The Psychologist December 2018 by The Psychologist

the

psychologist december 2018

How real people communicate A special collection including talk, facial expressions, ‘repair’, complaints, Alexa, burping and awkward silences…

www.thepsychologist.org.uk

the

psychologist december 2018

How real people communicate A special collection including talk, facial expressions, ‘repair’, complaints, Alexa, burping and awkward silences…

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

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

Managing Editor Jon Sutton Assistant Editor Peter Dillon-Hooper Production Mike Thompson Journalist Ella Rhodes Editorial Assistant Debbie Gordon Research Digest Christian Jarrett (editor), Emma Young, Vacancy (see the Digest website)

Associate Editors Articles Michael Burnett, Paul Curran, Harriet Gross, Rebecca Knibb, Adrian Needs, Paul Redford, Sophie Scott, Mark Wetherell, Jill Wilkinson History of Psychology Alison Torn Interviews Gail Kinman Culture Kate Johnstone, Sally Marlow Books Emily Hutchinson, Rebecca Stack Voices in Psychology Madeleine Pownall International panel Vaughan Bell, Uta Frith, Alex Haslam, Elizabeth Loftus, Asifa Majid Psychologist and Digest Editorial Advisory Committee Catherine Loveday (Chair), Emma Beard, Harriet Gross, Kimberley Hill, Rowena Hill, Deborah Husbands, Peter Olusoga, Richard Stephens, Miles Thomas

the

psychologist december 2018

Letters

News Britain’s prejudices; Society policy; Harbinder Sandhu; and more

‘There is a problem with juries acting on myths’ We meet Dominic Wilmott

Mindfulness and clinical science Bergljot Gjelsvik and colleagues call for more rigour and less hype

How real people communicate A special feature with Elizabeth Stokoe on ‘speak’ vs. ‘talk’; José-Miguel Fernández-Dols on facial expressions; Saul Albert on ‘repair’; Stuart Reeves and Martin Porcheron talk to tech; Alexa Hepburn and Jenny Mandelbaum analysing burps; Elliott Hoey on awkward silences; and Emily Hofstetter dealing with complaints.

Culture Including the ‘Mile-long Opera’; Living with Buildings; music; and more

‘Impact has got to be more than in-group grooming’ ‘One on one’ with Malcolm MacLachlan

Careers We meet Dawn Edge; and hear from Rebecca Fellows about her work in an Infant Mental Health Service

Jobs in psychology

Books Including reviews, Q+A, and the latest on our online extracts

Watching the ﬁlm Dunkirk last year, I suddenly realised that if I inhabited this cinematic world for real I would spend the entire time saying ‘What was that, mate? I didn’t quite catch it. You’re mumbling.’ (I would also keep walking into rooms and switching the big light on, but that’s another matter.) It struck me that modern attempts at ‘realism’ don’t feel very ‘real’ at all, and the idea for this month’s special feature (p.28) was born. I hope you’ll agree it’s a fascinating collection of pieces from the experts on how people really communicate, in a variety of ways. Of course, a vital way that you modern folk communicate is via the electric interweb and all the social medias. We’ve doubled the amount of users of thepsychologist. bps.org.uk in the last two years (compared with the previous two). There’s more exclusive content than ever. 82,000+ follow us on Twitter @psychmag for updates. You’re busy, but please try to ﬁnd time to look: and communicate back this way!

A to Z X… is it X-ray? Or xylophone?

Dr Jon Sutton Managing Editor @psychmag

Tim Sanders/www.timonline.info

Time to wake up to climate change We feel encouraged by the diverse public response to our article ‘Yawning at the apocalypse’ (September 2018). In October the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a landmark report warning of imminent crisis. We must now pursue a wide range of mitigation and adaptation strategies, even with high uncertainties. This diversity of necessary actions is our central response to commentaries by John Raven and Mallory Wober (Letters, November 2018). Wober commends more study before developing policy and behavioural prescriptions. Raven does the opposite, criticising our approach for being too modest. We agree that boosting recycling rates will not mitigate climate change, but that work forms part of a valuable whole. There are also research programmes on the political consequences of collective discontent (see tinyurl.com/ydclpjt4), when beliefs cause collective action (see tinyurl.com/ y9458o8y), and on activism and radicalism in related fields like sociology. Revolutionaries could benefit from their findings. Taking immediate action to curb the effects of climate change – yes, today – can take many forms, from the incremental (eat less red meat) to the revolutionary (reorient society away from consumption and ostensibly limitless economic expansion). There is room in the tent for all approaches. Our fundamental research on the

psychology of how people respond to climate change supports all levels. Complex economic and political systems are still made up out of people interacting with other people and the environment. As we debate the most valuable goals and best intervention methods, this fundamental psychology provides answers to the paradox of our informed inaction and illuminates concrete suggestions for action (see our earlier article). Note that the response by Wober may undervalue the ﬁrm scientiﬁc basis of the IPCC reports. The atmospheric chemistry is very well understood, as are the lifecycle assessments for alternative energy sources. There are no policy panaceas, only bitter pills, but some are far more bitter than others (e.g. coal). Quibbling over wellestablished physical and chemical processes is a reason why systemic change has been so slow. Another key reason comes from maximising too much on the best possible course of action. From this desk, it feels like a tsunami is swelling on the horizon. Shall we spend more time talking about which hills are the most salubrious, or shall we run now? We are grateful to all readers and commenters, and welcome further dialogue. Cameron Brick PhD Sander van der Linden PhD University of Cambridge

the psychologist december 2018 letters

Relationship counselling as a ‘necessary social justice’ but children and young people growing up in hostile environments, surrounded by relationship distress and difficulties are shown statistically to require further help and support from public services due to learning difficulties, mental health problems and anxiety. Should the focus not be aimed at the main problem instead of investing and addressing all the subsequent issues caused by relationship difficulties? The solution

lies with reform and re-direction of existing funding, which would in fact prove to be much more cost-efﬁcient in the end. Relationship counselling is more a right and a need than a commodity. There is a call to treat it as such and make the service available to everyone, regardless of ﬁnancial status. A necessary social justice. N. Gardia Oldbury, West Midlands Getty Images

An eye-opening report by Relate and the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (see tinyurl.com/y92tvznb) explores the need for making relationship counselling and therapy available to everyone regardless of their economic status and looks into detail at all the barriers and aggravating factors. When we look at the NHS, the path to take when we break a leg is clear. But what happens if we experience relationship difficulties within our marriage or partnership? Psychology has a commitment to equality and improves everyone’s daily lives by helping public services overcome socio-economic and cultural barriers. But within the public sector, relationship counselling is unexplored territory. With the lack of a targeted service, relationship counselling is only available if you can afford it. Furthermore, low-income families across the UK are at higher risk of experiencing relationship problems due to financial pressures and debt, and another expense would add gasoline to an existing fire. Relationship counselling becomes an inaccessible service for all low-income families and, in turn, stops being a solution altogether. The parental relationship is the foundation of a family home,

Paving the way to dementia-friendly communities It was February 2017. I had just started working for a local charity, providing support to vulnerable adults in the community. I was still getting my head around the role when I received a referral for someone whom I shall here refer to as Bill. The referral stated that Bill ‘has a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease’. I’ll admit I was nervous – I’d not had much experience with dementia in my personal life, so was basing my expectations on what I’d heard in the media. I was picturing Bill as being

potentially aggressive, incoherent or completely unaware of my presence at all. I arrived at Bill’s and was greeted by a well-groomed, pleasant gentleman who immediately offered me a cup of tea. I walked into his house and was met with hundreds of books – Bill enthusiastically told me all about his passion for reading and showed me some of his favourites. The next hour ﬂew by; Bill told me all about ﬁghting in the war, spoke fondly of his daughter who was living abroad, teared

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up a little when talking about his wife’s passing, and confessed his passion for quizzes. I left the visit feeling utterly confused. This was a man who had captivated me with his life history, who clearly felt happiness and sadness as strongly as I did, and who had completely deﬁed my expectations of dementia. As I met more and more people with the condition, I began to realise that these were a group of people from whom I could learn great amounts. I continually left visits inspired by what it was like to be evacuated as a child, and the challenges of raising a family in south London in the 1950s. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m sure a lot of people reading this have had difﬁcult experiences of dementia, and perhaps connect more strongly with the idea that dementia is a cruel disease where a person slowly loses everything. Of course, dementia is going to affect the person’s life in many ways, and most people will require support to carry on living an independent life for as long as possible. However, plenty of people living with the condition are still able to form relationships, socialise, and continue to be key members of the community for a long time after diagnosis. I realised that I was in quite a unique position by having the opportunity to spend time with a range of people with dementia. Amongst most of my peers, a diagnosis of dementia still amounted to little better

than a death sentence. It was due to this that I decided to look into how I could raise awareness, and I came across Alzheimer’s Society’s opportunity to train to become a Dementia Friends Champion. The training would teach me how to deliver hour-long sessions to members of the community in order for them to become a Dementia Friend. That is, that they would have a better idea of how dementia affects the person, help to dispel some of the myths and discuss how people with dementia can be supported to live well in the community. I can honestly say this was one of the most inspiring days of my professional career; any doubts I had about delivering a Dementia Friends information session were quickly eradicated. The training explains clearly how

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the psychologist december 2018 letters to deliver each of the activities in a Dementia Friends Session, and how to adapt these to different audiences when necessary. The Dementia Friends session manages to cover so much information, but allows everyone to really engage with the material so they don’t feel overwhelmed. The Champion training also spent some time focusing on presentation skills and gave me a chance to practise in front of the rest of the group. Not only did this eliminate some of the nerves I had about presenting, it was also a great experience to get some feedback about my presentation style. I’ve taken this advice forward in my role as a Champion and applied it to work-based presentations too. After the Champion training, I was ready to deliver my first session. I was encouraged to deliver this to one or two friends or family members. This was an excellent way to start as it got me in the right mindset and ironed out any kinks, and it was far less daunting than presenting to a group of strangers. As my confidence has grown, I’ve presented to larger groups, with my largest session to date being to an audience of 60–70. I’ve also been blown away by the amount of people in my personal life who have been wanting to know more about dementia but haven’t known who to ask, who have been truly grateful for the opportunity to learn more. In terms of practicalities, being a Dementia Friends Champion is one of the most flexible forms of volunteering I’ve come across. Once you complete the training, you can choose when and where you run your sessions and can choose the size of the group you present to depending on what you’re most comfortable with. The programme doesn’t need you to commit to a specific time every week, so it’s much easier to work around childcare, work or other life hassles. You’ll be allocated a Dementia Friends Officer who is contactable by phone and email; they’re always helpful with whatever problem you have, be that practical support or just helping with those last-minute nerves. To get involved, just visit www.dementiafriends.org.uk/ register-champion, and book a training day. The training assumes no previous knowledge of dementia, and if, after the training, you decide volunteering isn’t for you, you can just let them know and they won’t pressure you to deliver any sessions. So why not take a look today and help Bill and thousands of others living in the UK by making your community a safe and supportive place for those living with dementia. Emma Corcoran London SW2

Letters online: Find more letters at www.thepsychologist. org.uk/debates, including on a proposed new general theory of behaviour. Deadline for letters for the January print edition is Monday 26 November 2018. Letters received after this date will be considered for the following month and/or for publication online. Email letters to psychologist@bps.org.uk with the subject line ‘Letter to the editor’.

from the chief executive My first six months with the Society has been fascinating. As I’ve met with members across the UK, I’ve learned just how diverse our organisation is and how passionate our members are. I want to thank the hundreds of members that I’ve met for giving me their time, sharing their honest views and helping me identify the areas we need to improve. We all want the same thing: a vibrant and influential Society that promotes psychology and psychologists, that keeps practitioners up to date and that develops services that members value. Many of you have also given valuable feedback about the Society Review and as a result, it’s become clear that we need to widen our focus beyond just restructuring the member networks in order to achieve real and lasting change. We’ve heard loud and clear that our role as learned society is incredibly important to you, and we’ll continue to prioritise this important aspect of our work, but you’ve also told us that you want the Society to be a stronger professional body, speaking and acting on your behalf on the issues that impact on your working lives. Issues like the proposed 18 per cent increase in HCPC fees for practitioner psychologists. We believe this is unfair, and with your support, we’ll be robustly challenging this significant increase. We know that we have to deliver some tangible outcomes for you, but alongside that we also know the Society has to start working in a different way. That means changing our culture and working together in partnership with members. At the heart of this change is the determination to make the Society truly membership-led. That means giving you a much stronger voice in determining our focus as an organisation. Our inaugural Senate is a concrete example of this, with chairs of networks, divisions and groups meeting to decide on our campaigning priorities for 2019. This is an important first step as it puts our members at the heart of the decisionmaking process. Next month, I will be taking an initial transformation plan to the Society’s Board of Trustees, outlining the steps we need to take and the further investment we need to make in order to radically improve the Society. This is an important milestone in our transformation journey. I know from members that there is a sense that the Society has promised change before that hasn’t always been delivered. A long-term plan is vital, but it’s also important to make rapid improvements along the way. That’s why your Board of Trustees has already agreed to release significant new funding to support members and strengthen our external influence. This means we will be able to increase capacity in key areas such as communications, policy and our finance infrastructure We know that change can be difficult, that it’s constant and that it requires partnership. I know my challenge over the next year is to deliver for members so that together, we can relaunch the Society as a powerful professional body and an influential learned society. Sarb Bajwa is Chief Executive of the British Psychological Society. Contact him at Sarb.Bajwa@bps.org.uk

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Revealing Britain’s prejudices

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hile many of us espouse egalitarian ideals a new national survey from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, designed by psychologists, reveals the hidden prejudices many in Britain hold. The researchers found that although a majority of people believe all groups should be treated equally, a quarter suggested they would not be comfortable if their boss had a mental health condition and more than a third said attempts toward creating equal opportunities for immigrants and Muslims had gone ‘too far’. In 2005 Professors Dominic Abrams (University of Kent) and Diane Houston (Birkbeck, University of London) conducted a survey for the Cabinet Ofﬁce, assessing public attitudes towards six different groups in Britain. In 2016, in an Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) review of the previous 10 years of evidence, Abrams, Dr Hannah Swift and Dr Lynsey Mahmood (City University) established that prejudice and discrimination towards different groups had not been consistently measured in Britain. The EHRC decided to commission a new survey to establish national benchmarks of prejudice against which future surveys in the area can be compared, and recently released the results as a companion to its three-yearly Is Britain Fairer report. In the new 2018 survey, designed by Abrams, Swift and Houston, the National Centre for Social Research collected data from a representative sample of 2853 participants from England, Scotland and Wales, and an extra survey to target minority groups. One of the more surprising results from the 2018 survey was that prejudice remains so entrenched and continues to affect so many people. More than four in ten people in Britain said they had experienced some form of prejudice in the last 12 months, including 70 per cent of Muslims experiencing prejudice based on their religion, 64 per cent of people from a black ethnic background

Professor Dominic Abrams

Dr Hannah Swift

experiencing race-based prejudice and 61 per cent of people with a mental health condition experiencing impairment-based prejudice. Of the British people surveyed, 74 per cent agreed there should be equality for all groups in Britain (one in ten disagreed), but when asked about speciﬁc groups the picture changed. More people expressed openly negative feelings toward Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, Muslims and transgender people than did so toward gay and lesbian people, those over 70 and people with a disability. One quarter of those surveyed expressed discomfort over having a boss with a mental health condition and 29 per cent were uncomfortable having someone with such a condition as a potential family member. Roughly one ﬁfth of people said they would be uncomfortable if an immigrant or Muslim person lived next door. Around a third of participants felt the effort to give marginalised groups, especially immigrants and Muslims, equal opportunities had gone ‘too far’. However, the authors report, 63 per cent of people thought that drives toward equal opportunities for people with mental health problems had not gone far enough. Abrams said that while people may believe in equality in principle, they often become more selective on this when they are asked about particular groups. He pointed to Susan Fiske’s stereotype content model by way of an explanation. ‘There’s a distinction between groups that tend to be paternalised or treated “benevolently” and groups that are treated in a more hostile way. What it means, for example, is that people tend not to express overt hostility to older people or disabled people – nonetheless a high proportion of those people say they’ve experienced prejudice directed against them. But the form of prejudice tends to be patronising, a lack of respect or assuming they’re not competent, so they’re treated

the psychologist december 2018 news as likeable and deserving, but nonetheless as lacking in competence and as not worth taking seriously. I think for a lot of these groups that situation has persisted or become worse.’ On the other side there are groups such as Muslims or those in the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities who experience high levels of overtly hostile discrimination. ‘This can include being insulted, being treated negatively and hate crime. Prejudice takes all these different forms, and I think our survey reinforces, quite strongly, that strategies to improve fairness and equality need to address all different forms of prejudice and discrimination.’ There are multiple and complex causes of prejudicial beliefs and discriminatory behaviour. Abrams said that the current worldwide state of political and economic flux may foment intergroup suspicions and prejudices, and he pointed to the potential influence of the Brexit vote. Since the referendum in 2016 he said tensions had increased between different groups in the UK, not only on the basis of race, ethnicity and religion but also due to age and region. ‘This may be a consequence of the referendum result and the economic uncertainty that the UK now faces. But it probably also reflects global conditions, the rise of populism, nationalism, and clashes of value systems around the world. If there has been a distinct “Brexit effect”, then a satisfactory deal with the EU and the more certain future could reduce these tensions. On the other hand, no-deal, or a situation that causes significant economic and practical disruption within the UK could well add further energy to intergroup divisions and we could see rises in prejudice, hate crime, and antagonism between groups.’ However, Abrams maintains hope, and said there are many researchers and others doing work to tackle these issues and solutions were not out of reach. ‘One approach is strengthening legal constraints, such as defining more types of prejudice-based crimes defined as hate crimes. However, as psychologists we have a significant part to play through designing effective educational interventions and enabling people to recognise and understand the nature of prejudice.’ Abrams pointed as an example to the Anne Frank Trust, of which he is trustee, which uses Anne Frank’s story to teach young people about the nature of prejudice so they are better equipped to recognise and challenge it. ‘How we deal with ingrained prejudices in the rest of the population requires, I think, a combination of law, changes in norms and changes in what’s regarded as acceptable practice. But, clearly, as a society we have to monitor levels of prejudice, be aware of its different causes and alert to different types of events and situations which might be generating hatred between groups. We also need social and psychological tools to respond to those quickly and prevent such attitudes from becoming too entrenched.’ ER For a full report on the survey see: tinyurl.com/ydz9dsdt; for the Is Britain Fairer 2018 report see: tinyurl.com/y7hxnqyh

Psychology strong in Leverhulme Prizes Five psychologists are among the 30 recipients of the 2018 Philip Leverhulme Prizes to support early-career researchers whose work has already had signiﬁcant international impact in furthering their research. Among the winners were researchers in social robotics, the history of emotion, mental health and social evolution. The Philip Leverhulme Trust is one of the largest all-subject funders of research in the UK and provides its annual prizes across 18 disciplines making awards in six of these disciplines per year. Each awardee, who must be within 10 years of receiving their doctorate, receives £100,000 across two or three years to be used in their future research. This year’s winners in the Psychology category were: • Emily Cross, a Professor of Social Robotics (University of Glasgow) who co-directs the Social Brain in Action Lab. She explores experiencedependent plasticity in the human brain and behaviour using neuroimaging as well as how social experience and expectations shape how we perceive and interact with robots. • Dr Stephen Fleming, who leads the metacognition group at the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, University College London. He and his group research the mechanisms that support metacognition, conscious awareness and decision making in the brain. • Dr Claire Haworth (University of Bristol), whose research focuses on mental health and wellbeing across the lifespan and what factors affect it.

•

She also explores individual differences including using genetic techniques and has explored how genetic and environmental inﬂuences may change across development, in different environments and after interventions. Dr Harriet Over (University of York), a researcher in intergroup bias in children and adults, social learning and motivation and cross-cultural approaches to development. Some of her recent work has explored the developmental origins of dehumanisation and whether young children see outgroup faces as less human. Professor Nichola Raihani, who leads the Social Evolution and Behaviour Group. Her research explores the evolution of cooperation in nature and what mechanisms can maintain cooperation.

Some of those who received prizes in the Visual and Performing Arts category also explore psychological phenomena in their work. Dr Daisy Fancourt (UCL) studies the effects of social and community participation in health with a particular focus on engagement in the arts and culture. For example, some of her more recent publications have involved examining the effects of a singing intervention on people with postnatal depression and creativity on social and behavioural adjustment in 7- to 10-year-old children. Dr Tiffany Watt Smith (Queen Mary, University of London) has researched the cultural history of emotions, the links between theatre and science and early 20th-century experimental neurology and psychology.

News online: Find more news at www.thepsychologist.org.uk/reports, including a new website on living with burn injuries. 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.

Award for social inclusion work Professor Malcolm MacLachlan has won the 2018 British Psychological Society Award for Promoting Equality of Opportunity. The honour is given to psychologists who make an exceptional and sustained contribution to challenging social inequalities in relation to gender, race, ethnic origin, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, disability or age. Professor of Psychology and Social Inclusion and Director of the recently established Assisting Living and Learning (ALL) Institute at Maynooth University, Ireland, MacLachlan is a Chartered Psychologist and a Fellow of both the BPS and of the Psychological Society of Ireland. He has worked as an academic, clinician, organisational consultant and policy adviser in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America; with government, civil society, corporates and United Nations agencies.

