joshua Greene and public intellectuals Steven Pinker and Sam Harris. winning conflicts between groups or thriving within Their key contention is that advances in moral and them. Their dictates are neither moral nor rational. evolutionary psychology require us to theorise about This being so, how much weight can they be accorded ethics not with our intuitions but with more rational as moral reasons for anything? None, Singer says. axioms – like the principle of maximum utility – even if the outcomes sometimes feel wrong.

Returning to our search for happiness, Layard What the unselfish pursuit of happiness would wishes us to recognise the easy and natural affinity look like between that pursuit and utilitarianism as an To make virtues out of these natural ‘moral’ impulses, ethical system that could underwrite it. We all seek Singer suggests, is to reify our unthinking animal happiness; as rational actors we wish to maximise it. instincts. We need a more rational moral principle But we are moral agents too, and as such committed for adjudicating moral dilemmas, he says. Being a to impartiality. More happiness, to someone who is utilitarian, he has one to hand: the greatest happiness impartial, is better whoever are the beneficiaries. of the greatest number.

This, Layard suggests, is what the unselfish search Layard, too, is an uncompromising utilitarian who for happiness looks like: identical to utilitarianism. regards its founder, social reformer Jeremy Bentham as Seligman, meanwhile, has doubled down on his the true father of the wellbeing movement. Bentham’s position and put positive psychology through another principle of maximum utility, says Layard, is the ‘great revolution. Teleology is predicated on ends or goals ideal of the 18th-century Enlightenment from which and is thus a future-oriented mode of thought. In this whole tradition of thought springs’. his 2018 autobiography, Seligman says that this is a Bentham derived his theory from the observation fundamental characteristic, too, of human agency: ‘Our that happiness was the one thing all people pursued. minds brim with futures. This is not to be fought. The Maximising this good must therefore be desirable. future is in our nature’ (p.349). What this implies for He perceived – rather more contentiously – that positive psychology has yet to be precisely specified, happiness is fungible. It is unitary, additive and except to say that without incorporating ‘prospective uniformly valuable, such that a certain quantity of psychology’, a science of human flourishing cannot happiness experienced here is of equal value to the proceed. With this new preoccupation, it is unlikely same quantity of happiness experienced there. that Seligman will be too concerned to litigate charges No one’s happiness, consequently, could rationally be surrounding positive psychology’s degree of selfprivileged over that of another. From these premises absorption. When asked for his thoughts on the 20th Bentham famously concluded that, ‘it is the greatest anniversary of the field he founded, Seligman replied, happiness of the greatest number that is the measure ‘Nothing special… I live in the future.’ of right and wrong’.

Deputy Editor, The Psychologist The Psychologist is the magazine sent out to 50,000+ members of the British Psychological Society each month, alongside a website at thepsychologist.bps.org.uk which reaches out to a large and international audience.

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psychologist july 2018

Windows on our inner and outer worlds Christina Richards introduces psychologists’ musings on their own art, in a variety of media

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Working together Andreas Lieberoth enjoys a peek inside the world of collaboration

Collaboration in Psychological Science: Behind the Scenes Richard L. Zweigenhaft & Eugine Borgida (Eds.) Worth; Pb £31.99

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very much wanted to review the new Collaboration in Psychological Science because I deeply believe that understanding collaboration is key to achieving how science is really made possible.

I have two offices. One is at the end of a long hall of closed university doors. Mine is usually closed too.

The other office has no door, and the wall is made of glass. I go to my first office to get things done – urgent writing, boring reading and private meetings. Things that work best behind a closed door. But I much prefer my other office. The one with a glass wall. It is at the Aarhus University Interacting Minds Center. In that office, I’m close to my research group, I can spot colleagues on their way to the kitchenette, and friends from other departments usually pop their heads in to say hello when at the centre for a meeting or seminar. In my experience collaboration across (sub)disciplines is essential for psychological science to advance, and to make itself useful in the real world.

Collaboration in Psychological Science contains snapshots of collaborations in psychology and beyond.

Though a line-up of papers/essays we get to go behind the scenes for both an inside look at lifelong writer pairs and peeks at post-mortems for more short-lived projects.

The book is made highly readable by the fact that chapters read like a little scientific (auto)biographies, peppered with recent science history, personal observations and (often funny) anecdotes. Most stories are then topped off with short but substantive discussions on the research topic that emerged from the collaborations, and reflections on what makes or breaks collaborations between researchers.

Quite a few of the contributors are also noteworthy students of social and organisational processes, and all offer useful expert analyses on the process of collaboration. Recommendations include: • Diversity is good – but still choose collaborators with a shared perspective.

• Use collaboration as a social support, as well as a

•

• •

means of productivity.

Be mindful that language and impact expectations may differ between academic areas (and between academics and practitioners).

Be crystal clear about divisions of labour and credit expected.

Be aware of social loafing.

These themes and lines of advice are collected in the concluding best practice section which is worth a read in itself.

Psychology can be many things, so we are very likely to stumble into other fields. Even if I am primarily a media psychologist these days, my applied outlook often takes me into social psychology, behavioural economics and ethnography – even projects with traffic researchers, foodstuff entomologists and game designers. Zweigenhaft and Borgida’s book mirrors this tendency to mix and (hopefully) match.

While the first 10 chapters of Collaboration in Psychological Science examine collaborations between psychologists, the second part of the book discusses some of these interdisciplinary collaborations. Finally, the third section delves into how psychologists have worked with industry and community.

Topics range from how cross-disciplinary convergences led to the birth of a Political Psychology programme at the University of Minnesota, to getting otherwise unattainable data though work with marketing researchers or law enforcement officers. Many different threads emerge, but the book has a clear editorial line, with each writer (or set of writers) telling their own story and reflecting on collaboration as a general phenomenon, as well as lessons learned.

Pairings range from chance meetings to faculty alliances and student–supervisor dyads. For instance, being from two completely different cultures, with different initial interests in the differences between Japan and USA, allowed Hazel Rose Markus and Shinobu

the psychologist august 2018 books Kiyatama to develop interesting questions about cultural psychology. By contrast, Elaine Hatfield and Ellen Berscheid were the only two young women in their university department at a time where females weren’t allowed in the faculty lounge (especially not wearing trousers!): A shared situation that not only led them to mutual support, but also to explore iconoclastic lines of inquiry.

Seemingly universal roots of alignment, productivity and conflict are discovered, as are historical themes. For instance, I enjoyed pondering how communications technologies and geographical mobility have changed opportunities for my generation of researchers. There is a long way from sending typewritten manuscripts in the mail for revision and comments, and concerns over long-distance phone bills, to how we now work smoothly together online.

The book is neither entirely biography, history, a collection on collaboration studies, nor a psychology theory sampler. It is a bit of all four. As the title implies, it focuses on ‘psychological science’, which means a heavier emphasis on developing theories and studies in social, cognitive and experimental psychology, with quite a few discussions of how (not) to develop teaching departments, publish papers, and attain tenure. If you are clinician, educator or other practitioner, you will therefore get little by way of practical information applicable outside an academic context.

What will I be using the book for? First of all, I expect that this book will be left out on tables quite a bit. Collaboration in Psychological Science is exactly what I like to signal to visitors who haven’t picked up on my propensity to turn my glass-wall office into a display of books and research gadgets. The personal story in each chapter means that it makes for a pleasant travel paperback or bedside read in the same manner as any biography. It’s part storytelling, part analysis, and part psychology trivia. Not a bad combination for a long flight.

Finally, I will be taking nuggets of specific advice away from this book for myself. For instance, wonky collaborations can be analysed in terms of contributions and hierarchies, which may or may not be perceived alike by everyone involved. Such misalignments can muddle communication, bring work to a standstill, or sour credit given. And, sadly, agreeing to too many interesting projects with interesting people at once, may actually end up making you a bad collaborator for everyone.

Every reader, whether professional, student or researcher, will find bits and pieces that match their own situation. While not a textbook or traditional light read, Collaboration in Psychological Science is a fresh peek into the messy process of how science comes to be, and a good primer on productive collaboration more broadly. Enjoy the book alone – or share it with a new collaborator at the rosy outset of your life together.

