The Psychologist May 2017 by The Psychologist

the

the psychologist

psychologist may 2017

may 2017

Minds run free Christian Jarrett and Ella Rhodes

www.thepsychologist.org.uk

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07/04/2017 12:21

the

the psychologist

psychologist may 2017

may 2017

contact The British Psychological Society 48 Princess Road East Leicester LE1 7DR 0116 254 9568 mail@bps.org.uk www.bps.org.uk the psychologist and research digest www.thepsychologist.org.uk www.bps.org.uk/digest www.jobsinpsychology.co.uk psychologist@bps.org.uk Twitter: @psychmag Download our iOS/Android apps advertising Reach 50,000+ psychologists at very reasonable rates. CPL, 1 Cambridge Technopark Newmarket Road Cambridge CB5 8PB recruitment Matt Styrka 01223 378 005 matt.styrka@cpl.co.uk display Michael Niskin 01223 378 045 michael.niskin@cpl.co.uk april 2017 issue 46,560 dispatched design concept Darren Westlake www.TUink.co.uk cover Eliza Southwood www.elizasouthwood.com printed by Warners Midlands plc on 100 per cent recycled paper issn 0952-8229 (print) 2398-1598 (online) © Copyright for all published material is held by the British Psychological Society unless speciﬁcally stated otherwise. As the Society is a party to the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) agreement, articles in The Psychologist may be copied by libraries and other organisations under the terms of their own CLA licences (www.cla.co.uk). Permission must be obtained for any other use beyond fair dealing authorised by copyright legislation. For further information about copyright and obtaining permissions, e-mail permissions@bps.org.uk.

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Minds run free Christian Jarrett and Ella Rhodes

www.thepsychologist.org.uk

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

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

Associate Editors Articles Michael Burnett, Paul Curran, Harriet Gross, Rebecca Knibb, Adrian Needs, Paul Redford, Sophie Scott, Mark Wetherell, Jill Wilkinson Conferences Alana James History of Psychology Alison Torn Interviews Gail Kinman Culture Kate Johnstone, Sally Marlow Books Emily Hutchinson, Rebecca Stack International panel Vaughan Bell, Uta Frith, Alex Haslam, Elizabeth Loftus, Asifa Majid The Psychologist and Digest Editorial Advisory Committee Catherine Loveday (Chair), Emma Beard, Phil Banyard, Helen Galliard, Harriet Gross, Rowena Hill, Stephen McGlynn, Peter Olusoga, Richard Stephens

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psychologist may 2017

Illustrations by Nick Ellwood www.nickellwood.co.uk

02 Letters 10 News

22 A scientific strategy for life chances Michael S.C. Thomas on the cognitive neuroscience of socio-economic status

30 Gandhi addresses the British 56 One on one… Psychological Society …with new Society President Narinder Kapur imagines a talk Nicola Gale

38 Caution: Identity under construction Pam Jarvis on adolescents and social networks 44 ‘Why can’t we speak to the deepest issues of meaning, love and loss?’ Kal Kseib meets Steven Hayes 50 M inds run free Christian Jarrett and Ella Rhodes with scientific and personal perspectives on running

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Careers 62 Fiona McClean, plus featured job and the latest vacancies Books 68 Reviews, Q+As, ‘what to read…’ Culture 78

86 Looking back Natalie Bigbie and Nils Muhlert on Britain’s first full-time Professor of Psychology

A to Z

I’ve been a fairly keen runner all my life, although never again scaling the dizzy heights of ‘First U13’ in the 1986 Wokingham 10K. But I’ve never put much thought into the psychological side of it: as the writer Haruki Murakami has said, ‘I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void.’ Thankfully, many psychologists have more interesting things to say: from a research perspective, and also speaking as runners themselves. You’ll find our cover feature on p.50, and if you are attending the Society’s Annual Conference in Brighton in May, do join us for a gentle jog along the seafront on the Thursday morning. You’ll also find our ‘Guide to Healthy Living’ with this issue: please help us get it to those who might appreciate it. If you go the distance this month, you’ll hopefully find much of interest along the way, including the new Society President Nicola Gale (p.56), Narinder Kapur on Gandhi, and our latest ‘Books’ section. Dr Jon Sutton Managing Editor @psychmag

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A lot on their plate C

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ritics have been finding increasing numbers of anomalies in the research of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab, which specialises in changing eating and drinking behaviours. Professor Brian Wansink’s lab is known for its media-friendly results and was given a $5.5 million grant from the US Department of Agriculture to support its Smarter Lunchroom programme, which is now used in more than 30,000 schools in the country. Wansink’s troubles started late last year after he posted a blog piece titled ‘The Grad Student Who Never Said No’ that seemed to support questionable research practices such as ‘p-hacking’. He described giving a graduate student the data set from a study on eating behaviour at an all-you-can-eat buffet: ‘I gave her a data set of a self-funded, failed study which had null results… I said, “This cost us a lot of time and our own money to collect. There’s got to be something here we can salvage because it’s a cool (rich & unique) data set.”’ This data set was used in four later papers and, largely thanks to the above blog post, their results have come under increased scrutiny. Nick Brown, a graduate student at the University of Groningen, and James Heathers (Northeastern University) developed Granularity-Related Inconsistency of Means (GRIM), a

mathematical approach that can distinguish whether averages reported in journal articles are consistent with sample sizes and items within a study. Jordan Anaya, an independent researcher, later turned GRIM into a computer program to easily check papers for possible errors. He used this method to look through Wansink’s work and found around 150 inconsistencies across the four papers written using the buffet data set. He, Brown, and Tim van der Zee, a graduate student (Leiden University) published the paper ‘Statistical heartburn: An attempt to digest four pizza publications from the Cornell Food and Brand Lab’. Writing on his blog van der Zee said that he had found ‘34 publications from Wansink which are alleged to contain minor to very serious issues’, while Anaya has uncovered multiple inconsistencies in the papers (usually his own) Wansink cites. Anaya went as far as to write on his blog: ‘If you were to go into the lab and create someone that perfectly embodied all the problems science is currently facing you couldn’t do better than Brian Wansink.’ In February, Wansink took to the lab’s website to announce ‘a full review of studies in question, preparing comprehensive data which will be shared and establishing

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the psychologist may 2017 news

First ever study into how spaceflight changes brain structure

For an in-depth review of the case, including an interview with Wansink, see Tom Bartlett’s article in the Chronicle of Higher Education: tinyurl.com/kufe4fd

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Tim Sanders

new standards for future operations at the lab which will include how we respond to requests for research information’. An updated statement in March noted: ‘Since this review work [on the four disputed papers] began in mid-February, a few new claims about my research have been made that are not quite as substantial, and can be responded to much more quickly. Distilled, I have been accused of reusing portions of my own work in later papers on the same or related topics. The observation is, of course, true… In every instance, I reprised portions of my earlier work to underscore or expand on its conclusions, and to continue to advance this field of research pioneered by the Food and Brand Lab that is relied upon by people around the world to lead healthier and happier lives.’ We contacted Cornell University for a comment on whether the lab would be formally investigated but received no reply. er

Travelling in space can play havoc with the human mind. Because of microgravity, astronauts frequently experience weird sensory effects, such as the world suddenly appearing upside down. Even their ability to rotate objects in their mind’s eye is sometimes affected. A new study in Microgravity is the first to explore the structural brain changes caused by spaceflight that may contribute to, or reflect, these and other sensory and cognitive effects. Vincent Koppelmans and his colleagues, including Jacob Bloomberg at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, compared brain scans taken of 27 astronauts before a space mission with a second scan taken once they were back on earth. The results revealed a mix of shrinkage and enlargement across the brain. There were widespread reductions in grey matter as well as some more localised increases in grey matter in regions that are involved in sensory processing and motor control. Thirteen of the scanned astronauts had taken part in shuttle missions lasting around two weeks, the others had visited the International Space Station for a period of around six months. The pre-mission scans were conducted a median of 194 days before the mission, usually after a significant amount of astronaut training had already been completed, which helps reduce, but not eliminate, the possibility that any observed brain changes were caused by training rather than spaceflight. The postmission scans were taken between one and 20 days after landing back home. On average, after experiencing spaceflight, the astronauts’ brains had shrunk in various frontal and temporal regions and in the cerebellum (a region at the back of the brain involved in coordination, among other things). This is fairly similar to what’s been found in a previous study of the effects of 70 days’ bed rest on brain structure, which was intended to be an approximate simulation of microgravity. Koppelmans and his colleagues think these widespread grey matter reductions – which were more extensive in astronauts who’d spent longer in space – might be caused by the way that microgravity leads to increased fluid pressure in the brain leading to a gradual upward shift of the brain’s centre of mass in the skull Meanwhile, there were also some more localised areas in which brain volume appeared to have increased, on average, including in parts of the parietal lobe, which are involved in motor control. This might reflect changes to brain structure involved in the astronauts’ adaptation to a microgravity environment. This study marks a useful start in understanding how spaceflight affects the brain, which in turn could inform counter-measures to help astronauts cope with microgravity during flight and then adapt to life back on earth. However, the researchers acknowledge that many methodological drawbacks make the results speculative. Dr Christian Jarrett for www.bps.org.uk/digest Read the full article: tinyurl.com/lv6tw2m

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A new generation of thinkers This year’s New Generation Thinkers have been announced by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. These 10 academics, all at the start of their careers, will have their research made into TV and radio programmes on the BBC – with much to interest psychologists. For the first time, the scheme will this year be joining up with BBC Four, where some of the academics will be given the opportunity to present a full-length TV programme. Applicants were invited to show how their research could be presented to a broad audience, and this year’s shortlisted topics cover a wide spectrum of arts and humanities.

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Some have personal connections to their subjects, including a study on gang culture from a former youth worker, and an examination of government surveillance from a former marine. Others, although rooted in history, remain acutely resonant today: the role of children in war, the job of press attachés, the reception of Shakespeare and Milton in the Middle East, how music might be used for its health benefits and the ethics of population change. Among the researchers named were Emma Butcher (University of Hull), whose research investigates children’s experiences and responses to war in the 19th century, including the writings of the Brontës. With their

own voices in journals and letters she will tell the stories of children through an original lens. Daisy Fancourt, from the Royal College of Music and Imperial College London, examines the effects of the arts on neuroendocrine and immune response and the use of the music within clinical settings, and the impact of arts and cultural engagement on public health. She also works with the NHS designing arts and clinical innovations programmes. Her award-winning research is now involved in exploring how drumming can reduce anxiety, maternal singing can reduce postnatal depression, being in a choir can improve immune function in cancer patients and attending a concert can reduce stress hormones. Alistair Fraser from the University of Glasgow, who researches issues of youth and crime in a global context, will focus on representations and realities of youth gangs in three very different cities: Glasgow, Chicago and Hong Kong. He will probe the nature and impact of gang myths – in courtrooms, the media and the street – questioning the social and legal consequences of gang stereotypes for young people. As well as his scholarly research, Alistair has carried out a long-term study of gangs in Glasgow working as a youth worker and high school tutor. Chief Executive of the AHRC, Professor Andrew Thompson, said:

‘This scheme is all about helping the next generation of academics to find new and wider audiences for their research by giving them a platform to share their ideas and allowing them to have the space to challenge our thinking. More than ever we need the new insights and knowledge that come from arts and humanities researchers to help us to navigate through the complexities of our globalised world and address the moral and ethical challenges of today and tomorrow. The range of subjects covered by the 2017 New Generation Thinkers is really exciting. Their projects speak directly to so many of the debates that dominate the airwaves and national conversations.’ er

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Is it time to rethink drug education programmes? Academically successful children are more likely to drink alcohol and smoke cannabis in their teenage years than their less academic peers. That’s according to a study of over 6000 young people in England published recently in BMJ Open by researchers at UCL. While the results may sound surprising, they shouldn’t be. The finding is in fact consistent with earlier research that showed a relationship between higher childhood IQ and the use in adolescence of a wide range of illegal drugs. James Williams and Gareth Hagger-Johnson categorised their participants as high or low academic achievers based on their record at age 11 in English, maths and science. Once in their teens, the high-ability participants were more than twice as likely to regularly drink alcohol, but less likely to smoke cigarettes or engage in hazardous consumption of alcohol, defined as reporting being drunk more than 52 times per year. The higher-ability students also smoked cannabis more during late adolescence, both regular and occasional use; the likelihood that their use would continue persistently was nearly double that of their lower ability peers. These new results jibe with evidence from the 1970 British Cohort Study which has followed over 16,000 babies born in April 1970 from birth to the present day. An analysis published in 2011 of eligible members of this cohort found that high IQ scores at 10 years of age were linked to cannabis use at 16 years of age as well as cannabis, cocaine, amphetamine and ecstasy use at 30 years of age. This pattern held after taking account of parents’ social class, income and education and children’s levels of psychological distress during adolescence and their later adult socioeconomic advantage, though it’s difficult to rule out the role these factors may have played. These studies only show correlations and they don’t tell us why the patterns exist. One possible explanation is that intelligent children have an increased desire for novelty and stimulation. Intelligence has long been known to correlate with openness to new experiences, it could well be that the same forces that motivate intelligent people to learn about their environment also motivate them to use drugs. But the fact that the academic ability/ drug-taking relationship in the new BMJ Open study was strongest for persistent use of alcohol and cannabis would suggest that this is not simply down to intelligent children having a tendency towards a short period of ‘experimentation’. An alternative explanation put forward by the researchers behind the 2011 cohort study is that

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intelligent children often feel stigmatised by their peers. Perhaps higher levels of drug and alcohol use could be a coping strategy to being bullied or ostracised. Conversely, perhaps intelligent children are in fact more socially adept and therefore more likely to be accepted by older children, resulting in increased access to drugs and alcohol. Yet another explanation is that intelligent and welleducated children and adults may be more likely to recognise that the risks of consuming drugs and alcohol are often widely overstated. Several studies have found very high levels of drug use among doctors and medical students, who should have a far better understanding of the true risks of using drugs than the wider population. It’s also possible that children see through more simplistic attempts to dissuade them from consuming drugs and alcohol, and it is perhaps fair to assume that this effect would be stronger for more intelligent and better educated children. Several studies of alcohol and drug education programmes in the United States have found these schemes to have no effect. One carefully controlled longitudinal study even found a harmful effect of the Drug Abuse Resistance Education programme, famed for popularising the ‘Just Say No’ mantra – children in suburban schools who received the programme subsequently showed increased levels of drug use. The new research adds further weight to the argument that drug education programmes would likely be more beneficial if they were more educational and evidence-based. This could include an emphasis on the increased risks to developing brains from consuming drugs and alcohol at an early age, and advice focused on harm-reduction so that young people who do choose to use drugs are better equipped to do so safely. A better metric for the success of drug education strategies may be the rate of harm caused as a result of drug and alcohol use. While drug use in the UK has fallen over recent years, numbers of drug deaths have risen, heavily driven by opiate deaths. The combined evidence suggests a need to take a step back and assess the effectiveness, long-term impacts and possible unintended side-effects of existing strategies to guide children’s choices. Simon Oxenham for the BPS Research Digest: see www.bps.org.uk/digest. Simon covers psychology and neuroscience critically in his Brain Scanner column at New Scientist. Read the article: tinyurl.com/kzudzln

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Five minutes with… David Halpern The Behavioural Insight’s Team, a social purpose company set up by the UK government to apply behavioural science to policy, has recently released a new hiring tool, Applied. The platform aims to remove the bias inherent to hiring by removing the use of CVs and rather asks potential employees questions related to a specific role; their answers to these questions are anonymised and rated by people within a given company or organisation. Ella Rhodes spoke to Dr David Halpern, Chief Executive of the team, psychology graduate and one of those behind the creation of Applied [see also tinyurl.com/halpern0611]. Where did Applied emerge from? The Behavioural Insights Team was created to identify certain problems which have a certain especially strong behavioural or cognitive elements to them and see if we can figure out solutions. Sometimes that takes us to legislation or trials, but in some cases we think the answer is a product or service. Applied was one of those issues. We were drawn into it by the previous and current Prime Ministers around issues of discrimination and disadvantage. The Behavioural Insights Team was also growing very rapidly as an organisation and having to do a lot of recruitment; we were intrigued by the question of ‘What would good look like?’ from a hiring perspective. What are some of the biases and weaknesses in the hiring process? I used to lecture on this and was struck by the low predictive validity of most of the selection techniques which are used. The conventional unstructured interviews rarely achieve acceptable predictive validity, and then there’s lots of more specific concerns around gender or race discrimination. When people are doing selection they think they’re weighting many different dimensions, but in fact they often collapse on one or two dimensions and converge on an answer about a candidate much too rapidly. Tools that are better at prediction are those which incorporate work samples, an actual sample that’s behaviourally close to what the actual job will be.