See p.58 for more on Professor MacLachlan’s work

Research digest

Turing Institute elects new Fellows

Voluntarily placing ourselves in an intensely scary situation can have the rewarding effect of reducing the neural reactivity of our brains, effectively ‘recalibrating’ our emotions. That’s according to US researchers who scanned the brains of volunteers before and after they visited the immersive theatre ‘Basement’ attraction at the Scarehouse in Pittsburgh. (Emotion)

Psychologists and neuroscientists are among the new Fellows who have been elected to the Turing Institute. This year Fellowships have for the first time been opened to eight other universities beyond the founding five, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford, Warwick and UCL. The Turing Institute was created as the national institute for data science in 2015 and has just entered its third academic year. The academics elected as Fellows spend a portion of their time working at the institute on research concerning data, artificial intelligence and its broad range of applications, for example in healthcare or in increasing the transparency of algorithms and making them more ethical. New Fellows from the University of Birmingham included Director at the Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Cognitive Robotics Professor Uta Noppeney and Dr Matthew Brett who has worked in brain imaging analysis, neurology and cognitive psychology. Dr Tristan Bekinschtein, from the Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute and Dr Jason Rentfrow, a reader in personality and individual differences, both from the University of Cambridge, also began their Fellowships in the autumn. Dr Faisal Mushtaq (University of Leeds) who uses techniques from cognitive neuroscience to investigate perception, action and cognition interaction, is another new Fellow. Also from the University of Leeds, Professor of Cognitive Psychology Mark Mon-Williams has also been elected. Academics with a psychological background from Queen Mary University of London also become Fellows. They are Dr Elisabetta Versace, a Lecturer in Psychology who researches the foundations of knowledge and evolution of behaviour, and Dr Magda Osman who researches decision making, learning, problem solving and biases. ER

Listening to stories may have benefits for patients with dementia. A five-week-long trial that involved students reading stories each weekday to residents with dementia at a nursing home found that the residents showed subsequent cognitive improvements, whereas a control group who just watched TV as usual did not. This raises the hope of ‘narrative training’ as a form of non-drug therapy, though it’s possible at least some of the benefits were more to do with the social interactions than the stories. (Psychology and Neuroscience) 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 10

Throughout his career he has focused on the social inclusion of marginalised groups, speciﬁcally those on lower incomes, cultural and ethnic minorities and people with disabilities. MacLachlan is currently the Research and Innovation Lead for the World Health Organization’s Global Collaboration on Assistive Technology programme, which aims to promote access to high-quality, affordable assistive products in all countries, especially in low-income contexts. He is also the Knowledge Management Lead

for the United Nations Partnership for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNPRPD), which seeks to implement the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. The UNPRPD works across 40 countries, and Professor MacLachlan has been the Knowledge Management Lead since its inception in 2014. MacLachlan said: ‘This is a wonderful recognition of the work of the ALL Institute at Maynooth University, and of our many global partners. I am delighted to accept it on our collective behalf. It recognises that psychology can meaningfully and practically impact at the level of policy and systems, with government, civil society and the United Nations. In seeking to promote equality of opportunity at a macro level, we are contributing to applying psychology as a population science.’ ER

the psychologist december 2018 news

Strengthening BPS policy The British Psychological Society Senate has chosen which policy area to focus on in the coming year. A proposal on the mental health and psychological wellbeing of children and young people won the vote – against two other proposals on the role of psychology in current developments in technology, and ending the detention of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK and supporting their right to work. The newly inaugurated Senate, which is acting as an interim measure until the Society’s structural and member network reviews are complete, comprises the chairs of all BPS member networks with an aim to give members a democratic way of selecting organisational priorities. There is also hope the group will increase the impact the Society has on public policy. The winning proposal was put forward jointly by the Chairs of the Division of Educational and Child Psychology, the Division of Clinical Psychology and the Division of Academics, Researchers and Teachers in Psychology. They pointed to the need for a national strategy that ensures a cohesive and coordinated approach to increase access to psychological support and interventions. BPS Chief Executive Sarb Bajwa (see also p.5) said: ‘The Senate has allowed us to get a real sense of what matters to our members and means we have a clear focus and purpose that will help us to achieve much greater impact through collaboration.’ It has also been a busy few months for the Society in terms of announcements on a range of issues of public and professional importance. Kathryn Scott, the Society’s Director of Policy, said: ‘It’s a really exciting time for psychology, and there are huge opportunities for our discipline to make an impact. Recent government announcements on mental health show that many of the issues that are important to us are staying high on the agenda. And we are beginning to see recognition of the contribution of behavioural sciences to policy making and the importance of prevention, both of which the BPS has been advocating for in previous years.’ To mark World Mental Health Day, the government announced the appointment of Mental Health Minister Jackie Doyle-Price MP to an additional role as Minister for Suicide Prevention. She will be responsible for ensuring that local authorities have plans in place to stop suicide and will also be looking at how technology can help to identify those at risk of suicide. The BPS released a response calling for action to improve early intervention, outlining ﬁve steps toward helping those who may be at risk of suicide. These include implementing measures to ensure those discharged from hospital following a suicide attempt are given a follow-up appointment within three days, as this is a particularly risky time. In response to the autumn budget, the Society welcomed the announcement of a new mental health crisis service, which promises mental health support in every major A&E department, and children and young people’s crisis teams across the country. Sarb Bajwa, Chief Executive of the BPS, said that given the

Society’s senate vote (above) he was pleased to see the Chancellor’s commitment to children and young people’s crisis teams. He did add that the move was just a step on the road to real parity of esteem between mental and physical health care in the NHS. More recently Bajwa, along with Editor of The Lancet Psychiatry Niall Boyce and Wendy Burn, President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, published a letter in The Lancet Psychiatry setting out five principles to provide common ground among diverse professionals and others involved with mental health services. They stated that prevention is key, that there must be moves to eliminate stigma and discrimination against service users, that service users must be given choice and empowerment in treatment and that a drive towards community-based services must be accompanied by high standards of care. On professional issues, the Society called for members to respond to a Health and Care Professions Council consultation that is proposing an 18 per cent increase in its registration fees for next year. The Society has robustly challenged the proposals, pointing out the increases are more than six times the current rate of inflation. And in response to the Research Excellence Framework 2021 consultations on its draft panel criteria, working methods and submissions, the Society’s Research Board raised some concerns. For example, it suggested attempts to take researchers’ individual circumstances into account in an effort to promote equality and diversity was not a significant improvement on the 2014 process. Scott told us: ‘This is a key period for the Society as well – we are significantly expanding the Policy Team in order that we can make the most of these opportunities and bring the strength of our evidence and the power of our experience to bear on policy making.’ ER For information on the jobs in policy see www.bps.org.uk/about-us/jobs – closing date is 26 November

‘Unduly pessimistic’ on depression?

Research digest Researchers in Slovakia have provided a striking demonstration of the way that our powers of logical reasoning are diminished by our existing attitudes. They found that participants’ ability to discern the logical validity of basic arguments (syllogisms) about abortion was affected by whether or not they agreed with those arguments – a form of ‘Myside Bias’. The researchers concluded: ’Our results show why debates about controversial issues often seem so futile.’ (Journal of Cognitive Psychology). There may be a creative upside to ADHD, according to a test of undergraduates with the condition that involved them drawing alien fruits and proposing original brand names for a range of products, including drugs and pasta. The students with ADHD outperformed their peers without ADHD speciﬁcally in the sense of being able to break free from existing concepts and naming conventions. (Journal of Creative 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 12

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Depression is a chronic, recurrent, lifelong condition. Well, that’s the current orthodox view – but it is overstated, argues a team of psychologists led by Jonathan Rottenberg at the University of South Florida. ‘A significant subset of people recover and thrive after depression, yet research on such individuals has been rare,’ they write in their recent paper in Perspectives on Psychological Science. They propose a definition for ‘high functioning after depression’ (HFAD); argue that the advice given to people with depression need not be so gloomy; and lay out key areas for future research. The ‘gloomy’ view of depression is relatively recent, the researchers argue. Just a generation or two ago, conventional wisdom held that depression was the opposite – transient and self-limiting. ‘But what if neither the older orthodoxy nor the new view of depression fully captures the truth?’, Rottenberg and his colleagues ask. ‘What if, instead, two variants of depression operate simultaneously – a grim chronically recurring, lifelong variant, and a relatively benign, time-limited variant?’ Long-term studies certainly suggest that a substantial population of people are affected by a burdensome, recurrent form of the disorder. But Rottenberg’s team cite three studies finding that an average of 40 to 50 per cent of people who suffer an episode of depression don’t go on to experience another (e.g. the 2007 study by Mattisson et al. in Sweden: see tinyurl.com/ybm7mfwe) – but overall these individuals have been little studied. ‘This omission, and the field’s lack of focus on good outcomes after depression more broadly, virtually guarantees an unduly pessimistic impression of depression’s course’, Rottenberg and co. write – and this is an impression they would like to see changed.

HFAD has been overlooked in part, they argue, because researchers, influenced by the current view, have focused on finding factors associated with chronicity and recurrence. Also, people with recurrent depression are highly likely to be overrepresented in depression studies simply because, when researchers put a call out for subjects with depression, these people are statistically more likely to be suffering at the time, and so to be recruited. To be categorised as experiencing HFAD requires more than simply remitting or recovering from the symptoms of major depression for at least a year, Rottenberg and his colleagues add. An individual must also have achieved ‘high end-state functioning’ – doing well at work and home and socially, and reporting ‘robust’ wellbeing – feeling satisfied with life and enjoying high levels of self-acceptance, for instance. With such powers of recovery, what leads people who exhibit HFAD to become depressed in the first place? ‘One hypothesis might be that HFAD represents a more psychosocial form of depression that is more likely to be precipitated by environmental adversity, such as death, a break up of a romantic relationship or a job loss,’ the team suggest. Whether or not this is the case clearly needs exploring. And they point to other big questions. For instance: Are people who are HFAD more likely to have sought help while they were depressed? Does depression itself play a role in triggering the long-term improvement seen in HFAD? (Something similar has been proposed for trauma). Can we apply what is learnt about HFAD to enhance clinical interventions? What does HFAD tell us about thriving after other mental disorders? There are clearly a lot of questions. But here, at least, is a framework for finding potentially useful answers. ‘One reason HFAD needs to be discussed’, the researchers write, ‘is that it is part of the truth, which patients and the broader public are owed. It would be odd if an oncologist did not tell a cancer patient his or her chances of achieving lifetime remission. We submit that a depressed patient also deserves to know. The public deserves to know as well.’ Emma Young for www.bps.org.uk/digest Read the article: tinyurl.com/y9fccsvg

the psychologist december 2018 news

Five minutes with… Dr Harbinder Sandhu Associate Professor and Practitioner Health Psychologist Dr Harbinder Sandhu (Warwick Clinical Trials Unit, University of Warwick) is leading a large trial of an intervention that aims to help people with chronic pain taper their opioid use. Chief Investigator on the I-WOTCH trial (Improving the Wellbeing of People with Opioid Treated Chronic Pain) funded by the National Institute of Health Research, she spoke to our journalist Ella Rhodes about the issues that people who use opioids face and the randomised control trial that is set to start early in the new year. Could you tell me about the state of opioid prescription for chronic pain in the UK and some of the difficulties patients experience? There are eight to ten million people live in the UK with moderate to severe pain, and the number of people using strong opioids for pain has increased nearly fivefold between 2000 and 2010. This is a huge increase to NHS costs for a treatment that is largely ineffective with high incidences of serious side-effects including sedation, decreased concentration and memory, drowsiness, changes in mood, constipation, hormonal changes with consequences like sexual dysfunction, and opioid hyperalgesia where the more opioids are taken the more sensitive people become to pain. In 2014 there were around 23 million opioid prescriptions costing £322 million. The trend is showing that we are still increasingly prescribing more; the USA is experiencing a national epidemic, and there’s debate over whether we’re heading that way. However Public Health England has commissioned a review of the extent of the problem we have with prescription drugs, including painkillers, and the impact of long-term use… so we’ll have some data on that soon. I’ve worked clinically with patients experiencing chronic pain, and since we launched the trial we’ve had media coverage and people have contacted us to tell us their stories. A common term I hear is being ‘zombified’… that’s how people feel on high doses of strong opiates for a very long period of time. They tell me they feel like they’re living in a fog and that every day is a struggle. It affects their memory, it affects relationships within the family, they become quite isolated and don’t always actually put it down to the opiates. It’s a medication that’s been prescribed, and quite often that link isn’t made between the quality of life and what they’re taking. What will the study involve? Our research team includes clinicians, methodologists,

statisticians and health economists, because we’re also doing a cost-effectiveness analysis. We’ve just about finished recruiting our sample of 468 participants, and as it’s a randomised control trial there’s a 50-50 chance participants will have the intervention or best usual care. Our usual care arm looked at what’s available now for people to come off opiates, and in fact there’s very little. Rather than give participants nothing we’ve got a selfhelp booklet called My Opioid Manager developed by one of our collaborators in Canada, which gives some education on opiates and how to withdraw safely and information on the self-management of pain, and these participants will also get a relaxation CD. The intervention itself is partly based on a previous interdisciplinary intervention for pain management called COPERS. Our intervention has more of a focus on opiates and involves three days of group session. The sessions are delivered by a trained I-WOTCH nurse and layperson who has tapered off opiates themselves. The topics covered include, managing stress, mood, goal setting, communication, managing flare-ups, movement, mindfulness, relaxation and education about what opiates are and why they’re taking them. Between the second and third sessions participants receive a one-on-one appointment with a nurse, and that’s where the tapering is agreed and a plan put into place. After the last group session participants have three more points of contact with a nurse for ongoing support. We’re collecting data at baseline, after four, eight, and 12 months. Our main primary outcome measure is pain interference and how much it interferes with daily activities, and we also have secondary outcomes, including opiate use to see if it has reduced or not. We have an embedded process evaluation in this trial too, it will tell us which components of the programme are important in terms of behaviour change, motivating people and supporting them to come off their opioids whilst providing them with skills to manage their pain using non-pharmacological strategies How has this project been for you personally? It’s been a real whirlwind of a year. It’s such an important health issue and I feel very privileged to work with a massive team bringing together expertise from all over. I really hope we’re able to get some good results and really make a difference and have this available for people who need it. If you would like to find out more please see: https:// warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/med/research/ctu/trials/iwotch

Call for Nominations President 2020-21 The President is the visible ﬁgurehead of the Society and Chair of the Board of Trustees. We are seeking nominations of Members of the Society to stand for election to the role of President in the Presidential year 2020-21. The successful candidate will be President-Elect in 2019-20 and VicePresident in 2021-22. Descriptions of the role and responsibilities, together with requirements and time commitments, are available on request. Procedure A nomination pack, which includes further information regarding the role and a standard nomination form, is available from Viola Sander (viola.sander@bps.org.uk). The Board of Trustees has the

responsibility to ensure that there is at least one candidate for this position. In line with previous practice, a Search Committee has been set up to facilitate this process. Those wishing to propose candidates are invited to contact the Honorary General Secretary, Dr Carole Allan (e-mail: carole.allan@bps.org.uk) for guidance. Nominations must reach the Chief Executive’s Ofﬁce at the Society’s Leicester ofﬁce by 5pm on Friday 8 February 2019. Nominations will only be valid if the standard nomination form, including signatures, is fully completed. If more than one candidate is nominated, the election will be decided by a ballot of the Membership and the result announced at the 2019 Annual General Meeting.

‘There is a problem with juries acting on myths rather than evidence’ Ella Rhodes speaks to Dominic Willmott, whose research on the role of inaccurate beliefs about rape have caught the attention of policy makers

So-called ‘rape myths’ – described as attitudes and beliefs that, while inaccurate, are often used to seemingly justify sexual aggression – are endorsed by a worrying amount of people, often emerging on social media in the aftermath of media coverage. There are also parallels with reaction to recent hearings of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, accused of sexual assault by Psychology Professor Dr Christine Blasey Ford. The University of Huddersfield’s Dr Dominic Willmott has been exploring whether rape myths – for example, that sex within a relationship is implicitly consensual, that rapists are usually strangers, that those who report rape are inherently less trustworthy than victims of other crimes, and that time between incident and reporting makes the complainant less believable – may affect the verdicts of juries in trials. His troubling findings have caught the attention of the Crown Prosecution Service, Ministry of Justice and New Scotland Yard in England. Willmott’s interest started with research into jury decision making, and whether any particular traits or attitudes among jurors can predict guilty or not guilty verdicts. He explained that in most rape trials physical evidence is often of little value, and a victim’s word is put to the test against an assailant’s. After discussion with senior police officers, barristers and judges, Willmott decided to focus specifically on acquaintance rape cases – 90 per cent of rapes are committed by someone the victim knew. ‘A stereotypical scenario is two students who meet up on a night out having previously known each other in some way,’ Willmott said, ‘and following a sexual encounter, the male suggests this occurred with consent but the female states it was not. The legal practitioners I spoke to said these sorts of cases come up time and time again… police officers were telling me that these cases seem “nailed shut” in terms of clear culpability being established, but then ultimately it gets to trial and the jury return a not guilty verdict. The dismay around such verdict decisions led me to think this is where I need to focus.’

As it is illegal in the UK for former jurors to discuss their jury deliberations, much of the research in this area comes from North America. Willmott decided to take a more novel approach. ‘With assistance from barristers and a judge we were granted special permission to use a real crown court in one of our studies. Here, we could reconstruct with professional actors and legal personnel a genuine rape case that previously went to trial. This would allow us to test, in a more scientifically rigid and ecologically valid way, which factors, if any, had an effect on the verdicts that were returned.’ Willmott and his colleagues selected their mock jurors from the electoral register in the same way they are selected in real trials and were sent a form that was similar to a jury summons but was marked as a research invitation. ‘Quite a few members of the public who were selected in this way rang to say they had an operation or something important on the day of the study, but said “if I’m going to be prosecuted for failing to attend then I’ll come anyway”... in terms of ecological validity this was reassuring, as clearly participants perceived the process to be genuine, but meant I often had to explain that they were not legally bound to take part.’ In the most realistic study Willmott recreated the same scaled-down trial over the course of a full day on nine separate occasions. He was advised by barristers on the evidence that would be legally admissible in a real trial and a judge provided guidance on the content of conversations that would be had in the court in front of a jury. The mock jurors were given psychometric tests to complete pre-trial, measuring a number of different constructs including egocentricity and interpersonal manipulation (potentially important factors given the group-deliberation aspect of juries), affective and cognitive empathy, and rape attitudes including rape-myth acceptance. Working with Huddersfield University colleague Professor Daniel Boduszek, a statistician and forensic psychologist, and Dr Agata Debowska (University of Sheffield), Willmott

the psychologist december 2018 interview

examined the relationship between these factors and verdict decisions both pre- and post-jury deliberation. The researchers determined that rape attitudes were the strongest and most consistent predictor of the verdict decisions that juries made across the nine mock trials. In fact, across two separate studies involving almost 450 mock jurors, rape-myth acceptance was the only consistent predictor of verdict outcomes. ‘When we recreate a rape trial as close to the real thing as possible, we can see that the traits that people arrive with, in particular rape attitudes, are directly predictive of the individual verdict decisions jurors make, both pre- and post-deliberation in that we found this attitude held consistent even after group discussions.

Specifically those jurors who score high in rape-myth acceptance (established through one and two standard deviations above the mean), were significantly more likely to return a not guilty verdict, and those who score low were more likely to return a guilty verdict.’ In the first of a series of papers to emerge from the work, publishing what he calls the Juror Decision Scale in the Journal of Criminal Justice, Willmott also found an association between rape-myth acceptance and not believing the complainant’s testimony or rating the defendant as believable. Whilst Willmott notes that he’s not the first to find an association between rape myths and verdict outcomes, many of the UK studies into this link have

Follow updates on the research and policy developments via Willmott’s Twitter account: DrDomWillmott

been criticised by policy makers and legal experts There’s been fairly senior people in the legal profession for being too far removed from the real trial process. who when I’ve spoken to them about this work have Thanks to this new approach, Willmott said they remarked, “this all sounds very good and it’s a nice are beginning to take such findings more seriously. story but essentially there’s no role for psychics in the Recently he was asked to speak at the Ministry of courts”, and I’ve then had to explain the difference Justice (MoJ) HQ and to the National Rape Working between the role of a psychologist and a psychic...’ Group, chaired by the Police Lead for Adult Sexual However, on the whole, Willmott says, the Crown Offences and Assistant Police Commissioner Martin Prosecution Service and certain members of the MoJ Hewitt, about his findings. have been open-minded and appear to recognise the He’s understandably proud of ‘our success in importance of this issue. ‘The CPS seem very on board ensuring rigour in the research methods and analytic in terms of recognising there’s some degree of problem procedures. Matching the process in the level of detail within acquaintance rape cases, they accept psychology we did, from participant recruitment, to scrutinising is a science and that it has a role to play in helping fix evidence according to UK admissibility law and this.’ conducting an experiment with members of the public Willmott has ideas for a potential solution to the over an entire day – all without research funding, role of rape myths on jury decision making, and it is I hasten to add – involved a significant amount of certainly more radical than some. Other researchers careful work over a period of almost four years. As a have suggested juries should not be used in rape cases consequence, a growing number of influential people at all, or that juries should simply be educated out of in a range of justice organisations are very on board their rape-myth bias pre-trial. with the findings and recognise the need for policy ‘Coming from a psychological standpoint my reform.’ argument is always that existing knowledge and our There’s a but. ‘Will the recent research would suggest rape government, judges and others myths function very implicitly working in the criminal justice that these attitudes are often “psychology as a discipline and system ever accept that there is held below conscious awareness. is being undervalued and They function very similarly to a problem with juries acting on myths rather than evidence? The racist attitudes in that they’re often underutilised” fear is that there will be an element developed from family and peer of institutional resistance to the relationships over a long period difficult questions posed by the of time, and so the idea that a research. It suggests there are fundamental problems in short pre-trial or in-trial briefing would prevent a the way the jury justice system operates, which serves racist juror from relying on stereotypical views in a to disadvantage rape complainants’ right to justice, and case that involved some element of ethnicity is highly thus requires radical changes to fix those problems.’ implausible. While the government has now commissioned ‘Often people in government organisations agree research to examine the influence of rape-myth with this logic, but strangely they still advocate the bias upon verdict outcomes, Willmott said he was rape-myth training solution. We’ve now shown in concerned this appeared to have been done with no our research that greater rape-myth acceptance is involvement or consultation of psychologists. ‘The predictive of not guilty verdict decisions. Surely we lead researcher commissioned to carry out the research need to remove those that endorse such myths from a has a background in politics and law and is a welldecision-making process specifically designed to be fair known advocate of the jury system in its current form. and impartial?’ Willmott has suggested using validated I therefore cannot help but feel that at best psychology psychometric measures and removing jurors who score as a discipline is being undervalued and underutilised; two standard deviations above the mean on rape-myth or perhaps, more troublingly, that the MoJ and Judicial acceptance. He is clear that jurors need not be told College may be deliberately excluding psychologists about their scores on this measure but would be simply from the debate for fear of what we may find.’ reassigned to non-rape cases, where such attitudes As well as England’s Lead Jury Policy Advisor have no effect. at the MoJ Willmott has spoken at New Scotland Despite the occasional frustration, Willmott Yard and to members of the House of Commons and maintains that psychological research is vital in Lords about these findings. In his work with policy addressing problems within the legal system. makers Willmott has also come across resistance ‘While experiments conducted by legal scholars and from a surprising source – learned members of the academics from other disciplines are useful, they legal profession confusing psychology with psychic often miss some of the methodological strengths and mediums. ‘Despite psychology being a rigid, accepted controls we utilise in psychology, as well as advanced science now, there’s been a lot of resistance from analytical procedures. I honestly feel psychology can barristers and members of the bar. A comment that I’ve offer a lot in this important debate and it seems, at received on more than one occasion when presenting least currently, some policy makers are interested in the research is that this is “psycho-gobbledygook”. listening to us.’