Andreas Lieberoth PhD is Assistant Professor at Aarhus University, Denmark

You is not just your brain, silly The Biological Mind: How Brain, Body, and Environment Collaborate to Make Us Who We Are Alan Jasanoff Basic Books; Hb £21.99

Do not read this book.

Especially not if you hold firm to commonly held notions of the exalted nature of the brain – only trouble awaits ahead. For, as Jasanoff, a neuroscientist and Director of the MIT Center for Neurobiological Engineering, tells us, we have created a ‘false idealization’ of the brain, a phenomenon he calls cerebral mystique. Rather persuasively, we are informed that this mystique harbours age-old ideas of mind and body (buttressing dualism), unrestrained free will, individuality, and much more.

The theme of this rather delightful book could hardly be more important: What makes you you? Jasanoff is right to highlight that few of us doubt that you is in the brain – it is certainly the part of the body with which we readily identify. Yet, there is a problem: ‘Everything important about us seems to boil down to our brains…[which] sends us in the wrong direction, by masking the true nature of our biological minds.’

Specifically, ‘[b]y mythologizing the brain, we divorce it from the body and the environment, and we lose sight of the interdependent nature of our world’. We are invited to assume a more realistic biological perspective – taking a truly biosocial view of the brain.

Jasanoff illustrates his thesis with the ‘brain in a vat’ conception of an independent and autonomous brain/mind – namely, if some evil genius removed our brain and placed it in a chemical vat and connected all the loose bits to a powerful computer that simulated the world, then would we not believe this to be the world, and would we not be content – if not, why not? (Chapter 10 gives a vivid account of what this might be like.)

Jasanoff’s is a compelling argument: ‘By perceiving virtual barriers between our brains and our bodies – and by extension between our brains and the rest of the world – we see people as more independent and self-motivated than they truly are, and we minimize the connections that bind us to each other and the environment around us.’ There are important implications of this position: ‘In upholding the brain–body distinction, the cerebral mystique also contributes to chauvinistic attitudes about our brains, minds, and selves, such as the egoism of successful leaders and professionals and the “us versus them” attitude of war and politics.’ Also, a more biologically realistic view of the brain can improve the worlds of psychology, medicine and technology. Wow! On second thoughts, read it.

Reviewed by Philip J. Corr, City, University of London; Founding Editor-in-Chief, Personality Neuroscience

My shelfie… Dr Paul Redford (Associate Professor, Programme Leader MSc Occupational Psychology, UWE Bristol) Self-Efficacy Albert Bandura Self-efficacy is the psychological construct that I am most drawn to in relation to my personal and professional experiences. The simplicity of the ideas, the robust nature of the construct, the strength of the supporting research, the breadth of impact in people’s lives, the utility of the research regarding how to change it, and the levels of applicability from individuals to organisations.

It underpins my approach to teaching, parenting and self-development. I dread to think how many times I have said ‘there are four sources of self-efficacy’.

This book covers it all.

Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace Gordon MacKenzie I love this book. Without a doubt the book I most frequently recommend to anybody who will listen to me. Some actually read it, although I am not sure they like it as much as I do. The title, the size, the look and feel, the page weight, and the way that Gordon MacKenzie describes his 30-year career at Hallmark cards all work for me. I still find myself both laughing out loud and gaining insight into organisational life every time I read it.

In summary, organisations are hairballs, the key is how to try to orbit them.

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People Studying People Ralph Rosnow & Robert Rosenthal Having taught research methods for over 15 years, I have read through more research methods and statistics books than I care to think about. There are many how to do research and analysis type books, but I am aware of few books that provide a good psychological perspective regarding the actual process of people studying people. As with all their books, Rosnow and Rosenthal write with a style that is both engaging and informative.

This simple little book stands out for me as it provides a great insight into the process of research. It goes beyond the nuts and bolts of doing research to focus

on a psychological understanding of the research methods. It is all very ‘meta’.

Ideas and Realities of Emotion Brian Parkinson During my doctoral research I read Brian Parkinson’s work regarding emotion. This book provided a very convincing psychological approach to understanding emotion drawing from a broad range of literature about the social nature of emotion. Brian Parkinson’s research and approach summarised in this book provided an approach that was sympathetic to different sources of evidence and provided a clear narrative

regarding the complex phenomena of emotional experience. This book demonstrated to me the central social and relational nature of what might be considered intrapsychic experiences, shaping my view of many psychological phenomena.

Working at the Interface of Cultures: Eighteen Lives in Social Science Edited by Michael Harris Bond Also, whilst I was conducting research for my doctorate, my supervisor Peter Smith was working on the second edition of his Social Psychology Across Cultures text with Michael Harris Bond. I was fortunate enough to be able to visit Michael in Hong Kong as part of my data collection.

As a member of the community of researchers involved with the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, I began to understand the journeys that had led people into their fields of research. This book includes many of their stories and was the first book I had read that outlined individuals’ personal experiences in the research process. Many of the stories contained within this book are truly inspiring.

The Human Side of Enterprise Douglas McGregor Despite their being hairballs, I believe that organisations can be a powerful source of positive human experience, although I am also aware that for many this is not the case. Although this book is more than 50 years old, it includes some insights that still feel fresh regarding positive organisations. Of course the writing is of its time, but many ideas contained within the book would not be out of place in a recent article about positive organisational scholarship. This book enthuses me over how powerful organisational stories are in shaping our experiences of work, saddens me over how many organisations I experience have not moved beyond ‘Theory X’ ways of working (which was identified as problematic half a century ago), but also gives hope!

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Paths to creativity Listening to Design Andrew Levitt Reaktion Books; Hb £15.00

Birth is not a one-off occurrence. Life often requires us to be repeatedly reborn, particularly if we have strong creative impulses. Artistic creation is itself existential; an idea can pass through phases of gestation, nourishment and finally, birth. But an idea can also be abandoned, killed off.

In his new book, Listening to Design, Andrew Levitt examines the profound psychological journey that often accompanies the design process. As an architect, teacher and psychotherapist, Levitt’s interests lie at the intersection between successful design and emotional development, a link perhaps not immediately obvious, but one that he convincingly argues is of critical importance.

His key insight is that to be a successful architect and effective teacher of design, it was – and is – necessary to delve into the self.

This realisation led him to psychology and to look into its relationship with architectural practice.

He consequently applied what he learned from the experience in an educational context; in his current position as a design tutor in a school of architecture, Levitt encourages his students to listen to and explore their internal needs and desires. Of course, the ultimate aim of this process is practical: the creation of original and exciting designs that can be translated into viable projects.

Levitt argues that emotional maturity is conducive

to creativity. He observes that students’ ideas are often ‘annihilated’ through excessive deference to the expectations of teachers, or the structures of specific schools of design and architecture. Levitt’s objective in his classes is consequently to open up alternative, original routes for his students to take to achieving successful designs.

He articulates these ideas with clarity and a deftness of touch, using anecdotes and firsthand experience to enliven and enrich his central theses. Levitt’s belief that architectural theory and psychotherapy can work harmoniously together is both compelling and convincing.

It is easy to visualise the author talking to his students with passion and empathy.

I was, however, left feeling slightly dissatisfied by Levitt’s book. Whilst Listening to Design is brilliant at detailing the first steps in the creative process – listening to our inner world – it is not as strong at exploring the importance of building the personality. Surely the personality is itself the most extraordinary work of art that we are capable of creating.

That caveat aside, Levitt’s book is recommended to anyone with an interest in the connections between creativity in design and psychology.

Reviewed by Dr Lucia Giombini, Chartered Psychologist, King’s College; The Child and Family Practice; Elysium Healthcare, London (UK)

Why didn’t the dog jump out of the box?

Over New Year 1997 Martin Seligman, his second wife Mandy and their children rented a villain Yal Ku, Mexico, owned by The Grateful Dead.