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How does Applied work and how is it different? A key element of the Applied platform is it does something called chunking. So if you want to ask a series of questions about whether someone will be a good journalist for The Psychologist magazine, for example, you need to ask what would be the questions that are close to work samples? What are the questions and skills you’d want to know about? Once you have the answers to those questions they are bundled anonymously and you have groups of raters who rate each answer separately. They don’t see only one person’s answers… they see a string of answers to the same question and rate how good, or not, each one is. If you handle your first question in an interview really well or really badly that can overshadow the rest of the interview, but chunking can remove that problem.

How have you looked into the effectiveness of the technique? We realised we had to run this as a trial for ourselves and see if it performed better. This for me was a key bit of evidence, and whether we progressed it depended on the results of that. We were doing a recruitment exercise to the Behavioural Insights Team with about 800 applicants; we ran two different processes, one using the thenprototype Applied platform to see how it would perform, the other was a conventional CV sift. The candidates then go to a series of very detailed interviews and other processes, and the question is, which group of candidates did better? Applied performed much better than a conventional CV sift. We brought through candidates who wouldn’t have made the cut based on their CVs alone, and went on to appoint them on the basis of using Applied. What does the future hold for the Behavioural Insights Team? We continue to put a steady stream of new results out into the field and we’re moving beyond the nuts-and-bolts issues, like what’s the most appropriate letter to make someone pay their tax on time, to much bigger, so-called wicked issues. The BIT has also been shortlisted to win the MacArthur Prize of $100 million working with David Miliband’s group (the International Rescue Committee) and Sesame Street, in developing educational content for refugee children and their parents and caregivers in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Hopefully other psychologists are encouraged that psychology is finding its way into policy in a way it hasn’t done before. To find out more about Applied see tinyurl.com/kbatd3p

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Spearman Medal winners This year’s Spearman Medal winners have been announced, Dr Rachael Jack and Dr Claire Haworth have both been recognised for their outstanding published work in psychology. Jack (University of Glasgow) has conducted a significant body of research on emotion communication across cultures, particularly facial expressions. As well as having her work published in various highimpact journals, National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal, New Scientist and Time magazine among others, Dr Jack’s work has received several international awards and featured in the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition 2015. In response to her award she said: ‘I am absolutely thrilled to receive the Spearman Medal. My greatest thanks goes to the BPS for

Dr Rachael Jack and Dr Claire Haworth

awarding this prize, and especially to Professor Simon Garrod who nominated me. It’s a great honour to join such a stellar list of previous winners, many of whom have inspired and shaped the field. I hope that my work will inspire the new generation of researchers, and encourage wider participation in psychological science.’ Haworth (University of Bristol) has to date 85 publications in highimpact journals and has been cited more than 4000 times for her research in behavioural genetics. Her most recent work has focused on mental health and psychological wellbeing in adolescence and young adulthood. She has also provided expert opinion in documentaries for the BBC, as well as appearing on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, Sky News and the BBC’s World Service and world news. She said: ‘I am absolutely delighted to have been awarded the BPS Spearman Medal and honoured to be listed amongst such inspirational previous winners. I am extremely grateful to my colleagues and mentors for their support during my career, and to the BPS for recognising the importance of our work on the dynamic nature of genetic and environmental influence.’

Doctoral research award This year’s British Psychological Society award for Outstanding Doctoral Research Contributions to Psychology has been awarded to Dr Anne-Lise Goddings, who looks into the effect of puberty on the human brain. She studied for her doctorate at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and UCL Institute of Child Health. Dr Goddings has been described as an exceptional and dedicated researcher who has made a highly significant contribution to adolescent cognitive neuroscience through her PhD. Her work has already led to seven papers in high-impact journals

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and a book chapter, and she has presented at several international meetings. Goddings said: ‘It is a real honour to receive this prestigious award. I am extremely grateful to both my PhD supervisors, Professor SarahJayne Blakemore and Professor Russell Viner, for their inspirational support and training, and to all my collaborators and fellow researchers. I look forward to continuing my research in my new NIHR Clinical Lecturer role at the UCL Institute of Child Health, investigating how chronic disease impacts on the developing adolescent brain.’

Professional practice awards Anne Cooke, Clinical Director of the clinical psychology programme at Canterbury Christ Church University, is to receive the British Psychological Society’s Practitioner of the Year Award 2017. The award recognises in particular her publicfacing work to make available goodquality information about mental health. Most recently she edited the Society’s major public information report Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia, leading a group of eminent contributors drawn from eight universities and six NHS trusts, together with people who had experienced psychosis. The document is used in countries worldwide: together with its predecessor, Understanding Bipolar Disorder, to which Cooke also contributed, it has been credited with helping increase public understanding of these mental health problems and of what can help. Cooke continues to promote the key messages of Understanding Psychosis to professionals, service users, carers and the public at home and abroad. She is also engaged with colleagues in the ‘Discursive of Tunbridge Wells’ project, opening up debates about key issues in mental health and clinical psychology via a blog site and a series of podcasts. She said: ‘I am delighted to receive this award which recognises the work that colleagues and I have been doing to make available good public information about mental health, and to ensure that the public conversation is informed by a psychosocial perspective. I am particularly proud to be doing this work in collaboration not only with other psychologists but also with people who have personal experience of the issues concerned. I would like to dedicate this award to the many service users and survivors I have met in the course of my career, whose perspectives have challenged me and have hugely influenced my ideas about psychosis, about mental health more generally, and about how clinical psychologists can be best be useful.’ Meanwhile, Dr Joanna North has won the Society’s Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in Practice for 2017. A researching psychologist, psychotherapist and Associate Fellow and Chartered member of the Society, Dr North set up an Ofsted Registered adoption support agency to serve the South West of England and local authorities across the UK in 2006. Over the last decade she has provided services to adoptive families throughout the UK, enabling them to continue to care for their children and give security and permanency to their lives. By offering solutions for managing children that encourage hope and self-efficacy, Dr North aims to gives adoptive parents confidence and the capacity to remain involved throughout the child’s life and beyond. Dr North said: ‘It is very encouraging to receive this award and I am grateful for this recognition of my work by The Board. The agency goes from strength to strength and will continue to serve the community of adoptive parents.’

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Research digest People with higher working memory ability but poor attentional control suffer more from ‘brain freeze’ – they tend to struggle with mental tasks when they are put under pressure. A new study in Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition suggests this is because anxiety consumes their extra working memory capacity preventing them from relying on their usual advanced mental strategies. Numerous meta-analyses suggest that psychotherapy tends to be effective for most people, but a new ‘umbrella review’ of 247 of these meta-analyses, published in Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, has found that many have important problems and that only 16 provided ‘convincing evidence’ for psychotherapy’s effectiveness. Part of the issue seems to be a tendency for negative findings to remain unpublished. There may be a psychological case for paying female managers more money or giving them more free time. A German survey published in the Journal of Happiness Studies found that it takes an extra €12,000 to enhance female managers’ life satisfaction by the same amount that men gain from an extra €5,000, but that women managers’ happiness was enhanced more than men’s by having extra time off. Echolocation is the ability to use sounds bounced off objects and people to detect their location. Some of us find it easier to learn than others. Researchers examined various mental abilities, including working memory and spatial skills, in sighted participants to see which, if any, correlated with their ability to learn to echolocate. The results, in Experimental Brain Research, showed only attentional skills seemed relevant. Taking a selfie can shrink your written signature – but only if you don’t then post it on social media. That’s according to a study in the Journal of Personality and Individual Differences, which used signature size as an indirect measure of self-esteem. By Dr Christian Jarrett. These studies were covered, along with many more, by him and Dr Alex Fradera on our Research Digest at www.bps.org.uk/digest 16

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Young Global Leader An expert on moral decision-making and altruism has been named one of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders of 2017. Associate Professor of Experimental Psychology Molly Crockett (University of Oxford), joins more than 800 socially minded young leaders from both the business and academic worlds. This year’s leaders, all selected before the age of 40, were chosen for their outstanding contributions to society. The community of Young Global Leaders has a number of aims, to operate as a force for good by turning individual or collective solutions to global or local challenges and to build a community of peers with diverse talents to achieve more together than they could separately, indeed Crockett has already made potentially important networks for her own work. She told The Psychologist: ‘I feel very honoured to be part of that community. I’ve already met several Young Global Leaders whose work could be very complementary to some of my projects, and I hope some of these connections will help to take the research in my lab in a new direction.’ The aim of these Young Global Leaders is to affect worldwide change, and social psychology, Crockett said, has huge potential to do this. Crockett explained: ‘One piece of evidence that’s recently come to light is that policy-makers have very much listened to economists over the years, designing policy around their theories. But many models in economics aren’t accurate reflections of how humans behave. Psychologists have a really important job to do in bringing evidence of how people behave to policy makers.’ Crockett’s lab explores social decision-making and how people make decisions and learn about the characters of others in social interactions. A lot of their work focuses on whether people would benefit themselves over someone else and how group membership affects these processes, something that is particularly relevant today, Crockett said: ‘We’re seeing a lot of polarisation in the world between different political groups. The divide between liberals and conservatives is wider than it’s ever been before. We’re trying to understand why this happens and what can be done to stop it.’ Currently Crockett and her team are looking into the brain processes that support moral decision-making and representations of values in the brain, and whether these are sensitive to moral consequences. She explained: ‘We want to see if you get a reward for an ethically dubious action whether this changes its representation in the brain. We’re also looking into how we form beliefs about the trustworthiness of other people. Another early-stage project is trying to understand the causes and consequences of moral outrage online – in many ways it seems we’re developing technology faster than we can understand its effects on human behaviour.’ er

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Understanding the psychology of a crisis Where is psychology’s role in the aftermath of major disasters? This was the question posed at a recent British Psychological Society Crisis, Disaster and Trauma Section conference, which included talks on the part played by Family Liaison Officers following the Shoreham Airshow crash and the deep psychological impacts of flooding. Pete McCarthy, a European Association for Aviation Psychology human factors specialist, who has also worked for 25 years as a helicopter pilot, witnessed crashes and lost colleagues in the early parts of his career, and he started to look to psychology to find out why people make mistakes. McCarthy, now an academic at Cranfield University who has also worked within air accident investigations, said aviation relied on psychology to train its people. In the early days of aviation, accidents tended to be blamed on technology, but with improvements humans now often carry the can. Rather than attributing blame, McCarthy said, it’s important to understand what was different for those pilots on the day of the accident compared with other days. Humans can often be the saviours when accidents or faults do happen – remember the pilot who successfully ditched in the Hudson River – so as McCarthy summed up, all the things that make humans fallible often make them brilliant. As an investigator, McCarthy has to understand how memory, attention, human information processing, perception, behaviour, personality and situational awareness can go awry. Increasingly these days, he added, we have to consider the human–technology relationship – pilots tend to be monitoring systems rather than actively working with instruments, and this can lead to complacency. Culture is essential to understanding accidents as

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well: McCarthy said the behaviours of pilots are driven by deep-rooted beliefs and attitudes, which can have positive or negative impacts on safety. For example, the response to the Fukushima nuclear meltdown has been blamed on a traditional Japanese ‘deference to authority’ making the situation worse. This increasing focus on the human in air accident investigations has benefited the aviation community in a ‘big way’ McCarthy concluded. If we just concentrate on the technical causes of a crash, we can understand what happened and how, he said, but if we think about psychology and human factors we understand why it happened. In a heartfelt talk Detective Constable Louise Pye described her work as a Family Liaison Officer in the aftermath of the Shoreham Airshow crash in August 2015, which killed 11 men. She and 23 fellow officers are still working with the families, and investigations into the incident are ongoing. Although officers who voluntarily work as Family Liaison Officers (FLOs) are very highly trained, Pye said they still were not ready for the disaster. In the first hour following the crash, Pye assembled a team of FLOs who were ready to speak to families. However, she said, there was a careful balance in speaking to families between speed and accuracy. In a disaster like this identification of those who had died took time, and police could only provide families with the facts. She said the incident had tested the team to its extremes in many ways – while all capable officers in their day jobs, many were anxious about whether they could do a good enough job in this case. Pye said that in speaking to families, even if they had a vehicle that had been burnt out, they could not confirm the person had died without forensic evidence, DNA,

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and knowledge of what that person was like in life. It is extremely hard for families to wait for this information: Pye said that people can’t begin the healing process until they know the truth. Further complicating matters was media coverage – social and conventional – showing the crash and its immediate aftermath. Pye said Shoreham, a small place with good community spirit, truly felt the impact of the disaster – many knew someone who had died, or had been in the area at the time. Officers also worked in supporting the community as well. Each of the families affected is still working with the FLO they originally came into contact with, and where there was a choice – for example whether to visit the accident scene – Pye said families were given it. This went as far as to the property of loved ones. Families were asked whether they would like the personal effects, whether they’d like them cleaned or not, and these were delivered in a memory box to be opened when the family was ready. The FLOs in this case worked full-time with families for four weeks and have been working with them ever since. Each devoted huge amounts of time and energy, and Pye said it was a struggle to encourage officers to take time out for themselves in the first few weeks following the disaster. Officers were also encouraged to write things down to be discussed in the eventual debrief throughout the entire process of working with families. Dr James Rubin (King’s College London) has been looking into the psychological effects of flooding as part of a partnership between King’s College London and Public Health England – the National Institute for Health Research’s Health Protection Research Unit in Emergency Preparedness and Response. He explained that flooding has a much deeper impact on those affected than we’d usually think: not only has water entered their houses but many are left without the ability to go to work or school, and local health services can be affected as well as a community as a whole. In one study he and colleagues looked at the effects on flooding between three and six months on, following the 2007 summer floods – the wettest summer since records began. Collecting more than 2000 survey responses from people in South Yorkshire and Worcestershire, Rubin’s team found high levels of distress, anxiety, depression and PTSD in people whose homes had been flooded. The level of the water in the home even made a difference, with higher chances of being distressed if the flood water reached above the skirting boards compared with those who had water below that level – although all are at higher risk of distress compared with controls. In a later study following the flooding around

News online: Find more news at www.thepsychologist.org.uk/reports, including: a report from a Royal Institution event on the idiot brain; the Wellcome Book Prize shortlist; a health and wellbeing at work event; and a preview of the Cheltenham Science Festival. For much more of the latest peerreviewed 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.

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Christmas time in 2013 (the wettest winter in 250 years), Rubin and colleagues, as part of the ongoing English National Cohort Study of Flooding and Health, looked at how the psychological effects of flooding linger. Again more than 2000 people responded to in-depth surveys, revealing that mental health problems are still very high a year after flooding. Similarly to the first study the level of water, the duration of flooding and whether a person was evacuated all contributed to these effects. Rubin suggested these results show that the psychological effects of flooding are significant and could affect large numbers of people – it could be important for healthcare professionals to know whether a person has experienced flooding in order to understand their needs fully. There is also scope for intervention: if water depths in a person’s home can be prevented from rising above a certain level, this could decrease the risk of a person experiencing psychological problems later. er For an interview with Dr Noreen Tehrani, Chair of the British Psychological Society Crisis, Disaster and Trauma Section see www.thepsychologist.org.uk/volume-29/ february/5-minutes

Fellows of the Academy of Social Sciences The Academy of Social Sciences has announced 47 new Fellows, including four psychologists nominated by the British Psychological Society. Professor Paul Bartholomew, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education at Ulster University, was among those nominated by the Society. He is an established leader in the field of higher education curriculum design practice, with a particular focus on enhancing the student learning experience. Internationally recognised expert and methodological leader in psychophysiology Professor Adrian Burgess (Aston University) was also named as a Fellow, he works on the boundary between the social sciences and neuroscience. His work specialises in areas such as the neural correlates of consciousness, as well as the effects of mobile phones on the brain. Chair of Cognitive Psychology (University of Bristol) Professor Stephan Lewandowsky is recognised for his work on human memory, and the understanding of climate change. Recently he has examined the persistence of misinformation in society, and how myths can spread. Patrick Tissington, Professor of Organizational Psychology (Birkbeck, University of London), also became a Fellow after a Society nomination. He is a pioneer in the application of social sciences to the enhancement of working lives, with a particular interest in the development of leaders. Finally Eugene Sadler-Smith, Professor of Organisational Behaviour (University of Surrey) was also named a Fellow. Sadler-Smith is a leading figure in the field of management and organisation studies, most notably through his work in the field of behavioural decision research on intuition. er

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A scientific strategy for life chances Michael S.C. Thomas on the cognitive neuroscience of socio-economic status How much do we know about the impact of socioeconomic status on the brain, and how can that knowledge influence policy dialogues?

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Illustrations by Nick Ellwood www.nickellwood.co.uk

‘W

hen neuroscience’, said David Cameron, ‘shows us the pivotal importance of the first few years of life in determining the adults we become, we must think much more radically about improving family life and the early years.’ It was January 2016, and the Prime Minister was laying out the foundations for his so-called Life Chances Strategy, a plan for ‘how we can transform the life chances of the poorest in our country and offer every child who has had a difficult start the promise of a brighter future’. It was strategy that, by a twist of fate, was due to launch on 24 June 2016, the day after the referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU. The launch was postponed (although see tinyurl.com/j9dshdo).