Accredited Training in EMDR Therapy

2 day conference 8-9 April 2019

New directions in sex offender practice Forensic Psychology Practice Ltd and the Centre for Applied Psychology, present our 8th international interdisciplinary conference on what works and best practices when working with sexual offenders, bringing together practice, policy and research.

delivered by Dr Michael C Paterson OBE specially selected and trained by EMDR founder, Francine Shapiro PhD Starting Manchester Belfast

Keynote Speakers:

Georgia Barnett Victim empathy intervention with Sexual Offenders Prof. Kieran McCartan How effective are Sex Offender Registers? Prof. Hazel Kemshall Evolving approaches to public awareness campaigning on CSA Prof. Derek Perkins Updates from Online Protect Dr. Juliane Kloess Men’s perceptions of their online sexual interactions with young people

Manchester Newcastle Tyne

Dr. Teresa Ferraz-da-Silva Multiple perpetrator of sexual offending

3-5 October 2019 13-15 November 2018

Other training levels through the year

Sandra Fieldhouse HMIP Report on IPP sex offender thematic Prof. Anthony Beech & Sharon Wareham Child sexual exploitation in young men

7-9 March 2019

Dublin 12-14 September 2019

Professor Anthony Beech, University of Birmingham | Professor Sarah Brown, University of Coventry | Professor Kevin Browne, University of Nottingham | Dr Jackie Craissati MBE, Psychological Approaches CIC | Andy Watson MBE, Geese Theatre | Dr Fiona Williams, HMPPS Dr. Geraldine Akerman, Treatment of those who commit sexual offences in Therapeutic Communities

14-16 February 2019

In-house training - details on request

www.emdrmasterclass.com info@emdrmasterclass.com Tel: 028 9066 1110

Dr. Catherine Hamilton-Giachritsis ˂ˡ˟˜ˡ˘ ˔ˡ˗ ˢ˙Ђ ˜ˡ˘ ˖˛˜˟˗ ˦˘˫˨˔˟ ˔˕˨˦˘ ˜ˠˣ˔˖˧ on young people and how professionals respond to it Dr. Ruth Mann, Ralph Lubowski & Dr. Nick Blagden Getting the context right: rehabilitative culture in prison for men convicted of sexual offending Prof. Jane Wood Sex offender experiences of the polygraph

Dr. Rebecca Lievesley Using medication to manage sexual arousal and hyper-sexuality in sexual offenders

Dr. Kirsty Hudson Preventing sexual abuse through education. Stop It Now! Wales

Dr. Lesley Steptoe Assessment of inappropriate sexually harmful, behaviour by people with IDD

Dr. Mark Pettigrew Exploring the relationship between somnophilia and necrophilia

For a detailed conference programme visit: www.forensicpsychology.co.uk Delegate fees: Standard rate; 2-days £325, 1-day £235 Student rate: 2-days £210, 1-day £120 (full time students only). Venue: University of Birmingham For booking information please contact Marie at FPP Ltd on 0121 354 6784 or email mariegarbett@forensicpsychology.co.uk

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2019 CPD workshops Professional development opportunities from your learned Society We are pleased to launch our popular core programme and some of our workshops for 2019. Supervision skills: Workshop 1 – Essentials of supervision

4 January

Assessment and treatment of ASD

15 January

Supervision skills: Workshop 1 – Essentials of supervision

16 January

Working with suicidal and post-suicidal clients

21 January

Supervision skills: Workshop 2 – Enhancing supervision skills

29 January

Supervision skills: Workshop 2 – Enhancing supervision skills

6 February

Advanced psychotherapy skills: Intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy

15 February

Supervision skills: Workshop 3 – Models of supervision

15 February

Aviation psychology: Clinical skills for working with air crew

4–5 March

Supervision skills: Workshop 3 – Models of supervision

6 March

Supervision skills: Workshop 4 – Ongoing develeopment: Supervision of supervision

9 March

Understanding suicidal states of mind

27 March

Expert witness: Workshop 1 – Roles, responsibilities and business

28 March

Expert witness: Workshop 2 – Writing the expert witness report for court

29 March

Supervision skills: Workshop 4 – Ongoing develeopment: Supervision of supervision

10 April

Expert witness: Workshop 3 – Court room evidence

11 April

Expert witness: Workshop 4 – Choosing, using and presenting psychometrics in court

12 April

Supervision skills: Workshop 1 – Essentials of supervision

16 April

Supervision skills: Workshop 2 – Enhancing supervision skills

17 April

Supervision skills: Workshop 3 – Models of supervision

1 May

Expert witness: Workshop 1 – Roles, responsibilities and business

2 May

Expert witness: Workshop 2 – Writing the expert witness report for court

3 May

Responding to child sexual exploitation: Psychological approaches to supporting young people and their networks

10 May

Expert Witness: Workshop 3 – Court room evidence

23 May

Supervision skills: Workshop 4 – Ongoing develeopment: Supervision of supervision

28 May

For more information on Supervision skills and Expert witness training and dates visit: www.bps.org.uk/ﬁnd-cpd You can book on all workshops here: www.bps.org.uk/events

www.bps.org.uk/cpd

Mindfulness and clinical science Bergljot Gjelsvik, Alice Tickell, Ruth Baer, Chris O’Neill and Catherine Crane call for more rigour and less hype

Mindfulness seems to be everywhere. There has been a huge increase in research, with a 2015 report from the Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Group ﬁnding more than 500 peer-reviewed scientiﬁc journal papers being published every year. Mindfulness is all over the media: it’s all about decluttering the mind, mindful drinking and digital detox. In a country where parody is a popular leisure activity, the publication of The Ladybird Book of Mindfulness is a sure sign that mindfulness has gone mainstream. However, the rapid rise in popular interest has led to concerns in some quarters that the science surrounding mindfulness is less than rigorous.

n 2015 Time magazine declared that we were seeing a ‘mindful revolution’. The range of claims for the effects of mindfulness – some sound, some premature or inflated, others just plain wrong – suggests that there is a significant schism between the popular psychology accounts of mindfulness, and the evidence base. Expectations about the benefits of mindfulness have arisen in areas, and with a confidence, that far outstrips the current state of rigorous scientific investigation. There is emerging evidence that mindfulness training is not the panacea it is sometimes is portrayed to be. Sometimes, results from one area are used to justify the use of mindfulness training in other contexts for which the scientific evidence simply does not exist. And researchers such as Willoughby Britton (Lindahl et al., 2017) have recently been exploring the possibility that mindfulness meditation might even be harmful to some. So has hype preceded evidence? As with anything becoming popular very quickly, a backlash is predictable. Some critiques reflect the pendulum swinging to the other extreme, with Miguel Farias and Catherine Wikholm asking in a 2016 article ‘Has the science of mindfulness lost its mind?’ Yet the current climate of scrutiny represents a welcome opportunity to critically appraise the evidence for mindfulness-based programmes and their realistic potential, with a 2017 review led by Nicholas van Dam simply encouraging us to ‘Mind the hype’. It seems timely to ask, then, what is the status of the clinical science of mindfulness? Are we mindful of the scientific evidence that exists, and its limitations? What is required in order for the field to mature and refine its scientific credentials? Here, we will explore the evidence base for mindfulness-based programmes (MBPs) that exist within the healthcare realm. We will outline three principles by which the overall scope and cogency of clinical mindfulness science might be evaluated. We focus on mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) for depression, where the evidence base is most developed, but our points apply to any mindfulness-based programme for which claims of therapeutic effects are made. Commitment to scientific evidence The principle that clinical practice should be evidencebased is widely accepted within medicine. However, those interested in ‘mindfulness’ are a broad and varied

the psychologist december 2018 mindfulness

group. For some, mindfulness practice is a spiritual endeavour associated with Buddhist teachings (the Dharma). For others mindfulness training is viewed as a secular healthcare intervention. Still others regard ‘mindfulness’ in relatively non-specific terms, as part of the general zeitgeist or an irritating fad. Indeed, when different people refer to ‘mindfulness’, what they are talking about may be located anywhere along a continuum from spiritual practices for which the existence of an evidence base is less relevant, to health care, where it is critical. In the middle of this continuum, scientific knowledge arising from and relevant to MBPs delivered in healthcare settings is taken as justification for a much broader array of activities and products for which the evidence is often lacking (see Stephany Tlalka’s blog post ‘The trouble with mindfulness apps’). Despite the widespread buzz, the clinical science of mindfulness is in its early stages. Bad or misguided mindfulness science is like any bad science – unlikely to reveal anything of significance, and a potential source of misunderstandings and unsubstantiated claims. Thus, it is not enough to distinguish popular accounts from research findings; we also need to critically appraise the quality of the research on which our claims are based. In order for MBPs to be adopted in healthcare settings, they need to show hard evidence of efficacy; not anecdotal evidence of transformed lives, or experts’ claims of benefits. Thus, the field critically needs not only to ensure high research output, but the consistent use of high-quality designs

with the potential to maximise the impact of ﬁndings. In a 2015 piece on ‘Prospects for a clinical science of mindfulness-based intervention’, Sona Dimidjian and Zindel Segal argued that the durability and public health impact of MBPs depends critically on our ability to make these programmes accountable to ongoing scientiﬁc inquiry, and suggested that the translational model of treatment development of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) should be a starting point. We’ll highlight three key questions in this ‘translational circle’.

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Is MBCT well grounded in a theory? A key motivation for research into mindfulness-based interventions, just as for clinical science in general, is to develop ‘maximally potent and implementable interventions’ (Onken et al., 2014). In the case of MBCT this development has followed a research process in which the interventions are ‘translated’ from theoretical models of what processes may instigate and maintain a clinical problem or change process, into interventions that target these problems and processes directly. The differential activation hypothesis suggests that what keeps individuals vulnerable to recurrent depression is the tendency to react to temporary low mood with a ‘depressive interlock’ characterised by maladaptive responses such as depressive rumination and toxic thoughts (‘I’m a failure’), which maintain and exacerbate symptoms. The selection of systematic training in mindfulness practices as a therapeutic tool to target this depressive interlock was not random – it was based on the hypothesis that mindfulness skills support people in identifying distressing thoughts, feelings and body sensations, responding to them in less maladaptive ways, and cultivating acceptance and self-compassion, skills that together break up associative depressive networks and offset the risk of relapse (see Segal’s work with Mark Williams and John Teasdale). Where is the intervention located? Development of efficacious therapies relies critically on a sound theory and initial piloting. However, this alone is not enough. Any new intervention would need to be ‘well winnowed’ by passing through a cumulative series of stages that test its feasibility and efficacy. In short, this entails testing the intervention in controlled research settings and then community settings to see whether it works as anticipated in the real world. If findings are positive, then attention can turn to finding out how to implement it more widely and refine it – as knowledge of its mechanisms increases – to boost its potency and reduce any potential associated negative impacts or harms. Early randomised controlled trials of MBCT for relapse prevention in recurrent depression, often led by John Teasdale, suggested that MBCT led to lower rates

of depressive relapse than ‘treatment as usual’ control conditions. However, MBCT is a complex intervention including generic factors – such as group setting, welcoming atmosphere, expectation effects – as well as the specific factors such as the mindfulness practice itself. Some of the more recent trials have compared MBCT to maintenance antidepressants and active psychological interventions. The most comprehensive systematic review of MBCT for relapse prevention in depression to date, published in 2016 by Willem Kuyken and colleagues, suggests that across the nine RCTs included, MBCT is effective in preventing relapse in recurrent depression when compared with the various control conditions employed across the studies. However, there is no robust evidence at present that MBCT is more (or less) effective than maintenance medication or any other active psychological treatment (Crane & Segal, 2016). Scientific scrutiny can also help to discern for whom MBCT might be beneficial, and for whom it is not more useful than other approaches. Findings such as those of Mark Williams and colleagues’ Staying Well After Depression Trial, which showed that MBCT for people with recurrent, predominantly suicidal, depression was not superior to a closely matched active psychological control treatment or usual care overall, but was superior for people with a history of childhood trauma, demand that we further scrutinise and elaborate our understandings of risk mechanisms Key sources and the extent to which they are targeted by MBCT in particular Davidson, R.J. (2016). Mindfulnessclinical groups. based cognitive therapy and the This also reveals an ethical prevention of depressive relapse: dimension of an ongoing scientific Measures, mechanisms, and mediators. JAMA Psychiatry, 73, 547–548. scrutiny of MBPs. When research Dimidjian, S. & Segal, Z.V. (2015). shows findings we were not Prospects for a clinical science of expecting – for example a recent mindfulness-based intervention. trial led by Suzanne Chambers, American Psychologist, 70, 593–620. showing that mindfulness Kuyken, W., Warren, F.C. & Taylor, R.S. meditation for prostate cancer (2016). Efficacy of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy in prevention of made no difference – this prevents depressive relapse. JAMA Psychiatry, 73, vulnerable people from going 565–574. through a programme that Onken, L.S., Carroll, K.M., Shoham, might not help them, and invites V. et al. (2014). Reenvisioning clinical rethinking. The broader work science: Unifying the discipline to on the identification of cognitive improve the public health. Clinical Psychological Science, 2, 22–34. and neural mechanisms of action Teasdale, J.D., Williams, J.M.G. & Segal, underpinning the beneficial Z.V. (2013). Mindfulness-based cognitive change produced by mindfulness therapy for recurrent depression (2nd programmes in clinical and edn). New York: Guilford Press. non-clinical populations is still in van der Velden, A.M., Kuyken, W., its early stages (see a 2016 review Wattar, U. et al. (2015). A systematic review of mechanisms of change in from Richard Davidson). This work mindfulness-based cognitive therapy may yet yield important insights in the treatment of recurrent major that can be fed into the treatment depressive disorder. Clinical Psychology development process. Review, 37, 26–39. Full list available in online/app version.

In parallel to demonstrating efficacy in highly controlled randomised trials, we need to understand more about what happens in the real world once a treatment becomes a recommended part of routine clinical practice. Treatments may not always be delivered only to the patient group for whom the evidence base exists or in the format that has been tested, and a range of factors may facilitate or introduce barriers to effective implementation. For MBCT these implementation issues have been studied as part of the ASPIRE Project, led by Jo Rycroft-Malone and Willem Kuyken, as suggested in the final stage in the NIH stage model’s translational approach. By understanding how effective dissemination and implementation take place, we can increase the likelihood that interventions will remain efficacious as they move into routine clinical practice, and will become available to those people who might benefit. What is the ‘hard science’? Several meta-analytic studies have been published in recent years, focused on evaluating the efficacy of MBPs for various outcomes, including anxiety and depression (Hofmann et al., 2010), and psychological stress and wellbeing (Goyal et al., 2014). There are quite a lot of studies addressing other problems, and the studies are extremely variable in scope, scale and quality. Mapping the existing evidence for MBPs, Dimidjian and Segal (2015) found that the majority of clinical mindfulness research to date involves smallscale studies typically developing or applying MBPs to new populations and problems (e.g. ‘Would an MBP help problem X?’). This pattern is common in the early development of new treatment approaches. Dimidjian and Segal estimate that, within the field of mindfulness research, only 30 per cent of all research has moved beyond Stage 1, and only 1 per cent of research has moved beyond research contexts. Thus, very little clinical mindfulness research reaches the final three stages of the NIH model, leaving most research in the field at a comparatively preliminary level. Yet when we consider specifically MBCT as a treatment approach for relapse prevention in recurrent depression, this has gone from being tested in research settings to being examined in a relatively large number of randomised controlled trials, including pragmatic trials testing its effectiveness in community settings. It may now be legitimate for researchers to consider its potential usefulness with different populations, and for different purposes. Of course, any new project must demonstrate not only its own theoretical rationale, but also how this builds upon the theoretical rationale it has borrowed from a prior ‘well-winnowed’ area of research.

the psychologist december 2018 mindfulness

Pushing the envelope must accurately define the problem There are now a substantial Bergljot Gjelsvik being targeted, and test these number of smaller-scale studies Alice Tickell assumptions in well-designed and investigating mindfulnessRuth Baer sufficiently powered studies. Only based interventions in school Chris O’Neill then can careful adaptation begin. settings. Meta-analyses (e.g. Catherine Crane The underlying basic Klingbeil et al., 2017; Maynard are at the Oxford Mindfulness mechanisms of action of MBPs in et al., 2017; Zenner et al., 2014; Centre, Department of Psychiatry, general, or of MBCT, are still not Zoogman et al., 2015) show University of Oxford well understood. Alan Kazdin’s that these varied interventions bergljot.gjelsvik@psych.ox.ac.uk remark from more than a decade have small but significant effects ago, whilst originally aimed at on relevant outcomes such as psychotherapy research at large, is mindfulness, emotional health and highly relevant for mindfulness research today: ‘… attentional control. However, there is an absence of research advances are sorely needed in studying the large-scale robust trials of MBPs in this age group, mediators and mechanisms of therapeutic change. particularly over longer follow-up periods. There It is remarkable that after decades of psychotherapy is also very little work exploring mechanisms of research we cannot provide an evidence-based action, differential responding based on factors such explanation for how or why even our most wellas age or vulnerability to mental health problems, or studied interventions produce change.’ Understanding issues of implementation and dissemination. A large, how an intervention works is critical in deciding which Wellcome-funded research programme (My Resilience components of an intervention are key, and which are in Adolescence – MYRIAD), led by Willem Kuyken, not. Van der Velden and colleagues’ 2015 systematic is currently examining the effects of a school-based review of mechanisms underlying MBCT, and Alsubaie mindfulness curriculum, derived from MBCT, but and colleagues’ 2017 systematic review of mechanisms delivered as a universal intervention to children aged of action in MBCT and MBSR in people with physical 11 to 16, as well as conducting studies looking at and/or psychological conditions, mechanisms of change, including are important first steps towards in comparison to an active increasing that understanding. psychological control intervention, “It is remarkable that after So we find ourselves at a and at facilitators and barriers to decades of psychotherapy pivotal point in the development implementation in UK schools. of mindfulness-based programmes Other mindfulness approaches research we cannot in healthcare settings and beyond. are, in contrast, at a much earlier provide an evidence-based The tendency to extrapolate from stage of development, or have not explanation for how or scientific evidence in one area, such been formally evaluated at all. One such example is the use of why even our most wellas MBCT for recurrent depression, to justify the use of mindfulness MBCT for health anxiety. In this studied interventions for other problems and in case a theoretical account of the produce change” other settings, is problematic. use of MBCT in this population Enthusiastic popular psychology has been developed and elucidated accounts of mindfulness must be (Surawy et al., 2015), and several distinguished from and tempered studies, including a small-scale by scientific understanding of the developing uncontrolled trial (Lovas & Barsky, 2010) and a evidence base. In addition, scientific inquiry into larger randomised controlled trial (McManus et al., the effects of mindfulness-based programmes would 2012) have been conducted. However, none of these benefit from following the translational model of interventions have gone through the full translational development from theory to testing in research settings treatment development, that has already supported the development, refinement and widespread to being tested and disseminated in community implementation of evidence-based cognitivesettings. This is an example of interventions being on behavioural approaches to a range of common mental an ‘intervention cliff’ (Weisz et al., 2014). health conditions in the UK. The clinical science of mindfulness is in its early stages – the number of trials is still fairly modest, and we do not yet have Still not well understood a full understanding of the mechanisms underlying Despite the widespread claims for the effects of treatment effects, even in the areas for which there is mindfulness training, we cannot extend the evidence stronger evidence of clinical efficacy. A combination base from recurrent depression to other areas uncritically. We must define clearly what we mean by a of healthy scepticism, rigorous, theoretically informed mindfulness-based programme – Crane and colleagues’ adaptation and taking promising interventions through the whole translational treatment development arc is 2017 paper in which the ‘DNA’ of mindfulness-based likely to be key as the field progresses. programmes is laid out is helpful in this respect. We

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How real people communicate Elizabeth Stokoe introduces a special feature by tuning in to conversation analysis: in particular, is it better to ‘talk’ or ‘speak’?

s a scientist of conversation, I am often asked about many aspects of human communication. Some questions draw upon commonly held myths about the way we speak. For example, if I am showing an audience how customer service works over the telephone, people ask about ‘body language’, and the limits of the voice-only mode. They ask about the relative status of talking versus what our bodies do to communicate. And their questions often reveal a presupposition about the

answer. Body language, it is assumed, has primacy over words. Our words transmit one message, but our bodies leak another. Actions speak louder than words. Myths about how we talk originate in language itself. The word ‘talk’ suffers from being something basic, ordinary, and simple. It has hundreds of synonyms to characterise and evaluate its use: we ‘banter’ and ‘chat’; we ‘prattle’, ‘natter’ and ‘yap’. Conversation is also characterised in myriad ways: we engage in ‘small talk’, ‘discussion’, ‘gossip’ and ‘tête-à-têtes’. The notion that talk is secondary to something else – to action – forms the basis of many idioms, proverbs and phrases. The first recorded use of the English proverb ‘Actions speak louder than words’ was in 1628. It’s shared across all major world languages, including Brazilian Portuguese, Finnish, Russian, Swedish, Persian, Chinese Mandarin and Irish. Related phrases include the American colloquialism, ‘to talk the talk’, first used in 1906. The words of someone who ‘talks the talk’ are just rhetoric and without substance; someone who ‘walks the walk’ supports their rhetoric with action. Likewise, the American proverb from around the same era, ‘talk is cheap’ – actually a shortened version of commonly used idioms such as ‘talk is cheap but it takes money to buy whisky’ – denotes that you do not believe that someone will in fact do what they are saying they will do. There are other sayings: we ‘talk a mile a minute’ and until we are ‘blue in the face’. Talk becomes disconnected from action Almost 400 years after its first recorded use, the phrase ‘actions speak louder than words’ continues to capture the public imagination. It figures repeatedly in advertising, art, culture and literature. A recent exhibition at London’s Halcyon Gallery was promoted with the poster ‘Actions not Words’. Aaron Reynold’s ‘Effin’ Birds’ shouts the question on Twitter, ‘Can we stop talking and actually fucking do something?’ And Amazon advertises its web services with the strapline, ‘While talkers talk, builders build’. The idea, then, drives our understanding of talk towards communicative practices other than talk as the place to find out what people are really doing. Somehow, then, talk is not action. Talk is disconnected from action. For many years, implicitly if not explicitly, much of psychology maintains this separation between action and talk. Perhaps even more importantly, much of psychology – and the social sciences more generally – treats language as a mere window onto the real scenery, of the mind. Talk is the means by which we can access people’s underlying thoughts, emotions, personalities, attitudes and psyche. Of course, there is a massive branch of cognitive psychology dedicated to understanding the (typical and atypical) development of language and communication. There is also a great deal of work dedicated to understanding brain function, brain damage and language. But, overall, the mundane use of language is not of interest to psychologists.

However, in the late 1980s, a branch of psychology called ‘discursive psychology’ was invented by Derek Edwards and Jonathan Potter. The aim of discursive psychology was to encourage psychologists to treat language seriously. They argued that language – in the form of real language in use – should be something of interest to psychologists. Discursive psychologists were inﬂuenced by the language philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Austin and John Searle. For these writers, words do things – they create ‘speech acts’. Austin wrote that saying is doing – as one utters the words, ‘I name this ship the Queen Mary’ the ship is named. The action is done. How do these ideas about talk and action get used in conversation? And how might they cause problems for successful communication? Some years ago, I was approached by the police about a research project. They had heard about my work and wanted to know if conversation analysis could be applied to hostage and crisis negotiations. When a person threatens their own life or someone else’s, police negotiators attend the scene to try to talk the person in crisis off the roof. They try to persuade them to live, not die. The negotiations are recorded routinely, and Rein Sikveland and I started to analyse the harrowing recordings. The aim of our research was to identify words and phrases that made it more likely that the person in crisis would keep talking. We wanted to see what worked to make it more likely that the person in crisis would keep taking turns. Every time the person took a turn, they chose life – they did not jump. Crisis negotiations are often very long encounters – hours or even days. We immediately adopted a spiral metaphor to understand them. At the top of the spiral is the negotiator, the person in crisis, and life. At the bottom of the spiral is the negotiator, the person in crisis, and death. Across the entire negotiation, with each turn at talk, the person in crisis moves up or down the spiral. Another useful analogy when thinking about these negotiations is a football match. Whatever the outcome of a match – win, draw or lose – the players, manager, coach and fans will scrutinise every pass of the ball. They will determine every successful and failed pass of the ball. A team can only win, and keep winning, if players land each pass with the next player. Every pass matters. First, negotiators must get a person in crisis to talk to them. Negotiators ask regularly if they can talk to the person in crisis. They describe the negotiation process as ‘talking’. In the ‘natural laboratory’ provided by the police recordings, the effectiveness or otherwise of these turns reveals itself in the next turn.

Persons in crisis frequently resisted requests to talk to the negotiator. In Example 1, the person in crisis hangs up the phone connection shortly after this exchange. In the next case, another person in crisis similarly resists a request to ‘talk’.

Not only does the person in crisis resist talking, he recruits a near-idiomatic phrase about talking – ‘that’s my last word’ – to emphasise his commitment to not talking. In Example 3, the person in crisis also resists talking. He draws explicitly on the familiar cultural idiom that talk is just talk and does not do anything. The negotiator, in turn, is attempting to resist the idiom.

This example, and others like it, shows us that when negotiators ask or suggest that the person in crisis should talk they open up a slot for resistance. They provide a space in the interaction for the person in crisis to use the idiom. Even though in the act of taking this turn the person in crisis is choosing life – not jumping – the lines of communication are temporarily fraught. The very thing that negotiators need persons in crisis to do – keep talking – is now framed as something useless. So what word – if not ‘talk’ – will engage persons in crisis to talk? What kind of football pass will land with the next player? Which words will result in the person in crisis and negotiator moving up the spiral, towards life? Example 4 contains the answer.

the psychologist december 2018 communication

Further reading Sikveland, R.O. & Stokoe, E. (forthcoming). Verbs of engagement: Managing resistance in negotiations with suicidal people in crisis. Stokoe, E. (2018). Talk: The science of conversation. London: Little, Brown. Read a Talk extract on our website. Our editor will host a launch at Waterstones Nottingham on 27 November.

In the natural laboratory of real talk, we can identify what works. How real people communicate, or at least how they say they would like to! When negotiators frame the proposed activity as speak – not talk – the person in crisis starts to… talk. At line 3, the person in crisis starts to talk before the negotiator has even completed their ﬁrst turn. And in the ﬁnal example, the person in crisis makes a request to ‘communicate’ also using the verb ‘speak’.