The family snorkelled in a bright blue lagoon, ate in psychedelically painted rooms. Seligman was 55, had headed the American Psychological Association, had spent a lifetime in academia. In a state of excitement Seligman invited colleagues to cancel their New Year plans and join him.

He was a long way from Albany, New York where he grew up and a long way from the common rooms and lecture theatres that had made up his life. ‘Join me to invent positive psychology,’ he said. And they did.

In that idyll, under blue skies, they began the process of creating a set of ideas focused on positive experience, civic fulfilment and positive traits that would permeate into popular culture and government policy.

A mixture of the history of clinical psychology, slightly grumpy intellectual inquiry and having the

final word, The Hope Circuit blurs Seligman’s life with the life of his ideas. Dressed up as autobiography, the book is really Seligman’s journey between two points of personal and intellectual breakthrough. The first is Seligman’s experiments with Steve Maier in the mid-1960s that coined the phrase ‘learned helplessness’.

Two wooden boxes with an electrified run between them, dogs who had been inescapably shocked prior to a tone sounding failing to jump out of the run when they heard the tone: why? The positive breakthrough at the lagoon the other.

The book loops two main preoccupations: the tension between internal and external validity in experimental psychology and a deeply felt belief that creatures from rats to humans are more than just blank slates. These take Seligman first into clinical practice then into further research, asking ‘How can we predict who will feel helpless? What is the relationship between optimism,

pessimism and cognition? The first half of the book is the equivalent of scanning a row of 70s Pelican psychology books, as Marty runs into, and often disagrees with a who’s who of psychology’s post-war rock ‘n’ roll stars – Oh hi, Hans Eysenck!; Yo, Aaron Beck!; Hello, Albert Bandura, Ulric Neisser! – in a career that often sees him at odds with colleagues.

The final third of the book is self-justificatory in tone. Seligman’s work takes him away from human happiness, instead predicting which insurance salespeople will be most effective and, post-9/11, assisting the US Army and standing accused of assisting the CIA in their psychological torture at Abu Ghraib.

An entire chapter is given over to rebuffing the criticisms and critics of positive psychology. The book ends with Seligman declaring that he is as clever as he ever was, dabbling with sentiment analysis and hanging it out with the folks from Google.

The ‘hope circuit’ of the title

The Hope Circuit: A Psychologist’s Journey from Helplessness to Optimism Martin E.P. Seligman Nicholas Brealey; Hb £14.99

refers to research carried out into the medial prefrontal cortex dorsal raphe nucleus circuit of the (rat) brain by his old Mate Steve Maier in 2015. This circuit releases serotonin in relation

Extracts online: Find exclusive book extracts via www.thepsychologist.org.uk, including a chapter from Mismatch: How Our Stone Age Brain Deceives Us Every Day by Ronald Giphart and Mark van Vugt (published by Robinson) at www.thepsychologist.org.uk/ war-what-it-good

to threat, which builds up anxiety and panic but which stops doing so when higher cortical functions inhibit it.

Seligman holds that this proves that rather than beginning with control and learning helplessness, the inverse is true, a vindication showing that learning positive responses and a sense of control can be measured empirically: finally external and internal validity.

Told over the best part of a lifetime, the answer to the question

‘Why didn’t the dogs escape if they knew what was coming?’ is, for Seligman, finally ‘because they didn’t try to escape because they didn’t know a positive, shock-free future was possible’.

Reviewed by Mark Brown, Development Director Social Spider CIC, and Editor of One in Four magazine

‘It’s about editing our lives so that they make sense again’ Bestselling author Matt Haig’s new book is Notes on a Nervous Planet (Canongate).

Our editor Jon Sutton asked him about his approach to writing and mental health.

In Notes on a Nervous Planet, and other books, you write from the perspective of ‘The only psychology I truly know – my own’. Yet every professional psychologist I know who has read your work rates it highly… any thoughts on why that might be?

I don’t honestly know! But it’s a very nice thing to hear. I suppose if you write as truthfully as possible about your own experience, you might end up tapping into something universal. I do think it’s important, though, to acknowledge when I am writing it down, that I am writing about myself. Not everything that works for one person works for everyone else.

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You admit to falling back on clichés, ‘corny sentimental miracles’.

Do you think the best approaches to mental health are staring us in the face?

Clichés are clichés for a reason!

I think the aim of a writer should be to find new clichés.

But sometimes the old ones have a wisdom to them. The one I stand by most is ‘time heals’. For me, time is so important. Time is the thing that is bigger than depression and anxiety, and

can disprove their lies. Depression told me I’d be dead by the age of 25. I’m now 42. The lessons of time help to rationalise some of those urgent negative voices.

You’ve come through so much, yet – forgive me – you seem almost literally thin-skinned… you write that ‘The world gets in. It always gets in’, getting ‘infected by the world around us’, and ‘a secret external malevolence that could press a despairing weight and pain into you’.

Yes, I am thin-skinned. It is always used as a negative, but I don’t think it is though. I mean, obviously getting hurt at the slightest thing isn’t great, but for me being thinskinned is not just about the bad things. It means you are more sensitive to the magic of life.

Music, art, books, love, friendship.

It can help you feel alive. Now, the problem is that in a society where things are always trying to get in – marketing messages, the news, social media – we thinskinned people can end up being a little traumatised by the experience of modern life. Everything is so close.

the psychologist august 2018 books Kan Lailey

because they are not alive’, you talk of a world of a million distractions where you’re still left with only one mind.

To what extent is simply opting out the answer?

It’s not so much opting out as stripping back. We are overloaded. We are in a world of infinite choice. TV shows, books, friends, careers, travel (for some), where we get our news, apps, podcasts, food, cosmetics. Whatever.

Choice choice choice. You go back a few decades or centuries and millennia and you see a wholly different picture. We’re simply not made for all the thousands of micro-decisions we’re expected to make in a day. It’s about editing our lives so that they make sense again.

And for you that’s partly about finding ‘anchors’ in simple things: the sky, the sea, a good book. You use a Huxley quote, ‘whatever’s going on in your life the only corner of the universe you can be certain of improving is your own self’. But is that easier to say from a position of privilege?

Yes. Maybe. I am certainly privileged. I was privileged when I first became ill too. I was middle class, with a support network, and though I was in debt I certainly wasn’t going to end up on the streets. I think the sky is available for all of us, and I felt it was safe to wax lyrical about books from within the context of a book.

But sure, privilege massively intersects with mental illness, whether it is access to treatment, having financial freedom, or even in terms of how much stigma you face within your culture.

The world is now in our pocket. And advertisers trying to create ‘fear, uncertainty and doubt’ – or ‘FUD’ as marketers call it – can manipulate us and our emotions.

Social media can know and manipulate our emotions via algorithms. It’s just about being careful or – to use a more 21st-century word – mindful. Awareness is often a solution in itself, because once you know where your feelings are coming from, and why, it helps you deal with them and put things in perspective.

You write that you miss being ill, in some respects?

I don’t miss being seriously ill. But there is a point when you are recovering – with anxiety – where you no longer feel the pain but you have the alertness. I think I have learned a lot from being ill. For instance, when you are ill it is really easy to work out what makes you feel better and worse. Sometimes, when we are running on neutral, it is harder to look after ourselves because the stakes aren’t right there in front of us.

The essence of the ‘nervous planet’ in your title is that we are social creatures, the ‘mammalian bee’ in George Monbiot’s words, but our hives have fundamentally changed. And it’s things that bear the brunt in your book: you quote Sartre’s view that ‘objects should not touch

Is that stigma changing? Your books have been called ‘life saving’, and Stephen Fry’s clearly a big fan. But I heard you say you’re wary of becoming another Stephen Fry, with a focus on mental health and advocacy.

I wouldn’t mind becoming another Stephen Fry! I think he is a hero. I think what you are referring to is that Stephen Fry rightly warned of the dangers of becoming ‘Mr Depression’ as he did after his brilliant documentary on bipolar disorder. I was very determined not to be boxed into a corner where I would have to spend my entire existence talking about the worst times of my life. So after writing Reasons to Stay Alive I wrote a kids’ book about Father Christmas and a novel about a 439-year-old man. I had to wait a while before writing Notes on a Nervous Planet, basically. But yes, I think the stigma will change and, as it does, we’ll start to see mental health as an everyone issue. Mental health is far more than mental illness. It is everything. It is how we experience and enjoy life.