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the psychologist may 2017 socio-economic status

development, educational achievement and both physical and mental health (Hackman et al., 2010). When children start school, SES-related differences in children’s behaviour and cognitive abilities are already present, and these gaps do not narrow as children proceed through school (Heckman, 2006). Given the effects of SES appear so pervasive, it is somewhat of a surprise to find that the impact on cognitive development is uneven. Hackman and Farah (2009) found that the effects were most marked in language skills, where perhaps a third of the variation was predicted by SES. (Indeed, in one 1995 study in the US, Hart and Risley found that the vocabulary of three-year-olds from professional families was twice as large as those from families on welfare.) The effects Apart from highlighting how quickly things can of SES were also observed in the ‘executive functions’ change in politics, what was notable about David of cognitive control (attention, planning, decisionCameron’s speech was the repeated reference to making) and working memory; in neuroscience. He mentioned these cases SES predicted around 6 the exuberant growth in brain “Growing up in a family per cent of the variance. However, connectivity in the first two years, visuospatial skills showed no effects linking it to a developmental with low SES can lead of SES. window of opportunity. He referred to poorer outcomes in If low SES impacts children’s to the brain in the context of cognitive and emotional cognitive and emotional early parental care and children’s socio-emotional development. He development, educational development, which then affects educational achievement, which evoked the brain in the context achievement and both then impacts subsequent earning of alcoholism and drug addiction, physical and mental potential, together this is a pathway conditions that can seriously for the persistence of poverty across impact on the family environment health” generations. And, by the same in which children are raised. token, disrupting this pathway is an This was no accident. It opportunity to generate social mobility. reflects a growing body of cognitive neuroscience research that has focused on the impact of differences in socio-economic status on cognitive and brain A neuroscience approach development, and in particular the impact of poverty and deprivation. It is a field where scientists must tread The role of neuroscience is to focus on the possible biological mechanisms by which SES has its influence carefully, to avoid making judgements, to avoid taking on child development. Neuroscience has a suite of an overly reductive view of the complex environments methods. For human research, perhaps the most in which children grow up, and to make plain the goal familiar is brain imaging, measuring the structure and of alleviating socio-economic status-related disparities function of the brain. But there are also molecular in children’s development (Raizada & Kishiyama, and cellular methods, study of neural circuits and 2010). And it should be noted that when we consider systems, anatomy, animal models, genetic studies the data, what we will see are partial associations: for example, being on welfare does not always imply lower and computational modelling. Animal models, for instance, provide the opportunity to study the levels of education or child outcomes. effects of dominance hierarchies in the wild; in the lab they allow detailed investigation of the neural underpinnings of phenomena such as the effects of What are the effects of socio-economic status? Socio-economic status (SES) is a concept with multiple early maternal care, nutrition and prenatal versus postnatal stress. dimensions. It refers to a set of related properties of Let’s take an example of a 2015 study using the child’s family and environment revolving around magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with children. economic resources and social status (Hackman & Farah, 2009). The measure usually includes household Noble and her colleagues investigated whether SES correlated with differences in brain structure, in a income, material resources and the education and sample of more than a thousand children in the USA. occupation of parents. Many properties of the They used MRI to measure both the surface area child’s environment vary along with SES, including and thickness of the cortex across children. Cortical the nature of parental care, the level of cognitive surface is influenced by experience-related synaptic stimulation, as well as the risk of exposure to violence pruning and increased myelination that expands the and abuse. Growing up in a family with low SES can surface outward. With this large sample, they were lead to poorer outcomes in cognitive and emotional

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able to show that SES had a small but detectable effect on the variation in the brain’s surface area. The differences were strongest in families with the lowest incomes, rather than being a constant relationship across the SES range. They were also most marked in the temporal and frontal regions of the brain. This pattern fits with SES having stronger effects on language (temporal regions) and executive functions (frontal regions). It may also reflect the fact that these brain regions have the most extended trajectory of development across childhood, so there is more Key sources opportunity for the environment to impact them. Looking at particular brain structures, Noble Hackman D.A., Gallop, R., Evans, G.W. et al. found reliable differences in & Farah, M.J. (2015). Socioeconomic the volume of the hippocampus. status and executive function: The hippocampus is a structure Developmental trajectories and mediation. Developmental Science, 18(5), linked with declarative and 686–702. episodic memory. Parental Hackman, D.A. & Farah, M.J. (2009). education level was significantly Socioeconomic status and the associated with the volume of the developing brain. Trends in Cognitive left hippocampus, a relationship Sciences, 13, 65–73. that was steepest at lower levels of Hackman, D.A., Farah, M.J. & Meaney, M.J. (2010). Socioeconomic status and parental education. the brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Other studies have looked 11, 651– 659. at the function of the brain, for Heckman, J.J. (2006). Skill formation example, measuring electrical and the economics of investing in activity on the scalp. They have disadvantaged children. Science, found subtle differences in the 312(5782), 1900–1902. Noble, K.G., Houston, S.M., Brito, way the brain focuses attention. N.H. et al. (2015). Family income, For example, Stevens et al. (2009) parental education and brain structure showed that when children were in children and adolescents. Nature asked to listen to one sound and Neuroscience, 18, 773–778. ignore another, the brains of the Raizada, R.D.S. & Kishiyama, M.M. children from lower SES families (2010). Effects of socioeconomic status on brain development, and how were less able to screen out cognitive neuroscience may contribute the irrelevant sounds, showing to levelling the playing field. Frontiers in larger electrical responses to the Human Neuroscience, 4(3), 1–11. distracting channel. This was Sapolsky, R.M. (2005). The influence suggestive of deficits in selective of social hierarchy on primate health. attention. Science, 308, 648–652. Shah, A.K., Mullainathan, S. & Shafir, E. (2012). Some consequences of having too little. Science, 338, 682–685. Sheridan, M.A. & McLaughlin, K.A. (2016). Neurobiological models of the impact of adversity on education. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 10, 108–113. Stevens, C., Lauinger, B. & Neville, H. (2009). Differences in the neural mechanisms of selective attention in children from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Developmental Science, 12(4), 634–646. Weaver, I.C.G., Cervoni, N., Champagne, F.A. et al. (2004). Epigenetic programming by maternal behavior. Nature Neuroscience, 7, 847–854.

Full list available in online / app version.

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Causal pathways What are the current explanations of how low SES impacts on development? Causal accounts seek to capture both what is added (stress, childhood adversity experiences) and what is lost (cognitive stimulation) (Sheridan & McLaughlin, 2016). Researchers have distinguished three main biological pathways through which SES effects may influence brain development (Hackman et al., 2010). First, they may influence the child prenatally, such as in the influence on fetal development

of the mother’s stress levels and nutrition during pregnancy. Second, they may affect the way the parents interact with and nurture their children after they are born. Third, they may affect the level of cognitive stimulation, or the richness of children’s experiences, as they grow up. We don’t yet know which of these pathways is most important, whether indeed they may differ across groups (e.g. in rural settings versus urban settings), and the extent to which the relevant pathways depend on the absolute levels of income, education and health factors a child experiences or the relative levels a child experiences compared to other children in their society. Here’s where it gets complicated for researchers. A sensible strategy might be to find out which measure of the child’s environment is the strongest predictor of, say, his or her cognitive ability or language skills. That should tell us which causal pathway is most important. Perhaps it’s prenatal diet. Perhaps it’s the amount of language spoken to the child. Unfortunately, many factors collide in low SES families. A family with low income may have parents with fewer years of education; a home environment may have less structure and fewer resources (toys and books); stressed parents may have less time to spend with their children and interact with them differently (less sensitivity to emotional needs, less verbal communication, more discipline); homes may be in worse neighbourhoods with more pollution; mothers may be more likely to have had low birth weight babies and have become depressed afterwards. If all these factors are correlated, it is hard to discern which is producing the strongest effects on brain and cognitive development. Correlations aren’t the best way to unpick causes. To find out how a system works, it’s best to intervene experimentally. Change one factor and see what else changes. Studies of SES generally only investigate natural variation. This is where animal models have been useful, because aspects like diet, stress and maternal behaviour can be experimentally manipulated. For example, work with rats has explored how moving a rat pup from a mother with low nurturing behaviour (grooming, licking) to a mother with high nurturing behaviour alters the rat’s subsequent stress response as an adult (Weaver et al., 2004). Animal models have their limitations, however. Although animals have dominance hierarchies and can experience stress, these are not quite the same thing as in humans. Human hierarchies are multidimensional and buffered by internal standards (people tend to identify most closely with the hierarchy in which they have the highest rank); stress in a rat is different from the kind of psychosocial stress experienced by families who are struggling economically; and animal models do not offer direct parallels to the development of language and higher-cognitive skills (Sapolsky, 2005).

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the psychologist may 2017 socio-economic status

factors; early parental interactions One recent longitudinal study impact most on children’s socioof the relationship between SES emotional development and and children’s development of 10—12 July 2017 behavioural regulation; cognitive executive function skills (such CHESTER stimulation is the most important as attention and planning) took g are affiliated with the Linehan Institute and Behavioral Tech LLC factor in language development and advantage of the fact that in some then educational outcomes most families, SES can change over time 10—12 July 2017 DBT STEPS-A Curriculum strongly rely on language skills; but (Hackman et al., 2015). When DBT Skills Training the tight correlation CHESTER the child’s everyday experience in this happens, British Isles DBT Training with the Linehan Institute and Behavioral Tech LLC otional Problem between Solving predictors for Adolescents perceiving and interacting with the is broken, and are affiliated Michael S.C. Thomas physical world is enough for robust the more influential factors emerge. is Director, Centre for DBT STEPS-A Curriculum development of visuospatial skills, Here, it seemed that the nature Educational Neuroscience, Emotional Problem Solving for Adolescents is a social emotional learning curriculum deDBT Skills of Training making them insensitive to SES of the settings. early The relationship and Professor Cognitive gh school adolescents in educational DBT STEPS-A between curriculum is designed velop coping strategies and decision making abilities, especially under emotional distress. differences. mother and infant, including the Neuroscience, Birkbeck, Emotional Problem Solving for Adolescents on the skills components of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy that have been shown to be efults and adolescents. There are four primary modules of skills that are taught in DBT mother’ s sensitivity in responding University of London ness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. The focus Course the infant’ s needs, wasDescription of greater m.thomas@bbk.ac.uk PS A are Tiers 1, II and III ofto a multitier or RTI system. DBT Skills Training for Emotional Problem Solving for Adolescents is a social emotional learning curriculum deChallenges importance. Indeed, high-quality www.educationalneuroscience. signed for middleDBT and high school adolescents in educational settings. The DBT STEPS-A curriculum is designed TEPS A- Curriculum is to provide instructors, teachers , school counsellors, treatment to help adolescents distress. al administrators familiarity with the DBT STEPS-A curriculum. Beyond the difficulties of carrying parent–child interactions have develop coping strategies org.ukand decision making abilities, especially under emotional The curriculum is based on the skills components of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy that have been shown to be efout inthe fective positive, withthe high risk adults and adolescents. There are four primary modules of skills that are taught DBTscience itself, there are been with more to establish four basic elements thatlinked are necessary in implementing curriculum core mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. The focus and Development of DBT STEPS-A , Structure and implementation Issues, Acquisition of also challenges involving, on the resilient outcomes STEPS-A: in children population for DBTwho STEPS A are Tiers 1, II and III of a multitier or RTI system. ills. one hand, interpretation and, on the nevertheless live inThe impoverished and focus of the DBT STEPS A- Curriculum is to provide instructors, teachers , school counsellors, DBT treatment providers and educational administrators familiarity with the DBTother STEPS-A curriculum. cific no prerequisites to attend stressful this 3 day workshop—Open Registrations hand, communication of the research to policy environments. makers. terms of it is important to It (Excl may be, however, thatis designed SES has its effects via training to establish four basic elements that are necessary inIn implementing theinterpretation curriculum ** Price: £875 PP VAT) **The Effectively: Background and Development of DBT STEPS-A , Structure and implementation Issues, Acquisition of in children from distinguish aspects of behaviour multiple pathways. This might be one explanation roup Rates of 4 and over : £800 PP (Excl VAT) Skills and Practice of Skills. ovided with the DBT Skills in for Schools: Training for Emotional Problem Solving for low SES backgrounds that are natural and perhaps theSkills uneven effects observed across cognitive Mazza et al. 2016) and a copy of the presentation and handouts at the workshop Prerequisites protectiveRegistrations adaptations to the environment they find development. Here’ s one hypothetical scenario: the this 3 day workshop—Open Lunch and refreshments provided There is no specific no prerequisites to attend To Register your place click on the link below themselves in, from aspects that are deficits produced higher incidence of some disorders such as ADHD www.regonline.co.uk/STEPS-A-2017 ** Price: £875 PP (Excl VAT) ** by environments with fewer resources. The child in a observed in low SES children is caused by prenatal ** Group Rates of 4 and over : £800 PP (Excl VAT)

Applicants and will be provided with the DBT Skills in Schools: Skills Training for Emotional Problem Solving for zz Dexter-Mazza is a licensed psychologist in the state of Washington a certified Adolescents (Mazza et al. 2016) and a copy of the presentation and handouts at the workshop herapist. She has expertise in treating adolescents, adults and families facing a variety Lunch and refreshments provided ntal health difficulties including (but not limited to) depression, anxiety, suicide, and To Register your place click on the link below uicidal self-injurious behaviours. Dr. Dexter-Mazza is also a co-developer and author of www.regonline.co.uk/STEPS-A-2017 BT Skills in Schools educational curriculum called DBT STEPS-A.

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a is the co-author of the DBT STEPS-A social emotional learning curnd high school students.. Dr. Mazza’s research interests focus particuinternalizing disorders such as depression, anxiety, posttraumatic*stress to violence and especially suicidal behavior).

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eserves the right to alter aspects of the training programme.

20/12/2012

DBT STEPS-A Curriculum & DBT Skills Training Emotional Problem Solving for Adolescents

Dr. Lizz Dexter-Mazza is a licensed psychologist in the state of Washington and a certified DBT therapist. She has expertise in treating adolescents, adults and families facing a variety of mental health difficulties including (but not limited to) depression, anxiety, suicide, and non-suicidal self-injurious behaviours. Dr. Dexter-Mazza is also a co-developer and author of the DBT Skills in Schools educational curriculum called DBT STEPS-A.

Dr. Lizz Dexter-Mazza & Dr. James J. Mazza aining, Croesnewydd Hall, Wrexham Technology Park, WREXHAM LL13 7YP

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Dr. James J. Mazza is the co-author of the DBT STEPS-A social emotional learning curwww.dbt-training.co.uk riculum for middle and high school students.. Dr. Mazza’s research interests focus particularly on adolescent internalizing disorders such as depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress Coursedisorder, Description exposure to violence and especially suicidal behavior).

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This course is for teams of professionals who want to deliver a DBT Skills intervention as part of the Secondary School Curriculum. Teams attending should comprise teachers, educational psychologists or school counsellors and ideally CAMHS professionals with Britishof Isles DBTThe Training, Hall, Wrexham WREXHAM LL13 7YP develop coping strategies and decision making experience DBT. DBTCroesnewydd STEPS-A curriculum is Technology designed Park, to help adolescents +44 (0)1978 346900 info@dbt-training.co.uk abilities, especially under emotional distress. The curriculum is based on www.dbt-training.co.uk the skills components of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy that have been to be effective highof risk adults and adolescents. There are four primary modules of skills that are taught in British shown Isles DBT Training reserves the right towith alter aspects the training programme. DBT STEPS-A: core mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. CMY

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The training is designed to establish four basic elements that are necessary in implementing the curriculum Effectively: Background and Development of DBT STEPS-A , Structure and implementation Issues, Acquisition of Skills and Practice of Skills. Prerequisites There is no specific no prerequisites to attend this 3 day workshop-Open Registrations.

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To Register your place visit www.regonline.co.uk/STEPS-A-2017 British Isles DBT Training reserves the right to alter aspects of the training programme.