Elizabeth Stokoe Professor of Social Interaction at Loughborough University e.h.stokoe@ lboro.ac.uk

We would never know that the verb ‘speak’ is more engaging of persons in crisis than the verb ‘talk’, unless we analysed real interaction. The words are near synonyms. We tend to believe that persons in crisis will either talk or not because of some other psychological motivation – their personality, the strength of their suicidal intent, and so on. In short, factors that precede the talk. But there are no equivalent idioms about ‘speak’ – we do not say, for instance, ‘he can speak the speak but can he walk the walk?’ Persons in crisis do not say, ‘I don’t want to speak’, or ‘it’s just speak’ or, more grammatically, ‘it’s just speaking’. ‘Talk’ is a noun and a verb – ‘speak’ is not. When negotiators suggest that they ‘speak’, they do not open up a slot for resistance. We are pushed and pulled around by language more than we realise, and we can see how when we look. It remains the case that psychologists do not, generally, study how real people communicate. Instead, to ﬁnd out about talk, we run experiments about it, ask people to report on it, or simulate it. Plenty of commentators have noticed this gap in our knowledge. For example, over a decade ago, the American psychologist Roy Baumeister wrote in a high-ranking

journal, Perspectives on Psychological Science, that while psychology calls itself the ‘science of behaviour’, much of psychology never studies behaviour directly. Instead, psychologists rely on questionnaires and other proxies for studying actual social life, becoming the ‘science of self-reports and ﬁnger movement’. For Baumeister, ‘psychology pays remarkably little attention to the important things that people do’. Ten years later, another psychologist working in America, Matthias Mehl, made the following assessment of psychology. Laypersons often think of psychologists as professional people watchers. It is ironic, then, that naturalistic observation, as a methodology, has a remarkably thin history in our ﬁeld. In contrast to ethologists (and researchers working with infants), psychologists are in the privileged position to be able to obtain valuable data by simply questioning their subjects. At the same time, there are clear limitations to what self-reports can assess. …the psychological scientist’s tool kit also needs a method to directly observe human behavior in daily life. … naturalistic observation can bring behavioral data collection to where moment-to-moment behavior naturally happens.

It is probably evidence of the lack of interdisciplinarity in academia – despite all sorts of interventions and efforts – that Baumeister’s and Mehl’s evaluations of psychology remain correct. It might be because psychologists lack imagination when they conceive their research. And I speak as a psychologist. Yet conversation analysis (rooted in sociology, not psychology) has been producing knowledge about what people do for over half a century. Some of this research is among the most cited in academia, including ‘hard science’ disciplines. A lot of people need to start talking! I hope that this special feature of The Psychologist will open a conversation. We have several articles on seemingly mundane things that, when we pay attention, might reveal some fairly fundamental truths about how we interact. From lapses and sighs to burping, from expressing emotion to talking to tech, from mumbling to complaining, listen in as we consider how real people communicate.

The problem with facial expressions José-Miguel Fernández-Dols argues that expressions are tools rather than signs

José-Miguel Fernández-Dols is a professor of psychology at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid jose.dols@uam.es

Consider the ‘facial expressions’ displayed on nursery walls, in cartoons, in clinical tests or in psychology textbooks. Static, disembodied faces that supposedly have only one function: to express basic emotions, irrespective of the context in which they are displayed. Today these expressions are great cultural icons, transmitted to worldwide audiences through Pixar movies, TV series and the emotionalintelligence business. But do they really exist? Are they representative of how real people communicate? No. Only in your nightmares will you run into disembodied faces with still expressions. Actual people display changeable, animated faces, and we always perceive these muscular movements in combination with the movements of the rest of the body and the events in the surrounding context. Scientiﬁc studies, such as those published by Hillel Aviezer and his collaborators, show that deciphering the emotional meaning of a facial display in a highly emotional situation (tennis players after winning or losing a crucial match) can be very difﬁcult or even impossible without contextual information.

Even emojis, those schematic versions of facial expressions of basic emotion, provide an example of the strong interaction between facial expression and context. Users do not typically use them to convey a category of emotion but to add subtle affective or motivational nuances to their message. A smiling face besides the message ‘you are late’ does not mean ‘happiness’ but ‘I am feeling friendly anyway’. A frowning face besides the message ‘I don’t know’ does not mean ‘anger’, it may mean, for example, ‘having a hard time making up my mind’. It could be argued, then, that millions of social media users have naturally developed a more accurate description of the actual role of facial expressions than have psychologists and neuroscientists. We threw the baby out with the bathwater. In fact, new lines of research have conﬁrmed that the static expressions promoted by the classic version of the basic emotion theory (BET) should not be so popular. Our recent studies in the Trobriand Islands and Mozambique (much of it with Carlos Crivelli) did not ﬁnd the pattern of recognition observed in literate Western societies. Furthermore, our meta-analysis of the studies that tested the predicted coherence between expression and emotions such as anger, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise or happiness has actually

the psychologist december 2018 communication

found a surprisingly weak link between emotion and expression. Today a significant number of researchers envision or support alternative approaches to the understanding of what we call ‘facial expressions’ (see my 2017 book with James Russell, The Science of Facial Expression). We’re inspired not only by a growing amount of empirical evidence, but also by the conceptual problems behind the assumption that the static, disembodied, posed expressions of basic emotion are frequent, natural signatures of our emotions. Let me focus on just one of these conceptual problems. Facial expressions as pornography A Martian comes to Earth: their equivalent of a behavioural scientist, and Mars happens to have its own Darwin and an evolutionary theory that is practically identical to ours. On landing, the Martian researcher looks for behavioural categories that seem to be salient for human beings. She assumes that their relevance most probably hints at its important role for the species’ survival. After some googling and mindreading, she finds an interesting target for her inquiries: sex. What is its adaptive function? Our Martian is on the academic tenure track and can’t spend terrestrial years observing the causes and consequences of sex on an everyday basis. So she decides to run a ‘recognition study’. Her rationale is that if the term ‘sex’ is so prevalent, maybe the most relevant contribution of sex to human survival is not found in sex itself, but in its ‘recognition’ as a signal. So she googles ‘sex’, and voilà! She gets a never-ending series of images, from the thriving earthly pornography industry. Taking a representative sample of these pictures – which have a high degree of uniformity in some interesting features – she combines them with other neutral pictures, and eventually she asks people, all over the world, which ones are depicting sex. She finds out that the pornographic acrobatics of naked, young and attractive individuals are ‘sex’. Actually, much to her delight, she finds that a lot of people can categorise these acrobatics not just as ‘sex’, but into a number of consistent categories, which she calls ‘categories of basic sex’ (I won’t go into the details). She concludes that ‘basic categories of sex’ are universally recognised. At this point, she concludes that if sex has a repertory of universal signals, its main evolutionary function must be the expression of sex. Human survival must depend on the recognition of different combinations of acrobatic, naked bodies as belonging to particular categories of basic sex. But there’s a problem: try as she might, she just can’t find many naked, slender, good-looking humans performing these categories of sex in conspicuous ways ‘in real life’.

There must be display rules, she concludes. Our Martian friend goes back home with a new, attractive, unfalsifiable theory about the evolutionary function of sex in humans: it is a set of innate signals that can be universally recognised! Human sexual intelligence and adaptive fit depend on how well people code and decode all these basic categories of sex. The theory will make her famous, but leave her clueless about the main evolutionary function of sex. Substitute facial expressions for sex, and this might be a pretty accurate description of what has happened to this field. The original choice of the universal expressions of basic emotion by Tomkins and his disciples was not backed by any empirical study of the prevalence of such expressions in emotional situations (and this remains true). Tomkins’ selection was probably inspired by the facial expressions that seemed most salient in the already fully fledged Hollywood industry at the time he published the first sketch of BET. Universal agreement on the labelling of an icon does not mean that the icon is the represented behaviour; most importantly, it does not mean that the evolutionary function of the behaviour represented by this catchy icon is communication. Stretching the metaphor, facial expressions of basic emotion are catchy, cognitively alluring icons of emotion, but their widespread recognition by Western audiences does not mean that they are the actual facial behaviour observed in emotional episodes. Nor does it mean that the main evolutionary function of the represented facial behaviour is communication. So what? I’m not saying that facial expressions of basic emotion cannot have a role in psychology. Although evidence is mixed, they remain potentially useful as diagnostic devices in the same way that people’s responses to our Martian’s pornographic icons could be, and actually are, highly diagnostic of different human tendencies or representational processes. Artificial icons can detect the natural normal or abnormal functioning of the human brain even better than natural signals. And facial expressions are useful resources for the shortterm and long-term success of our interactions. (Our Martian explorer should have assumed this, taken a lot of less slender and agile pairs of humans, observed them for a while, and waited for nine months.) But we do need a new look at facial expression – one that emphasises what we do with our faces, rather than what is meant by them. Let’s consider this via the study of that quintessential facial expression: the smile. It has become synonymous with happiness; even scientists treat the two as interchangeable. But what is really behind a smile? And what is the facial display of people who are happy?

Believe it or not, in the BET golden age of the 1980s and 1990s, psychology did not offer us many answers to this question. Of course, we knew that people – well, Western people – say that smiles are happiness, but systematic information about what actually people display on their face in situations in is associated with a characteristic expression (funnel which they claim to be happy was scarce. A few lips: García-Higuera et al., 2015). The enjoyment of scientific mavericks were raising questions at that having sex is associated with a grimace that recalls time, but psychologists were increasingly uninterested an expression of pain (Fernández-Dols et al., 2011). in human ethology and the question was not taken Extremely happy athletes cry out of happiness seriously. In 1979 Kraut and Johnston published a (Fernández-Dols & Ruiz-Belda, 1995). On the other paper in which they showed that bowlers, pedestrians hand, people smile not only when they are happy; they and hockey fans’ smiles were predicted by social also smile when they are amused (but not necessarily interaction, rather than happiness. The study, inspired by a long tradition of observational ethological studies, happy; see Gervais & Wilson, 2005), when they are embarrassed (LaFrance & Hecht, 1995) or even when was received with indifference or even hostility by a they are anxious (e.g. when sexually harassed during vast majority of its audience. This foundational work a job interview; see Woodzicka & LaFrance, 2001). received the Golden Fleece Award, a forerunner of The final outcome of this accumulation of scientific the Ig Nobel awards but with a political agenda: it evidence is an open rather than a closed typology of was aimed at exposing frivolous spending of public facial expressions. Whereas the current normative research funds. closed categories of ‘true expressions of basic emotion’ Fortunately, other maverick scientists were willing have rigid boundaries, open typologies are generative to consider the forbidden question. Jim Russell, and accommodate new variables in on the methodological side, order to provide a mapping of the and Alan Fridlund, on the correspondences between emotional theoretical side, joined forces “Fortunately, other and spontaneous facial to write an important book, maverick scientists were episodes movements. This approach is already Human Facial Expression, which willing to consider the used in artificial intelligence by became a sort of heretical, some developers who do not use the quasi-forbidden book for BET forbidden question” expressions-of-basic-emotion closed followers. Fridlund’s point was categories, but context-dependent strongly counterintuitive: facial dimensions extracted from actual behaviours, including smiles, are interaction. Thus expressions are recognised to have nature’s tricks to engage people in interaction; they are a powerful tool for influencing others but do not signal multiple functions and more natural appearances (e.g. Castillo et al., 2014; Lang et al., 2013). a uniform, universal message. There is an urgent need to develop this new Why do we display smiles when we are alone? mapping of the facial expression from a fresh, openBecause we need to interact with real or imagined minded perspective – not only for theoretical but others: consider Cast Away, one of Tom Hanks’s also for practical, everyday reasons. We should most famous movies, in which our desert island hero stop teaching children that the only intelligent way develops a moving relationship with a volleyball with of expressing their emotions is through a limited a face drawn on it. repertory of six or seven facial displays! This approach To make things more complicated (and is utterly simplistic or even deleterious. Let me finish fascinating), sometimes we are with a telling real story. In 2013 a mother in Spain was happy and do not smile at all; Key sources accused of murdering her daughter. The case had a sometimes we are not happy but parallel popular trial in the media and a decisive ‘proof’ we smile. We display a surprisingly of the mother’s guilt was found in her expression large repertory of facial behaviours Crivelli, C. & Fridlund, A.J. (2018). Facial during a conversation with her lawyer, while the that make sense in context. I have displays are tools for social influence. Trends in Cognitive Science, 22, 388–399. been studying happy (and unhappy) police searched her house. Some TV stations broadcast Fernández-Dols, J.M. & Russell, her smiles in that conversation, and some supposed people for years, either in the lab J.A. (Eds.) (2017). The science of facial experts cited them as proof of the mother’s perverse or in natural settings, and my expression. New York: Oxford University character: she was happy. After the trial, it was known conclusion is always the same: Press. that her lawyer had been telling her funny anecdotes spontaneous, ‘true’ smiles are Fridlund, A.J. (1994). Human facial about her late father, a popular endearing character, neither necessary nor sufficient expression: An evolutionary view. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. while trying to relieve her anxiety. Only her lawyer signals of happiness or enjoyment. Russell, J.A. & Fernández-Dols, J.M. Bullfighters, for example, report fear seemed to know that humour can be an effective (Eds.) (1997). The psychology of facial coping strategy in the face of negative emotions, and before the bullfight but happiness expression. Cambridge: Cambridge that expressions are mainly about and for others: while they confront the animal’ s University Press. whether a defendant’s dad, or a castaway’s volleyball. charges; surprisingly, this happiness

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Saul Albert works at the Tufts Human Interaction Laboratory, Medford, Massachusetts saul.albert@ tufts.edu

Repair Saul Albert analyses how conversation is continually corrected

Imagine a society in which we all communicate telepathically, so that there are never any misunderstandings, misspeakings or mishearings. Whenever we wanted to do something complicated that needed lots of people to cooperate, our actions would be coordinated in a smooth, uninterrupted ﬂow. The problem with this idea, apart from it sounding like the plot of a 1950s B-movie, is that if there were a misunderstanding, it would be nearly impossible to tell. How would we know, and be secure in our knowledge, that people weren’t just going along with whatever others were doing without really engaging with and understanding one another? If we couldn’t detect and ﬁx failures of communication, how would we even recognise success?

As counterintuitive as it may seem, it is our miscommunications, hesitations, disfluencies, quizzical looks, and words like ‘huh?’ that provide the best evidence for mutual understanding. If we look at recordings of how real people talk in everyday life, it’s surprising how much of what they do involves dealing with problems of speaking, hearing and understanding as they emerge. In conversation analysis, we call the methods people use to fix these kinds of problems ‘repair’. The way that repair works is very systematically organised, which makes sense, given that repair procedures are the basic tools we must be able to use in order to understand each other. The simplest way to categorise the repair procedures that have been discovered so far is to divide them up in terms of who initiates the repair (by seeing that there’s trouble and pointing it out), and who completes the repair (by fixing the source of the trouble so we can move on). Any speaker (self) or recipient (other) of a ‘trouble source’ can initiate and/ or complete a repair, so we can fit any repair into one of four main categories (Schegloff et al., 1977). Each of these types of repair is organised differently, with different uses and social outcomes. ‘Self-initiated self-repair’ is when the speaker identifies and completes repair on their own talk. This is by far the most common form of repair, which makes sense since if the trouble-source is coming out of the speaker’s mouth, they will probably have the first chance to identify and fix it. You can identify this type of repair in any conversation if you listen for when people cut off then re-start their stream of speech.

If you record and replay a self-initiated self-repair slowly, you’ll often find that the speaker will have deleted, added or changed something they were in the process of saying. This happens often if someone is choosing their words carefully, so studying this kind of self-repair can show us how people deal with sensitive social situations (Lerner, 2013; Mandelbaum, 2016). ‘Self-initiated other-repair’ is when the speaker identifies a problem in their own speech but Key sources then relies on someone else to fix it. For example, if a speaker Albert, S. & de Ruiter, J.P. (2018). is struggling to remember a Repair: The interface between name they can self-initiate otherinteraction and cognition. Topics in repair by cutting off and saying Cognitive Science, 10(2), 279–313. ‘er… you know, whatsisname, Dingemanse, M., Torreira, F. & Enfield, er…’. As long as the recipient N.J. (2013). Is ‘Huh?’ a universal word? has heard enough to get the Conversational infrastructure and the convergent evolution of linguistic items. gist, they’ll suggest candidate PLoS ONE, 8(11), e78273. ‘repair solutions’ until they fix Drew, P. (1997). ‘Open’ class repair the problem together and move initiators in response to sequential on with the conversation. Such sources of troubles in conversation. displays of forgetfulness are Journal of Pragmatics, 28(1), 69–101. very useful tools for achieving Goodwin, C. (1987). Forgetfulness as an interactive resource. Social Psychology all kinds of social outcomes: for Quarterly, 50(2), 115–130. example, inviting others to ‘fill Goodwin, C. (2004). A competent in the blanks’ when telling a speaker who can’t speak: The social shared story (Goodwin, 1987, life of aphasia. Journal of Linguistic 2004). Anthropology, 14(2), 151–170. ‘Other-initiated self-repair’ Hosoda, Y. (2006). Repair and relevance of differential language expertise in is when a recipient notices some second language conversations. Applied problem in the speaker’s talk, and Linguistics, 27(1), 25–50. points it out, but then leaves it Lerner, G.H. (2013). On the place of for the speaker to complete the hesitating in delicate formulations: repair themselves. This kind of A turn-constructional infrastructure repair initiation, in response to for collaborative indiscretion. In M. Hayashi, G. Raymond & J. Sidnell a first turn, is designed to catch (Eds.) Conversational repair and human problems of speaking, hearing understanding (pp.95–134). Cambridge: and understanding just after Cambridge University Press. they occur. It also provides many Mandelbaum, J. (2016). Delicate useful techniques for dealing matters. In J.D. Robinson (Ed.) with these three distinct types Accountability in social interaction (pp.108–137). Oxford: Oxford University of communication problem. For Press. example, if someone is speaking Schegloff, E.A. (1992). Repair after and their recipient says ‘huh?’, next turn: The last structurally the speaker will usually produce provided defense of intersubjectivity a full repeat of their last turn. in conversation. American Journal of ‘Huh’, which seems to be an Sociology, 97(5), 1295–1345. Schegloff, E.A., Jefferson, G. & almost universal word for the Sacks, H. (1977). The preference for other-initiation of self-repair self-correction in the organization of across languages (Dingemanse repair in conversation. Language, 53(2), et al., 2013), is an example of an 361–382. ‘open class’ repair initiator (Drew,

1997) since it doesn’t give any clues about the cause of the recipient’s problem. When speakers do the usual full repeat after a ‘huh?’, this treats it as a problem of hearing. Contrast this with category-specific otherinitiations of repair such as ‘who?’, ‘where?’ or ‘when?’, which specify the precise kind of thing that needs to be fixed. The speaker can fix the problem and move on with a partial repeat of the prior turn, targeting only the specific trouble-source. The most help a recipient can give to the speaker in terms of fixing the trouble at hand is by offering a candidate hearing or understanding, which the speaker can then confirm or deny. Finally, ‘other-initiated other-repair’ is the least common of the four main repair types since it involves the recipient unilaterally identifying and fixing the speaker’s talk, which may be socially inappropriate. The situations where it is common for recipients to initiate and complete repair can help explain why it’s otherwise quite unusual. For example, other-initiated other-repair is common for parents correcting their child’s speech, or when native speakers correct the speech and pronunciation of second-language learners (Hosoda, 2006). Most often, however, recipients use other-initiated self-repair to allow speakers the opportunity to correct their own talk. These systematic variations in the structure of repair in different situations show why repair is such a useful tool for securing and maintaining mutual understanding in social interaction. The choices people make about the kind of repair procedures to use in any given situation not only demonstrate their understanding of talk, but also their understanding of the social situation. This is why Schegloff (1992) describes ‘third position repair’ (a form of self-initiated self-repair where a recipient’s response reveals that they have misunderstood the speaker’s initial turn) as ‘the last structurally provided defense of intersubjectivity in conversation’. When misunderstandings pass unnoticed through the ongoing flow of turns and sequences at talk, we may never discover or deal with the fact that any kind of miscommunication has occurred. Telepathy aside, without repair and the strong evidence it provides for the communicative success of our interactions, the complexity and coordination of our societies would be almost impossible to imagine. If you would like to find out more about repair, check out our lab’s open access review of the conversation analysis literature (Albert & de Ruiter, 2018), which includes open data recordings of the various forms of repair I’ve described.

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Stuart Reeves Mixed Reality Lab, School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham stuart@tropic. org.uk

Martin Porcheron University of Nottingham

Talking with Alexa Stuart Reeves and Martin Porcheron listen in to the ‘conversation’

The idea of a ‘smart personal assistant’ that you can speak to in your home is no longer the stuff of science fiction. Apple Homepod, Google Home, the Amazon Echo and more are all vying for this role. They are sold (in their millions) as household helpers that let you perform various tasks naturally by just talking to them, whether that’s asking them for information, helping out with the cooking by guiding you through a recipe, putting on some music, doing some shopping or just telling the time. If you own one of these devices, though, you’ll know that the reality is a bit different. Often they don’t seem to hear what we say, and when they do respond, the response often betrays a significant lack of understanding of what we really mean. There are now many videos available online of inexplicable interactions recorded by owners of these devices. Interaction with them is a little ‘messy’. The field of human–computer interaction (HCI), which has strong historical roots in psychology and its application to computer interfaces, is actively exploring not only the role of these new devices in our home life but also how they might be better designed to take the complexity of conversation into account. As HCI researchers, we think that taking a human-centred approach, by looking at the precise details of how people actually use language to get things done, will help us better understand the interactional ‘mess’ and work out how to improve the design of these systems. In our research we find that users of voice-based assistants often work very hard to integrate them into the social setting and deal with the various problems they encounter in use. Our group – along with Joel Fischer and Sarah Sharples – have been doing some empirical work looking at the Amazon Echo, marketed as a voicebased personal assistant that uses the Alexa Voice Service. We did fieldwork by collecting audio recordings from five households each deployed with an Echo for a month, capturing what participants said to the device but also the conversations they had before, alongside and after moments of interaction with the device. Informed by a conversation-analysis approach to make sense of this corpus of hundreds of hours of recorded audio data from the home, we have

been developing descriptions of the various methods people use to organise their talk with and around the Echo into a coherent conversation. Let’s take just one example. Nikos and Isabel are at a New Year’s party and they are trying to get Alexa to play some suitable music.

We have many such examples (180+) of householders’ extended ‘conversations’ with Alexa. Several observations can be made from this short fragment that illustrate features we repeatedly ﬁnd in these exchanges. First, we can spot a form of use that is never depicted in the adverts: Nikos addresses Alexa with the wake word ‘Alexa’, but then after a pause, Isabel takes over with her own instruction. It is a form of ‘speaker selection’ (see Gene Lerner’s work), but very different to human conversation.

We see this kind of collaboration (and sometimes ‘competition’) between users of Alexa frequently in our data. The home is a social environment and offers of help (both explicit and implicit) emerge frequently to smooth things along (see Kendrick & Drew, 2015). There is a politics to the control of the device that is worked out as part of the life of the home. Having been asked for ‘some New Year’s music’, Alexa responds.

This response is treated negatively by Isabel. There are three interesting things about this. Firstly, it turns out that Alexa’s response is the result of a speech transcription error (we know this from logs). But the potential mismatch between what was said by Isabel (‘New Year’s music’) and what has been captured by the device is never revealed to users; no hesitancy or uncertainty is displayed in the response from Alexa (e.g. a question format could be employed, ‘did you want to listen to jazz music?’). Competent conversationalists routinely perform remedial action to repair emerging misunderstandings between themselves and others (see Saul Albert’s article in this collection, and Schegloff et al., 1977). But voice-driven devices seem poorly designed to live in a world of constant verbal ‘ﬁxing’. As a result, it is users of them who are constantly seeking to repair various sense-making problems that are encountered. The second aspect is about Isabel’s negative assessment of Alexa’s response and the music being ‘not what we wanted’ (and her laughter). The category ‘New Year’s music’ turns on various socially shared (and culturally situated) assumptions about what constitutes relevant music to play; as conversationalists we work with the complexity of categorisation routinely (Schegloff, 2007). It is not a genre or artist or song Isabel is asking for (which happen to work readily as search keywords). Thirdly, Isabel laughingly says ‘this is not what we wanted’, which she addresses notionally to Alexa but also deftly acts as a joke for the others to join in with. We see frequent uses of the Echo as a prop for shared jokes, often involving utterances ostensibly addressed to the device. The role of the tech as a resource for such things is largely absent from demos or sales pitches for voice interfaces, perhaps because doing irony with the device as a prop might be perceived as undermining for a marketing campaign (since it often turns on making the device look ‘stupid’). Something interesting happens next. Nikos tries to stop the music playing with ‘shut up’, but Isabel then chides him with a third-person ‘apology’ ironically addressing the device.