That book about the 439-year-old man, How to Stop Time, is one of my favourites. Much of your writing, across non-fiction and fiction, comes back to time. Why? Time is something I find therapeutic and unsettling all at once. It is unsettling because you watch it passing by and worry you aren’t spending it the right way. Time is an enemy and it won’t take any of us alive. But time is also a friend. For instance, when I was ill, time disproved a lot of the pessimism I was living with. Time is everything.

It is how we measure our lives and our loves and our illnesses. It is the ultimate theme.

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Grandiosity Mats Alvesson cautions against the seductive tendency to gild the lily; and, overleaf, argues that we may have underestimated the value of ‘functional stupidity’

‘The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts’ – Bertrand Russell ‘To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost’ – Gustave Flaubert

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e live in a society full of upbeat claims and ego boosts. And that can be just fine… who doesn’t like to hear positive messages about how great they are? However, this also means that ‘grandiosity’ is flourishing. You, the organisation you work for, the group you belong to, what you do, how you consume… all are given a positive, statusenhancing polish. But it’s a superficial sheen. It’s seductive, promising to fulfil our needs, to give us the good life. Yet there is a strong downside, and to my eyes grandiosity is seriously overrated.

Grandiosity involves representing or loading phenomena in a way that makes them appear to be as attractive and extraordinary as possible, without being perceived as obviously fake. Issues of substance (practices or tangible results, knowledge, everyday life)

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Expressions such as ‘world class’ and ‘excellence’ are are marginalised. We’re not talking about delusions increasingly used without much beef behind them in of grandeur here, or something that is obviously mad.

My interest lies in ‘normal grandiosity’: an exaggeration terms of demonstrable qualities or accomplishments.

That’s the key to grandiosity: fine image, little of normal phenomena to imbue them with strongly substance. In our so-called ‘knowledge economy’, positive, exaggerated meaning that generates attractiveness, success and distance from the paltriness low-level service and distribution still dominate.

Or as Stephen Sweet and Peter Meiksins said in their and mediocrity of everyday life.

2008 book Changing Contours of Work, for every Grandiosity used to be mainly for the elite, but well-paid programmer at Microsoft there are three with economic and technological progress it has been people flipping burgers at McDonald’s. democratised. Everybody wants to gild the lily, to Grandiosity is also salient in the consumer arena, use a smoke screen, to goldplate their lives. People where the focus is on youth, beauty, physical fitness feel entitled to it. We want to be in the public eye, and success. Fashion and brand names have a great confirmed, associated with something prestigious, impact, and products are associated with identity and and to distance ourselves from what is trivial. It’s part a promise they will express, or even create, buyer and parcel of an increasingly narcissistic, self-esteempersonalities. Basic needs are becoming less important, driven world. ‘individuality’ becomes a particular consumption The desire to shine is not just an individual pattern, and more of the goods and services we phenomenon. Various institutions and groups acquire buy have narcissistic overtones. Goods and services labels to boost their meaning, sophistication and become objects that are used as a lever to improve status. Let me give some examples. self-esteem and status. According Many Western countries to marketing and other life-style have rapidly moved from being “Everybody wants to experts, products enable you to dominated by the industry and realise yourself to the full. (All this service sectors to becoming gild the lily, to use is beautifully explored in Naomi ‘information societies’ (during a smoke screen, Klein’s No Logo.) And don’t even the 1970s) and then ‘knowledge to goldplate their lives. get me started on social media… economies’ driven by ‘the creative You may think this is all pretty class’ and innovation. In these People feel entitled to it” harmless stuff. If individuals, dynamic times, it’s essential to keep groups, organisations feel better up with things. In education, the about themselves, so what? Yet grandiosity often number of higher degrees has exploded in order to involves reinforcing a superiority to others, and it’s also keep up with the (pretence of a) sophisticated nature increasingly haunted by its own emptiness. Grandiose of contemporary working life. In many countries, half people are doomed to disappointment and frustration. of a population is expected to take a university degree, They’re thwarted, developmentally. The ‘grandiose self’ but is this truly bearing fruit in terms of ability and – characterised by fantasies of omnipotence, perfection knowledge? In their 2011 book Academically Adrift and success – is a completely normal and prominent sociologists Richard Arum and Josika Roksa point to part of childhood. The child experiences separation US research showing that 40 per cent of all graduates from its parents and compensates for its feelings of do not improve cognitively across their academic being small, marginalised and dependent. Successful studies, according to tests of generic intellectual development involves integrating these grandiose skills conducted when students started and finished fantasies into a more positive, stable and realistic selftheir education. image. Yet I would argue that immature, grandiose, In working life, there is much rhetoric around idealising fantasies and an unstable self-image have bureaucracy and mass production making way for become an increasing feature of ‘problem-loaded so-called knowledge-intensive companies, dynamic normal psychology’, a form of ‘heated’ narcissism or networks and flexible, customer-steered operations. inflated sense of self somewhere in between the healthy People are employed for ‘value creation processes’ and the pathological. rather than for the production of goods and services.

The narcissistic personality is, then, not new: Small businesses are now run by ‘entrepreneurs’; but this strange mixture of fantasy and craving may managers and supervisors have been replaced by be a defining feature of our age. We seem to spend ‘leaders’. This inflation of job titles is pervasive… so much time trying to build a positive self-image, our workplaces are filled with executives and coaches, with the help of status symbols, consumption, idols, hotel receptionists are labelled ‘impression managers’, fantasies, therapeutic interventions, and so on. The shop assistants become ‘sales advisers’. Strategic promoters of this process include politicians, the mass visions and empowerment have pushed aside media, schools, universities and education institutions, organisational management of a more conventional, marketers, therapists, consultants and other experts on more boring nature. ‘human improvement’. They are all selling a potentially Much of this is appealing and seductive, but in better life – if you simply buy their products or use my 2013 book The Triumph of Emptiness I discussed their services. how workplace reality seldom lives up to all this.

All this leads to unstable and vulnerable selves, a culturally oriented exaggeration of subjectivity, accompanied by the need for confirmation of idealised self-images. The sense of self is inflated, it is overheated. Objects are over-invested with personal meaning. And our fragile identities are accompanied by a general frailty: a risk that imperfections and problems lead to increased anxiety, relationship problems,

over-consumption of pharmaceuticals, health issues, burn-out tendencies, and so on.

The seemingly grandiose life, then, tends to produce its opposite: uncertainty, doubt, a feeling of emptiness and a suspicion we living in a fake world.

As a solution to our societal, individual and existential woes, grandiosity is seriously overrated. And as psychologists, we should be keeping it on our radar.

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Thinking inside the box

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tupidity is often associated with low intelligence, but in a social context there is often no clear link between people’s scores on an IQ test and their actual thinking and action. Clever people may do stupid things: not only in private life, where the unconscious plays all sorts of tricks, but also at work, where social forces may be in operation. At the Wannsee conference in Berlin in 1942, well-educated and intelligent people decided on the Final Solution.

When we think about stupidity at work, the image that comes to mind is of a thoughtless chump who leaves a trail of disasters in his wake. Stupid acts may emanate from people that are badly educated, have an excessive workload, receive contradictory requirements or are simply not up to the job. But we can think about stupidity in other ways. We can look at stupidities that are normal, accepted, even rewarded.

‘Pure’ stupidity – where people are obviously thinking and behaving in problematic ways – is typically observed and counteracted at workplaces.

Other forms of stupidity – what I and André Spicer call functional stupidity – are not. They are part of business as usual, of normal practice. These forms of stupidity are often undetected, and that’s what makes them

important to consider. That’s why functional stupidity is underrated.

Functional stupidity involves narrow thinking, where established frameworks are accepted uncritically.