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more dangerous, less predictable environment perhaps needs to be more vigilant, and cannot afford to focus his or her attention. The child in a world with few resources may adopt a ‘scarcity mindset’, focusing on immediate goals rather than long-term planning Implications for policy (Shah et al., 2012). These adaptations, however, Researchers are now more aware of the perils of too may hold the child back in the classroom, where simplistic links to policy implications; nevertheless, selective attention is necessary and where behavioural the essence of cognitive neuroscience research is to regulation around long-term plans is necessary to point towards interventions to reduce the impact of achieve educational goals. By contrast, animal models family differences in SES on child development. As have produced evidence that variations in maternal Bruer himself said, ‘What science can add to the policy care and environmental stimulation can lead to debate are insights about the causes, mechanism, and changes in neural signalling supporting plasticity, leverage points that we could most effectively exploit including structural differences in dendritic branching to reach our goal.’ Researchers such as Hackman and and synaptic density in the hippocampus and cortex. colleagues (2010), Raizada and Kishiyama (2010), This makes it likely that some effects of low SES will produce poorer learning and memory as a deficit rather and Sheridan and McLaughlin (2016) have pointed to several implications. than an adaptation. First, just because the effects of low SES are In terms of the communication of research to measurable in the brain does not imply they cannot policy makers, in his 1999 book John Bruer argued be reversed. Outside of cases of severe neglect, many that the neuroscience evidence on early development cognitive differences shown by children from very then available had been misconstrued to such an low SES families respond well to extent that it had created a ‘myth’ of training techniques, such as those the unique importance of the first “Neuroscience is now that focus on executive functions three years of development. Under and engage with parents. the myth, the first three years influencing policy Second, a mechanistic provide caregivers and educators dialogues. It remains perspective highlights multiple with ‘a unique, biologically the responsibility of points of possible intervention delimited window of opportunity during which the right experiences researchers to assure the (directly on SES, indirectly on experiences or biological processes and early childhood programs quality of the information that mediate SES effects, indirectly can help children build better that is shared as well on brain development by training brains’. But Bruer pointed out that specific neurocognitive functions, the (then) existing neuroscience as the limits of its and directly on outcomes mostly addressed the effects of interpretation” educationally or therapeutically); gross neglect, and evidence of and they allow fostering of factors critical periods in development was of resilience such as the mother– derived mainly from animal studies child or caregiver–child relationship. of sensory deprivation. It couldn’t support the more Third, measures of brain function make the greatest general claims about early development across entire contribution where they can show that two individuals human populations. with similar behaviour actually exhibit it for different I recently made just this point in evidence to a joint meeting of the Education and Work and Pensions reasons. This might imply that, for example, childhood Select Committees (tinyurl.com/j9dshdo). The first few emotional regulation difficulties caused by adverse childhood events are best addressed by therapies years are clearly important, but so are the following addressing traumatic experiences, while those caused years. In many respects, brain plasticity is a lifelong by lack of cognitive stimulation are best addressed by property. Particularly, we know that many parts of the learning opportunities scaffolded to encourage selfbrain are still developing throughout adolescence. regulation. Adolescence is the time when many high-level Neuroscience is now influencing policy dialogues. cognitive skills are developing, skills that are going It remains the responsibility of researchers to assure to be needed in the workplace and are important for the quality of the information that is shared as well as later life success. We need support in the educational the limits of its interpretation. While David Cameron’s structures around the development of those later skills Life Chances Strategy has slipped out of view, its as well as those in the early years. key elements may yet reappear, perhaps within the more graduated approach favoured by the new Prime Minister Theresa May in her 9 September speech: ‘… to give a fair chance to those who are just getting by – while still helping those who are even more disadvantaged.’

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the psychologist may 2017 socio-economic status

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07/04/2017 11:40

Steven C. Hayes ‘Why can’t we speak to the deepest issues of meaning, love and loss?’ Kal Kseib meets Steven C. Hayes, Professor of Psychology at the University of Nevada, Reno

How do your ideas connect with your values? I’ve tried in my career to be less concerned about brand names and personal applause, and more concerned about building community and connecting to this larger value of ‘how can we best serve people using science?’. I get more excited in my personal work about supporting the work of others. I mean I’m productive, I do research, I write books. But to this day I’ve never not responded to an email. If a patient contacts me and says, ‘I’m in misery, what do I do?’: yeah, it might be two or three sentences, but I’m going to try and do something. So my value is being of use and building a community that can profoundly be of use – trying to bring science into alignment with what society needs and wants from us. And I don’t think we’ve always served that. You’re one of the founders of acceptance and commitment therapy, or ACT. What is the greatest opportunity ACT has in today’s world? Reaching the culture. My son’s favourite cartoon show is Steven Universe – it’s very sweet. Garrett is a kind of a meditation or mindfulness person, a wise adult. She sings a song called ‘Here comes a thought’, and the show notes say she got it from ACT. The first stanza is ‘flexibility, love and trust’, and it walks through what to do with difficult thoughts. It talks about seeing and feeling, and watching the thought. And they actually lie on the ground like they’re watching clouds. I started crying seeing it because I’m thinking, ‘how many children have shame that they’re carrying?’ It’s got to be a large percentage of children, right? And they can’t talk to their parents, and they can’t talk to their peers, because what is it they’re going to say? ‘Just don’t think about it.’ And it’s like pouring gasoline on a fire, it’s just a horrible thing to do to shame… it’s saying there’s something wrong with you for feeling and thinking that, and you just need to think differently and it’ll go away. We can do something a lot wiser than that. 44

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It sounds like a powerful message. Will a young child – a six- or seven-year-old – hear a

song on a cartoon show and behave differently? I don’t know. But I do know that 17 million people have listened to this song, and that’s a lot. There are some children there that will be moved by it. So can we put this into the culture in such a way that it has a chance to bump people in a healthier and more helpful direction? That’s the kind of science I would like to see us do. There are studies that show if you change, your friends are more likely to change in the direction you’ve changed, along with their friends and the friends of their friends. If you’re a fairly socially active person and you stop smoking, about 10,000 people are influenced. The idea that we, as psychologists, are just working with people one at a time, or in small groups, it’s bullshit. We’re working with the entire freakin’ culture. But if we can just figure out what the processes are and how to put it into human lives, artists will help us, industry and business will help us. Start-ups will help us. We’re not out there fighting this fight alone, but let’s fight it with good science linked to processes of change that really matter. Where is ACT heading now? It seems to me that the field is moving from an era of protocols for syndromes into an era of processes-linked procedures. The way I like to say it – there are a lot of ‘p’s in it – processes linked to procedures that help with problems but also promote the prosperity of people. Understanding what it is that the person really wanted from us. Psychologists are everywhere, they’re in everything. But there’s a cacophony of voices. If we focus on processes, that mediate and moderate outcomes and on the procedures that move them, suddenly all of these school differences begin to diminish and we can focus on how the process is moved and how best we do that. I’m looking forward to seeing more of what I already see, which is a deeper sense of cooperation. So where ACT is heading, I think, is being at the leading edge of a larger thing. And if we get there, psychology as a field will become much, much more relevant, but in a coherent way.

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the psychologist may 2017 interview

What will be the greatest challenge in getting there? There are philosophical divisions which are real, and you simply can’t ignore those. But some of these are theoretical divisions and I think it’s time to put some of these behind us and get on a page of evidencebased processes. We’re going to need different kinds of studies. We’re going to need better science. Laboratory science linked to clinical science is a vital part of your tradition here in the UK, whereas in the US it almost died out – and it will be about bringing some of that back. We became very good at doing randomised clinical trials for syndromes and it’s going to be painful to put some of that aside, because that can only take you so far. If you add mediation and moderation you can do a lot, but even then we have different trajectories – some people are succeeding, some people are failing. And we can’t just call that

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error. These are human lives, not errors. And so one of the big challenges scientifically is how we do that in a way that really is respectful to the individual and yet is progressive. The old solutions, the single case designs, the randomised trials, are just not adequate. I think we’re going to need very big data sets that are very intensive and individualised. It’s the kind of thing that an NHS, let’s say, could actually do as we gather more process-oriented focus. We have a chance to do it. When are you at your most focused? I would say in two areas. One is when I’m in front of pain – my own pain or the pain of others, from my children to the people that I work with professionally. I do a lot of work trying to dig into pain, and so pain to me is a focus point because of the possibility inside. It’s an energy and it’s not something that needs to be

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subtracted or eliminated. It’s an energy that’s very powerful. If you go and look at my first TED talk, I talk about where I started the ACT journey – at two o’clock in the morning on a shag carpet. I just made a turn as I kind of hit rock bottom. But that turn was inside the energy of anxiety. Later on I found out it was inside the energy called ‘sadness’. My own history of domestic violence, of witnessing it, kind of broke through. Some ‘ah ha’ memories showed up. So, when I’m in front of somebody who’s in pain, I’m focused because what I feel is the possibility. A metaphor I use a lot is like the pivot in a hinge. If you’re going to open a door, you don’t actually push it in the direction you want to open it… the hinge swings it round. And it’s like that. You can swing this energy around, and a good clinician knows how to do it, to take the energy that’s inside – sadness, anxiety, urges, et cetera. – and swing it around towards a life worth living. Most experienced clinicians wake up in those situations. If you’re in front of a client hearing a big, heavy, interpretive, cognitively entangled ‘blah, blah, blah’, part of you is fighting to stay awake. But if you get down to just the pain of it, I’ve not met a good clinician who doesn’t wake up. I don’t think it’s just because they want to get rid of it and subtract it, it’s because they feel in that energy, something really important can happen right here. And I think that’s the place where I have the single most focus. If I had another one it would be when I see the potential for bringing together elements of the community or the intellectual tradition that I’m trying to put together. And so I wake up and focus in conversations with my colleagues. I see the possibility for connection and participation in combination, so I think of myself like a catalyst.

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What is the most important lesson life has taught you recently? A painful one is to see is that in my focus I sometimes leave people I love behind. My wife teases me over this ability to focus, which is both a good and bad thing. But if I put an intellectual issue that I’m chewing through in front of me, my focus will narrow. I think love is an open process and that a lot of the work we’re doing in therapy is really teaching people how to take a more loving approach to themselves and others. But love also requires this broader focus sometimes, and the lesson would to be to make sure that I stay broad enough to not let people that I love fall out of focus. So that’s a dance, of ‘how do we narrow in our focus, and also broaden out our focus?’. And I think we’re doing that clinically all the time. I just had a painful talk with one of my elder children about something I missed over about a two-year period in their childhood and as it was told I was like, ‘Of course I shouldn’t have missed that. How was I not there for you during that?’ So I catch that in myself with enough regularity to know that it’s a really important thing to work on. It’s a lifelong issue. I’m sure a lot of people can relate to it because if you’re very productive and working hard,

every moment you’re focused on one thing you’re not focused on something else. Is it something you’ve become better at over time? I think I have got better at it, but I’m still not that good! It’s a work in progress, but aren’t we all? I don’t think there’s any finish line. I don’t think we get an award at the end. I think we probably just keep working, keep chopping. What advice would you give aspiring psychologists? I think the biggest thing that people need to bring to their work is the whole of themselves. In these roles that you may be in as a psychologist – research, clinical, academic or teaching – you can sometimes forget why you’re in the field. You get caught up in the problems in the clinic, with your clients, with your colleagues – it’s all the normal things, right? But, you know, psychologists are studying this pivot point of human behaviour and their doing of that is human behaviour, so you constantly have this reflective quality. Your field will never leave you. There’s no moment in which you’re alive where the feeling will leave you. Maybe that’s true in some ways with biology, physics, chemistry, but it doesn’t seem to be quite as dominant as in psychology. So I always tell young psychologists ‘bring what you really, really care about to the work’, and there’s this other part if you’re going to do it as a scientist – as an empirical person – of holding that in check, in the sense that there’s something inside your caring that’s important, and we filter what we do and what we learn and what we know, though this kabuki dance of scientific evidence. I think students, or young professionals in general, sometimes feel they have to either forget who they are – follow the rulebook, or fit into the role – or take the approach of ‘forget all that science stuff, I believe this because of some personal story’. Either one of those is a mistake, I think. When I teach brand new students, say, research methods, the very first thing I get across is this: the modal number of citations for a publication in psychology is zero, which means nobody has been influenced by it enough to actually put in writing that it mattered. So I only want something that you really have heart for, something that deep down you think might really matter. And then I tell them, ‘and by the way, your research idea almost certainly is a bad idea’, because that’s how it [the modal number of citations] gets to zero. From there we can figure out a way that maintains the heart, and that won’t have zero citations. There’s like this dialectic of ‘how do we come into our field as social human beings with this core of caring, and nurture and sustain that, but also learn how to channel our interest and questions in a way that will have a long term impact on the world – on our clients and on our colleagues?’.

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the psychologist may 2017 interview

to them, ‘turn that into a sentence, and then turn that into a word.’ And the two words they come up with are ‘love’ and ‘be’. I know it sounds kind of ‘hokey’, and my more critical science colleagues are probably wrinkling their noses, and I understand that. Here’s the way I sometimes say it: Think of somebody who profoundly lifted you up – a coach or a teacher, a lover, a spouse, a teacher, a friend, a therapist – pick one – and let me ask you a few quick questions: ‘Did you feel profoundly accepted for who you were? Were you constantly judged by that person or did judgement seem to be far away? When they were with you, were they with you and attentive and here and now? Or were they constantly looking at their watch with their mind halfway somewhere else? And did your values matter to that person, or were they willing to ride over what you deeply care about? Could you be together in What are you most grateful for recently? different ways that fit the situation but that wouldn’t Well, other than my health, which at my age is where violate values (it wasn’t always one way, the high way, I would always start, I’m grateful for my family. if you didn’t agree)?’ I sometimes think about this: It might not escape you that ‘Would I be able to function in I’ve just gone around the flexibility the way that I’d want to in trying “I only want something of Acceptance and to promote and foster the work that you really have heart hexagon Commitment Therapy with those and help people, if I didn’t have for, something that deep questions. So, ‘did you feel loved my family with me?’ Especially and empowered by that person?’ my wife, who is one tough cookie. down you think might I think you’re probably going She doesn’t let me get away with really matter” to answer ‘yes’. Well, when our anything! If I’m doing something clients come to us, I think they’re that’s bullshit, she knows it almost looking for the same thing. And before I know it. And yet she no, we’re not their friend, we’re not their lover, we’re really deeply loves me and accepts me for who I am, not their spouse, we’re not going home with them, and that’s pretty sweet. I have four kids: a 11-year-old but we’re going to create a loving space for them to boy, I’ve got a 25-year-old girl, a 28-year-old son, and be whole human beings in the therapy room and – if a 47-year-old daughter – which if you do the math we’re successful – in their lives. Why can’t evidencemeans that I’ll have had children in the home (by the based psychology talk about things like that? Why time little Stevie goes to college) for 55 straight years! can’t we speak to the deepest issues of meaning, love My kids are teachers, and blessings in my life. And I’ve let them down and I’ve been there for them. I think and loss; of life and death; of purpose, connection and contribution; in a way that does justice to the human I’ve been a pretty good dad, but not always. And so depth of these issues and their social importance? I’m thankful for that, too. They’re willing to hold up a And so ‘love is not everything, it’s the only thing’, mirror and still give me a hug. They know the places where I’ve succeeded and failed as a dad. My eldest son isn’t just a personal thing – I think we kind of feel that. now is in my universe, he’s working for New Harbinger I think most people can relate to it in some point in their lives. Could we also make it at the centre of what Publications as an acquisitions editor, which is kind of crazy – it’s really, really neat. My middle two are in film. we’re doing as a field clinically, with our colleagues, in And then I watch this amazing 11-year-old that I’ve got our communities and in our homes? Because it looks to me like what this world needs is to learn how to be – little Stevie – who’s in a full time gifted and talented with ourselves and others in a way that is empowering class. He’s a brainiac and turning out such interesting and loving. If our field could be about that I think we’d things. He says ‘hey Dad, did you know…?’ and half the time the answer is ‘no, I didn’t know that!’ And he’s be stepping up to what people want from behavioural science and from psychology – how to be more in the fifth grade! So, I’m thankful for my family. effective and whole in their lives. I would like to see us change the scientific conversation towards processes Imagine that all of your 41 books and hundreds of that liberate people, and I think if we do that as a field publications have been wiped out, and it’s your final the human community will feel as though they met the day; everyone you’ve ever cared about is by your challenge that they gave to us. bedside. What three things you know to be true about the world would you share with them? I could get it down to one, which is that love isn’t More: Find out more at www.stevenchayes.com. everything, it’s the only thing. Within the psychological Read the full version of this interview via flexibility model, I challenge my students by saying http://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/meets What’s something people don’t know about you, that if they knew, they would be surprised? I think people are sometimes surprised that if I wasn’t going to be a psychologist, my other big thought about what I would be is a carpenter. I’m a veteran re-modeller, I’m tearing down my house all of the time. People sometimes think I’m a geek, but I can put in plumbing and I’ve built an entire house from nothing, from the foundation to the roof – done everything myself. So I’m a builder and I try to bring that sensitivity into what I do research-wise and clinically also. I want to build something that lasts and that matters, and I think we’ve been able to do it in some of the work we’ve been doing in CBT and ACT, and Mindfulness and ACBS etc.