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This is another feature we repeatedly see: normative moral order – the shared, agreed sets of ways of acting against which we are held to account – is not somehow suspended when addressing the voice assistant. What is said to the device is necessarily often said around others. In other words, you are accountable for what you say, even to a computer. The Echo, like its counterparts, is sold as a device to live in the home. In doing so it becomes embedded into the fabric of that home, including the established and expected organisation of social conduct. Thus, conduct designed for the device is nevertheless socially implicated conduct. It’s important not to get confused here, however. Isabel is not somehow apologising to the device but rather offering an analysis of Nikos’s behaviour that is accountable to a particular normative moral order (‘being polite’). The ﬁnal part of this exchange sees Isabel’s ‘apology’ being responded to.

There seems to be little sequential coherence between this response and what Isabel said (or Alexa’s prior actions, like playing some jazz). This forms a break in the illusion of what the device is doing. Alexa’s ‘conversation’ with the user is really just set of attempts by the device to fulﬁl ‘commands’ that it has likely ‘heard’. At best, voice devices may have a sense of ‘state’, connecting one utterance by a user to a prior one. However, these are still fairly limited exercises in ‘slot-ﬁlling’ for a set of possible paths (rather like following a simple recipe). For users, however, there is ongoing context being built up all the time and a rich set of implied meanings (e.g. categorisations) that can be used as resources for ‘next moves’ in the conversation. For Alexa that tracking of and response to the always-building context is severely impoverished, and users must thus work around the limitation all the time. We can see this when Nikos – reformulating his prior command, ‘Alexa (1.1) shut up!’ – utters ‘Alexa stop stop’. Nikos does not treat Alexa’s greeting ‘hi there’ as a greeting at all (i.e. there is no paired greeting from him e.g. ‘hi Alexa’). Instead he carries on with his command to ‘stop’. Some concluding remarks. Research into how we talk is catching up with the latest developments in ‘conversational’ interfaces and personal assistants

as they become more widespread in everyday life – both via disciplinary hybrids, such as our use of conversation analysis in HCI, and in conversation analysis itself beginning to examine the organisation of non-human (and human/non-human) interaction (e.g. see Federico, 2013, and Pika et al., 2018). Our recent work suggests that many of these new AI-driven systems are designed to support ‘conversations’ with people. But the reality of their use is that they tend to display significant difficulty with many routine but deeply critical aspects of talk that have been mostly overlooked by speech technology research (which tends to focus on technologically driven advances). That said, we nevertheless see users of voice-based interfaces going to significant lengths to repair breaks in interaction, sense-making and, often in the course of doing so, innovating possibly novel conversational forms that research into human language and communication has yet to document fully. Of course, our study was limited to one month of use. What remains unclear is how long Key sources people will tolerate such Federico, R. (2013). Sequence interactional organization and timing of bonobo clunkiness and mother–infant interactions. Interaction whether this Studies, 14, 160–189. leads either Kendrick, K.H. & Drew, P. (2015). Recruitment: Offers, requests, and the to permanent organization of assistance in interaction. abandonment of Research on Language and Social these new voiceInteraction, 49(1), 1–19. based personal Lerner, G.H. (2003). Selecting next assistants or speaker: The context-sensitive to increasingly operation of a context-free organization. Language in Society, 32, 177–201. novel ways of Pika, S., Wilkinson, R., Kendrick, K.H. speaking that & Vernes, S.C. (2018). Taking turns: encompass Bridging the gap between human and new forms of animal communication. Proceedings of device-oriented the Royal Society B, 285(1880), 20180598. language – Porcheron, M., Fischer, J.E., Reeves, S. & Sharples, S. (2018). Voice interfaces new ways that in everyday life. In Proceedings of the ‘real people 2018 ACM Conference on Human Factors communicate’ in Computing Systems, CHI ’18, ACM, that (much New York. like adapting Schegloff, E. (2007). A tutorial on to a mouse membership categorization. Journal of Pragmatics, 39(3), 462–482. and keyboard) Schegloff, E., Jefferson, G. & Sacks, are simply H. (1977). The preference for selfaccommodations correction in the organization of repair people must in conversation. Language, 53(2), develop to get 361–382. by.

Analysing burp sequences Alexa Hepburn and Jenny Mandelbaum dig in to a family mealtime interaction

Alexa Hepburn and Jenny Mandelbaum are at Rutgers University

Many of us can recall the guilty pleasure of childhood burping competitions, or the shameful embarrassment of an unintentional burp in a public setting. However, as we will show, closer investigation of children’s mealtime burps allows us a fascinating glimpse into how families orient to both appropriate behaviour and rebellion. ‘Real people’ burp, and burps carry communicative information. As part of a larger study on parents’ socialising practices in family mealtime interaction, we examined children’s (apparently) intentional and unintentional burps in early childhood (ages 3–5), later childhood (age 9), and teenhood (age 16), along with parental responses to these burps. While this study is preliminary, based on conversation analysis of a collection of 21 burp sequences that occur spontaneously in 59 field recordings of family dinners, we find that parents’ initial responses to burps are calibrated to two related issues – how intentionally produced the burp is, and the burpers’ displays of contrition. Our analysis also shows that even the youngest children can be highly sophisticated in understanding parental reprimands, whereas older children may exploit the inferential work required of them to flout their parents. We can illustrate this with a couple of contrasting examples. In our first extract, Cindy, aged 9, and her parents are eating dinner together. We join them as Dad assesses a new dish that Mom has prepared. In line 6, Cindy produces a loud burp, and immediately raises her hand to her mouth, as if to ‘cover’ the burp. This

sharp movement of her hand displays surprise at the burp, perhaps marking it as an inadvertent eruption. The transcript shows elements associated with the coordination and prosodic delivery of talk, and key interactional non-vocal activity.

While Cindy is still in the process of raising her hand to her mouth, Mom in line 9 turns her head towards her, and gives her ‘the look’, a rather stern sustained gaze, as described by Kidwell (2005). While this is happening, Cindy in line 7 begins to laugh. Mom then produces ‘<Nice ma:nners.>’ in line 10. The delivery of Mom’s turn proposes the turn as an ironic or joking censure rather than a serious one. In this case then, after Cindy begins to produce a display of contrition, her burp is acknowledged as a social infraction, but more or less in passing; it is not taken up as a serious matter for reproof.

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In contrast, in Extract 2, we see a burp that appears to be deliberately exposed and over-produced. While Mom is producing agreement with her son Kevin in line 1, in line 2 we see her daughter Karen (age 16), lift her head into what could be construed as a ‘pre-burp’ position. We join the extract after Mom, Kevin 22 and Daniel, 20 have been discussing how different sides of the brain function.

In line 5 Karen emits an open-mouthed burp, produced in overlap with Mom’s turn in line 4. Immediately upon completion of Karen’s burp, Mom looks over at her and says her name, ‘Karen’. While the format of Mom’s turn is a summons, the prosody, in combination with the ‘look’ at lines 6 and 7 immediately after the burp, makes Mom’s turn hearable as initiating a censure. These kinds of subtle sanctioning actions invite children to inspect their conduct for an infraction, ﬁnd it, and then acknowledge its transgressive character (Hepburn & Potter, 2011). However, in response to Mom’s turn, in line 8 Karen does a return summons to Mom in a loud, exaggerated way, ‘MO:M’, challenging her to acknowledge her own wrongdoing. Producing an exaggerated turn of the same format as Mom’s may be understood as a way of refusing to acknowledge transgressive conduct, and in this way implements deﬁance. In line 19 Mom produces a hearable sigh, while still giving Karen ‘the look’, but Karen sustains her attention to the food she is serving herself. In line 5 we see a more explicit attempt by Mom to get Karen to acknowledge and atone for her behaviour with ‘Where are your ma(h)nn(h)ers.’, produced with a head shake. Prior talk resumes after this, without Karen having acknowledged the burp. Here then we see a burp exposed apparently intentionally, the burper prompted to acknowledge

and show contrition for the burp but instead resisting increasingly overt attempts to get her to acknowledge wrongdoing. In this way, Karen subverts the asymmetry that is characteristic of parent–child interaction, in which parenting comes with elevated rights to direct and sanction behaviour. In pursuing a display of contrition after Karen’s counter-summons, Mom deletes the relevance of Karen’s summons, and her entitlement to do it, and resumes her sanctioning project. These contrasting extracts illustrate some of our broader analytic findings: when a child burper displays contrition, like Cindy in our first extract, parents overlook or respond to the burp with a very mild or joking censure. However, older children like Karen can exploit the inferential work required by covert admonishment techniques such as the sustained gaze or summons. It seems then that it’s not burping alone that is transgressive, rather it is the intentional exposure of burping, and/or failure to suppress or remediate its occurrence. Interestingly, parental responses seem calibrated to these issues of intentionality and contrition irrespective of the age of the child. However, we are cautious about making definitive claims about developmental differences on the basis of our current corpus. Burping in our US and UK mealtimes therefore has a number of important features. Like other bodily eruptions it is purportedly unintentional and offensive, and therefore constitutes a social infraction. Perhaps for these reasons it is attractive to children; its transgressive character renders it funny, and its involuntary Key sources character provides defeasibility, and an opportunity to flout parental attempts at controlling Hepburn, A. & Potter, J. (2011). Threats: behaviour. So, while seemingly Power, family mealtimes, and social inconsequential and uncontrollable, influence. British Journal of Social Psychology, 50(1), 99–120. mealtime burping appears to be Kidwell, M. (2005). Gaze as social an environment in which children control: How very young children can learn to ‘fly below the radar’, differentiate ‘the look’ from a ‘mere offering them both a training look’ by their adult caregivers. Research ground in proper conduct and a on Language and Social Interaction, 38(4), resource for implementing and 417–449. communicating defiance.

Silence is not always golden Elliott Hoey on… umm… …awkward silences Elliott Hoey is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Basel elliotthoey@ gmail.com

Regularly enough in conversation people come to a good enough ending to whatever they’re talking about and then the conversation lapses into silence. Sometimes this silence is completely fine, comfortable even. Like when you’re with family or intimates, eating breakfast at home or driving in the car. But other times, these silences feel awkward, ungainly and deeply uncomfortable. Think of this happening on a first date or when chatting with your boss. What’s behind these awkward silences? What makes some lapses in talk distressing? The sociologist of everyday life Erving Goffman described awkward silences as moments of interaction consciousness, or a kind of alienation from social interaction: A participant in talk may become consciously concerned to an improper degree with the way in which the interaction, qua interaction, is proceeding… Once individuals enter a conversation they are obliged to continue it until they have the kind of basis for withdrawing that will neutralize the potentially offensive implications of taking leave of others. While engaged in the interaction it will be necessary for them to have subjects at hand to talk about that fit the occasion and yet provide content enough to keep the talk going; in other words, safe supplies are needed. What we call ‘small talk’ serves this purpose. When individuals use up their small talk, they find themselves officially lodged in a state of talk but with nothing to talk about; interaction consciousness experienced as a ‘painful silence’ is the typical consequence. (Goffman, 1967, pp.119–120)

This painful silence likely resonates with our own experiences in conversations. When prompted to think about these moments, people report feeling intensely aware of their own and others’ social behaviour, and having uncertainty about what conduct is appropriate for the situation (Clegg, 2012a, 2012b; McLaughlin & Cody, 1982). Goffman (1956) thought moments like these were critical for understanding social behaviour, and indeed enshrined embarrassment as the central emotion for social life. Researchers since have similarly situated embarrassment in the social situation from which it arises, rather than primarily as an individual phenomenon.

But what are the particular social circumstances that give rise to the awkwardness we feel during some silences? We can approach this question by looking at instances of social interaction to see what people actually do. In my research I’ve looked at over 500 instances where conversations lapse into silence to see how people behave around those moments and what they make of them. Awkward silences, when they do occur, emerge from participants’ self-awareness when managing their own ambiguous involvement in interaction. And this is something generated by general interactional processes. The way that we get ‘ambiguous involvement in interaction’ is from the mechanisms underlying social interaction itself. Specifically, awkwardness of this sort can be linked to turn-taking in conversation, and how one turn relates to the next. Who speaks next? Harvey Sacks, the founder of conversation analysis, noted that ‘under the more general rule of the turntaking techniques we’re dealing with, silence is a terrible thing. The turn-taking rules say that somebody should be talking all the time; not more than one person, but somebody’ (1992, p.225). Whenever a speaker gets to the end of their speaking turn, other participants get the chance to speak in a particular order. If someone was selected to speak next, they then get the floor. If no one was specifically called out to speak next, then anyone can self-select and take the floor. And if no one else chooses to self-select, then the same speaker can go on speaking. But an important part of this turn-taking machinery is that everyone has the option to speak. When everyone forgoes the option to speak, then a lapse can develop, consisting of ‘rounds of possible self-selection’ (Sacks et al., 1974). The awkwardness of some lapses is bound up with a tension or ambiguity around who is obligated to speak right at that moment. It is every participant’s right to not speak, but if every participant avails themselves of that right, who is to speak next? Whose right to remain silent, so to speak, prevails here? The tension embodied by these rounds of possible self-selection connects awkwardness to turn-taking. While the absence of self-selection is the mechanism that gets you the silence, the main driver of awkwardness is bound up with how participants

the psychologist december 2018 communication

relate one turn to the next, or ‘sequence organization’ (Schegloff, 2007). Sequences are a series of linked actions or turns that hang together in the formation of coherent courses of action. Participants build up sequences together turn by turn, and advance with some course of action or topic until it’s adequately complete or until there’s nothing left to say on the matter. At this juncture – that is, where a sequence is possible complete – participants have the opportunity to launch some new course of action, return to something they were talking about before, or otherwise take up some matter that’s different from what they were just doing. But it’s also possible that at this juncture no one does anything. The choice to not continue with what you were doing before and not proceed to anything new lets the conversation lapse. So a silence can emerge in the place where one sequence has come to an end and before the next one has begun. Another thing about sequences is that they ordinarily lend intelligibility to whatever’s going on in interaction. And this intelligibility relates to the feelings of ambiguity and uncertainty characteristic of awkward silences. The turn-byturn sequential organisation of talk creates and maintains an ‘architecture of intersubjectivity’ (Deppermann, 2015; Heritage, 1984; Schegloff, 1992), which lets participants share an understanding of ‘what’s going on right now’. But if participants are stuck in the juncture between one sequence and the next, then ‘what’s going on right now’ isn’t supported by that architecture. In the absence of some next-thing-to-do, participants are left somewhat unmoored from the intersubjective grounds ordinarily supplied by sequences. Sociologist Christian Heath describes the situation in the following way: Individuals become increasingly aware of their own actions during the episode of embarrassment; the self attention emerging as they attempt to deal with the local conﬁguration of action. The emotion, experience of the situation and its heightened sensitivity, emerging as the individuals progressively attend to the production of their own actions; the emotional

experience deriving from their perception of and involvement in the action in which they are engaged. … [Embarrassment emerges] in circumstances in which the nature of the individual’s involvement in interaction is at issue or ambiguous … [where] persons are found in each other’s immediate copresence whilst lacking a mutually co-ordinated activity to which they are committed. (Heath, 1988, pp.156–157)

This ambiguity, conﬂict and heightened sensitivity to action emerges from the sequential organisation of interaction. Lapses in conversation are places for the management of multiple courses of action. They are silences that invite participants to consider a range of things: what just happened in the previous sequence, what it implies (if anything), how the previous course of action began, whether the previous course of action can be reciprocated, whether there are any unresolved

officially committed to having a conversation, lapses matters to take up, what news there rupture what should be continuously sustained turnmay be to deliver, what updates by-turn talk. Lapses place participants in a situation there may be to solicit from others, where there is a palpable absence of conversation. This what sites of interest there are in Clegg, J.W. (2012a). Stranger situations: overlong discontinuity in conversation can not only the environment, and so on (Hoey, Examining a self-regulatory model of expose participants’ collective failure to coordinate 2018b). socially awkward encounters. Group turn-transfer but can also belie the interaction itself These sorts of questions often Processes & Intergroup Relations,15(6), by implying some uncomfortable things. A lapse in help participants come up with 693–712. Clegg, J.W. (2012b). The importance of conversation can invite consideration of potentially something to talk about, and in feeling awkward: A dialogical narrative delicate matters, such as who my co-participants this way they can be seen as a phenomenology of socially awkward are, who they are to me, what this silence says about countervailing force to potential situations. Qualitative Research in me, what it says about awkward silences. At Psychology, 9(3), 262–278. them, what it says about the same time, though, Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual. us, what it means for our they may serve to Garden City, NY: Doubleday. “They let participants Hoey, E.M. (2015). Lapses: How people how I might fluster a cognitively exhibit unpreparedness for relationship, arrive at, and deal with, discontinuities be seen as ‘being silent’ (cf. burdened participant. in talk. Research on Language and Social speaking and, through that Sacks, 1992, p.101), how the If the participant is Interaction, 48(4), 430–453. unprepared to address display, a disinclination to silence reflects on what just Hoey, E.M. (2018a). Drinking for happened, how it reflects on these questions, speaking: The multimodal organization speak next” the interaction as a whole, their collective of drinking in conversation. Social Interaction: Video-Based Studies of and so forth (cf. Koudenberg preponderance Human Sociality, 1(1). doi:10.7146/ et al., 2017). And conversely, might be felt as si.v1i1.105498 being able to swiftly arrive at answers to these unwieldy. Even though answering Hoey, E.M. (2018b). How speakers questions and have confidence in them is probably these questions offers a way out continue with talk after a lapse in how certain silences come to be felt as comfortable of the silence, a participant can conversation. Research on Language and rather than awkward. feel encumbered by the range of Social Interaction, 51(3), 329–346. McLaughlin, M.L. & Cody, M.J. possible things to talk about and (1982). Awkward silences: Behavioral the abundance of directions to go antecedents and consequences of with the interaction. The heightened Escaping embarrassment the conversational lapse. Human It is possible to detect in participants’ lapse behaviours sensitivity to potential courses of Communication Research, 8(4), 299–316. some indication of this embarrassment. In the lapses action may derive from feeling Schegloff, E.A. (2007). Sequence I’ve looked it, we often see things like scratching, compelled to weigh the merit of organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis. Cambridge: stretching, eating, drinking, sighing, yawning and each one and feeling pressured to Cambridge University Press. other forms of momentary disengagement (Hoey, select from among them, all while 2015, 2018a). These behaviours offer a kind of ‘escape the clock is still ticking. hatch’ from interaction. They let participants exhibit unpreparedness for speaking and, through that display, a disinclination to speak next. What does this silence mean? Psychologists and ethologists have examined Perhaps another aspect of the awkwardness of lapses very similar self-directed conduct in humans and has to do with participants’ being exposed to the non-human primates. ‘Displacement activities’ like interactional machinery of which they are ordinarily scratching, yawning, face/mouth-touching, lip-biting/ kept unaware, and seeing their place within it at licking, and hand fumbling have been linked to that moment. Questions about what’s happened situations of social tension, anxiety and uncertainty, so far, what remains to be done, etc., lay bare the and correlate with increased autonomic arousal organisation of conversation to a participant, who (Troisi, 2002). Similarly, gesture researchers have may become conscious of the local configuration associated ‘body manipulator’ behaviours with anxiety, of action, and self-conscious of their particular guilt, conflict, stress and discomfort (Ekman, 1977; position in it. The participant becomes aware of the immediate circumstances while still embedded in them LeCompte, 1981). Not only are these displacement activities and body manipulations virtually identical to and still responsible for them. A lapse in talk may the disengagement behaviours regularly seen in lapses, reveal to participants just how fragile and precarious but reports of awkward situations similarly support the conversation is, and it may implicate the participants link between such behaviours and anxiety, stress and in their failure to sustain it. Compounding this is uncertainty (Clegg 2012a, 2012b). the reciprocal nature of embarrassment – feeling The value of these behaviours in a lapse is that embarrassed, knowing others may be feeling the they allow you to be engaged in the interaction, but same way, and nakedly being embarrassed before one involved with something else and therefore a less-thananother. eligible candidate for next speaker. You can avoid the This moment of ambiguity in selecting from among different relevant things to talk about can easily multitude of questions posed above, or conversely, buy time while considering your route out. shade into embarrassment. For participants who are

Key sources

the psychologist december 2018 communication

Complaints Emily Hofstetter on how much better we are at complaining than we think

Emily Hofstetter is at the Universities of Loughborough and Linköping emily. hofstetter@ liu.se

Complaints are ubiquitous in everyday life. We tell complaints to our friends and family, we complain to the doctor about our symptoms, and we complain to public services to get the bins collected. Despite each of us complaining multiple times a day in a variety of settings, little research in psychology investigates how we actually accomplish complaints in real time, and for what purpose. We often imagine complaints to be vitriolic diatribes: an image fuelled recently, perhaps, by interest in internet trolls. Self-help manuals (and the internet) abound with advice concerning complaints, such as how to avoid them, how a manager should deal with them, and how to make them in an effective, ‘constructive’ way. All this advice assumes we are not already excellent, practised complainers, and this is false. We are highly sensitive to how and to whom we complain. All you have to do is look at real conversations and examine real, naturally occurring complaints. Conversation analysts have been doing just that for decades, showing how deftly humans manage the social challenges associated with making complaints. For example, we must appear to be disinterested and reasonable complainers, without a personal stake in the matter, or else our complaint may be treated as characteristic of a personal vendetta (Stokoe & Hepburn, 2005). We must also be careful to avoid being seen as people who complain all the time, lest we be treated as ‘whingers’ or ‘moaners’ (Edwards, 2005). Patients cannot visit their doctor about any old thing – in presenting their symptoms, they regularly make special effort to show that their current concern is serious, not personally motivated, and not imagined (Heritage & Robinson, 2006). Further, callers to hotlines typically try to show they have attempted to help themselves before calling (Edwards & Stokoe, 2007), suggesting one only has the right to complain after taking reasonable precautions. My own research shows two examples of the trickiness of complaining. The ﬁrst involves visiting the local MP surgery (see

Hofstetter, 2016; Hofstetter & Stokoe, 2015). Citizens can visit their local Member of Parliament to discuss a wide variety of concerns. It is typically assumed that people visit to argue about politics. However, there is a problem! Presenting concerns about nationallevel policy amounts to complaining directly to the person about whom you are complaining. This kind of complaint is very rare, and most conversation data shows that it is more common and more acceptable to complain about someone who is not present (see Heinemann, 2009). How do constituents get around this? For starters, few present political concerns – only 12 per cent of the encounters in the dataset involved presenting a complaint that clearly involved national politics. Of the remaining conversations, we can look at the data to see how carefully the constituents managed the challenge of complaining directly to a person implicated in the complaint. The constituent (C2) in the extract below is speaking to the MP and the caseworker (CW) about difﬁculties in receiving a carer’s allowance. She has had to return to work in addition to caring for an ill partner and

“I hope you have new complaints, because mine are all the same” arrives at a complaint about the recent change in pension age. Having to go back to work full time is already a problem, because of needing to be at home caring for her partner. This issue might have been more manageable if they could have relied upon a pension, or a soon-to-arrive pension. However, the government recently moved the pension age forward for her age bracket, moving that possible relief out of sight. The MP was part of the government that enacted that policy. Note, though, that C2 does not state the MP’s involvement in the policy. In fact, C2 omits any mention of the government at all. The pension has ‘been moved’ (lines 9–10) by an unstated force. By stating the issue in this way, C2 avoids implicating the MP directly in the complaint, and thus also avoids breaking the interactional norm. C2 also uses other conversational strategies that have been documented to mitigate the potential aggressiveness of this complaint, such as using laughter particles (lines 10, 12; see Potter & Hepburn, 2010).