Often functional stupidity does not cause havoc. It is low-key, implicit, and has a mix of positive and negative outcomes. Very few people are completely thoughtless, but many are constrained in their thinking. Most workplaces these days seek to encourage and cultivate critical thinking, reflection and ‘out of the box’ ideas, yet they often remain better at doing the opposite. Managers and subordinates follow organisational and professional templates and cultures without paying much attention to assumptions and beliefs. Experts get obsessed with the detail and grow blind to the bigger picture. Bureaucrats follow laws and rules without much thinking if these make sense or not. Followers willingly let their leaders do the thinking for them. Employees habitually avoid ‘negative thinking’ and look on the bright side. People adapt to norms and expectations of others. They often jump on new fashions and fall for seductively formulated solutions. In each of these cases, people are thinking – but only in the most narrow and circumscribed ways. People are often competent, intelligent and clever within these established limits.

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Outside the box, stupidity often rules. policies, systems, structures, rules, A simple proof. About two projects and activities that do not thirds of all UK universities – lead to much apart from keeping arguably the centres of knowledge, staff occupied. critical thinking and reflection – Yet there’s another side to employ more people in managerial, functional stupidity. It means technical and administrative jobs order, predictability, smooth than people doing research and Mats Alvesson is a PhD in social interaction, a feeling of teaching. Behind this surplus of psychology and a professor in trust and community, focused support functions at the expense organisation studies at Lund work and reduced stress. Doubt of core activities, we find the University. He is also affiliated and existential anxiety easily accumulation of functional with University of Queensland triggered by the question ‘What stupidity. A variety of managers, and City University, London. in hell are we doing?’ can be professionals, functional units and He has published over 30 books, avoided. Functional stupidity demands for systems, expertise, including The Triumph of is a powerful institutionalised procedures, rules and activities Emptiness and The Stupidity defence mechanism. It supports lead to organisations losing sight of Paradox: The Power and hierarchy and authority. After what is meaningful and productive.

Pitfalls of Functional Stupidity all, asking too many questions Let’s look now at three telltale at Work (with André Spicer). and spending too long reflecting aspects of functional stupidity. mats.alvesson@fek.lu.se on a situation can make you The first aspect is an absence unpopular. Thoughtfulness can of reflexivity. This happens when upset the smooth workings of a group, threaten we stop asking questions about our assumptions. Put simply, it involves taking for granted what other people relationships with key people, and disturb existing power structures. All this could make being smart very commonly think. We often fail to question dominant costly indeed. Play dumb, and the status quo survives; beliefs and expectations. We see rules, routines and team relationships continue norms as completely natural: unthreatened, leaders are happy they are just how things are.

“Very few people are and the burden of thinking Members of the organisation often about more basic arrangements don’t question these deep-rooted completely thoughtless, purposes is avoided. Your assumptions – even if they think but many are constrained and career may prosper. You focus they are idiotic. in their thinking on ‘delivering the goods’.

A second aspect of stupidity is Functional stupidity is, not seeking cause or a good reason. therefore, a mixed blessing.

People stop asking ‘why’ at work.

They do not ask for, or offer, reasons for their decisions Stupidity of any sort can get a bad press, and in this way can be considered underrated. A certain kind and actions. A rule is a rule and it must be followed, of stupidity works as an efficient social glue and even if no one is clear why it exists. Questions about lubricator; it aids some types of productivity; but why something should be done are either completely ignored or dismissed with reference to rank (‘The CEO it also undermines (particularly in the long run) wants it’), convention (‘We’ve always done it this way’) organisational and professional performances. We need a good dose of functional stupidity, but most or taboos (‘We could never do that’). workplaces and occupations suffer from a glut.

The third aspect is a lack of substantive reasoning.

To spot stupidity we need to step back and People stop asking about the wider consequences of ask whether people are fully using their cognitive their actions and their broader meaning. Instead, they capacities. Do they have at least some awareness of focus on very narrow issues of how something is to the assumptions they are making (reflexivity), are be done. Technical questions about the most efficient they willing to ask for and give good reasons for a way to do something completely trump more basic course of action (justification), and do they show an questions, such as whether it should be done in the awareness of the consequences or broader meaning first place and what effects its practice might have. of their actions (substantive reasoning)? We need to This all sounds bad, right? And indeed there are be aware of the phenomenon, and perhaps cautiously many cases where an accumulation of functional stupidity can result in disastrous outcomes. Something work to counter it – ‘What goes on here?’, ‘Why are we doing this?’ – but also be aware of the risks in has gone seriously wrong, and with the benefit of doing so. It might be a rocky road, but in the end the hindsight everyone can see why, even though all the correct, approved procedures were followed. But often, destination – a meaningful work life, and organisations functional stupidity rules without any easily detectable that contribute more imaginatively for the benefit of patients, pupils, taxpayers, customers, etc. – is worth consequences. Organisations are full of unproductive heading for. meetings, people busy working on and following

‘We live our lives in clothes’ We meet Dion Terrelonge to talk about ‘style psychology’ and her work as an educational psychologist

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‘The best way I can explain the complementary nature of fashion and wellbeing is through something a woman said to me during a talk I’d given. She explained that she had once worn her favourite David Bowie t-shirt for a week to stop a low mood from taking hold – it helped her feel happy. We’ve seen that exercise and physical health impact on emotional wellbeing – so do the clothes we wear.

That’s not a trivial issue and I want to encourage thinking and research about it.’

Which is presumably why Dr Dion Terrelonge, a fairly recently qualified educational psychologist, wrote to us, saying, ‘[Fashion psychology] is an emerging, or rather re-emerging, field which so far seems to focus on the potential negative impact of fashion in the media interpretation of trends, etc… I am interested in the link between personal style and wellbeing, the relationships people have with clothing… and the effect dress has on our cognitions and behaviours.’

Having considered whether I needed to dress up for the occasion (I didn’t, so it’s just as well that this is not the focus of Dion’s work), I met her in Joe and the Juice, a crowded coffee bar in Cannon Street London.

Which came first – an interest in psychology or in fashion? ‘I’ve wanted to be a psychologist since I was 16. I was always curious about the world.

I remember wondering what was going on for some of my classmates who seemed to be struggling in

different ways. Education became a safe place for me; my mother was loving and caring but, growing up, things were far from easy, so school became a safe and predictable base.’ Dion thought for a while. ‘I probably needed someone to help, advise and talk to me as a child, but that person wasn’t around. One or two years ago I realised I had trained to be the person I’d needed.’

She believes passionately in the value of education. ‘It’s the one thing that can’t be taken away from you; every child deserves a good education. I was the first member of my immediate family to go to university. My A-level psychology teacher asked me what I liked and then said, “It sounds like you want to be an educational psychologist”, and that was that.’

Dion took her first degree in Hertfordshire: ‘Not too far from home. I loved it – I enjoyed the stats and worked as a maths teacher for two years after my degree. During that period, I saved money to fund my master’s, then took out a small career development loan to afford to eat! My master’s was in research methods and data analysis. I love SPSS and statistics but, to be honest, I mastered in that area because I was told it gave you a better chance of getting a place on a doctorate programme. That turned out not to be true.

But I still find working with data very relaxing, almost therapeutic.’

After working at the Anna Freud Centre as a research officer on what is now called the Child

the psychologist august 2018 careers

Outcomes Research Consortium, Dion took her doctorate at the Tavistock Institute. ‘I found that difficult. It’s not a conventional academic establishment, and their strategy of, what seemed like, breaking you down to build you up intimidated me at first. I found self-exposure very difficult. But at a growth-related conference on group relations I suddenly got it. They were training you to be the technique or tool you used, rather than thinking that a test or a particular analytical technique was your primary way of relating to a client. And the strategy challenged me as a person – I learnt a lot about myself and the value of reflective practice.’ What was the subject of your PhD? ‘Why white working-class boys were underachieving. I loved talking to the boys – in fact I love any sort of research where I feel I’m learning.’

Clothes are one (important) part of our identity ‘I’m not very good at downtime so I took a personal styling course during the second year of my doctorate.’