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07/04/2017 11:52

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The downsides of positivity Kate Sweeny provides a nuanced picture

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07/04/2017 11:53

Minds run free Christian Jarrett and Ella Rhodes on when psychology and running intersect, personally and in terms of the research evidence

Psychologists, like much of the population, have been bitten by the running bug. What do they get out of it, and does their experience chime with the science? 50

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t was just before midday on 21 July 2005, and I walked onto the platform at Warren Street. As the train pulled in and the doors opened, people ran screaming from the train. I had no idea what was happening but I did what most people did, turned and ran up and out of the station as fast as I possibly could. Halfway up the second escalator a wave of nausea came over me and my chest tightened. My immediate terrifying thought was that this had been a chemical

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the psychologist may 2017 running Eliza Southwood: www.elizasouthwood.com

attack but as I got out into the fresh air and did some urgent self-CBT, I realised that it was much simpler than that – I was just horribly unfit.’ After her terrifying experience, subsequent flashbacks and newly acquired phobia of the London Underground and public places, psychologist Dr Catherine Loveday (University of Westminster) eventually decided it was time to do something proactive. Loveday sought out a sports-psychology qualified fitness trainer and, after getting over a hatred of running, could eventually run a mile without

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stopping. That was over seven years ago, and she says that ‘since then I have never wavered in my commitment. I have continued to run a minimum of three times a week, and have completed a half marathon. Not bad for someone that said they’d never run.’ And Loveday is not alone: running has boomed in popularity in recent years, including an increasing number of people doing it barefoot (see box, over). Record numbers are also signing up for the London Marathon, ‘Parkrun’ has been a phenomenon, and evidence is growing for its psychological as well as physical benefits (though there can be downsides, as we will see later). We caught up with psychologists who run, and delved into the research to find out what running does and means at a psychological level. Why do people start running? The dramatic story behind Loveday’s impetus to become a runner is likely to be unique to her. Of course many of us start running simply as a way to get fit or lose weight. Having said that, her experience is consistent with research that suggests that other, less dramatic, kinds of life markers can also inspire people to take up the sport. For a paper published in 2014, for example, Adam Alter and Hal Hershfield at New York University’s Stern School of Business looked at data from the Athlinks website and found that first-time marathon runners were especially likely to have an age that ended in a ‘9’; in other words, to be on the cusp of a new decade. Some experts subsequently criticised the statistics, but Alter and Hershfield stood by their findings which are consistent with the idea that we’re particularly likely to reflect on the meaning in our lives at such junctures, and, for many people, running offers the perfect chance to forge new goals. Other times it’s not so much about fitness or personal meaning – rather, there’s just something irresistibly awe-inspiring about the challenge of a long run in a beautiful setting. Take the example of Dr Ian Walker, based at the University of Bath. For years he was a keen long-distance walker, but then his friend showed him a video of the Transvulcania ultramarathon, one of the toughest trail running events in the world, which involves competitors running a 73km route up and down a volcano on the island of La Palma in the Canaries. ‘I just decided to start running the next day,’ Walker says.

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What goes on inside a runner’s mind? For many, part of the appeal of running seems to be that it’s a chance to think things through, or perhaps to clear the mind. Walker says he’s often highly focused on keeping his balance on the treacherous mountain trails that he encounters on ultra-running events, and it seems like this acts as a kind of enforced form of mindfulness, distracting him from the pain of each mile. ‘If you focus on something close and mundane, it frees your mind. For a large part I’m focused on that,

The rise of barefoot running In recent years there has been an explosion of interest in barefoot running, or running without spongy supportive trainers, thanks in part to the publication of Christopher McDougall’s best-selling book Born to Run in 2009, in which he describes the remarkable running feats of the Tarahumara Indians in Mexico, who run barefooted or with only the thinnest of sandals. As sports scientists debate the relative merits of barefoot running for injury prevention and performance, psychologists are beginning to explore the appeal of the barefoot approach, and the kind of people drawn to it. There’s even some new work hinting at possible mental benefits. In-depth interviews with eight runners published last year found that they viewed barefoot running as more ‘natural’, but that they also saw it as extreme, presumably because of the risk of injury to the unprotected foot. Consistent with this, a recent personality survey of hundreds of runners, led by Nicholas Hanson, found that those who ran barefoot tended to score higher on openness but lower on conscientiousness than their trainer-loving counterparts. And last year, Ross Alloway and his colleagues found some tentative evidence that time spent barefoot running may be especially beneficial to our working memory abilities, more so than trainerclad running (also called ‘running shod’), presumably because all the concentration involved acts as a kind of brain training. ‘One explanation’, the researchers said, ‘is that barefoot running requires greater proprioception than running shod and thus can offer greater tactile awareness of the running surface and an enhanced ability to adjust foot strike to a position that is appropriate to the surface.’ 52

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and time goes by really quickly,’ he says. Other times, his thoughts are more practical, and painful, in nature: ‘things like what time I’m likely to reach the next checkpoint and whether my feet are hurting, or do I need to eat or drink at this point’. Clinical psychologist (and outgoing British Psychological Society Vice President) Professor Jamie Hacker Hughes is a regular runner, and he finds it therapeutic. If he’s not listening to rock music, he’ll use the time to pray or think. ‘Psychologically, running allows you to organise things in your mind and encourages creativity,’ he says. ‘All of my best ideas, such as reorganising the MoD psychology services, reintroducing uniformed clinical psychologists, setting up a military veterans research institute and an international research hub – and, of course, restructuring the BPS – have come to me and have been worked out while I am running.’ Researchers at California State University at Northridge recently took a more systematic approach to runners’ thoughts. They recruited 10 amateur long-distance runners and asked them to record their thoughts out loud with a voice recorder while they went on a run of at least seven miles. Like Walker, many of their thoughts were about the practicalities of pacing (‘lean and steady, make it a long stride, lean and steady’) or the pain (‘Hill, you’re a bitch … it’s long and hot – God damn it … mother eff-er’). However, this research didn’t find solid evidence for the troublesolving or inspirational effects of running that Hacker Hughes described. What does running do to your brain? There are of course many reasons why these particular runners may not have used their time to solve problems and reflect on life’s challenges. But research of a different kind – that’s looked at the effect of exercise on participants’ brain activity and feelings of flow – does tentatively support the idea that running, as psychology writer and runner Melissa Dahl recently put it, might provide a kind of ‘mind-clearing magic’. For instance, a recent study (led by Petra Wollseiffen) of 11 ultra-marathon runners involved measuring their brain activity via EEG (electroencephalography) once every hour during a six-hour run, as well as their cognitive performance, mood and feelings of flow (measured through agreement with questionnaire items like ‘The way time passed seemed different from normal’). The run was associated with reduced activity at the front of the brain, and after the first hour, an increased feeling of flow. Note, though, that the decreased brain activation and increased sense of flow did not correlate, so they may not be directly related. Also, feelings of flow began to decrease as the run wore on, perhaps suggesting there’s a point reached in a run where the mental benefits are overwhelmed by the pain and effort required to keep going! Looking at the broader literature on the

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the psychologist may 2017 running

way running affects mental How do runners keep going? performance, a 2010 meta-analysis Going for a short jog to clear your ‘I don’t run in from Kate Lambourne and Phillip mind is one thing, taking part in races or for Tomporowski (which included an ultra-marathon lasting hours is recreation, the results from five prior relevant quite another. How can the human but I do seem studies on running) concluded body, and mind, cope with mile to spend an that going for a jog, at least on upon mile of pain and exhaustion awful lot of a treadmill, is associated with with no end in sight? Walker says time running impaired cognitive function during he draws on health psychology after my the run, but with a slight boost to and that the most straightforward twins, who are about to cognitive performance afterwards. approach is what he calls the turn three.’ Up until now the research on the ‘acceptance strategy’. ‘When you effects of running on cognition has set out to run 100 miles, there are Christian Jarrett is Editor of mostly involved simple reaction going to be long periods where the Society’s Research Digest time measures, so it’s not clear you feel awful. Knowing that up www.bps.org.uk/digest how relevant these findings are to front, and accepting the fact, makes christianjarrett@gmail.com the claims of many runners that it it much easier to cope when it provides them with a creativity or happens – it’s just what you were problem-solving boost. expecting.’ ‘Inspired by Related to the popular idea that Another helpful psychological Ian Walker’s running helps problem-solving is method he uses is to remind blasé attitude that it is a great way of handling himself that no matter how bad he to running 75 stress and beating bad moods. For feels in the present moment, there miles, I took example, runner and neuroscientist will always be an upswing later on up running Professor Geraint Rees, Dean of the course. ‘This phenomenon of at the start the Faculty of Life Sciences at swinging back and forth between of this year. University College London, tells us high and low points is something Now I can be found regularly ‘It is absolutely and unexpectedly that ultra-runners often talk about,’ wheezing my way round my wonderful for reducing stress and he says. ‘“It never always gets local reservoir, and surprisingly building resilience at work. I have worse” is the phrase, but it’s only enjoying every torturous step.’ a tough leadership role as a Faculty after you’ve had a few experiences Dean, and there’s nothing like going of going from feeling like death Ella Rhodes is Staff Journalist out for a run in the dark and rain to feeling great that you truly on The Psychologist and cold to help out with that!’ understand it.’ ella.rhodes@bps.org.uk A recent study in Cognition Another key way that longand Emotion backs this up. Emily distance runners manage the pain Bernstein and Richard McNally at Harvard University and exhaustion is through pacing. For years it was asked participants about their ability to handle thought that fatigue is purely located in the muscles negative emotions and then asked half of them to jog and that we can only go as fast as our body will let for 30 minutes while the others rested. Afterwards us. Increasingly, however, sports psychologists have the participants watched a sad clip from the film The come to realise that this is only part of the story: in Champ. As you might expect, participants who said fact, physical exhaustion is in some ways more of a they usually struggled to handle negative emotion were mental state, in the sense that the sensations from our more intensely affected by the sad clip, but crucially muscles are weighed up by the brain in the context of this was less so if they had completed the jog. The the strength of our motivation and our belief in how researchers said: ‘…a bout of moderate aerobic exercise far we’ve got to go. appears to have helped those participants potentially This is empowering in some ways because it more vulnerable to problematic affective dysregulation means we can often overcome even the most intense to be less susceptible to the impact or lingering effects bodily exhaustion. But it’s also what makes pacing of the stressor.’ so important, because if a runner misjudges their capabilities and energy levels and runs too fast early on, they can end up ‘hitting the wall’, which is runners’ slang for when your body literally runs out of fuel and it’s virtually impossible to move. Backing this up, a recent analysis of running data from the Dublin Marathon and the Chicago Marathon by Barry Smyth, of the Running With Data blog, found that runners who ran their fastest sections in the earlier stages of the race often ended up being the slowest completers overall.

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The dark side of running Although it’s hard to deny that running is a spectacular sport for mental and physical wellbeing, there are downsides for some who take it up. One odd example of this is the strange hallucinations that some ultra-runners report (see tinyurl.com/ h5gq797). Although there has been no peer-reviewed research on the topic, hallucinations are like folklore among ultrarunners, and New York Magazine interviewed Martin Hoffman, a professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at UC Davis, about the phenomenon. He told them these visions can be a result of eye problems, called ‘ultraeye syndrome’, where the cornea swells and distorts vision. But others report ‘true’ hallucinations: some of the more unusual visions people have had include seeing a military ship sailing by. In one terrifying case, a woman taking part in the 135-mile Badwater Marathon saw rotting corpses following her every step, giant beetles and mouse monsters crawling along the road. The sheer rush of running seems to be addictive to some. Although an addiction to exercise doesn’t sound like a particularly bad thing, some people can put their bodies in danger by the amount of running they do, or feel the need to do. Exercise addiction is a contentious issue and isn’t truly accepted

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as a ‘real’ phenomenon, and despite a mention in the DSM 5 it is unclear the extent of this addiction in the general population. However, several case studies and anecdotal reports suggest something similar to tolerance, a need for increasing amounts of exercise to achieve the runner’s high. As James McWilliams wrote in Pacific Standard Magazine: ‘The fact that I now need more and more miles to experience the benefits of physical exercise comes uncomfortably close to the chronic substance abuser who needs more and more hits to get high… Perhaps we’re too quick to highlight addiction when an activity becomes intense, but still, the parallels are hard to ignore.’ McWilliams cites one of the few things we know for certain: exercise addiction or dependency seems to affect people in more endurance-related events such as Iron Man and ultramarathons, and it seems to overlap with eating disorders, but also drug and alcohol abuse, about 25 per cent of the time. The best advice is to keep an eye on whether exercise is becoming a need rather than a source of enjoyment. As McWilliams points out: ‘Those we classify as exercise addicts might be a rare sort who are honoring what their bodies are designed to do and, historically, have done.’

Want to get your running shoes on? If we have inspired you to pull on a pair of running Heath psychologist Daryl O’Connor (University shoes, what can you do to motivate yourself to run? of Leeds) similarly suggests starting slow, but also We asked our interviewees for their best advice for advises recording one’s progress beginners, or returning runners. using a spreadsheet or app. He Ian Walker emphasises the “When you set out to tells us: ‘Lots of people think they importance of building up to have to do long runs, but for me running, and making it part of run 100 miles, there are 5K a few times a week is key. Do one’s routine. He suggests the NHS going to be long periods short, frequent runs and record Couch to 5K programme as a great where you feel awful. what you do and try to maintain place to start. He also told us how useful joining a running group had Knowing that up front, and the behaviour.’ He also tells us that after taking up running he slowly been: ‘[It] revealed to me one of accepting the fact, makes began to feel his identity change: the things I hadn’t realised – ultrait much easier to cope ‘I never previously saw myself as a runners tend to be a really nice bunch of people and everybody in when it happens – it’s just runner,’ he added, ‘but starting to do it and maintaining it over eight it is lovely. Now the social side of it what you were expecting.” years, I do see myself as a runner keeps me coming back.’ now. That helps you maintain those ‘Set a goal, get a plan and stick behaviours as well, if you think to it with appropriate rewards’, “Yeah, I’m a runner, that’s what I do”.’ Geraint Rees suggests. He, among other psychologists we spoke to, said Saturday morning Parkruns are great for regular local group motivation among people of different abilities. He added: ‘Going out slow is important, whether it’s a race or training. Start too fast and it all becomes terribly difficult later. I also like to vary the challenge for really long runs and explore Join members of The London. When training for a half I used to run along Psychologist team on a the Thames in one direction and get the tube/train morning jog in Brighton back – there’s nothing like starting in West London and on 4 May, during finishing in Canary Wharf to make you realise how far the Society’s Annual you can run.’ Conference.

07/04/2017 11:54

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‘Profile is key to our influence’ Nicola Gale One inspiration Some of our famous novelists were pretty good psychologists, and as an early avid reader of historical novels I was enthralled by their psychological studies of individual character, family dynamics, and structural relationships in society. Then on my path into psychology from business, as director of organisational development and training in a professional services firm, we knew what was often missing was listening, understanding and responding to the real story clients were telling. The work of Carl Rogers was a revelation to me, and using and training those client-centred consulting skills – rather than selling the pre-prepared system or solution – was invaluable in that context. Equally important though are inspirations from other walks of life. I am a keen gardener, and gardeners will know it is the 200th anniversary this year of the birth of Joseph Dalton Hooker. He was one of the early and most famous directors of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, a medical doctor, scientist, plant collector, traveller, political influencer and collaborator with Charles Darwin. The inspiration for me from these polymaths of an earlier era is the range of knowledge and intellectual capability they brought to bear on producing cuttingedge scientific research and advancing their professions.

Nicola Gale is the new President of the British Psychological Society.

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One moment that changed the course of my career There have been several as my career morphed through accountancy, consultancy, organisational development and training, training in psychology on one of the first Society-accredited counselling psychology MSc and post MSc programmes in the mid-1990s, to the NHS and academic life. But starting to find the British Psychological Society interesting was the beginning of my path to being our President! When I was studying, I didn’t know what the Society did beyond being the place one sent membership applications off to; once qualified it seemed to have limited relevance. I had no sense it was something that I would become involved with. Then someone told me about a group of counselling psychologists working in organisational settings, and as I was clinical lead for an NHS occupational health psychology service, it grabbed my interest. Next, as Chair of Council, I worked with all our Branches, Divisions, Sections and Special Groups, and together we started making a real difference to our future.

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the psychologist may 2017 one on one

One challenge psychology faces At the same time to both give our discipline away and differentiate ourselves so we are the go-to profession to solve complex problems. We want to make the public at large more psychologically attuned, so that (in the words of the impact statement that was developed by our Board of Trustees), ‘People are equipped with the everyday psychological skills and knowledge to navigate a complex world, knowing themselves and others better. Everyone can access evidence-based psychology to enhance their lives, communities and wider society.’ To do this effectively, though, we need also to create some clear water in the minds of the public, policy makers, the media, in terms of what psychologists and our evidencebased psychology can bring to the table. And that is something I am putting on my to-do list as President. We need too, to work closely with our European and international colleagues, and for us in the BPS this largely means the European Federation of Psychologists Associations, and the International Union of Psychological Science. 2017 is the year of the 15th European Congress of Psychology, which will be in Amsterdam in July and is an opportunity for us to showcase our science and practice.

can be done about some of the blocks and barriers. Our Presidential Task Force on training is looking at how we can enhance our training, and it’s at the early stages of developing a vision for Modernising Psychological Careers for the next generation. Do ask for support and help; in my estimation psychologists are generous with their time for and encouragement of people starting out in the field.