The MP’s response to the complaint demonstrates his interpretation of the complaint as political through references to the government sorting out the budget (‘we’re trying to sort out… the big black hole’, lines 18–19). His response also helps reduce his agency in the decision, both by treating the decision as forced (by the black hole), and the omission of who exactly made the ‘Difficult- difficult choices’ (line 25). C2 accepts the response enough to move the conversation forward (‘But I say…’, line 31), and the topic is abandoned. When looking at thousands of these turns in the constituency office setting, it becomes clear that speakers prioritise these interactional rules over any potential issue (Hofstetter & Stokoe, in press-b). Constituents bring very dire situations, including life-altering income problems such as the above, but they never complain about the MP’s role in political changes that have brought about their grievance. Despite the high stakes in getting their complaint addressed, constituents still find ways to complain while following the interactional norms (Hofstetter & Stokoe, in press-a), rather than arguably more ‘direct’ practices. However, there is one place that I am studying where complaints are regularly directed at the person who has committed the transgression: during board game play (Hofstetter & Robles, 2018; Robles & Hofstetter, 2017). Examining such sequences can help provide a contrast to the rare occurrences elsewhere. In the following game, players try to take each other’s pieces. To do so, they make formations – as if playing checkers, but with the requirement that a player makes a ‘square’ shape or some such before taking all the

the psychologist december 2018 communication

Key sources

pieces surrounding it. As a result, if one player can successfully disrupt another player’s shape before it is ﬁnished, then they get a big advantage. The next extract begins after Adam does just such a move to John, taking an important one of John’s pieces. John gives an extended set of complaints, through pain-like moan sounds (lines 1, 7), to describing the extremity of the event (line 3), to the denial of his clever plans (line 9). Adam denies knowledge of the effect of his move (line 5), and also points to earlier complainable situations he had faced (line 10), both of which suggest that John’s complaint, and/or its extremity, is unwarranted, and at least that Adam is not accountable to the degree John implies. Ultimately John backtracks, saying ‘that’s good’ (line 13): Adam’s move is acceptable, and in making the utterance, accepted. Complaint sequences as above are unusual because John is expressing his complaint directly to Adam (note, though, that John still phrases the transgressive action as ‘that’, rather than ‘you’ in line 3, both of which were possible). The result is that both Adam and John end up negotiating how ‘problematic’ Adam’s action was. It is common in these data for the complainer to back down after these discussions, and the game action is never undone. Even more remarkable is that when complaint sequences are entirely absent after an adverse game event (like taking someone’s piece), long discussions (too long to reproduce here) often ensue that pursue information about how the adverse event affected the player! In other words, the complaint appears to be necessary – an indication that the game action has had the intended competitive effect. A lack of complaint suggests either a lack of successful effect, or a lack of genuine participation and investment in the game. So, despite the interactional challenges, some complaining may be central to competitive game play. The interaction (rather than the game actions) provides the feedback players need to successfully construct the competitive environment. It may be tempting to dismiss the games as low-stakes, imaginary scenarios where interactional rules would not apply anyway, but this is not the case.

Players follow other interactional rules very carefully, such as delicately navigating when to give advice to a less experienced player (or to avoid it and let them learn or act independently). The game refocuses attention on collaboratively completing the competition. To compete effectively involves showing effort, interest and engagement with the competition itself, and that requires demonstrating that an adverse event was indeed adverse. Complaints are an effective way to accomplish this display. Note that this also means complaints can be used in a subversive way, misdirecting players with an exaggerated complaint and exploiting the misdirection later. In summary, despite popular suggestions to the contrary, we are very good at navigating the tricky territory that complaining brings. Complaints even have a central role in managing certain interactions, such as service encounters, but also, perhaps surprisingly, competitive play. The ingredients of complaining, as seen in conversational data, structure these interactions in speciﬁc ways. Complaining is so commonplace it can be easily overlooked, but it is an essential component to getting things done in these social settings. In looking at data such as the above, we can see what real complaint strategies achieve.

Edwards, D. (2005). Moaning, whinging and laughing: The subjective side of complaints. Discourse Studies, 7(1), 5–29. Edwards, D. & Stokoe, E. (2007). Selfhelp in calls for help with problem neighbours. Research on Language & Social Interaction, 40(1), 9-32. Heinemann, T. (2009). Participation and exclusion in third party complaints. Journal of Pragmatics, 41, 2435–2451. Heritage, J. & Robinson, J. (2006). Accounting for the visit: Giving reasons for seeking medical care. In J. Heritage & D. Maynard (Eds.) Communication in medical care: Interactions between primary care physicians and patients (pp.48–85). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hofstetter, E. (2016). Citizens getting help: Interactions at the constituency ofﬁce [Doctoral dissertation]. Loughborough University. Potter, J. & Hepburn, A. (2010). Putting aspiration into words: ‘Laugh particles’, managing descriptive trouble, and modulating action. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(6), 1543–1555. Hofstetter, E. & Robles, J. (2018). Manipulation in board game interaction: Being a sporting player. Symbolic Interaction. doi:10.1002/symb.396 Hofstetter, E. & Stokoe, E. (2015) Offers of assistance in politician-constituent interactions. Discourse Studies, 17(6), 724–751. Hofstetter, E. & Stokoe, E. (in press-a). Getting service at the constituency ofﬁce: Analyzing citizens’ encounters with their Member of Parliament. Text & Talk. Hofstetter, E. & Stokoe, E. (in press-b). Making ‘politics’ relevant: How constituents and a member of parliament raise political topics at constituency surgeries. In G. Horan & M. Kranert (Eds.) Doing politics: Discursivity, performativity and mediation in political discourse (pp.127–150). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Robles, J. & Hofstetter, E. (2017). Moral dimensions of ascribing intention in board game interaction. Paper presented at National Communication Association Convention, Dallas, Texas. Stokoe, E. & Hepburn, A (2005). ‘You can hear a lot through the walls’: Noise formulations in neighbour complaints. Discourse & Society, 16(5),647–673.

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‘They’ve agreed to build something bigger than themselves’

Sally Marlow experiences a ‘Mile-Long Opera’ and meets its Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, David Lang

music Mile-Long Opera David Lang

ew York is proud of its public parks, which provide necessary respite in a place where the phrase ‘the city that never sleeps’ is not so much a cliché as a truism. The latest addition has been the High Line, a raised landscaped platform running along the meatpacking district on the west side of Manhattan, occupying the site of a now abandoned railway line. Think of those 1950s movies where train tracks would rattle along two or three storeys high amongst apartment buildings – that’s the High Line, except now it’s full of trees, plants and walkers, instead of trains and commuters. It’s certainly beautiful, a place for contemplation in the most intense urban environment imaginable. It’s also brought gentrification to an area that was once run-down, and there are mixed opinions on that. In the six years that composer David Lang has been working on his opera, he has seen a rapid rate of change in the area. He wanted to reflect that in a piece, he says, without commenting on whether the gentrification is good or bad, and provide ‘a vision of where we have been and where we are going’. And so, for six days in October 2018, the High Line was not just a park, but an operatic set, the backdrop to The Mile-Long Opera: a biography of 7 o’clock. This large-scale civic musical project was created by Lang, in collaboration with the architect of the High Line, Liz Diller, and the writers Anne Carson and Claudia Rankine. It was performed by a mix of 1000 singers, both professionals and from community choirs, drawn from across the five boroughs of New York, and the tickets were free. There was no orchestra – the High Line is open air, so the sounds of the city formed the backdrop of the opera,

and Lang wrote the piece to work with those sounds, rather than compete with them. The concept is visionary: in most operas you take your seat, and the characters are paraded in front of the audience at set times, with set expectations of a collective response. Lang is on a mission to introduce new audiences to classical music, showing them that its relevance isn’t restricted to wandering romantically around Vienna 200 years ago. As he explained when I met him in his New York loft, he wanted to reverse the usual way of doing things, so it’s the characters who are stationary, and it’s the audience that parades past, individuals each deciding their own pace. In this way, every experience of the opera is different, and these individual experiences sit alongside his aims for this piece: to show the lives of New Yorkers in all their diversity through narratives of life at 7pm. By doing this Lang tells me he wanted to create unity for performers and audiences alike, but also to be political: ‘People are becoming more and more divided by the things that they believe in, and so people have fewer opportunities to talk to people who have different opinions or have different backgrounds, or who have different experiences. Our city is very diverse – New York has a huge immigrant population, it has a huge minority population, it has a huge diversity of rich and poor, it really is the most mixed-up city in America… the way [the opera] is supposed to work, that everyone shares an experience, and sharing that experience makes you a community, and it makes you citizenry, and it makes you a nation.’ Lang addresses this with his choice of performers:

the psychologist december 2018 culture the singers are very diverse, including for example Chinese and Ukrainian choirs singing in their own languages. Bringing together 1000 performers would be challenging by anybody’s standards, but Lang saw it as integral to the piece: ‘Without that sense of coming together we can’t do music, so one of the things that’s really clear to me as a musician, is that music may be one of the last places left on earth where people have to forget their individual differences in order to come together to build something… No one says I don’t like the politics of the person next to me so I’m going to sing badly, everyone knows they’ve agreed in advance that they’ve agreed to build something which is bigger than themselves.’ This sense of something bigger than themselves is what he wants the audience to experience. As I walked along the High Line at dusk, night falling, and the sounds of the city all around me, I was drawn to the stories I was hearing. Lang had given me a bit of a heads-up about what it would be like when he said, ‘You get an individual relationship and an individual experience with each one of those people (the singers). As you walk by they look you in the eye, they sing their tune, they sing their story, and you have a connection with them and you can’t avoid that connection… in this piece, those different people, who are all of us, are unavoidable.’ What I wasn’t prepared for is just how powerful that intimacy would be. The music and the voices are compelling, with enormous integrity, and being so close up only serves to increase the feeling that you are at one with the singers, and with the city, at the same time. It was sublime, and it was New York as I have never before experienced it, despite having lived in the city at various points in my life. It was also opera like no other I have ever heard. Towards the end as the High Line loses is greenery and just the railway track remains, it slopes down towards the grid of streets and avenues below. Ghostly singers loomed out of the dark, guiding us home, with the 26th piece of music we would hear that night, a fitting finale: Whatever can happen to anyone can happen to us, whatever can happen to a city can happen to this city. The sleeping, the forgetting, the wrecking, the towering, the kissing, the scoffing, the cellophaning, the whirling snow, the sane and the inside, the red cliffs, the parades, the lipstick, the poets in fresh cloaks, the white man’s anecdotes of the black man’s anecdotes, the icing and the frosting and the defrosting and the deicing, the city cats in city hats, the famished multitudes, the rushing plentitudes, the lonely limits, the silence after ambulances, the silence after living, whatever can happen to a city can happen to this city, whatever can happen to anyone can happen to us. Onward rolls the broad bright current. You can experience excerpts from the opera in 360° at https://milelongopera.com Sally Marlow is Associate Editor for Culture

Building for wellbeing healthy and productive environments Living with Buildings, the Wellcome in factories and hospitals. Collection’s largest exhibition to Plans for ‘Wellcome Ville’ a date, explores the impact of the built utopian village envisaged for the environment on our mental and workers at Henry Wellcome’s physical health. pharmaceutical plant – The exhibition plans that were never highlights what should exhibition realised – are also be a simple truth: that Living with displayed. Incidentally, it buildings are ultimately Buildings was the Wellcome Trust built with humans in mind, Wellcome Collection building on Euston Road, and that they can (and which hosts the present arguably should) therefore exhibition, that ultimately be built to support and was built instead. enhance health, wellbeing and The exhibition shows the community. potential of architecture not only to The ground floor of the exhibition improve health and wellbeing, but charts developments in architecture also to enable the delivery of health and urban planning towards care to those who are struggling improving health and wellbeing, from with mental and physical health. The the 19th century to visions of postwar benefits of interdisciplinary working developments right up to the present to addressing this discord are day, in which more people than ever brought to life on the first floor live out their lives in metropolitan of the gallery space, where a ‘mobile’ areas. The catastrophic scope of the Global Clinic, which will be shipped psychological impact of the fire at off and used in the field to provide the Grenfell Tower is explored and adaptable health care, is being built. highlights that safe housing, which The humanitarian charity Doctors is of vital importance to mental and of the World are tackling the huge physical wellbeing, is still a huge mental health treatment gap (those issue in contemporary Britain. Here who need care and those who the exhibition particularly draws can access it) in low- and middleattention to inequalities in accessing income countries by increasing their a salubrious built environment. delivering of mental health support. Other exhibits include a The Global Clinic model enables this commission by the artist Giles Round by incorporating democratic design that explores colour psychology and that will create safe and confidential its role in health care. This draws on spaces to facilitate this work. sources such as a mid-20th-century Ultimately the exhibition guide that offered advice on the use of highlights the importance of colour to influence mood and create psychology in seemingly unrelated fields. It will make anybody with a proximity to or interest in psychology think about the applications of our discipline. The exhibition is accompanied by and inspired an eponymous new book by Iain Sinclair, published by Wellcome Collection and Profile Books, exploring some of the central themes from a psychogeographical approach. The free exhibition runs until 3 March 2019 Reviewed by Pauline Meyer, a recent psychology graduate of King’s College London

Dredging the riverbed of our national psyche music Gazelle Twin Attenborough Centre, Brighton

The Psychologist recently asked whether we are ‘yawning at the apocalypse’. It’s a charge that could be levelled at the music world, too. Like psychologists and psychotherapists, musicians can find it hard to move between the micro and the macro. For the latter, of course, Michael Jackson’s ‘Earth Song’ may serve as an eternal warning not to even dare try. But Gazelle Twin, aka dark electronic artist Elizabeth Bernholz, isn’t yawning at the apocalypse. She’s screaming. More specifically, she’s screaming with startling vocal prowess over distorted industrial beats, while dressed as a nightmarish court jester in matching red Adidas Gazelles. Behind her on stage is a painted picture-postcard scene of a verdant riverbank. Yet the gig opens with the nauseating sound of buzzing flies, and ends with a warning that the river is overflowing. Inbetween tracks, she fixes her mouth – the only part of her face visible through the costume – into a jeering, rictus grin. Gazelle Twin has always made deeply psychological music. She’s influenced as much by the Freudian dystopian fiction of J.G. Ballard and the body horror films of David Cronenberg as by classical choral music and Throbbing Gristle. But while 2014’s Unflesh was a work of claustrophobic internality, as Bernholz wrestled with her teenage experiences of body dysmorphia and bullying, her new LP, Pastoral is national, and occasionally planetary, in scope. It is a state of the nation album about all that is rotten and distorted in contemporary British society, a Brexit record that dredges the riverbed of our national psyche. ‘What species is this?’ go its opening lines, ‘What century? What atmosphere? What government?’ Performing live at her alma mater, Sussex University, Bernholz sometimes lets rip with her searingly beautiful, classically trained soprano. But more often her voice fragments, via digital manipulation, into a sinister chorus of multi-gender voices that rant and hector and spew tabloid bigotry. ‘Much better in my day, much better in my day, much better in my day/No locked doors no foreigners’ she whispers with increasing frenzy on ‘Better in My Day’. ‘Wave those flags, stick it to the man, my little island’ she hisses insidiously on ‘My Little Lamb’. ‘Throne’ finds her intoning ‘insolvency’ with a voice more suited to high mass, while ‘Tea Rooms’ sees cosy country living onto which tones of pitch-warped existential dread are superimposed. The whole performance sounds like a demonic message hidden in civilisation’s runout groove.

Reviews online: Find more at www.thepsychologist.org.uk/reviews, including ‘the art of attachment’ at the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts; and ‘Maniac’ on Netﬂix.

And then there’s the recorder. Abrasive techno and unsettled electronica are Gazelle Twin’s stock in trade. For Pastoral, she’s worked in tropes from early music and traditional English song, giving her vision of contemporary Britain a warped folk horror flavour. The recorder hangs round her neck like an absurd anachronism as the harsh beats pound. As she plays it, she dances a grotesque caper, red ribbons flailing from the elbows of her jester’s costume. It’s a serious, and seriously committed, performance (it is, after all, impossible to play the recorder without a straight face). But on this occasion Gazelle Twin suffers from an over-active lighting engineer, who seems determined to drag everything out of the shadows. I also miss the eerie simplicity of her previous stage get-up – for Unflesh she performed in a blue hoodie, her face further obscured by flesh-coloured tights. ‘In ancient culture you wear the clothes of ghosts or demons to ward them off,’ she once told me. ‘I applied that process of thought to my own life – when was I at my most vulnerable? And I thought about the changing room at school…’ It was, I think, the way she embodied both the vulnerable schoolgirl and the powerful aggressor, the everyday and the dread-filled, that made her previous live performances so powerfully unsettling. For Pastoral, Gazelle Twin has created a persona that is more contrivedly theatrical, less compellingly uncanny. Reviewed by Isobel Todd, a psychodynamic counsellor and music/arts journalist based in Brighton

the psychologist december 2018 culture

Magical, disturbing, funny and glorious play The Inheritance Noël Coward Theatre, London

The Inheritance is the West End theatre hit of the season – some say the decade, or even a generation. A beautiful, if emotionally stormy experience, the play tackles questions of history, responsibility and storytelling, the place for these in our individual and community lives. The Inheritance ‘questions how much we owe to those who lived and loved before us. A generation after the peak of the AIDS crisis, what is it like to be a young gay man in New York? How many words are there now for pain and for love? What is the legacy left…by previous generations? What do they owe the future and each other?’ First things ﬁrst – as a play this is a stunning production. It thoroughly deserves the plaudits being thrown at it. Personally, I found nothing to fault – Mathew Lopez’s script is riveting, the acting sublime under Stephen Daldry’s direction and the set stark and a perfect foil for the telling of a complex story that weaves contemporary and historical ideas. While the entire cast is wonderful, for me Kyle Stoller as Eric and Andy Burnap as Toby were outstanding. Central to the production is a question posed by Eric: What was the responsibility between gay men from one generation to another? It’s a question of care, of education and of the development of the self, a question that many discriminated communities have to engage with – as do we psychologists who should be the allies of these groups. The play is adamant, without a concerted effort the past is forgotten, ignored, resisted and shoved aside, as are vulnerable groups of people. That many gay men died to AIDS (and some continue to), that we lost a generation, that the pain was absorbed by those that survived, must all have an effect on us.

Do you love podcasts? There are now 14 episodes of our own Research Digest podcast PsychCrunch, available via https://digest.bps.org.uk/podcast/ The latest episode considers ‘Psychological tricks to make your cooking taste better’. The podcast is kindly sponsored by Routledge Psychology. Why not binge on our back catalogue now?

As therapists, we know to be cautious about a client’s protestations that historically difﬁcult experiences mean nothing now that time has passed. We know that loss, pain and trauma leave a legacy, and without awareness and the availability of the stories of those who have preceded us, our suffering, both physical and social, may simply be ignored. Visibility and representation – something our schools, public broadcasting services and public policy often overlook (or deny?) becomes a major question here. Some psychologists are familiar with the stories of the community, either through their own life experience, engagement with their courageous clients, or through the work of artists, playwrights and novelists. However, many are not, and The Inheritance is a chance to absorb rather than simply study these experiences. And this is something that Lopez, Daldry and the actors should be proud of – at no time is this a lecture. It is a profoundly magical, disturbing, funny and glorious experience. As a profession that works with the vulnerable and the silenced, and works to assist communities in their efforts to thrive, psychologists’ responsibility is great and should be embraced. We may not make the impact that a play of the quality of The Inheritance can, but we make an impact nonetheless. We should ensure it is a good one. Reviewed by Martin Milton, a Chartered Psychologist and Professor of Counselling Psychology at Regents School of Psychotherapy and Psychology, and Regents University London. See our website for the full version.

HARROGATE 2019

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The Psychological Impact of Inequality We welcome submissions relating to: • • • • •

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Credit: Catherine Aldred, www.catherinealdred.co.uk Watermark Gallery, www.watermarkgallery.co.uk

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Safeguarding Advisory Group - Chair and Members The Societyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Professional Practice Board (PPB) is seeking to appoint a Member of the Society to act as Chair and several Members to join the above Group from early 2019. It is anticipated that there will be around 15 members. The Group reports directly to the Professional Practice Board. The remit of the advisory group is to advise and guide members and the Society on safeguarding issues. This will include safeguarding vulnerable adults as well as children and young people. The group will advise on professional standards and good practice for psychologists including the production and updating of guidance documents as relevant; promotion and advice on training opportunities as part of BPS CPD initiatives; and respond to relevant correspondence from members and external parties. For full details on these positions or to request a Statement of Interest Form, please contact Sunarika Sahota on sunarika.sahota@bps.org.uk. The post will commence in early 2019. Statements of Interest should reach the Societyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ofďŹ ce no later than 4 January 2019.

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‘Impact has got to be more than ingroup grooming’ Malcolm MacLachlan is Director of the ALL (Assisting Living and Learning) Institute and Professor of Psychology and Social Inclusion at Maynooth University

One good move In the early 1990s my wife and I got jobs at the University of Malawi. After working in clinical and organisational consulting roles in the UK, I felt, that for me, something was missing. Within days of arriving in Malawi I had found it – a combination of being humbled by the scale of the challenges yet feeling you could make a small, but meaningful, contribution. My uneasiness with ‘psychological colonisation’ was diminished by so much that I learnt from my students – there are multiple psychologies; and very few problems, national or individual, that don’t have a psychological component. One work habit I’m not good at habits; I tend to work at odd times and in odd places… and sometimes, with odd people… One difﬁculty I am terrible at languages. When I was Professor of Global Health at Trinity College Dublin, people assumed that with all the travel I did, I must be multilingual. The combination of an extreme dependency on Google Translate and being dyslexic, has resulted in some perverse and other quite rude (but fun) ‘misunderstandings’! One weakness A growing (since about the age of four) lack of interest in the minutiae of detail. See others, for details… One strength I seem to think more in terms of patterns, systems and context than many other psychologists I know. I try and grasp the ‘big picture’, when I can. One hobby Sailing… and swimming, in case the sailing doesn’t go to plan.

One thing that stops you in your tracks In short, exclusion and exploitation. I have worked with many UN and civil society organisations and it is easy to become jaded and frustrated with the slow pace of social justice and structural reform. However, personal testimonies are often a compelling reminder of what we are trying to address. I recently completed

the psychologist december 2018 one on one

a project in South America and Africa with Humanity & Inclusion; concerned with women with disability and their reproductive rights. Stories of institutionalisation, followed by abuse, including sexual abuse; pregnancy followed by forced abortion and then sterilisation to facilitate continued rape without pregnancy… all continuing behind the closed doors of institutions. Devastating to hear, so what must they be to experience? This is why psychology needs to address not just the person, but also the organisations, and the systems and structures that overpower them. This is one example of the need for psychology as a profession to embrace a psychology of societal liberation, at all levels.

One frustration with psychology One of my motivations to become a psychologist was to contribute to improving people’s lives; particularly the most marginalised. The imperative for psychology to prove its worth – particularly in the 1980s and 1990s – led to its commodiﬁcation and a focus on technocratic skills. This ‘means of production’ within psychology has stimulated a range of professional protectionism that continues to marginalise those most in need of psychological help. Innovations in how psychology is accessed are needed; some internet-based examples are promising; others for those who can’t or won’t use the internet are needed.

One bit of advice Question authority, because that’s what maintains the status quo; and many things could be much better, for many people. So why not try and change things?

One delight with psychology The students and breadth of the subject are fantastic. This is often however a missed opportunity as so many – particularly academics – drill down deep into the psychological substrata of a particular issue; missing the broader landscape through which such issues are made meaningful in people’s lives.

One other career I would have loved – and had planned to be – a Merchant Navy captain. I still might. One impact My role as the Research & Innovation Lead for the World Health Organization’s Global Cooperation on Assistive Technology (GATE) has provided wonderful opportunities to work with people from all over the world; from service users, to industry, governments, practitioners, civil society and professional organisations. I had the great pleasure of being involved in the foundational work and then chairing the overall consensus meeting that established the WHO Priority Assistive Product List in 2016; which is a recommended list of 50 assistive products countries should seek to provide as a minimum to their citizens (e.g. wheelchairs, Braille displays, hearing loops etc.). It is the assistive technology equivalent of the Essential Medicines List (now in its 20th edition) which has improved access to medicines worldwide. One pet hate Citations are not a measure of impact – they are a measure of citations! Some of the most important impacts I have had are unpublished, unpublishable and uncitable. Surely impact requires reaching ‘outside’; it’s got to be more than ingroup grooming.