Was that because you wanted to change the way you looked? ‘Oddly, I don’t particularly like shopping for myself, but I really enjoy shopping for other people and helping them find things they feel good in. I was interested in why people wore what they wore and the effect it had on them. A friend’s relationship broke down, he wasn’t very happy and he lost a lot of weight training for a charity event. He hadn’t cared about clothes before, but he asked me to help him buy some new things because of the weight loss. The pleased look and smile that spread across his face when he tried on a pair of jeans that were actually flattering was warming for me and highlighted the positive impact of something so simple. Later he said, “People keep telling me how good I look.” It boosted his confidence at a time when he needed it – in some senses it changed how he considered himself as a person and empowered him to make further positive life changes.

Feeling good about how you look empowers you. By contrast, an attendee at one of my talks told me about the time he was detained in a mental health hospital and kept in the same clothes while he was recovering.

Before he left the hospital, he felt better and different, but believed the staff seemed to see him and treat him as the same person he was when he entered, at his lowest point. The clothes contributed to this effect, and after leaving he continued to wear this outfit during low episodes.’

Why doesn’t everybody think more about their appearance? ‘It’s like certain children who are reluctant to try to learn new things – fear of failure prevents them from trying. Adults can be like that with clothes. It’s not helped by the fact that fashion is an intimidating world and clothes shops can be unwelcoming. Having an empathetic and genuinely interested person with you can help to overcome some of these barriers. The personal styling course taught about body shape and colour analysis, which

are important. But what I really noted was how some stylists spoke about people as though they were clothes hangers. The stylists didn’t think about why the clients were seeking a styling service. By contrast, I think that just as children are placed at the centre of my educational psychology work, so an adult individual stands at the centre of my style and wellbeing consultancy. I always employ a person-centred approach. It’s not about imposing a “fashionable style” on someone, but about empowering that person and helping them feel comfortable, so they can grow in confidence. In effect, a lot of stylists treat the symptoms rather than attempting to find out the causes. They go to clothes first. I try and find out why me, why now, what the issues and needs might be, the preferred future. I only talk about styling if that’s part of the solution.’

Has this work changed how you look? ‘Yes. It’s made me care less about what other people think.

I dress for myself more and take more risks.’

Dion set up a website and created a consultancy ‘very much based on what people seemed to want.

It’s aimed at people who are going through change – say a mastectomy or post-pregnancy – where they may engage with clothes differently to how they did before.

These transitions can be daunting – think about people experiencing gender reassignment. The first time they go in to buy clothes that are not in line with their assigned sex can be a pretty daunting and an emotional task. Why don’t we support in this?’

She still works as an educational psychologist for Tower Hamlets five days a week and is full of praise for the borough. ‘It allows psychologists to work creatively on bespoke projects, not just statutory tasks. I get to run multidisciplinary trainings, work across a range of settings and use my love of group dynamics. Plus the team are amazing.

Presumably some people still see her fashion work as trivial as opposed to ‘real’ psychology with children?

‘Well, yes. But I don’t understand why psychology is divided into all these little boxes, and what’s wrong with searching for new areas to inform. If psychology studies human beings, surely it can be used anywhere human beings are, and addressing anything they engage with. Undoubtedly, what we wear effects how we feel, and how we feel effects what we chose to wear.

There’s psychology here.’

What does the future hold? ‘I’m doing a lot of talks, so I need to continue with that and establish my consultancy. I tend to not call this area fashion psychology, but rather style psychology, because it’s about personal style and choice, rather than trends and high fashion. But most importantly, the whole area needs more of a research base to underpin it and I plan to contribute to that by exploring the link between clothing choices and emotional wellbeing.’

Dion signs off with her favourite quotation.

‘It’s from the 19th-century writer Thomas Carlyle.

He wrote, “Those who consider clothes frivolous should consider that we live our lives in clothes.”’

A life’s tapestry unravels Liz Jenkinson

exhibition The Vanity of Small Differences Grayson Perry

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n ‘The Vanity of Small Differences’, Turner Prize–winning and media-savvy contemporary artist Grayson Perry considers issues of class in modern Britain through six large tapestries and associated sketches.

The collection consists of six very large intricate technicolor tapestries, presented with complementary work cited to have inspired the pieces and sketches. The series allows us to chart the life course of a fictional socially mobile male protagonist, Tim Rakewell, throughout his lifespan. Perry argues that the work invites us to consider our attitudes to class and social position in contemporary Britain – particularly the concept of social mobility. The collection has echoes with folk art, Renaissance paintings and religious tapestries. A Rake’s Progress, by 18th-century English artist William Hogarth, is also cited by the artist as a pervasive influence in providing a structure to the narrative.

As a health psychologist, my eye was drawn to the health disparities within the depictions of the Rakewells’ day-to-day lives. Working-class life was painted as synonymous with health-compromising behaviours. Tim Rakewell’s mother was shown smoking in an antenatal state whilst holding her baby, can of Red Bull and cigarettes at hand. Her newborn was presented with a football strip in a quasi-religious ceremony – suggesting both the aspirations and gendered expectations heaped upon the young. As Tim becomes socially mobile, thanks to a middle-class university girlfriend and work in the technology industry, the trappings of middle-class existence beckon and aspirations and expectations change. William Morris wallpaper and dinner parties are complemented by depictions of olive oil, wine and bruschetta, the family joining together to indulge in alcohol and a Waitrose-sourced bounty.

However, across the tableaus, we see Tim’s life unravel. At first he enjoys the spoils of his work, selling his company to Virgin for billions, marrying, having children and living in a stylish home decorated with the ephemera of middle-class living – mugs that feature Penguin book covers, a carefully placed politically aware tea towel and a doting retired well-dressed grandmother on hand to help with the baby. But life twists and turns, and the final scenes show a second, much younger and

vainer wife, tax evasion charges and an untimely and gruesome death.

Upon my visit, I was impressed with the ambitious scope and scale of the works, and the arresting technicolor images presented. Themes were accessible, yet wry and subtle in places. Clever piece of texts are hidden in corners – witty references that you might only find on second or third viewing. However, issues around class and taste were presented here with a broad brush… whilst working-class white lives undoubtedly need their stories voiced, there was little here to warm to. Perry himself refers to these as stereotypes, but also argues that they are grounded in the realities he grew up with and viewed in his research for the works. He recounted this journey in the Channel 4 documentary All in the Best Possible Taste, with these stories inspiring the tapestries that were ultimately developed.

Ultimately, I found the main exhibition to be an accomplished appropriation of tapestry and embroidery techniques that told a compelling, colourful tale.

Nevertheless, I was left wondering whether this collection could have painted a more sensitive picture of the nuances of class, taste and social mobility. The exhibition in Bristol closed with an All in the Best Possible Taste screening, and here the complexities of class, taste and social mobility were explored in participants’ own words, largely in their own homes. I found that this enhanced my enjoyment and allowed a deeper, more socio-psychological reading of the tapestry collection with reference to those who inspired the work.

Perry’s strength is shining a spotlight on everyday experiences with a wry and witty lens, and in using traditional media in contemporary artworks. This exhibition does not disappoint, but is perhaps best enjoyed alongside the original narratives of the lived experiences of those groups the artist seeks to represent.

The Vanity of Small Differences was on at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery until 24 June, before moving to Scunthorpe and Blackpool.

Reviewed by Dr Liz Jenkinson, a Chartered Psychologist, and Senior Lecturer and Joint Programme Leader, MSc Health Psychology, University of the West of England

the psychologist august 2018 culture

Expulsion from Number 8 Eden Close © Grayson Perry

The Annunciation of the Virgin Deal © Grayson Perry Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre London and British Council. © the artist. Gift of the artist and Victoria Miro Gallery with the support of Channel 4 Television, the Art Fund and Sfumato Foundation with additional support from Alix Partners.

The age of love September sees a collaboration between Sharron Hinchliff, Reader in Psychology and Health at the University of Sheffield, and Pete McKee, an artist from Sheffield known for his evocative images and distinctive style (‘Till the end of our days’, below).