One important lesson from history Every year there are important anniversaries, all will resonate with us in different ways and we will take different things from them. For example, 2018 will bring us the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War; of women’s suffrage and the Representation of the People Act 1918 which enabled all men and some women to vote for the first time in the UK; of the birth of Nelson Mandela. We can relate these and no doubt many others to how psychology has helped move humanity forward, in building cooperation and unity; in promoting and celebrating equality, diversity and social inclusion; and in so many other ways. Such events are also a spur to take stock and assess what major tasks remain. We are working with many like-minded scientific, One thing you would change about psychology professional and service-user-focused organisations Have us collaborate more, bring together our shared through memoranda of cooperation and informally to but different experiences and expertise to solve the take forward our strategic agenda. Within our Society, complex problems that face society. I should perhaps I have referred above to enhancing our collaboration say collaborate ‘even more’ because there are some and joint working. Many psychologists are passionately fantastic examples in the Society of cross-disciplinary engaged in social justice work, and our work needs to work that is using our discipline to foster change; for reach and engage marginalised groups. For our Society, example in public policy across the an important milestone is our own nations, in health and care services Declaration on Equality, Diversity “we need also to create working in partnership with service and Inclusion – I’m looking forward users/ experts by experience, in the to fostering its adoption across the some clear water in workplace, in giving our children Society. the minds of the public, and young people a good start Profile is key to our influence. policy makers, the in life, supporting people across I am working with our Chief the span of life; and through this, Executive and other colleagues to media, in terms of what engaging our students and graduates to host the European Semester psychologists… can bring bid in psychology. Sometimes though for 2018. If successful, this is an to the table” we can allow internal differences opportunity for six months to shine to get in the way of that. I will be the spotlight on how our science driving forward the development and practice across the range of our of our Society to support this work, as a core part of the discipline can enhance lives, communities and wider strategic plan for the Society and a major focus of our society; through our annual and network conferences structural review. and other scientific and practitioner meetings and events; media exposure; hosting issue-focused working meetings One nugget of advice for aspiring psychologists of leading psychologists from across Europe, and the Think about what inspires you, where you think you Presidents’ Council of EFPA. could make a difference, how you want to work, what sort of context means something to you, how you would One final thought want to be remembered. What are you already good We all need ways to keep our feet on the ground, and at? What transferable skills and interests do you have? for me this spring it is going to include working on my Then take some steps along the way. There will be many allotment and long walks with my dog (a rescue dog possible routes, and the opportunities that present may whom I brought back from Andalusia), and by the time not always be the obvious ones. So don’t pass up the you read this I will have been on a family history First opportunity to give something a go. In the Society we and Second World War memorial trip through France, know it is not all plain sailing and we are looking at what Belgium and Germany.

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07/04/2017 13:21

Exploding with fiery intelligence Jon Sutton, Managing Editor of The Psychologist

ow do you ‘unself’? Do you feel that need, to let go of your emotions, of inhibitions, to break down the walls of fear and shame and connect with something way beyond our small and mortal bodies? Many psychologists and writers have discussed this ‘deep-seated urge to self-transcendence’. In this book philosopher Jules Evans paints a colourful picture of his search for ecstatic experience. Evans, who is Policy Director at the Centre for the History of Emotions at Queen Mary, University of London, imagines the book as a festival, with each chapter as a different tent or zone exploring a different way that people James, David Lynch, Aldous Huxley, Bruce Springsteen and others. And the book holds an empowering message: find ecstasy in modern Western culture. Well aware of Evans’s own near-death experience having convinced the dark side of transcendence, what Jung called ‘the him that suffering is based on beliefs, not burned-out shadow’, Evans warns ‘in some tents you’ll feel at home; neural transmitters. Get out there and transform your others might seem a bit weird, but just go with it’. relationship with the world. The festival metaphor is no coincidence. Within Evans suggests there are two risks in our culture our circles, Evans’s midlife crisis is probably a fairly – the main one being that we pathologise ecstatic stereotypical one: as an ‘introverted, cerebral, bachelor experiences and push them away, ending up ‘shut off academic’ and practising Stoic, he decided he wanted to in our narrow ego-prisons’. Personally, I think the book ‘loosen up and learn to let go’. Clearly the place to start sometimes falls foul of the second risk he was a week-long naturist tantra festival followed mentions – that we become too attached to by a 10-day meditation retreat. Thankfully his ecstatic experience, ending up thrill-seekers, book is so much more than an earnest, selfThe Art of important gap-year postcard (even if he does Losing Control: ‘sensation-addicts’. There’s quite a lot of ‘bucket write that ‘the universe is a giant lava-lamp of A Philosopher’s list’ type description, forced communal jollity… I could have done with more of the old Stoic matter’). Evans is a wise guide on this trip, and Search for Evans leading the way, and more consideration he soaks up plenty of psychology, sociology, Ecstatic of the kind of solitary experience which opens anthropology, history, popular culture and much Experience the book: the wind on your face, damp sand more. He’s looking for ‘a middle way – a way to Jules Evans under boots, a huge sky, an enthusiastic marry New Age play to some kind of wisdom, Canongate Labrador, the world ‘exploding with fiery belief, shared ritual and authority that is not Hb £16.99 intelligence’. toxic or intellectually shallow’. We should cut Evans some slack though: Evans largely finds that middle way, as he concludes, ‘it’s effing difficult to talk about the although I think I’m with Brian Eno, who says: ‘Mysticism ineffable’, and his main goal is simply to bring this isn’t an explanation. It’s a way of getting rid of a problem. conversation into the mainstream. In keeping with the You don’t know what’s happening, so you call it God.’ But ecstatic experience itself, this is a wild, wondrous, wideEvans doesn’t force his faith upon us, instead showing eyed journey, and Evans has convinced me at least that it’s himself to be open to all manner of teachings. His stone a trip worth taking. tablets are handed down by Barbara Ehrenreich, William

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the psychologist may 2017 books

To the power of two This book is a biography with a difference. Michael Lewis paints a vivid picture of how Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky developed as individuals, and more significantly how they developed together, to generate such significant and gamechanging ideas and theories. The author is not a psychologist, but has published a number of books along the theme of the fallibility of decisionmaking (e.g. Moneyball). As well as describing the theories that Kahneman and Tversky produced, Lewis touches upon a wide range of themes, all of them interesting in their own right. He covers how professions can get stuck in their thinking – how the breadth and diversity of psychology meant that it was disjointed as a profession and subject, and how economists were holding on to a model of behaviour that had no grounds in reality. He also explores creativity by way of describing how Kahneman and Tversky generated ideas, the energy that that produced and how their thinking developed in small steps and giant leaps. Lewis reveals each of their personalities in depth throughout their life stories, and how elements of their character helped and also hindered them. And lastly he unpicks endings – how their partnership lost its spark, how they needed to separate but still had a pull to be together. On any of those counts, it would be worth reading, but the most important theme throughout this book is about what happened between Kahneman and Tversky – the dynamics of what was an highly intense (but non-romantic) relationship. Lewis has a way of beautifully describing the magic that happened when they were together: ‘…they didn’t even want themselves in the room. They wanted to be the people they became when they were with each other’. Reviewed by Emily Hutchinson, who is Associate Editor for Books, and Director of EJH Consulting

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The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed the World Michael Lewis Allen Lane Hb £25.00

‘Living cosily’ Associate Editor Dr Rebecca Stack spoke to Meik Wiking, author of The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living What motivated you to write The Little Book of Hygge, exploring the concept of ‘living cosily’? I wanted to share what works well in Denmark, and one thing that is integral to our happiness levels is the conscious decoupling of wealth and wellbeing. While being poor naturally leads to a decrease in happiness levels, there also is a point when a higher income does not correlate with a higher level of happiness. I have also been curious about understanding why Denmark does better than the other Nordic countries when it comes to the happiness rankings – and here, also, the Danish culture comes into play. Readers of the book could be surprised by your role in academia and policy in Denmark. Can you describe the type/range of research that takes place in the Happiness Institute (www. happinessresearchinstitute.com)? We try to inform decision-makers of the causes and effects of human happiness, make subjective wellbeing part of the public policy debate, and improve the quality of life for citizens across the world. For instance we are now working on guidelines for a city that is being built in southern Europe and how can we create the best possible conditions for the citizens to enjoy a high level of quality of life. Another project is around understanding the impact on happiness of people living with psoriasis (see our PsoHappy study website to find out more about our work with people living with psoriasis – www.psohappy.org/report2016 ). What do you see as the relevance of The Little Book of Hygge and the work of the Happiness Institute to the

discipline of psychology? The institute was founded out of the development in psychology – especially positive psychology. Why shouldn’t we try to understand what drives happiness, in the same way as we try to understand what causes depression or stress? I am obviously inspired by Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. In essence, hygge is the implementation of the theory described in positive psychology. Why might many psychologists be interested in reading the book? How could they use to content in their work? One of the most interesting things coming out of happiness research at the moment is that positive emotions drive higher levels of satisfaction than merely the absence of negative emotions. Hygge is about trying to build some positive experiences in your daily routine.

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Can Neuroscience Change Our Minds? Hilary Rose & Steven Rose Polity Books Pb £9.99

Neuro-sceptic The availability of new technologies and multi-million-pound brain research have provided unprecedented access to the inner workings of the brain. This in turn has led to increased knowledge about how to leverage individuals’ ‘mental capital’ and provide innovative, early interventions with a focus on parenting and education policy. Thus, with the help of neuroscience, we can all develop our individual ‘neuroselves’ for the better… From the first page, a critical gaze is cast over some of the claims made in the name of neuroscience. While there is no dispute that developments within neuroscience can enhance our understanding of the human brain, the Roses argue

that ignoring the role that societal and economic factors play in shaping science generally and neuroscience specifically is problematic. They assert that science is co-produced by society, and vice versa. Thus, ignoring these factors leads to neuroscience acting as a neoliberal instrument for denigrating those most disadvantaged in society. At just over 150 pages, there are very big ideas and concepts to cover in such a short space, but it is executed effectively and succinctly, with clear references for further reading. While almost scathing in its critique, it did not alienate this reader and was at times almost humorous. The book provides a critical perspective to the current

appetite for all things neuro and is well worth reading. Reviewed by Andrea Didier, who is a Graduate Member of the BPS

My Shelfie … Phil Banyard (Reader in Psychology at Nottingham Trent University) The Social Construction of Reality Peter L. Berger & Thomas Luckmann Perhaps the two most influential books I read during my undergraduate course were a course book on quantum mechanics (I started off studying physics) and then later The Social Construction of Reality by Berger and Luckmann. Both books changed the way I thought about the world and my place in it. I was directed to The Social Construction of Reality by John Shotter, who was my tutor, and I was taken by the idea that we negotiate social meaning and social roles, and how over time these roles become institutionalised and become a social reality. Mind you I have never been back to the book. I’m a little nervous of going back. I recently watched the cult film Blade Runner after a gap 30 years during which time I remembered it as a film that had deeply affected the way I thought. Now I’m not sure why. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick Talking of Blade Runner brings me to the book it was based on. I point any of my tutees who can tolerate science fiction towards this book. The question at the heart of it is whether we will be able to create machines that are indistinguishable

from human beings, and if this is possible then does it matter? In another of his stories he muses on the split-brain studies of Sperry and Gazzaniger and wonders whether you can create two identities in the same brain that are unaware of each other. What’s not to like? War on the Mind: The Military Uses and Abuses of Psychology Peter Watson The title gives a good clue as what this is about. In some ways it is very dated having been published in 1974 while the American war on Vietnam was still in progress. In other ways the issues are still there for psychologists as they wrestle with their involvement in military work and interrogation techniques. The Intelligent Eye Richard Gregory I know that Eye and Brain is the more obvious choice, but I got a lot out of this book and often went back to it. Interestingly, when I tried to go back to it for this piece it wasn’t there. It is thing about books that you lend them out and they don’t always come back. Still, I mustn’t complain, I also found some books on my shelf that clearly aren’t mine. Sorry about that.

Phantoms in the Brain V.S. Ramachandran and S. Blakeslee This is a wonderful book because it is very readable, has some great stories, some cutting-edge science and shows how research in neuroscience doesn’t need massive scanners but can be done with some cardboard and sticky-back plastic. Who Stole Pirate Park? Christian Adey & Phil Banyard The brief for the shelfie said you could choose a book by yourself! I’ve had the privilege to write with a number of coauthors to create textbooks for psychology students. I enjoy writing and I’ve found that each project has challenged and enhanced my understanding of the psychology I have written about. My choice, though, is none of these but a short story written with my nephew who was five at the time. It is one of a series in our attempts to write in the style of Mister Men books. Sometimes writing is more fun than reading. Phil Banyard has co-authored several psychology textbooks including Ethical Issues in Psychology (2001, Routledge), Introducing Psychological Research (2008, Palgrave Macmillan) and Understanding and Using Statistics in Psychology (2007, Sage).

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‘You’re a writer already’ Our editor Jon Sutton speaks to academic and author Professor Charles Fernyhough (University of Durham) about his writing Does writing come easily to you? It doesn’t always come easily, but I never have any problem in finding the motivation to do it. It’s the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning, and when I don’t do it I’m miserable. The poet Paul Muldoon said something good about writer’s block: he said that he’s a writer in the moments when he’s writing, but when he’s not, he’s something else. I expect it to be slow and difficult, but I love the struggle. When your psychological grounding informs your fiction writing, is this just an inevitable side-effect or a deliberate

attempt to find a new way to communicate psychology? I’m definitely not trying to communicate disciplinary psychology in my fiction. Novels have to be about emotions, atmospheres and human detail. But I do think the psychologist and the novelist share certain preoccupations. What is it like to be conscious inside this flesh-and-blood machine? How does it feel? I call that last one the Bob Dylan question. Is there a thread that runs through all your writing? I’m interested in how people make sense of their experience. If there’s a thread, it’s trying to understand the understanding. Do you know much about your audience, and whether they’re the audience you would like to have? It’s hard to know who they are. I’d love to hear more from them. I get a certain amount of feedback on my nonfiction, and I know who comes and talks to me at festivals. But it’s a lopsided view. Most of it happens in a bit of a vacuum, unless in desperation one starts looking at online reviews – which are never very edifying. You’ve published all sorts of books, and seem pretty successful at combining writing with academia while branching out into all sorts of new areas. What’s left? I feel I’ve hardly begun to explore what I want to explore in my writing, both fiction and non-fiction. The science books are written from the starting point of a novelist, and I hope that’s what makes them feel a little different. Fiction-wise, I’m currently trying to understand what it’s like to be a 12th-century German priest. There’s nothing more exhilarating than throwing yourself into an utterly different world view. Any advice to psychologists who fancy trying their hand at writing? You’re a writer already. Anything that can give you practice at writing for a general audience – blogging, reviewing, or pitching articles to newspapers or magazines – will only improve your academic writing. Be a reader, of course. Like most things in life, find someone who’s good at doing it, and start by trying to work out how they manage it. I can’t give any advice about fiction, I’m afraid, except that if the entire universe is telling you to stop, and you are driven to keep going, then you are probably on to something. Above all, you need to set aside a lot of time. I haven’t worked full-time since 1997, which is pretty disastrous for the pension. I pay myself in hours, days, weeks – the time it takes to create a world and people it.