One big challenge Psychological interventions need to be developed at the population level, which often means designing policy psychologically; this is an aspect of what I call ‘macropsychology’. Helping to psychologically ‘nudge’ the uptake of, for instance, economic policy, can be useful; however designing good psychological policy for society – psychosocialism? – is an area we need to address more systematically and more boldly. One future focus Following my recent move to Maynooth University, we have established the Assisting Living & Learning Institute – the ALL Institute. It’s across 14 departments; with its ‘home’ in the Psychology Department; a warm, energetic, broad-ranging, broad-minded place to work, and study. One other thing I have just retired from 20+ years as a part-time livestock farmer; and planted a lot of trees. Trees are less work, but I am missing the bleating of lambs, skilfully born between academic terms… One ﬁnal thought (To paraphrase) knowledge, without passion, is ignorance.

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Division of Sport & Exercise Psychology

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Hilton Belfast

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4 Dec

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Cardiff University

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‘We’re pulling bodies out of the river, we need to ask why they’re falling in’ Ian Florance meets Dawn Edge

‘Do you really want to interview me?’, Dr Dawn Edge asked me. ‘I’m not a psychologist.’ My answer was that as a Senior Lecturer within Manchester University’s Division of Psychology and Mental Health and the University’s Academic Lead for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, she has some unique insights for trainees and practising psychologists.

Dr Dawn Edge describes her work as ‘at the place where mental health intersects with a range of social factors such as culture, gender and markers of deprivation. Inequalities in the provision, experience and outcome of mental healthcare are issues of social justice – efforts to tackle such disparities are among my most passionate interests.’ In addition to leading her own research and interdisciplinary collaborations, Dawn teaches undergraduates and postgraduates as well as supervising master’s and doctoral students. ‘My role as the university’s Academic Lead for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, operates within the Ofﬁce for Social Responsibility. This is one of three university-level academic lead roles that are integral to the organisation setting and delivering its social responsibility objectives. Having social responsibility as one of our three corporate goals is unique to the University of Manchester.’ I asked Dawn how she got involved in these sorts of issues. ‘My initial training in the 1990s was in a range of areas, for instance as a Chartered Physiotherapist; a degree in health, care and welfare and a Certiﬁcate of Higher Education. During this time, I was also co-opted onto the Board of Trustees of African and Caribbean Mental Health Services (ACMHS), Manchester. A voluntary/third sector organisation, ACMHS was established in 1989 to address the obvious disparities in mental healthcare experienced by black service users (African, Caribbean, British, ‘other’) and those of “mixed” ethnic origin

the psychologist december 2018 careers

compared with white British people. Despite several delivered in a multicultural context. To illustrate, if national policy initiatives, there has been little progress black service users receive psychological therapies at in almost 60 years of research and service evaluations all, this is likely to be delivered by a white therapist. highlighting the problems.’ But it’s not just an issue of colour: many therapists are Dawn points to the 2005 Department of Health also middle-class and/or females and/or straight and/ launch of Delivering Race Equality (DRE) in Mental or do not regard themselves as having a disability. Of Healthcare: An Action Plan for Reform Inside and course, it’s important to acknowledge that irrespective Outside Services and the Government’s Response to the of our backgrounds, we all hold prejudices. So, Independent Inquiry into the Death of David ‘Rocky’ I’m not saying that therapists with any particular Bennett. ‘This policy and implementation plan, background can’t understand the issues experienced by service users from diverse backgrounds. However, including appointing Community Development Workers, was supposed to eradicate raced-based from discussions with my colleagues and looking at curricula, it seems to me that we don’t talk enough, inequalities in statutory services within five years. Sadly, inequalities, including disproportionate rates if at all, in training about how therapists’ biographies and lived experiences might impact their views and of service access using the Mental Health Act and discharges on Community Treatment Orders as well approaches to working with diversity and difference. This is a structural issue that needs to be addressed as deaths in services, are still very much in evidence.’ There have been consistent reports over many in the context of factors like power, patriarchy and what comes to be accepted as “normal” or “deviant/ decades of significantly higher diagnosis rates of psychosis and schizophrenia and under-diagnosis of pathological” and, importantly, how this intersects others, such as depression, among African-Caribbean with social factors like race/ethnicity, class, gender, etc.’ people. Several theories have been proposed. ‘From In this context, I asked Dawn whether she felt the perspectives of service users and carers who have that psychology in 2018 was fit for purpose. ‘Whilst participated in our research,’ Dawn says, ‘negative there have been changes in curricula, I tend to think stereotypes and unconscious bias often invokes psychologist training hasn’t changed sufficiently automatic coupling of blackness over the years. Comparing the with dangerousness, especially with 2001 and 2011 National Census male service users, among health shows how much the make-up of “…many service users professionals. the UK population has changed. ‘Additionally, predominantly simply won’t mention their These changes are not just in white or Asian staff often lack terms of demographics but also experiences of racism insight/awareness into the in expectations and attitudes. and discrimination, even Importantly, what’s currently on structural issues that affect black people, such as racism in offer in mental healthcare simply though these might general and institutional racism doesn’t work for some groups of be central to their in particular: which is taboo, a people accessing psychology and illness models” kind of “elephant in the room”. other services. Furthermore, with Let me give an example there. globalisation it’s highly likely that It’s a fairly common experience some trainees from the UK will for African-Caribbean people to migrate to other countries. I accept be followed around by store detectives and security that you can’t train people to be knowledgeable about guards. Black service users have said that if this is every nuance of cultural and individual differences. raised in therapeutic conversations, professionals My current work to develop culturally appropriate do not believe their accounts of “everyday racism”, psychological therapies and education suggests dismissing them as far-fetched or seeing them as that black service users recognise that this or other evidence of paranoia. Consequently, many service users approaches like “ethnic matching” are not practical simply won’t mention their experiences of racism and and, in some instances, undesirable.’ discrimination, even though these might be central to So, what is needed? ‘In my experience, what their illness models. I want to stress that I see these as service users from all backgrounds want is to work societal and organisational versus individual issues.’ with therapists and other health professionals who In some previous issues of The Psychologist, are prepared to listen actively enough to hear and interviewees have raised the issue that it has become understand them, versus dismissing or pathologising so expensive and time-consuming to train as a their experiences. It might sound obvious, but psychologist that there’s been a reduction in the people want to be treated with dignity, respect and diversity of people who can afford to do it. For compassion. Training in the 21st century surely ought instance, interviewees have suggested a preponderance to be capable of equipping psychologists and others to of white, middle-class students with parents who be culturally confident without necessarily feeling they can afford to support them qualifying as clinical need to know everything about every ethno-cultural psychologists. Dawn comments on this. ‘I think group or protected characteristic?’ this is problematic when psychological care is being Should training change? ‘In my view, yes. I think

we should be actively working to develop diverse and inclusive curricula, enabling students to address issues like the intersections between gender, culture, power and therapeutic engagement more fully. At the moment, it seems to me that when some students come across these issues on their placements, the extent to which they can develop competencies in working with them varies hugely. A more systematic approach to embedding cultural competence into curricula is not only needed but long overdue.’ Researching Dawn’s background, I was really interested in her Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship, an experience that seems to be continuing to inform the ideas we discussed. She travelled to Canada and the USA in 2014 and Jamaica and Barbados in 2015 to explore different approaches to supporting black people with mental health issues. ‘The fellowship approach can be summed up in its strapline “Travel to learn; return to inspire”. It involves people travelling abroad and bringing back ideas to improve UK society. I saw some very inspiring things. Visiting Midnight Mission on Skid Row in LA was one – I couldn’t believe “Skid Row” was actually named on a map!’ [You can ﬁnd out more about the organisation at www.midnightmission.org.] ‘In Jamaica, it was revelatory to see mentally ill clients in a ward with physically ill patients, supported by specialist psychiatric staff as part of their programme to improve

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integration of physical and mental healthcare.’ Dawn has since returned to Jamaica to work with colleagues at the University of the West Indies, the Ministry of Health and a range of other key stakeholders on developing community mental health hubs in places of worship. These are intended to: facilitate mental health promotion/education; expedite access to diagnosis and care; and reduce stigma. ‘This builds on work I’ve been doing in the UK over the past few years, highlighting the importance of faith and communities for service users and the untapped potential of faith-based organisations to improve engagement and outcomes for groups often labelled “hard-to-reach” but who are “seldom heard” from their perspectives.’ Do you feel things are getting better? ‘I am a born optimist – glass half-full – so I’d say “yes”. I regard the Royal College of Psychiatrists issuing a statement on institutional racism a few months ago as a step forward. It’s great to see BME psychology raising issues of race and whiteness but it would be good to see this becoming more “mainstream” and directly influencing curricula, from undergraduate all the way through to doctorates and beyond into CPD.’ Dawn concludes by returning to her earlier point: ‘The issues and solutions are society-wide, but that doesn’t absolve us as individuals, professions and organisations from doing what we can to make a difference. Indeed, the Public Sector Equality Duty to tackle all forms of discrimination (direct and indirect) is enshrined in law as part of the Equality Act 2010. I am currently part of the National Mental Health Act review, instituted by Prime Minister Theresa May, into what she describes as “the burning injustice” of the rising use of the Mental Health Act. Many readers will be aware that the Act is used disproportionately with black people and other ethnic minorities. The significance of this inquiry is not to be underestimated. However, we cannot review the Act in isolation. To do so would be to ignore the context in which it is being used and therefore missing the point: we’re pulling bodies out of the river, we need to ask why they’re falling in, what can be done to prevent that happening in the first place and how to help those who do fall in, to recover instead of drowning.’ For further information on some of these issues see: www.manchestercommunitycentral.org/news/africanand-caribbean-mental-health-services and http:// research.bmh.manchester.ac.uk/ReACH

Might you have an interesting story to tell about your career path, the highs and lows of your current role or the professional challenges you are facing? If you would like to be considered for a ‘Careers’ interview in The Psychologist, get in touch with the editor Dr Jon Sutton (jon.sutton@bps.org.uk). Of course there are many other ways to contribute to The Psychologist, but this is one that many ﬁnd to be particularly quick, easy and enjoyable.

Have a positive holiday season! Ryan M. Niemiec

Ryan M. Niemiec

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Early relationships matter Rebecca Fellows is an Assistant Psychologist in a busy and expanding Infant Mental Health Service in Leeds

Rebecca Fellows, Assistant Psychologist, Infant Mental Health Service, Leeds Community Healthcare, Parkside Community Health Centre, 311 Dewsbury Road, Leeds

People often seem bewildered when I tell them I work in infant mental health. ‘Babies have mental health?’ Yes they do! Our service is one of the few services of its kind in the UK and has been recognised nationally for its contributions to the field of infant mental health. The work is extremely varied and rewarding. I often find the weeks pass in the blink of an eye! We provide direct work with families of infants from conception to age two where there are concerns about the primary attachment relationship. This work can include parent–infant psychotherapy, video interaction guidance, assessment of quality of interactions, eye-movement desensitisation and reprocessing therapy, cognitive analytic therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy. Organising and delivering training makes up a large chunk of the role, including our ‘Infant Mental Health: Babies, Brains & Bonding’ training day, which focuses on attachment and the critical periods for neurological development. Our service has been established since 2012, and in that time we have trained nearly 2000 professionals in Leeds: health visitors, social workers, children’s centre staff, contact supervisors, psychologists and many other professions. As the financial year comes to a close, a large part of my time will be dedicated to producing our annual report, which is an exciting opportunity to reflect back on the last year and some of the things that we have achieved. It will include reporting on the risk and complexity of our referrals over the year. There are statistics and outcomes on the training we have delivered, on consultations we have provided and many other aspects of the service. Another aspect of my role that has taught me a lot involves supporting members of the team to deliver reflective case discussions. Teams of health visitors and family outreach workers bring a case that they would like to discuss in greater detail. These sessions have taught me how to use genograms to map out family relationships, how to manage large groups in a supervision setting, how to facilitate discussions around holding the infants’ experiences in mind, how to manage differing opinions, and many other skills. It’s great to see so many professionals supporting each other in trying to think of ways to move forward whilst holding the infants’ experiences in mind during these sessions.

the psychologist december 2018 careers

Beyond the ‘band aid’ So how did I get here? I started my career in mental health working as a health support worker in acute psychiatric inpatient settings. I had youth and a whole lot of enthusiasm on my side, and while this role taught me a lot of positive things, I was surprised to learn that the service users I was working with would be re-admitted time and time again. I quickly learned that inpatient settings were not the nurturing, therapeutic environments that I had expected and that systems in place were largely reactive rather than proactive. I soon moved to working with adults with eating disorders accessing inpatient treatment. One common theme that struck me early on between both types of wards was that a large proportion of the women I was working with had experienced significantly traumatic early lives, fraught with chaos, neglect or abuse. Was it any wonder that they were behaving like this given their experiences through infancy and childhood? I soon realised this ‘band aid’ type of therapeutic work was rapidly depleting my enthusiasm for the work I was doing. I wasn’t actually making a difference. That sparked my interest in early intervention and early life experiences. Whilst acute services are absolutely necessary and provide support to many individuals at times of mental health crisis, these wards are becoming increasingly stretched, due to financial cuts, high demands on beds and major staffing issues. It’s more and more difficult to provide high-quality, person-centred, therapeutic care. Throughout my time working in infant mental health, I have often thought about some of the adults whom I previously worked with and wondered: If they had received input from an infant mental health service, would they have developed their eating disorders? Would we see repeat admissions to secondary mental health services? We’ll never know. But I firmly believe that a child’s internal working model of themselves and their relationships with others will help them navigate the world as they grow, and cope with inevitable life experiences. From conception to age two, infants’ brains undergo an incredible amount of development, producing more than a million neural connections every second. This development can be influenced by a range of factors, including relationships with primary caregivers, experiences and environment. We must promote the best care during this critical developmental time. That means environments and relationships characterised by contingent, nurturing and responsive care. When physical and emotional needs are met consistently and in an attuned manner, infants develop an internal working model that they are safe, their needs will be met and that they are deserving of such care. Infants who have repeated abusive, neglectful or misattuned care in their first years of life have higher rates of mental health problems in adulthood as this negative internal working model becomes hardwired in their brain. We need to intervene early when there are

concerns about attachment and responsiveness with the primary care giver. The mantra of the Infant Mental Health Service is that early relationships matter. As we train and equip more and more frontline professionals in infant mental health, they are able to offer support to families and infants at increasing levels of risk and complexity. That’s a challenge, and there are never two days the same. It’s great to see the message about infant mental health spreading across the city, and I hope to see more services like ours developing over the UK in coming years. I was particularly interested in Elizabeth Meins’s article ‘Overrated: The predictive power of attachment’ in the January 2017 edition of The Psychologist. Her argument in relation to equipping parents with evidence-based information on babies’ development and how best to interact, play and respond to their cues as their children develop is very similar to what our team are aiming to do day-to-day. However, the idea that insecure attachment is being ‘vilified’ or ‘pathologised’ is inaccurate; instead it is a model that can be used to support parents to understand the implications of attachment styles on future behaviour. Parents who have suffered from mental illness postpartum or infants who have needed special care can still go on to foster secure attachments with their children/primary caregiver. Next steps Since starting as an assistant psychologist I’ve tried to immerse myself in as many opportunities as possible. A colleague told me about the Yorkshire Aspiring Clinical Psychologists group, for assistant psychologists, support workers, nursing assistants, students and anyone who is interested in becoming a clinical psychologist. The group has monthly meetings with presentations and it’s been a great opportunity to meet other people and learn about different services in the area. I would encourage anyone aspiring to further a career in clinical psychology to see if there’s a local group near you. I’m confident that the busy and varied environment of the Infant Mental Health Service is a good fit for me. I hope in the future to get a place on the doctoral training course in clinical psychology. But my experience so far has reinforced my feeling that no matter what age group you are working with, having an understanding of how early life experiences impact on an individual’s way of relating to others is essential to understanding the here and now for all service users. Might you have an interesting story to tell about your career path, the highs and lows of your current role or the professional challenges you are facing? If you would like to be considered for a ‘Careers’ interview in The Psychologist, get in touch with the editor Dr Jon Sutton (jon.sutton@bps.org.uk). Of course there are many other ways to contribute to The Psychologist, but this is one that many find to be particularly quick, easy and enjoyable.

Careers in Psychology Whether you are a recent graduate, or a Psychologist looking for a change in career, you can view current vacancies for a range of Psychology roles here, or view the latest roles on the new appointments site www.jobsinpsychology.co.uk The job site is still the number one online resource for psychology jobs. Fully accessible on mobile and desktop computers, the site features increased search functionality, superb ease of use and navigation. For recruiters, there are many more targeting options for you to promote your vacancies to potential candidates. All adverts placed in The Psychologist will have their adverts included on the job site. To discuss the opportunities for advertising and promotion in The Psychologist, www.jobsinpsychology.co.uk and Research Digest, please contact Kai Theriault on 01223 378051 or email kai.theriault@cpl.co.uk.

Jobs of the month on www.jobsinpsychology.co.uk Human Factors Researcher Anglia Ruskin University Chelmsford or London £35,000 - £40,000 pa Closing date: 10th Dec 2018 Senior Consultants Organisation Development & Research Ltd United Kingdom Competitive Renumeration Closing date: 7th Dec 2018 Clinical Director The Brandon Centre London £78,983 per annum pro rata Closing date: 30th Nov 2018 Multi Systemic Therapy (MST) Worker Family Psychology Mutual Cambridgeshire £28,746 - £36,612 Closing date: 5th Dec 2018

To view these jobs and more, please visit the BPS job site www.jobsinpsychology.co.uk 70

West Kirby Residential School Specialist SEN College & National Support School Meols Drive, West Kirby, Wirral, Merseyside CH48 5DH

Clinical Psychologist Salary negotiable subject to experience (Band 8) with opportunities to develop and progress Terms and conditions negotiable Required as soon as possible

For further information, to arrange a visit or to apply, please visit: www.wkrs.co.uk Closing date: Friday 7th December 2018. The School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. The successful applicant will be subject to rigorous recruitment checks including an enhanced DBS clearance.

Are you looking for a change and a challenge? This is an exciting opportunity to join a dedicated multi-disciplinary team working with young people between the ages of 5-19 years with complex special needs and mental health issues. 80% of the pupils have a diagnosis of Autistic Spectrum Condition plus other co-morbid diagnoses, so it is important that the successful candidate has experience with working with this client group and their families. This post requires someone who is committed to supporting young people to reach their potential by reducing the barriers to learning. The successful candidate will contribute to developing new initiatives and be able to use their knowledge, theories and approaches to help embed clinical skills into unique educational curriculum pathways. The role includes being able to deliver a range of assessments, addressing issues around cognition, behaviour, mental health and mental capacity in order to be able to provide information that can support and advise parents/carers, other professionals and staff. Outcome measures will be paramount to measuring success and need to be functional and personalised.

Educational / Clinical Psychologists

We seek someone who can generate enthusiasm and develop the potential of pupils who may have experienced frustration and trauma during the early years of their lives and education, and present with low resilience, esteem and tolerance. You would be accountable to the Head of Clinical services as part of a multi-disciplinary team, managing your own caseload and a small team of therapy assistants providing interventions for young people requiring emotional and mental health support. There would also be opportunities to work closely with our teams of Speech and Language Therapists and Occupational Therapists. In return, we offer excellent support from colleagues, commitment to CPD and research, access to internal and external training and opportunities for multidisciplinary and multi-agency working. You must be HCPC registered, have your own professional insurance and undertake regular external clinical supervision. The school is committed to sharing good practice and you would be expected to provide internal and external training.

£41,299 - £58,193

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ƚ tŝƚŚĞƌƐůĂĐŬ 'ƌŽƵƉ͕ ǁĞ͛ƌĞ ĐŽŵŵŝƩĞĚ ƚŽ ŚĞůƉŝŶŐ ĐŚŝůĚƌĞŶ ĂŶĚ ǇŽƵŶŐ ƉĞŽƉůĞ ǁŝƚŚ ĐŽŵƉůĞǆ͕ ĐŚĂůůĞŶŐŝŶŐ ŶĞĞĚƐ͘ ĐƌŽƐƐ ŽƵƌ ŝŶĚĞƉĞŶĚĞŶƚ ƐĐŚŽŽůƐ ĂŶĚ ŚŽŵĞƐ͕ ǁĞ ŽīĞƌ ĞǆƉĞƌƚ ĐĂƌĞ ĂŶĚ ĮƌƐƚͲƌĂƚĞ ĨĂĐŝůŝƟĞƐ͕ Ăůů ĚĞƐŝŐŶĞĚ ƚŽ ƐƵƉƉŽƌƚ ĂŶĚ ƐƉĞĞĚ ƚŚĞ ĚĞǀĞůŽƉŵĞŶƚ ŽĨ ŽƵƌ ǇŽƵŶŐ ƉĞŽƉůĞ͘ Ɛ Ă WƐǇĐŚŽůŽŐŝƐƚ͕ ǇŽƵ͛ůů ƉůĂǇ Ă ďŝŐ ƉĂƌƚ ŝŶ ŽƵƌ ǁŽƌŬ ĂŶĚ ŽƵƌ ŽƵƚĐŽŵĞƐ ĨŽƌ ǇŽƵŶŐ ƉĞŽƉůĞ͘ /ƚ͛Ɛ Ă ŚŝŐŚůǇ ƌĞǁĂƌĚŝŶŐ ƌŽůĞ ǁŚĞƌĞ ǇŽƵƌ ƐŬŝůůƐ ĐĂŶ ŵĂŬĞ Ă ŚƵŐĞ ĚŝīĞƌĞŶĐĞ Ͳ ĂƐ ǇŽƵ ŚĞůƉ ƵƐ ĐƌĞĂƚĞ ďƌŝŐŚƚĞƌ ĨƵƚƵƌĞƐ͘

&Ƶůů dŝŵĞ WĂĐŬĂŐĞ͗ £45,289 - £58,193͕ ϯϱ ĚĂǇƐ ŚŽůŝĚĂǇ ;ŝŶĐůƵĚŝŶŐ ďĂŶŬ ŚŽůŝĚĂǇƐͿ ƚĞĂĐŚĞƌƐ͛ ƉĞŶƐŝŽŶ ;ƵƉ ƚŽ ϭϲйͿ dĞƌŵ dŝŵĞ WĂĐŬĂŐĞ͗ £41,299 - £54,791͕ &Ƶůů ^ĐŚŽŽů ŚŽůŝĚĂǇƐ͕ ĐŽŶƚƌŝďƵƚŽƌǇ ƉĞŶƐŝŽŶ ;ŵĂƚĐŚĞĚ ƵƉ ƚŽ ϱйͿ KƚŚĞƌ ďĞŶĞĮƚƐ͗ ĐŽŵƉƌĞŚĞŶƐŝǀĞ ŝŶĚƵĐƟŽŶ ĂŶĚ ŽŶŐŽŝŶŐ ƚƌĂŝŶŝŶŐ͕ ĂƐ ǁĞůů ĂƐ ĞǆƚĞŶƐŝǀĞ 'ƌŽƵƉ ƐƚĂī ďĞŶĞĮƚƐ ƐƵĐŚ ĂƐ DĞĚŝĐĂƐŚ ,ĞĂůƚŚ WůĂŶͬ ŵƉůŽǇĞĞ ƐƐŝƐƚĂŶĐĞ͕ ǇĐůĞ ƚŽ tŽƌŬ ĂŶĚ ƚĂǆͲĨƌĞĞ ĐŚŝůĚĐĂƌĞ ǀŽƵĐŚĞƌƐ͘

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Job Title: Clinical/Counselling Psychologist – Children’s Autism Services Employer: Midlands Psychology CIC – NHS service providers since 2010 Angela Southall, Consultant Clinical Psychologist and CEO at Midlands Psycholog, is clear about one quality in a successful applicant. They will be ‘passionate and committed to working with children with autistic spectrum conditions, their families and communities. If that’s you then let’s talk!’ Midlands Psychology is a not-for-profit social enterprise, built on the belief that social issues and community participation drive psychological well-being. ‘We work in, with and for the benefit of local communities’, says Angela, ‘and they are the focus of everything we do. As a social enterprise we reinvest any profits back into those communities. We’ve done some really important and exciting development work over the years.’ ‘We have been delivering the children’s autism services in South Staffordshire as the NHS provider since 2010 and a lot has happened in the last eight years! This year, one exciting development is our partnership with Sport England, through which we’re able to support families of children who have autism to become more active together through a programme of specially-tailored, funded activities. Another is the work we have been doing with a neighbourhood groups to develop a ‘community hub’, enabling delivery of activities and for and by local community members. We are very proud to be changing the face of community services for children and families who live with autism and that that’s being recognised. For instance, in 2014 we received the National Autistic Society’s award for Most innovative Family Support and are also the recipients of the Lean Healthcare Award for Best Impact on Patient Experience.’ ‘The post we are advertising will involve the diagnostic assessment of children aged 0 to 18 whose behaviours indicate Autism Spectrum Condition. Post-diagnosis services, the successful applicant will be engaged in delivering various psychological interventions, including through our regular advice surgeries, parent training workshops and group interventions, as well as one-toone. We have an active research stream and are about to embark on national validation study which will involve the whole staff team. We have a strong publications record.’ Angela promises that ‘whoever joins will find an enthusiastic, friendly and well-supported team, serious about quality and passionate about psychology. We’re looking for a psychologist who will most likely have some experience working with children who have autism but we’re also flexible about this. Newly qualified people challenge what we do and that’s great. The job suits someone prepared to work hard, who shares our passion for psychological services and feels driven to change the culture around autism and mental health. If they have specific interests or approaches, great! If you’re interested in this approach you’ll be fascinated when you visit us: we’re looking for someone who, in turn, is going to excite us.’