Part of Festival of the Mind in Sheffield, the exhibition, ‘The Age of Love’, serves as a visualisation of Sharron’s research, which has identified that older adults can experience prejudice and discrimination when it comes to their sexual and intimacy needs. It promises artwork which will ‘allow entry into the taboo, enabling conversations to be had minus the embarrassment that is associated with this sensitive topic.

We’ll make the invisible visible, and get people talking about the sexual rights of older adults.’

Our editor Jon Sutton spoke to Sharron about both the exhibition and her new book on the topic, Addressing the Sexual Rights of Older People (written with Catherine Barrett and published by Routledge).

How was working with Pete?

It was a real privilege. The thing I love about Pete’s work is that you can identify with it on so many levels: the depiction of everyday life, the way he captures the feeling of the moment, the subtle humour. He was the perfect creative partner for my research.

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What’s driving your work?

Passion for change. Sexual rights are central to human life but we don’t tend to think about them in relation to older adults. For many years, sexual rights have been applied to young people, and I think this reflects the neglect of older adults from sexual health overall. It also reflects the assumptions people may hold about age and about sex, in that there is a tendency to stereotype older adults as sexless: that they’re not interested in sex, not at risk from sexual diseases, and are immune from sexual assault.

Another consideration is that older adults who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) have been invisible and silenced. In the book we understand sexuality as practice and identity, so we cover various topics (online dating, sexually transmitted infections, sexual abuse), and groups (heterosexual, LGBT, intersex). It’s the

the psychologist august 2018 culture first academic text on older adults’ sexual rights, and it draws on interdisciplinary research from experts in their fields to provide readers with an innovative and evidencebased framework for achieving the sexual rights of older adults.

Why is such a focus needed now?

A lack of awareness, absence of resources, and restrictive social attitudes can mean that health and social care professionals do not always provide appropriate support for older adults’ sexually related needs. Often violations are unintentional. The picture is complex because the subject is sensitive and private, and we’ve found, for example, that GPs may not tell an older patient about the sexual side-effects of a commonly prescribed drug yet they will tell a younger patient.

We know the damage that can be done when people are denied their sexual rights. This ranges from not being aware that a sexual dysfunction caused by a prescribed drug can be easily remedied, to the degrading treatment that trans and intersex people can experience for being themselves. A focus is needed now to ensure that all older adults are treated with dignity and respect and are able to influence the direction of their lives through the choices they make. A sexual rights framework should protect, yet guarantee access to, these choices.

Won’t a shift in focus in terms of sexual rights in older people come about naturally, with generational shifts, without the input of psychologists?

I think we are seeing evidence of such a shift. The combined efforts of academics, activists, practitioners, and older adults have been influential in changing the sexual-rights landscape. While we can see evidence of positive change, in that there is now more recognition of the sexual agency of older adults and of diverse sexualities overall, stigma remains. Change is slow, and we need to support the current generation of older adults as well as pave the way for a better sexual rights future for all. Psychologists play a key role here. We are in a position to influence public understanding of human behaviour and raise awareness of the ways that stereotypes can influence how we think about and act towards others. Because of this we are in a strong position to tackle prejudice and discrimination.

I guess intersectionality is vital here, i.e. the issues facing an older transgender person might be very different to those facing an older heterosexual person?

Absolutely. Intersectionality is a key feature of our work.

In many countries, older adults are marginalised and subject to damaging prejudice and discrimination based on their age. When being ‘old’ intersects with other social categories that are in the minority, such as sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnic group, older adults can be further marginalised. Many people aged 60+ have grown up during a time when gender roles were rigid, so diverse sexual and gender identities were not understood or accepted. Having a history of being treated differently, pathologised even, can have a cumulative effect, and so

the older adults of today who have experienced longterm prejudice may be less open about their identity and needs than younger people. Our sexual rights framework acknowledges that sexuality is influenced by such life experiences, that older adults can experience multiple stigma, and that power, privilege and inequality combine and exclude certain groups.

What are the implications for older people of the #MeToo movement and other recent social agendas?

It’s really important that movements like #MeToo include older adults. We know that older age does not provide us with a protective shield from abuse and exploitation.

The potential vulnerability of those who are dependent on others for daily care is a concern. One of the chapters in our book focuses on the sexual assault of older women.

The authors point out that many of these assaults are carried out by people the women know, and that victims who report sexual assault may be dismissed on the basis that they do not ‘fit’ the stereotypical image of the female sexual assault victim, who is, quite simply, young. This is a significant violation of sexual rights.

A grateful ageing Kingsley Amis once said of his declining libido ‘for 50 years it was like being chained to an idiot’.

Can a sexual-rights agenda for older people ever go too far, beyond what many are looking for?

Great quote, and great question! The sexual-rights framework recognises the right to not be sexually active.

This is important especially in the current cultural climate where sexual activity is being promoted, including by some government bodies, for ageing well. We know that sexual activity and intimacy can have benefits for health, but the successful ageing narrative that equates sex with physical and mental health in our later years is often presented uncritically. When we challenge stereotypes such as the asexual older age, we need to be mindful that they are not replaced with new, equally restrictive, stereotypes. People do not become ill if they’re not sexually active!

If our readers take just one message from this, to change them personally or professionally, what should it to be?

Ageism is one of the biggest challenges in the UK (and many other countries), and evidence shows that it can badly affect our health and wellbeing. Ageism is ingrained in many societies and hard to shift, and many argue that it is the most socially tolerated form of discrimination. In our work we provide guidance and tips to help academics, health and social professionals, service providers and students to promote and advance the sexual rights of older adults. A large part of this work requires changing social attitudes towards older age. Collective action is required. Small steps matter, and we can all make a difference.

‘The Age of Love’ exhibition runs from 20 to 30 September at The Art House in Sheffield. All Festival of the Mind events are free to attend, and you can find more information at http://festivalofthemind.group.shef.ac.uk

Arts in Mind Earlier this summer the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience held its first Arts in Mind Festival, a week-long series of 30 exhibitions, performances, screenings and workshops all exploring interdisciplinary collaborations between scientists and clinicians studying the brain and mental health and the arts.

In this spirit of mixing things up a bit, the four reviews below are written by people with very different profiles.

See also Sally Marlow’s interview with the festival’s creative director and curator, Ruth Garde, via our website.

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Alina Ivan is a psychology postgraduate and research assistant working on the RADAR study at King’s College London, which uses smartphone and wearable technology to monitor conditions such as epilepsy and depression.

She reviewed ‘Headtrip’, a binaural immersive depiction of a depressive experience.

Basak Tas (right) and Galia Rybitskaya (left) in front of a still from the Breathing Body animation (Photos courtesy of Nigel Brunsdon)

Headtrip Sat in a circle with our headphones on, blindfolded, we are taken on a journey. The morning alarm sets off, the rustle of the duvet. A male voice uttering fleeting thoughts then emerges, mixed with the radio news in the background.

A very normal day. The thoughts we then start to hear become a battling internal dialogue; as time passes it becomes more and more punishing, culminating into war.

This is a taste of Headtrip, a 10-minute audio experience that takes you on an incursion through someone’s daily struggle with depression. The piece felt very real, incredibly rich, and uncomfortable at times.

Once the audio finished, the Headtrip team – Lucia Scazzocchio, Ella Saltmarshe and Rebecca Hatchett – then worked with us to explore our thoughts and feelings, and any insights from the experience.

Rebecca told us how they had co-created the audio alongside people with lived experience of depression, introducing us to Nick – one of their co-creators on the project. Ella talked us through the scriptwriting process and Lucia explained the use of binaural microphones to record the audio. Hidden in the ‘ears’ of a dummy ‘head’, they give the impression of an immersive 3D sound.

Although we may have knowledge of what depression involves, many agree that unless you experience it you cannot fully understand what someone goes through.

Headtrip has done an impressive job at bringing to life symptoms of depression. This initiative (see tinyurl.com/ headtripproj) could help to build empathy and put us in a better position to offer support, as well as normalise this serious but common mental health problem.