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Depressive Realism: Interdisciplinary Perspectives Colin Feltham Routledge Hb £95.00

Living with the modern world In the 21st century, scientific truths can be as disquieting as they are fascinating. The universe seems accidental and humankind a quirk of evolution; our actions shaped not by our will but by our context, history and biology. To top it all, we are feted sooner or later to vanish as a species… If we struggle to glimpse these dark possibilities, then it is because we are too clever for our own good. We have built a technological world that distracts and entertains mightily. But it is a world that is bewilderingly complex, iniquitous, dangerously out of control and perhaps uncontrollable; and it probably causes most of the distress that gets labelled as ‘mental illness’. These assertions – which are neither philosophically new nor resolved – form the credo of ‘depressive realism’ (or DR), as surveyed in this wide-ranging and stimulating book by Colin Feltham: one of the more thoughtful commentators from within the psychotherapy field. As Feltham shows, DR is not entirely negative. Life can yield transient rewards that are worth savouring;

and some of the best humorists and writers – from Woody Allen to Samuel Beckett – are exemplars of this melancholy school, which has a venerable pedigree that stretches across philosophy, the social sciences and the arts – and not just in the West. The author also explores some implications of DR for everyday life, seeks to counter some of its critics, and suggests lessons and applications for individuals and society. Indeed, most of modern psychology is built upon the notion that life is good and that humans are perfectible, or at least improvable; and Feltham brings forth a large body of evidence to question the naive claims made by the ubiquitous positive psychologists and by practitioners of CBT and of other fashionable therapies. The book is worth reading for these critiques alone. Feltham succeeds in showing that DR is a perspective that all of us should take seriously – whether or not we accept its outlook. Reviewed by Paul Moloney, a counselling psychologist

What to read… if you care about climate change This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate – Naomi Klein (2014, Penguin) Klein argues that climate change is the result of unrestrained capitalism putting short-term profit above all else, even the laws of physics. In this accessible gripping account, she gives the big picture needed to understand that climate change is human-caused. Engaging with Climate Change: Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives – Sally Weintrobe (Ed.) (2012, Routledge) A psychological and psychosocial perspective is also needed to engage with climate change. In this ‘jargon-lite’ book, structured as an interdisciplinary dialogue, the authors (many of them psychoanalysts and psychotherapists) discuss questions such as, Why are we collectively in such disavowal about the seriousness of climate change? The book

argues the disavowal is predominantly culturally driven. In Time for Tomorrow? The Carbon Conversations Handbook – Rosemary Randall & Andy Brown (2015, The Surefoot Effect) This gem of a book also helps join dots between the psychology, politics and social forces. It offers simple practical ways to reduce one’s carbon footprint, gives clear charts that show how much carbon is involved with daily actions and products and – I found this very useful – offers guidance on what to choose among ‘least worst’ alternatives. A compact ‘calorie counter’ type of book that opens one’s eyes to the problem of carbon and why we need to move to a cleaner smarter world.

Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming – Naomi Oreskes & Erik M. Conway (2010, Bloomsbury) Sowing doubt and confusion about science is a deep attack on our caring part and deeply demoralising. It leads to progressive breakdown of trust in scientists and the reality-based community in general. This book shows how large corporations funded the denialism of climate science. Highly relevant for traversing today’s world of ‘alternative facts’. Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell (1949) So, I suggest, is Orwell’s classic novel, now back on the bestseller list after Trump’s

election. Orwell’s subject is how politics uses culture to influence us psychologically to go along with a particular regime. My recent work is on how current culture serves the aims of neoliberalism: it boosts our self-idealising wish-fulfilling part to encourage us to ignore reality and continue with carbonintensive business as usual.

By Sally Weintrobe, Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society and Chartered Psychologist. Sally is also a climate psychologist and is currently working on a new book The Anti-mind: How Present Culture Undermines Our Sense of Reality, which explores ways mainstream culture actively seeks to block transition to a low-carbon fairer economy. A Founder Member of www. climatepsychologyalliance.org, her talks and blogs can be found on www.sallyweintrobe.com.

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This Way Madness Lies Mike Jay Thames and Hudson Hb £24.95

Immaculately researched This extraordinary book was published to accompany the exhibition of the same name at the Wellcome Collection (September 2016–January 2017: see tinyurl.com/ psychbedlam). If you were lucky enough to catch the exhibition, this wonderful text is a perfect companion; and if you missed it, the exquisite design combines graphic and text content, giving a flavour of the rich visual and scholarly material that ‘Bedlam’ contained. The text is an immaculately researched historical review and visual history of the Bethlem Royal Hospital, the world’s best-known asylum. It scopes the critical moments in the evolution of mental health care internationally, as well providing a pictorial portrayal of people, places and artwork that represent and define madness and its treatment from, as Jay states, ‘the dawn of humanity’ to the current day. The text is interspersed with an astounding array of visual images, some highlights include detailed architectural reproductions of asylum architecture, an assortment of depictions of heads, brains and minds being examined, pummelled and purged, and Jane Fradgley’s beautiful photographic

images of straitjackets entitled ‘Held’. Charting the fascinating history of mental health care, as it moved from mechanical restraint to moral treatment, and including curious facts such as the widespread belief that George III’s madness was caused by his overindulgence in pears, the book holds your attention. Beautiful and other-worldly photography from the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris depicting Charcot’s phases of hysteria, and the progressive ‘colony of the mad’ in Geel [see Jay’s article at tinyurl. com/jaygeel], Belgium that uses adult fostering of those who are mentally ill, still in existence today, also feature. The text considers current understandings of madness and treatment of mental health through inclusion of contemporary work such as ‘the vacuum cleaner’s’ Madlove project, featuring an imagined designer asylum. This book is essential reading for all with an interest in mental health, the history of asylums, and the artwork made by those who experience mental distress. Reviewed by Victoria Tischler CPsychol, AFBPsS, Professor of Arts and Health, University of West London

A hard day’s night As someone for whom work and sleep are major preoccupations, I was intrigued to find a volume that set out to examine the interaction between them. The editors, though, claim with some justification that given the prevalence of shift and night working, greater recognition of the role sleep quality plays in health, and the emergence of new research questions regarding performance and wellbeing in the workplace, it is actually a timely examination of a topic of considerable relevance to occupational health psychologists. The various contributions are organised into three main parts. The first contextualises the material in population trends for work and sleep patterns – albeit focused on the United States – and existing knowledge about the general relationship between working

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hours, sleep disorders and work performance. The second part looks in more detail at specific aspects of the latter relationship, some familiar (such as the role of fatigue in driving accidents) and some less so (such as the relationship between sleep and unethical behaviour). The final part considers the need for this relationship to be addressed in managerial education and practice. I found the content to be generally well organised and presented. Each of the chapters provides a clear and succinct discussion of its subject matter.

While the material is academic in nature, there are plenty of insights for practitioners along the way, most notably some guidance on managing one’s energy whilst at work. This volume will be of value both to those seeking the state of the art in research on sleep and work performance, and to those with an interest in developing practical interventions in this area.

Work and Sleep: Research Insights for the Workplace Julian Barling, Christopher Barnes, Erica Carleton & David Wagner (Eds.) Oxford University Press Hb £52.00

Reviewed by Denham Phipps, University of Manchester

More online: Find more books coverage on our website, including exclusive extracts from The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone, by Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach. See www.thepsychologist.org.uk/knowledge-illusion

07/04/2017 12:09

(from left): Me as Cahun holding a mask of my face by Gillian Wearing, 2012; © Gillian Wearing, courtesy Maureen Paley, London; Regen Projects, Los Angeles; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; I am in training don’t kiss me by Claude Cahun c. 1927; Jersey Heritage Collections © Jersey Heritage

Revealing the mask Rachel Williams on a never-ending performance of gender and identity

exhibition Behind the Mask, Another Mask National Portrait Gallery

Jersey Heritage Collections

Self-portrait (on sea wall at La Rocquaise) by Claude Cahun 1947

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‘Behind the mask, another mask. I will never finish removing all these faces.’ – Claude Cahun, 1934.

tanding in the middle of the exhibition, I am torn between two centuries. To the north, self-portraits of Claude Cahun against a backdrop of her sea-facing garden in post-war Jersey fill my field of view. Cahun appears hooded and caped with arms outstretched, creating an uncertainty over whether she will fly or fall. To the south, a young Gillian Wearing dances in the middle of Peckham’s Aylesham Centre – a south London shopping centre now unrecognisable post creditcrunch and the later wave of gentrification. She dances uninhibitedly as passing shoppers provide a range of reactions, from unapologetic stares to quickly stolen glances, reproduced here on a small television screen. ‘Behind the Mask…’ draws together two artists with almost a century between them but a shared exploration of identity through masquerade and performance. The masks used are physical, digital and surreal. Throughout, the artists challenge us to think of the masks we wear ourselves, how they are constructed, and who we are behind them. That is, if there is anything behind the mask at all. Many of the masks challenge the social construction of gender and betray its falseness and fragility. Cahun is referred to in academic literature and throughout the exhibition using the pronouns ‘she’ and ‘her’, however, Cahun identifies herself as ‘neuter’ rather than masculine or feminine in her written work, Disavowals. Today, Cahun’s work reflects experiences of life outside of the gender binary. Trans and non-binary people are constantly

under threat – trans women are the most murdered minority in the world – and accused of deceiving the world as to their ‘true identity’. Using masks, Cahun and Wearing push us to understand that all identities are constructed and shaped over time, from childhood to death. The truest reflection of ourselves will always be a mask. Some of the most striking photographs in the exhibition are Wearing’s portraits of herself in the guises of her family and younger self. Wearing emulates the looks of her parents, grandparents, siblings and threeyear-old self. In the gallery book, she explains that the photograph she receives the most questions about is her portrayal of her brother. She recalls the heavy fullbody suit she used to create a snapshot of time in his bedroom while he toured with a band. In this photograph, Wearing is behind the mask but her brother has designed the mask for her – his individuality is worn on his body through his distinctive hair and tattoos. Wearing’s masks are perfect except for the subtle border around the eye. In every photograph, the eyes are commanding and direct – they make the viewer uncomfortable as you are forced to recognise the humanity within. If we can see a mask, its power is revealed. And if we realise we are wearing a mask, we gain the ability to remove it. The exhibition is part of a season at the National Portrait Gallery exploring art, gender and identity: see www.npg.org.uk/whatson/i-am-me/home. Rachel Williams is an MRes student in Developmental Neurobiology (King’s College London)

07/04/2017 12:13

the psychologist may 2017 culture

tv A Killing in the Family Channel 4

Responding to homicide Hearing the question ‘Why did Daddy kill Mummy?’ asked by a child attending a homicide residential weekend run by the specialist child bereavement charity Winston’s Wish is heart-breaking, tough and impactful. I was not alone in this response, judging by social media following this documentary, which traced the experiences of 15 children and their families trying to make sense of grief and loss from murder. The shattering experiences sensitively portrayed were those of children whose parents had been taken from them suddenly and through violence. This included domestic homicide-suicides where children were coping not only with the loss of both parents, but the impact of being abandoned at the

scene of the crime, and an entire change in family dynamics. This was the plight of families coping with the collateral victimisation of such an act and the hidden and often forgotten lives of those affected by the visceral realities of knife and gun crime, whether random or intentional. The response to homicide is often portrayed as a need for justice along with questions surrounding motive – understanding the ‘Why?’ behind such absolute acts of violence. However, for those left behind, the challenges continue, often with little support outwith the charity sector – the families of loved ones not being perceived as victims and, in regard to the justice system, largely peripheral to events. In the year to September 2016, there were 695 recorded incidents of homicide in England and Wales (Office for National Statistics, 2017) and considering one child every day is bereaved of a parent in this manner, the role for tailored therapeutic intervention is critical. Facing challenging issues of childhood grief and loss in a timely, safe and contained way, while not undoing the loss of a parent, can give hope for the future with strategies to cope with a life that is irrevocably changed. The children and young people supported by Winston’s Wish could begin to develop their understanding of the range of powerful emotional responses to loss through a variety of creative

expression, gain permission for their tears and engage in a collective experience of childhood grief with those who could truly empathise. The severity, breadth and accumulation of adverse childhood events is acknowledged as playing a critical role in psychological development and mental health (for example see tinyurl.com/cwrc2014, and the work of John Read and Richard Bentall). Sadly, the delivery of tailored early intervention for childhood trauma remains variable at best. Many adults engaging in therapeutic interventions in applied clinical and forensic psychology settings are the product of unidentified childhood trauma and victimisation and a lack of services to meet their historic needs. The significance of this documentary should therefore be immense. It is as much about enhancing awareness of the tragic experiences of children and young people affected by homicide as it is to emphasise the sheer magnitude of such psychological impact when there is no capacity for ongoing support. The need to avoid trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube in adulthood is recognised – the commitment of consistent resources to childhood trauma remains a challenge we need to address. Reviewed by Dr Lynsey Gozna (University of Leicester)

Waxing and waning on Goldfrapp’s discography Goldfrapp have reinvented themselves with each album, and Silver Eye, named after the moon, brings those incarnations together. The first electro beats take us back to the reassuringly familiar synth pop territory of works such as Supernature; and when the distinctive voice of Alison Goldfrapp layers over the top, we are reminded that she falls into that small but distinguished category of female vocalists whose voice is instantly recognisable: at the same time both unreal and totally authentic. For me part of the beauty of the duo is that their songs have always stood on their own, without analysis or explanation, but if you delve deeper there are often unexpected messages. I was transfixed from first hearing by ‘Lovely Head’ (from the album Felt Mountain), which I later discovered was about oral sex. That track was the

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defining music of several films including My Summer of Love, a 2004 Pawlikowski film about the complicated and destructive relationship between two teenage girls. In their latest offering, ‘Become the one you know you are’ may seem like an everyman sort of song, but was inspired by a documentary about transgender children. A defining feature of previous albums has been a combination of imagery of nature with vast washes of sound, and here ‘Moon in your Mouth’ and ‘Ocean’ do this in spades. This is a solid pop album, in which Goldfrapp’s identity feels like it is consolidating. There isn’t much here that’s new, but if you’ve followed Goldfrapp’s reinventions over the years, there will be much here for you.

music Silver Eye Goldfrapp

Reviewed by Dr Sally Marlow, Associate Editor for Culture

07/04/2017 12:13

music The Eysenck Suite Russian Linesman

Rummaging in his parents’ loft, ‘Russian Linesman’ unearthed a tattered old psychology book by Hans Eysenck. It contained an analysis of temperament theory and its roots in the ancient ideas of Hippocrates and Galen, and it was to become the catalyst for his latest musical project. ‘I had recently rediscovered my love for psychology,’ Russian Linesman explained. ‘This book led me to think about my next story, a story of the mind. I started off by writing a poem, and the EPs are a musical interpretation of those words, a mantra I hope to pass on to my son on how to survive in this nonsense of a world.’ Galen had named four temperamental categories as ‘Melancholic’, ‘Choleric’, ‘Sanguine’ and ‘Phlegmatic’, and the Linesman’s compositions communicate his

The time is now… Do you remember the 80s? Not just the creative hair (mullets, high-top fades, puffed-up back combs… the quiff), but Thatcherism, the struggle to end apartheid, social unrest, riots and anti-fascism. ‘The Place is Here’ exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary represents the political turbulence and social inequality through the eyes of marginalised people in the 1980s. This exhibition brings together over 100 works from a range of writers, artists, thinkers and film makers. Across the four exhibition rooms of the Nottingham Contemporary, topics such as Margaret Thatcher’s anti-immigration policies, black feminism, Asian film and apartheid in South Africa are addressed through paintings, sculptures, posters, film and texts. The films presented as part of the exhibition were captivating and moving; one particularly interesting documentary (that was originally not aired and is believed to have been suppressed) explored the origins of the social unrest in Brixton, Photo: Andy Keate

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interpretation of each classification of Eysenck’s resulting model and the emotions they encompass, ordered and structured and revealed across four EPs. Russian Linesman writes all his music on acoustic guitar and piano, harking back to a past spent touring as an acoustic singer/songwriter playing folk music. This ethos has evolved into recording with vocals as well, before everything is heavily edited and drowned in electronic sounds. He says that the first EP, ‘Melancholic’, is ‘intended as a soundtrack for times of sorrow, reminiscence and regret. But also for moments of withdrawal from overthinking everything, reducing anxiety, reflecting and triggering memory traces of happier times. In the ideal personality, these complementary traits are intricately

balanced, and so, within these recordings, I hope the listener can find comfort in acknowledging them, and in turn finding their own balance.’ I shared the music with Eysenck biographer Professor Philip Corr (Department of Psychology, City, University of London). ‘The Melancholic collection is accomplished, creative and imaginative,’ he said. ‘I am sure that Eysenck would have been delighted (and perhaps ruefully amused) to hear these pieces of music, especially as he had a lifelong interest in the psychology of artistic appreciation – indeed, his PhD during the late 1930s was on the very topic of aesthetic judgement. In addition, as noted in my 2016 biography Hans Eysenck: A Contradictory Psychology, Eysenck’s professional and scientific style had much in common with the artistic

Photo: Andy Keate

exhibition The Place is Here Nottingham Contemporary

Finding a melancholic balance

Handsworth and Tottenham. The photographs catalogue a history of protest, including one of anti-national front demonstrations in Birmingham city centre, and other examples include a selection of four anti-racism posters. The photo archive also presents traditions such as the dead yard/house (a Caribbean funeral tradition) and celebrations such as the Handsworth carnival in the 80s. Throughout the exhibition, strong messages about the purpose of culture, identity formation, prejudice, implicit