Your chance to come and work for Midlands Psychology! Do you have what it takes to be a member of our award-winning children’s autism team in South Staffordshire? We are also recruiting to a fixed-term 12 month post to cover maternity leave – all qualified clinical and counselling psychologists are welcome to apply. Full or part-time hours considered.

Full-time, Band 7/8 depending on experience

Do you

feel passionately about the contribution psychology can make to the lives of children who have autism? have experience working with children and families? have an interest in using or developing your autism skills? feel as enthusiastic as we do about working creatively in the community?

If so – get in touch with us now!

are a not-for-profit Social Enterprise and NHS provider are an enthusiastic and supportive multidisciplinary organisation are actively engaged in changing the mental health culture – and especially the culture around autism use and promote a psychosocial understanding of people’s difficulties are setting standards for psychological services nationally

For further information about this post please contact Abbey Boss, Business & Contracts Support Officer either via email at: abbey.boss@midlandspsychology.co.uk or via telephone: 01785 748447 Closing date: 9am, Wednesday 5th December 2018 Interviews will take place: Thursday 13th December 2018 Interviews will take place in Stafford

NHS provider

The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve Steve StewartWilliams Cambridge University Press; Hb £20.00

The ape that became us Evolutionary psychologist Lance Workman takes a look at the competition

volutionary psychology has always had a polarising influence. Advocates see it as potentially unifying, not only of the disparate subfields of psychology, but also of all the human sciences. A transformative and unifying theoretical framework. Detractors perceive it as politically and scientifically suspect, built on a mix of rebranded genetic determinism and just-so story telling. An arid desert, devoid of social and cultural considerations. In The Ape that Understood the Universe Steve StewartWilliams demonstrates just how important the concept of cultural evolution has become to the burgeoning field of evolutionary psychology. The subtitle How the Mind and Culture Evolve makes this explicit. As a writer and editor of evolutionary psychology books, I am always keen to get my hands on the competition as it appears. My response to Stewart-Williams’s book was ‘Damn, this

is good!’ Frankly, whether you are advocate or detractor you should acquaint yourself with this book – love it or loathe it you will learn a lot from reading it. And you will ﬁnd that reading to be a captivating, page-turning, voyage of discovery. Stewart-Williams is not only an experienced evolutionary psychologist but also a talented and insightful writer with a memorable turn of phrase. The Ape that Understood the Universe begins with how an asexual alien might report back on human social behaviour, demonstrating, when we look at ourselves from a different perspective, just how odd our behaviour can appear. Similarities and difference between us and other animals are laid out in order to later explore where both arise from. For example, whereas human males have a lower threshold for physical aggression than females (the norm among mammals) human males also

the psychologist december 2018 books engage in high levels of parental care (almost unheard of in other mammals where the males are largely ‘sperm-donors’). This raises the important question – how might we account for both similarities and differences? Of course, this is a device to draw the reader in, as such features of human behaviour are explored in later chapters. This is not the first time I have come across this alien perspective device, but Stewart-Williams does it particularly well, making it feel fresh. From here, through five further chapters, we are asked to consider the relationship between natural selection and behaviour and then sexual selection and relationships, followed by considerations of the whys and wherefores of altruism and finally to explore the current standing of cultural evolutionary theory. Although he covers much of the ground that many introductions to the relationship between evolution and behaviour have previously considered, StewartWilliams’s constant playful use of metaphor, anecdote and witty aside maintain the reader’s attention throughout. In reading it myself, I regularly thought, ‘I know this stuff, it’s my bread and butter (not to mention my obsession), and yet I can’t wait to see where this narrative is going.’ Importantly, you don’t have to have foreknowledge of the subject area in order to comprehend this book. Despite covering a great deal of ground, due to its accessible and engaging language, it is easy to follow for the non-specialist. In addition to these six chapters, Stewart-Williams provides two very useful appendices. ‘How to win an argument with a Blank Slater’ is particularly enlightening (and entertaining). To be sure there are areas where evolutionary psychology is open to fair and reasonable criticism. I have my own doubts about some evolutionists’ use of ‘massive modularity’. But here Stewart-Williams shows how lazy criticism made by those who just don’t like the idea of evolutionary psychology, but clearly haven’t done their homework, can easily be dispatched. Examples of this include why evolutionary psychology isn’t genetic determinism (no serious evolutionist has been a genetic determinist for over half a century) and why the accusation of justso story telling fails, since all hypotheses are just-so stories until they have been tested. And hypothesis testing forms the bedrock of evolutionary psychology today. ‘How to win an argument with an antiMemeticist’ is also entertaining, but I must confess that I’m not a dyed-in-the-wool memeticist. So in this case I have some sympathy for at least some of the critics. Then again, evolutionary psychology would not have progressed to its current standing without a degree of diverse opinion. In summary, I would agree with the second-rate evolutionary psychologist who declared on the back cover that The Ape that Understood the Universe is ‘a twenty-first century successor to The Selfish Gene’. Lance Workman is Visiting Professor in Psychology and a ‘second-rate evolutionary psychologist’ at the University of South Wales

Better living through chemistry? How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics Michael Pollan Allen Lane; Hb £20.00

Imagine: in a controlled trial of high-dose psilocybin, administered to healthy volunteers as part of a scientific research study, affiliated with a prestigious university, and guided by skilled facilitators, two-thirds of participants described the experience as one of the five most spiritually significant experiences of their lives (comparable with the birth of a first child or the death of a parent). A full third of participants reported that the experience was the most spiritually significant event of their lives. Consider: when psilocybin was given to people with terminal cancer, participants typically experienced a decrease or a complete removal of their fear of death. One participant declared of himself, months after his trip and although dying of cancer, ‘I am the luckiest man on Earth’. Both of these studies were published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology in 2016. They represent examples of a quietly resurgent interest in the therapeutic use of psychedelic compounds by mainstream researchers. In this excellent and highly readable book, food writer Michael Pollan guides us through the history of psychedelic research, much of it forgotten – a thousand scientific papers were published between the early 1950s and late 1960s, when the compounds were made illegal and so became almost impossible to study. The middle section of the book sees an intrigued Pollan seeking his own psychedelic spiritual experience, vividly recounting trips on psilocybin, LSD, and a terrifying experience on 5-MeO-DMT, the smoked venom of the Sonoran Desert toad, an experience he likens to holding on to the side of a launching rocket, or being a wooden shack that you see getting obliterated in atom bomb test footage. The book ends with an attempt at explaining these experiences, and why they can be profoundly lifechanging. Pollan introduces a niche neurological theory, the default mode network (essentially suggesting that our brains get overly rigid in their perceptions of the world and that psychedelics ‘shake the snow globe’) and sticks to vague notions of ego. To my reading, I saw huge parallels with third-wave contextual therapies, particularly ACT, and many of the descriptions of the insights people gained from the psychedelic experience could have been quoted verbatim from an ACT textbook. Pollan’s book poses profound questions for mainstream clinical psychology, not least how to approach evidence like this, and what, if any, role will it have in our future? Reviewed by Dr Mark Oliver, who is a Clinical Psychologist with Northumberland, Tyne & Wear NHS Foundation Trust

Extracts online: Find exclusive book extracts at thepsychologist.org.uk, including a chapter from The Genius Checklist: Nine Paradoxical Tips on How You Can Become a Creative Genius, by Dean Keith Simonton; plus the psychology of vampires, chess, retirement and weather – all from the second batch of books in the Routledge ‘The Psychology of Everything’ series; and ‘Do women and men talk differently?’ from Elizabeth Stokoe’s Talk: The Science of Conversation.

Interesting insights How Shostakovich Changed My Mind Stephen Johnson Notting Hill Editions; Hb £14.99

Any book that combines psychology with Soviet history and the meaning of music was always going to catch my eye. My Russian grandmother came to England in 1918 when her family ﬂed the revolution, so I have always had a fascination with this era of world history. But it is only recently, and thanks to my son’s GCSE studies, that I have learned about the complex relationship between Stalin’s ‘reign of terror’ and the compositions of 20th-century composer Dimitri Shostakovich. By all accounts he created works that had a powerful and lasting effect on those living under Stalin’s regime, and many have conjectured that his music carried coded political messages. In this short book, Johnson’s musings centre around two personal stories – the challenges faced by Shostakovich during this turbulent period in which almost a third of the population starved to death; and the author’s own personal struggle with bipolar disorder. He weaves between vivid descriptions of the compositions and moving accounts of the climate in which they were both written and performed, pausing every now and again to explain the signiﬁcant role that this music has played in his own troubled life. Johnson – a renowned classical music journalist and regular

speaker at ‘The Musical Brain’ conferences – speaks passionately of the power of music to communicate, unite and heal. Despite being immersed in classical music for much of my life, I am relatively ignorant about much of what I listen to. I can thoroughly enjoy a piece of music but remain oblivious to what it is or why I like it (much like my experience of wine). And for me this book relied too heavily on having a good knowledge of Shostakovich’s compositions. As a music analyst, Johnson is inclined towards quite specific and detailed interpretations of the semantic content and communicative intent of the compositions he listens to. ‘Elegy’, he argues, is definitely about ‘us’ and ‘we’, and not about ‘I’. While I wholeheartedly agree that music has a phenomenal power to reflect and convey emotional states, I have always argued that the meaning is abstract, intangible, ambiguous, and highly dependent on the listener. To be fair, Johnson acknowledges this but counters it by saying that he has found few who disagree with his interpretation. I did find myself powerfully drawn towards the stories of Shostakovich and the Russian people who performed and heard his works. It

was also interesting to learn about policies that influenced cultural evolution, for example, Stalin’s directive that all creative works should meet the requirements of ‘Socialist Realism’. But what I found most compelling was the author’s own autobiography and the role that this music has played in enabling him to cope with serious episodes of depression and a deeply traumatic relationship with his mother. Referencing several well-known psychologists, Johnson elaborates on the broader implications, offering some interesting insights into how music can be used to open a dialogue or provide a new therapeutic perspective. While the narrative reads rather like a stream of consciousness at times (albeit one that is both informed and informative), I did find parts of it highly engaging and powerful. It has left me with a new desire to listen to Shostakovich’s music and to reflect on what might have been going on in his mind while he created those works. And most of all, it has reminded me of the capacity of music to speak to and comfort those in emotional distress. Reviewed by Professor Catherine Loveday, University of Westminster

A kaleidoscope of mental Illness The Colour of Madness: Exploring BAME Mental Health in the UK Samara Linton & Rianna Walcott (Eds.) Skiddaw Books; Pb £9.99

This is an edited anthology of essays, a research paper, poems and artwork from across the globe that creatively grounds experiences of mental illness in Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people. Employing a kaleidoscopic array, experiences are themed by colour (e.g. red, green, polychrome). Being more used to reading texts in this area with a strong academic tone, it was refreshing to read a book compiled almost as an ‘act of political resistance’, where contributors willingly invite the reader into their deeply personal accounts of living with, dying with, or having a family member with a mental illness. At times, the rationale for placing a piece within a colour choice was less clear (although explained by the authors in their conclusion); but the book is so engaging that, after a while, this was of less importance. Within are cultural accounts that range from bereavement from suicide to panic disorder. Poignancy for the prospect of imminent death from suicide is conveyed from the viewpoint of a slightly cracked open window into a sinking

soul. Contributors eloquently capture the despair that accompanies admission to an eating disorders clinic, distress on separation from family, body-invisibility for life on a mental health ward, and effects for structural, systemic and institutional racism. Throughout these accounts, we are encouraged to make the shift from interested bystander to an ally for broken people. An overriding message in this book is the value that should be placed on protecting mental health to aid the process of healing. Psychologists or practitioners looking for the usual textbook approach to mental illness will not ﬁnd it here. What you will encounter, however, are the cultural voices of broken minds that offer therapeutic insight into experiences of living with a mental illness. Our diverse, entangled world makes this collection well worth reading. Reviewed by Deborah Husbands, Senior Lecturer at the University of Westminster

the psychologist december 2018 books

‘Offenders process information differently from non-offenders’ Tony Beech, co-editor of The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Forensic Neuroscience, tells us how the book grew in the making Seeing the results of major writing projects like this, I often wonder how they started. Two of my co-editors, Adam Carter and Ruth Mann, were concerned that there was a lack of understanding of neuroscience in forensic psychology and more general correctional practice (including themselves in this problem). They saw a common tendency in risk assessments and formulations, as well as in behavioural management and risk reduction policies, to interpret the causes of criminal conduct in purely psychological rather than biopsychosocial terms. So they approached me to ask if we could collaborate on a project to communicate neuropsychological knowledge to practitioners who work with and make decisions about people who have committed crime. I had worked with Pia Rotshtein at Birmingham University and thought she would be a great addition to the editorial team. We met in my office for coffee, and we all loved the idea, so we sketched out the book there and then. Who did you see as your readership? We originally aimed at practitioners and students, but as the book grew we also hoped it might be seen by academics as a go-to book on their bookshelves. We didn’t originally intend for it to be so big, but as we kept on brainstorming what we would want to be included, we ended up with the audacious goal of producing a book that covered almost everything. And the book covers a lot of ground from a variety of perspectives. How did you set about bringing it all together? We tried to strike a balance between helping people understand neuroscience and its role in criminal behaviour and giving them ideas about how to put this knowledge into practice. There are many areas of criminal behaviour that have not particularly been explored before through a neuroscientific lens (e.g. burglary), and we really enjoyed finding people who were up for the challenge of thinking this through. Along the way, we identified some real ethical, legal and political issues and so we decided to include formal chapters on these issues too. Quite a task… what does neuroscience say about burglars? People convicted of acquisitive offences such as burglary make up the bulk of any ‘offender’ population. General accounts of neurological impairment and impulsivity,

including brain injury, ADHD and substance misusing parents, can legitimately be applied to how such offenders are overly drawn to behaviour they associate with immediate reward. So, how long was the book in the making? Over three years, even longer since we first had the idea. Getting authors to agree to contribute and getting the chapters in were truly high points, as were seeing the proofs for the first time. Reading the chapters was intellectually stimulating, and we all learned a lot. But editing for consistency was a somewhat low point. Our authors came from a mix of settings, and the style of the submitted chapters varied as a result. That always seems to be a difficult task in edited volumes – achieving a degree of consistency while retaining individual voices. And then you needed to ensure accessibility for a wide readership too… Yes. We divided the work according to expertise and often worked in pairs as editors, drawing on our relative expertise as academics and practitioners, forensic and neuroscience. We were all starting from very different places in terms of our knowledge of the subject. For instance, Pia is a highly respected and well-connected neuroscientist but is not familiar with applied forensic settings. Ruth on the other hand has worked in prisons and rehabilitation policy for over 30 years but had practically no knowledge of neuroscience and often found the terminology to be rather inaccessible. Ruth saw herself as our yardstick for deciding when sufficient accessibility had been achieved, but we had a lot of interesting discussions about when a chapter was or wasn’t likely to be accessible enough to non-neuroscientists. We tried to get the authors to use minimal scientific jargon, and to write assuming a very basic knowledge of the topic. All were asked to provide explicit suggestions on the translation and application of the knowledge shared in the field. Perhaps a big ask, but could you distil the book’s main message into one short paragraph? There is clear neuroscience evidence to suggest that offenders and non-offenders perceive and react to their environment in a different way. In other words, their brains process information differently. These differences emerge through a complex interaction of genetic and internal and external environmental factors. Understanding how neuroscientific features contribute to criminal behaviour will improve our ability to understand and work with individuals who have committed crime.

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the

psychologist

AZ to

...is for Xenophobia

Suggested by Richard Bentall, University of Shefﬁeld @RichardBentall

A November 2009 article on parasites by Justin H. Park and Mark Schaller highlighted a surprising finding: that women in the first term of pregnancy – whose bodies are naturally immunosuppressed – show especially high levels of xenophobia and ethnocentrism. In his Presidential Address published in the June 2017 issue, Peter Kinderman admitted ‘we could have done more to condemn xenophobia and falsehoods, hatefilled political rhetoric, increasing inequality, threats to social inclusion and humanitarian principles’.

In his November 2016 article on ‘zombie

Karla Novak

‘In a world of mass migration, xenophobia – a socialpsychological phenomenon – is an increasing challenge to the political and economic stability of nations.’

coming soon… we take a look at brain, heart and gut, with Sarah Garﬁnkel and John Cryan; plus all our usual news, views, reviews, interviews, and much more...

psychology’, Roger Luckhurst recalled how one of the early zombie ﬁlms, 1936’s Revolt of the Zombies, played on American xenophobia about Chinese immigration – ending with images of a long-dead Asian army re-awoken from sleep and inexorably advancing. Is how prone you are to disgust linked to xenophobia? Nick Haslam considered the evidence in his (enduringly popular) June 2012 article on ‘toilet psychology’.

A to Z Entries so far are collated at https:// thepsychologist. bps.org.uk/ psychology-z

contribute… reach 50,000 colleagues, with something to suit all. See www.thepsychologist.org.uk/ contribute or talk to the editor, Dr Jon Sutton, jon.sutton@bps.org.uk, +44 116 252 9573 comment… email the editor, the Leicester ofﬁce, or tweet @psychmag to advertise… reach a large and professional audience at bargain rates: see details on inside front cover

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

Find out more online at www.bps.org.uk

President Professor Kate Bullen Vice President Nicola Gale Honorary General Secretary Dr Carole Allan Honorary Treasurer Professor Ray Miller Chair, Membership and Standards Board Dr Mark Forshaw Chair, Education and Public Engagement Board Professor Carol McGuinness Chair, Research Board Professor Daryl O’Connor Chair, Professional Practice Board Alison Clarke

Chief Executive Sarb Bajwa Director of Policy Kathryn Scott Director of Corporate Services Mike Laffan Director of Member Services Annjanette Wells (Acting)

society notices

society vacancies

Director of Communications Rachel Dufton (Interim)

Qualitative Methods in Psychology and History & Philosophy of Psychology Sections Joint Annual Conference Cardiff, 3–5 July 2019 See p.4 CPD workshops 2019 See p.20 Division of Clinical Psychology Annual Conference Manchester, 23–24 January 2019 See p.49 Division of Forensic Psychology Annual Conference Liverpool, 18–20 June 2019 See p.50 BPS Annual Conference Harrogate, 1–2 May 2019 See p.56 Division of Neuropsychology 20th Anniversary Conference London, 24–25 January 2019 See p.60 BPS conferences and events See p.61

BPS President 2020/21 See advert p.14 Safeguarding Advisory Group, Chair and Members See advert p.57

The Society has offices in Belfast, Cardiff, Glasgow and London, as well as the main office in Leicester. All enquiries should be addressed to the Leicester office (see inside front cover for address).

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

Open Courses 2019 The Association for Psychological Therapies (APT) is a leading provider of training in mental health and related areas. The majority of our training is provided onsite (we come to you) but for a few of our courses you can come to us in Leicester (about an hour by train from: London, Birmingham, and Sheffield).

Date

Course Title

Price (excl. VAT)

Various dates

Extended Training in DBT (10-days)

£1,375

1-day courses:

14-16 Jan 2019

Running DBT Skills-Development Groups

£450

04-06 Feb 2019

DBT Essentials

£450

12-13 Feb 2019

Providing Good Clinical Supervision

£325

zŽƵ ĐĂŶ ĂƩĞŶĚ ŝŶĚŝǀŝĚƵĂů ĚĂǇƐ for the majority of our open ĐŽƵƌƐĞƐ͘ &Žƌ ŵŽƌĞ ŝŶĨŽƌŵĂƟŽŶ see www.apt.ac/open

27-01 Mar 2019

CBT Essentials

£450

04-07 Mar 2019

The DBT Masterclass

£575

What’s included:

13-15 Mar 2019

Motivational Interviewing and The Stages of Change

£450

18-20 Mar 2019

DBT Essentials

£450

21-22 Mar 2019

Mental Health Awareness for Teachers in Primary Schools

£325

26-28 Mar 2019

ACT Essentials (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy)

£450

02-04 Apr 2019

CFT Essentials (Compassion-Focused Therapy)

£450

• • • • • •

10-12 Jun 2019

Running DBT Skills-Development Groups

£450

18-20 Jun 2019

SFT Essentials (Solution-Focused Therapy)

£450

24-26 Jun 2019

DBT Essentials

£450

16-19 Sep 2019

The DBT Masterclass

£575

17-19 Sep 2019

DBT Essentials

£450

24-26 Sep 2019

IPT Essentials (Interpersonal Psychotherapy)

£450

ŽīĞĞ ŽŶ ĂƌƌŝǀĂů͘ Lunch and refreshments. Course workbook. dƵŝƟŽŶ͘ ĞƌƟĮĐĂƟŽŶ͘ WdͲĂĐĐƌĞĚŝƚĂƟŽŶ ĂŶĚ access to post course resources.

APT Tutors: APT tutors are senior mental health professionals (Consultant Clinical Psychologists or similar), have a very good academic knowledge, ĂŶĚ ĂŶ ĂƉƟƚƵĚĞ ĨŽƌ ƉƌĞƐĞŶƟŶŐ ŝŶĨŽƌŵĂƟŽŶ ŝŶ Ă ǁĂǇ ƚŚĂƚ ŵĂŬĞƐ ŝƚ ŝŶƚĞƌĞƐƟŶŐ ĂŶĚ ƌĞůĞǀĂŶƚ͘ dŚĞǇ ƌŽƵƟŶĞůǇ ƌĞĐĞŝǀĞ ŽƵƚƐƚĂŶĚŝŶŐ feedback from course delegates.

01-03 Oct 2019

CBT Essentials

£450

08-10 Oct 2019

Motivational Interviewing and The Stages of Change

£450

04-06 Nov 2019

DBT Essentials

£450

12-13 Nov 2019

Providing Good Clinical Supervision

£325

12-14 Nov 2019

MoodMaster

£1,000 incl. VAT

Find out more, or book, at:

19-21 Nov 2019

The DICES® Risk Assessment and Management System

£450

25-27 Nov 2019

Running DBT Skills-Development Groups

£450

www.apt.ac/open

To discuss or book, contact us:

t: 0116 241 8331 e: office@apt.ac APT: applying best psychology to the clinical setting. APT is the UK’s world class provider of training for professionals in mental health and related areas. Over 100,000 professionals have attended APT courses.

The Association for Psychological Therapies