Heroin Bodies Heroin Bodies (picture above), product of an interdisciplinary collaboration, first debuted in November 2017 at the pop-up Museum of Drug Policy celebrating the 50th anniversary event for the UK-based drugs charity Release. Since then the exhibition has reached drug policy and harm reduction conferences. It is reviewed by Dr Rebecca McDonald, a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the National Addiction Centre, King’s College London.

The aim of this ambitious interdisciplinary project is to connect the general public with visually stimulating and factually accurate representations of heroin addiction and overdose. The artist and communication designer Galia Rybitskaya and academic lead Basak Tas (from the

the psychologist august 2018 culture National Addiction Centre) have been working closely together on this project from its inception.

I had the opportunity to see their very first exhibition at the Museum of Drug Policy as well as their most recent at the Arts in Mind Festival. The centrepiece is a dividing wall of images representing the layer of skin, separating the biological ‘journey of the drug’ through the body from the historic, unspoken aspects of drug use that are and have been present within society. Photos do not do justice to this ‘skin’ and this exhibition. A separate piece, which I found very moving, is an animation of the human body moving to the cyclical sound of breathing that alternates in a fashion that resembles what might occur before and after a dose of heroin. Galia and Basak were so effectively able to take quite complex information to lay audiences, but there were also many aspects of this exhibition that addictions and mental health professionals alike could also take something from. Opioid overdose and its recent epidemic is a complex phenomenon that has stumped many a researcher and clinician. This exhibition thrusts us deep into the biological and social foundations of opioid dependence and overdose whilst simultaneously causing us to take a step back. I look forward to seeing Heroin Bodies in whatever space it finds itself in next (see www. heroinbodies.com), and encourage you to do the same.

Maternal Journal With maternal mental health a stated priority area for the NHS, and ‘journaling’ becoming so popular that journal has crossed the line from noun to verb, this project – reviewed by artist and mother Amy Dignam – is right on the zeitgeist.

Maternal Journal (see tinyurl.com/matjournal) is a project that came out of a shared interest between artist/midwife Laura Godfrey-Isaacs and psychiatrist Professor Carmine Pariante. The focus of the project is to explore the potential of ‘journaling’ as a creative and therapeutic tool to promote good mental health in pregnant women who have a history of mild to moderate mental health problems. During the Arts in Mind Festival, Maternal Journal ran two ‘tester’ workshops offering people an opportunity to have an insight in to the project.

Art journaling is a way to explore mood, emotions and experiences over time. The practice of journaling has a real physical and mental health benefit. It has been shown to strengthen our immune system and lower hypertension, and is also associated with a decrease in depression and anxiety. Throughout the workshops participants were encouraged in making, drawing, working with text and playing with words.

Artist Fran Burden opened the first session by leading a concrete poetry workshop – poetry in which the meaning is conveyed partly or wholly by visual means, using patterns of words or letters and other typographical devices. This type of poetry has been used for thousands of years, since the ancient Greeks. A significant word search began attempting to tell a story in a few words.

It was an authentic and strong sharing experience, where women’s true voices came through and inspired.

Project founder Laura Godfrey-Isaacs facilitated the afternoon session. She asked participants to concentrate

on personal feelings. Something that might have happened in the past or just to focus on the way they felt there and then. Starting with eyes closed, participants were asked to make lines on their journal adding layer to layer, changing colours and media as they built up to the final image. The result was always an unpredicted one just as unpredictable as the dialogues and connections made along the way.

These expressive modalities of communication and the translation were often difficult feelings for the participants. However, the Maternal Journal provided a safe, non-judgemental environment, a space of acceptance, acknowledgement and tolerance of vulnerability highlighting the need for a holistic approach to mental health issues as a viable alternative to the current clinical model.

Wandering Minds … reviewed by Sushank Chibber, who has a Master’s in Africana Studies from Stony Brook University, New York.

Chibber is doing cancer research in London and pursuing his second master’s at Goldsmiths University of London in social anthropology, focusing on access to healthcare in Europe for refugees, and mental health. He submitted his review in the form of a letter to the artist.

Dear Kai, I wanted to congratulate you and thank you for an amazing event yesterday. Your event was so innovative and really brought art and science together. I learned more about the mind, ADHD and how important art is in navigating various outlets and that was even more valuable to me than what I would have learned in a classroom setting. The connection between art and science is so essential, and you were able to impact and educate individuals so effectively and bring awareness at the same time. Your event encouraged everyone to step outside of their comfort zone and try to understand their own inhibitions in terms of ADHD and of other people as well.

For instance, I talk excessively and get distracted very easily due to my ADHD. However, during your event my engagement with other participants made me more aware of my ADHD. Hence, I tried harder to pay attention and give the other person for of a platform to talk.

By doing so I did not only overcome my own limitations but was able to meet and interact with people just like me but also learn how our individual journey in terms of our ADHD can be understood individually and collectively as a group.

I hope that you continue to get funding and make your vision even better and more accessible to all. Due to my ADHD, I have always struggled making friends or having access to specialists, and your event was able to break both barriers and provide a ‘family’ as well as imparting useful skills in return. Art in that case served as a process to educate me and to connect me with people that are just like me, something that I am extremely grateful to you for.

Thank you and I look forward to your next event.

Yours sincerely, Sushank Chibber

This event was an informal evening of speed-dating style discussions with experts in the arts and the human mind, exploring mind wandering, neurodiversity, the creative process and ADHD. It is part of a 1.5 yearlong project entitled ‘We Sat On The Mat And Had A Chat and Made Maps! #MagicCarpet’

by King’s Artistin-residence Dr Kai Syng Tan in collaboration with Professor of Psychiatry Philip Asherson at King’s College London. The project consists of public engagement activities, workshops and artistic outputs including a tapestry artwork, photographic performance and badges. wesatonamat. weebly.com

the

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T

...is for Thinking

‘In general, thinking is the act of having an idea or thought in one’s mind, but it encompasses all mental activities from reasoning, problem-solving, decision-making and learning to contemplating, conceptualising, creativity and imagination. Few terms in psychology cover such a wide range of constructs and processes.’

Thinking in a second language drains the imagination of vividness, but makes us less prone to superstition. Search ‘thinking’ on our Research Digest blog. You’ll also discover why critical thinking skills are more important than IQ in making good decisions in life.

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What do psychologists think about machines that think? That was the 2015 Edge question.

Steven Pinker noted: ‘It’s telling that many of our techno-prophets don’t entertain the possibility

Karla Novak

Suggested by Christopher Kelly, Principal Human Factors Consultant with Thales Cyber & Consulting @HFmatters coming soon… climate change; awakening experiences; plus all our usual news, views, reviews, interviews, and much more...

A to Z that artificial intelligence will develop along female lines: fully capable of solving problems, but with no desire to annihilate innocents or dominate the civilisation.’

Rather than yielding direct insights about what people think, it is safer to consider [much psychological] data as comprising what some people say about what they think they think. That’s the conclusion from Brian Hughes in an April 2017 extract on our website.

Our thinking is more agile, and fragile, than we might have thought, said Cecilia Heyes in a ‘Books’ Q+A last month.

Tweet your suggestions for any letter to @psychmag using the hashtag #PsychAtoZ or email the editor on jon.sutton@ bps.org.uk Entries so far are collated at https:// thepsychologist. bps.org.uk/ psychology-z

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Search for more on this topic and any other via www.bps.org.uk/thepsychologist and www.bps.org.uk/digest

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society notices CPD workshops 2018/2019 See p.8 BPS conferences and events See p.21 Spearman Medal – call for nominations See p.42 Award for Equality of Opportunity – call for nominations See p.54 Award for Outstanding Doctoral Research Contributions to Psychology – call for nominations See p.54 4th Community Psychology Festival Hertford, 23–24 September 2018 See p.70

Director of Finance Russell Hobbs The Society has offices in Belfast, Cardiff, Glasgow and London, as well as the main office in Leicester.

All enquiries should be addressed to the Leicester office (see inside front cover for address).

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

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