07/04/2017 12:13

the psychologist may 2017 culture

type, although not of the melancholic variety. ‘This Suite highlights the essential psychological nature of music and beautifully illustrates the reality of personality differences. It goes to show, music can be inspired by psychological theory – the Freud Suite would be interesting! But so too it is intriguing to think how the nuanced rendering of ideas and emotion in this art form may, itself, be used to help understand the nature of individual differences – personality taxonomy through the music of Ed Sheeran, anyone?’ The series of four EPs will be released at bi-monthly intervals throughout the year. Find out more at www. soundcloud.com/russianlinesman Reviewed by Jon Sutton, Managing Editor

Photo: Andy Keate

biases, power and injustice were communicated. All of these topics are explored and addressed in psychology (Graham Richards outlines psychology’s relationship with race in his 2012 book Race, Racism and Psychology – Towards a Reflective History). In three to four decades from now will we look back at our contemporary art, film and artefacts of our time with admiration for those who provided an active voice against discrimination, inequality, prejudice, the politics of injustice and the resurgence of divisive political views? I hope so. And amongst those voices taking a stand, will we hear the words of psychologists? If so ‘the time is now and the place is here’. The exhibition runs until 30 April. Reviewed by Dr Rebecca Stack, Lecturer/ Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Nottingham Trent University

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Are we more like animals than we know? Are capuchin monkeys spiteful? Might elephants grieve? Do fish fake orgasms? Have we the slightest idea how an octopus thinks? (If it’s a baby, maybe an inkling?) Just some of the topics on the table in the Reading Room at London’s Wellcome Collection, for a live and lively discussion presented by Claudia Hammond and Tim Cockerill. Sharing the platform were Laurie Santos, Professor of Psychology at Yale University, and Anil Seth, Co-Director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex. Both were called on to explain whether we humans may have unjustifiably placed ourselves on a pedestal: sure, we’re the only species having a radio broadcast and sharing it, but once you strip out teaching, language and culture, are we fundamentally that different? In fact, are even those exalted highs of human achievement that unique to us? Some animals have systems that look a lot like language, and abilities that we once considered the preserve of humans, such as tool use, are now found to be relatively widespread. These characteristics are considered the ‘better side’ of human nature, allowing us to create and appreciate beauty in our world. But we’re perhaps increasingly aware that we are also idiots – the work of psychologists such as Daniel Kahneman, and pretty much every news story of

radio The Evidence BBC World Service

07/04/2017 12:13

the last few years, has shown that we fall prey to a whole host of biases and irrationalities. We cause economic crashes, we make the same mistakes over and over. Do animals do the same? The panel considered loss aversion: we are really averse to losing out, so much so that we take on more risk. You see this in the housing market, stocks and shares, even on the golf course (a study suggesting the bias is behind risky putting on the PGA tour). Well, it turns out that monkeys trained to trade tokens for food will do the same: they go with the guy who gives the small safe bonus, but when playing with losses all of a sudden their behaviour becomes risky. Presumably the strategy of avoiding losses may have been good for something back in our evolutionary past. Consider food storage – there’s not much point in having extra, but you definitely don’t want to go with less than you currently have. The problem humans have, Professor Seth pointed out, is that the consequences of our decisions are amplified by our numbers, and by our technology. The heuristics that served us well in the past fail us big time now. Any discussion around the similarities between humans and animals treads carefully around the language of anthropomorphism. But when you hear Professor Santos, who clearly spends a lot of time with animals, talk about ‘things in some species that look a lot like love’, it’s easy to be persuaded. Behaviours

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such as selective grooming and mating recruit the same hormones as human ‘love’, and Santos says ‘when I watch it I can’t help but describe it using those same verbs’. On its reverse, hate – or, at least, spite – Professor Santos extends the research of Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal to show that capuchin monkeys not only care about the equity of others’ actions, they can get so upset when this is breached that they will work to do something bad to the other monkey. Professor Seth agrees that a consideration of emotions in animals is a useful counterpoint to the focus on intelligence. The most important question, he says, is whether an animal has the capacity to suffer, feel disgust, etc. Did you know you can distinguish between disappointment and regret in rats? ‘Do they wistfully gaze over to the nose-poke thing? It’s a stretch to say they experience regret,’ Seth admits, ‘but they do show sensitivity to the action not taken.’ The fascinating facts kept coming. Or not: fish can fake orgasms, Professor Santos announced. ‘I briefly stopped eating fish when I found this out’. Brown trout females will fake the dance that leads to the release of her eggs, but only if the male is ‘not so good’. Again, it might be a stretch to use the word ‘fake’, but they are showing a ‘complex set of reasoning abilities that I didn’t expect fish to have’. And you can change the extent to which a cleaner fish cleans merely by giving it an audience. ‘They’re definitely tracking a lot of the same things we do.’ The evening even touched bravely upon consciousness. Studying animals can reveal how arbitrary, fragile and contingent human consciousness is. Take that octopus. ‘You have the sense of being in the presence of an alien intelligence’, said Professor Seth. They have lots of neurons outside the central brain, including in each arm. ‘We feel our body as this thing that moves around with us. Maybe each octopus arm has the sense of being an octopus arm.’ There was so much more, I won’t spoil the programme. If it has made the edit, I hope you’ll hear about putting dolphins in the dock in 1596 Marseilles, about trees sharing minerals with other species across root networks, and of course about those clever crows (I wish they all could be New Caledonian). So much that I didn’t know we know, but as Professor Santos concluded, a ‘humbling’ amount that we haven’t got the first idea about. Essential listening. The Evidence, a series of five episodes looking at the relationship between humans and animals, is due to be broadcast on the BBC World Service in the week beginning 17 April. Reviewed by Jon Sutton, Managing Editor

07/04/2017 12:13

the psychologist may 2017 culture

radio Hitting the High Notes BBC Radio 3 Listen at tinyurl. com/jazzheroin

of Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy_HPH.pdf

An invigorating look at heroin and jazz The relationship between musicians and substance abuse is not a shocking revelation. From Berlioz, through Beethoven to The Beatles, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse, there is a long and tragic lineage of artists falling foul of stimulant abuse. It’s often attributed to the collision of youthful abandon, wealth and the stresses of new-found fame; yet 1 17/11/2016 11:56 bebop era jazz musicians like Charlie Parker and Chet Baker often lived gig to gig yet were still infamous for their heroin use. This is the genesis of a brand new BBC Radio 3 documentary feature by Dr Sally Marlow, an addiction researcher at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London [and one of the Associate Editors for these pages]. ‘Hitting The High Notes’ travels to Lexington in Kentucky to talk to musicians from the bebop period and medical researchers from the present day,

who elaborate on the prodigious heroin epidemic prevalent in the 40s and 50s jazz music scene in the USA. Prudent music choices from the period place the listener at the heart of Harlem in the 1940s. Invigorating, imaginative narrative storytelling synthesise the political, racial and artistic factors that frame this poignant story. We hear the history of a ground-breaking institute for drug addiction, the ‘Narcotic Farm’, where music played a huge part. The researchers of the day were charged with understanding whether jazz itself was a contagious disease, part of a number of elements that predisposed people towards addiction; or whether the heroin epidemic simply reflected a lifestyle choice for an oppressed minority, spoiling for a much-needed revolution through the only outlet available to them in the underground arts world. It is a vivid and thoughtprovoking look at the musicians

who made near miraculous new waves in music during this period, but also at the duplicitous nature of similar innovations being made by researchers in the burgeoning field of psychotherapy for stimulant abuse. The work done at the Lexington Institute in Kentucky ‘Narco Farm’ broke significant ground in the humanitarian treatment of those dealing with opiate addiction and the fields of occupational, recreational and music therapy… but there were also some highly unethical methods and procedures with the patients too. The history of our relationship with stimulants can be traced back to the Stone Ages, but Dr Marlow’s documentary provides a fascinating look at the foundations of presentday treatment for substance abuse, via an animated snapshot of the past. Reviewed by Niall James Holohan, musician and BSc in psychology undergraduate at Birkbeck, University of London

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07/04/2017 12:13

Britain’s first full-time Professor of Psychology Natalie Bigbie and Nils Muhlert on the life and work of Tom Hatherley Pear

M 86

any at the University of Manchester will be familiar with the name Samuel Alexander: his memorial building is part of the School of Humanities. What may not be widely known is that we have Alexander to thank for the early development of psychology in the UK, and for introducing psychology to Manchester. Before joining the Philosophy Department at the University of Manchester in 1893, Alexander studied experimental psychology in Germany, hoping to commit to ‘new psychology’ and to bring it to his teaching. He was one of the few members of the British Psychological Society in its conception and, by 1902, he had started an experimental psychology lab class at Manchester. In addition, he gathered other scientists, such as the pathologist Lorrain Smith and the famous physiologist Charles Sherrington, to further encourage psychological research; to top it off, Alexander planned to establish a department of psychology. Alexander searched for the perfect lecturer for the department, deliberating between American, German and British psychologists. He first set his sights on C.S. Myers, but he was ‘lost’ to King’s College London. The place was later offered to an undergraduate by the name of Tom Pear (pronounced ‘peer’). Pear was a physics student at King’s but, after attending Myers’ lectures, became obsessed with the psychological issue that underlies all science – that scientific observation requires an observer. Pear’s attention was caught by Myers’ insight, so much so that he went on to become his protégé, alongside Cambridge psychologist Frederic Bartlett. Nudging from both Alexander and Myers resulted in Pear’s arrival at Manchester. One dark winter afternoon, Pear was approached by Alexander in a corridor at UCL (where Pear regularly attended lectures). There, Alexander proposed the idea of a department of psychology at Manchester, the only catch being that Pear needed to obtain a first.

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As luck, and hard work, would have it, Tom Pear gained his first class degree at King’s, and was rewarded with an invitation to stay in Alexander’s home. At this point, several important figures at the university ‘looked him over’. Having gained their approval, Pear was sent to finish his studies under guidance of Oswald Kulpe in Würzburg, Germany. He returned to Manchester in 1909, to his new role as their first lecturer in psychology, and was elected to the BPS. In his new role, Pear discussed science with noted figures (such as the physician Elliot Smith), immersing himself in the social life at the Medical School. Pear’s own reflections only briefly mention the start of his career in Manchester, but reminisce fondly of the scientific ‘prayer meetings’ that took place. In these meetings, academics would gather to set out their ‘scientific creed’, and debate the pressing questions of the time. Amongst this group were Samuel Alexander, Ernest Rutherford (the ‘father of nuclear physics’), Elliot Smith and Niels Bohr (the Danish Nobel-prize winning physicist, who set the foundations for quantum theory and atomic structure). These interdisciplinary meetings provided stimulating academic debate for Pear and later helped him to expand pathological and psychiatric education and research at the university. Pear also reflected on his early interest in ethnology, stemming from worries about the lack of cultural differences in mainstream psychology. In particular, he noted that Carveth Read’s UCL lectures were ‘compiled by someone who had no first-hand contact with any civilisation less sophisticated than that of the peoples of Western Europe’ (Pear, 1960, p.227; see tinyurl.com/k2jbmcp). Pear’s interest in ethnology and in obtaining multiple perspectives on psychological problems mirrors his later achievements in bringing together disparate areas of psychology, moving away from his contemporaries’ linear, Westerncentric views on subjects. An important psychological shift in Pear’s thinking is also apparent in his veering away from an early

07/04/2017 12:16

the psychologist may 2017 looking back

Freudian approach, in which he of hatred in soldiers, were such had diarised dreams and discussed to greatly exacerbate any such them with BPS members. Through predispositions. These observations the Manchester ‘prayer meetings’ he led Pear and Smith to write an began to question Freud’s belief in influential book, Shell Shock and the ‘fundamental similarity of the its Lessons, making the case that human mind’. This term suggested more investment was needed in the a base psychological foundation to mental health of veterans. every human being. Elliot Smith, Upon returning to Manchester however, considered this too in 1919 Pear was promoted from vague – humans certainly shared lecturer to Professor, establishing key physical features, but he was a new department of psychology unconvinced that this extended to and, in the process, becoming psychology. Freud’s view was based Britain’s first full-time Professor of on observations that people in Psychology. He remained a professor distant lands shared similar habits, in Manchester for the following beliefs and customs. Shrewdly, 32 years. In that time he was Smith pointed out that these lands joined by only a handful of other had often been visited by Christian academic staff, many of whom are missionaries, so apparent similarities could reflect remembered to this day, such as R.H. Thouless and newly learned behaviours and the biased methods H.E.O James. Despite the small department, Pear’s used to study and report them. Alongside their clear connections and contacts brought together multiple influence on Pear’s work, these formative experiences areas of psychology at the university, including regarding ethnology and Freud provide remarkable industrial, occupational, anthropological and social insight into the nature of debates in psychology and psychology. More broadly, he engaged and collaborated the BPS as the 20th century began. closely with scientists from a range of physical and The First World War tore Pear and Smith away social disciplines (including noted correspondences from Manchester and thrust them into the Military with Professor A.V. Hill). Hospital in Maghull near Liverpool. There, Pear Throughout his writing Pear emphasises engaged in therapy and teaching to wounded soldiers, harnessing the skills of others – sticking to one’s increasing his prominence in own field but working with psychology and psychology’s other experts to achieve greater prominence in Britain. His insight. His concerns about people work with Smith in Maghull overstepping their own domain of led to significant advance in expertise has been immortalised in the understanding of ‘shell his famous quote: ‘We should be on shock’. In his reflections about our guard against the temptation to Maghull, Pear discusses the argue directly from skill to capacity, unpreparedness of civilians for and to assume when a man displays the experiences of war. The skills in some feat, his capacity is sudden shift from a psychology therefore considerable.’ This quote’s Natalie Bigbie of peace to one of hatred was roots can easily be identified from is a BSc Psychology student at the deemed too much to bear Pear’s work, his ‘prayer meetings’ University of Manchester for many soldiers. Pear also and his gathered learning from natalie.bigbie@student. questioned whether those who esteemed colleagues in Manchester, manchester.ac.uk developed ‘shell shock’ or postLondon and Maghull. traumatic stress disorder, as Despite Pear’s time, effort and it’s now called, were somehow contribution to psychology, his predisposed to it. A commonly name is now remembered more held government and military for his legacy within Manchester view was that those with shell than for the legacy of his work. shock would have developed The range of psychological an equivalent condition in their disciplines within the northwest, everyday lives, thereby washing and the UK more broadly, perhaps their hands of the responsibility. stands testament to this. Today, Nils Muhlert Pear’s view was that the extent psychology has considerably is in the Division of Neuroscience & of horror (gathered from the outgrown its early roots in Experimental Psychology, University soldier’s personal stories of philosophy with the diversity, of Manchester trench warfare), and techniques depth and breadth that Pear hoped nils.muhlert@manchester.ac.uk used to instil a psychology for, but may not have expected.

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07/04/2017 12:16

AZ the

psychologist to

E ...is for Ecstasy

‘Ecstatic experiences – moments where people go beyond their ordinary self and feel connected to something greater than them – are fundamental to human flourishing, yet historically they have largely been ignored or pathologised by psychiatry and psychology. Luckily that’s started to change, with more research on flow states, mystical experiences, self-transcendence and “out-of-the-ordinary experiences” like hearing voices. There’s still a lot to learn.’

‘Secular ecstasies’ have features that resemble psychiatric symptoms but they’re indicative of a healthy life, with beneficial effects on personality and creativity, wrote Ray McBride (March 2014). Our 2002 article led by Jon Cole argued that the longterm effects of Ecstasy use are far from clear, and that psychologists are muddying the waters. Has the field moved on since?

Synaesthetes who claim to have sexual forms of the

psy 0517 p88 atoz.indd 88

Karla Novak

Suggested by Jules Evans, Research Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London (see also p.68).

condition report altered states of consciousness during sex, including ‘oceanic boundlessness’ (feelings of derealisation and ecstasy). In a 2013 case study reported on our Digest, a team of neurologists stimulated the anteriordorsal insula of a 23-yearold epileptic patient during surgery. She experienced the same feelings of bliss and ecstasy that she reports prior to a seizure. In her September 2014 ‘One on one’, Valerie Curran described Ecstasy as having ‘fascinating, potential synergy with psychological therapies’.

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society notices

society vacancies

Psychology of Education Section Annual Conference Edinburgh, 27–28 October 2017 See p.20 BPS Annual Conference Nottingham, 2–4 May 2017 See p.27 Division of Clinical Psychology Annual Conference Cardiff, 17–18 January 2018 See p.35 Division of Health Psychology Annual Conference Cardiff, 6–8 September 2017 See p.42 Psychology in the Pub (South West of England Branch) Bath, 11 May 2017; Plymouth 18 May 2017 See p.42 CPD workshops 2017 See p.49 BPS conferences and events See p.59 Division of Counselling Psychology Annual Conference Stratford-upon-Avon, 7–8 July 2017 See p.61

British Journal of Health Psychology Editor See p.36 British Journal of Clinical Psychology Editor See p.76 Electronic Health Records Task & Finish Group Members See p.79

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

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

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