The Psychologist June 2019 by The Psychologist

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psychologist june 2019

Big data in the big city Catherine Lido on using novel technology to explore inclusion in Learning Cities

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psychologist june 2019

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contact The British Psychological Society 48 Princess Road East Leicester LE1 7DR 0116 254 9568 mail@bps.org.uk www.bps.org.uk

Big data in the big city Catherine Lido on using novel technology to explore inclusion in Learning Cities

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 contact Kai Theriault 01223 378051 kai.theriault@cpl.co.uk may 2019 issue 47,836 dispatched cover Visualisation from iMCD project GPS trails of men (blue) and women (purple) around the city of Glasgow over a day. Full data at tinyurl.com/imcdglasgow environment Printed by Warners Midlands plc on 100 per cent recycled paper. Please re-use and recycle. Mailing bag is potato starch-based and fully compostable.

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 Deputy Editor Annie Brookman-Byrne Production Mike Thompson Journalist Ella Rhodes Editorial Assistant Debbie Gordon Research Digest Christian Jarrett (editor), Emma Young, Matthew Warren

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.

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

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psychologist june 2019

‘The World Cup demonstrated what changes when people feel differently’ Pete Olusoga meets Dr Pippa Grange, the sports psychologist with the England men’s football team

The Rocky Horror Pixel Show Where in the brain is creativity? Arne Dietrich ponders whether we’re asking the right questions…

Letters Let go of the script…

Obituaries

News Vaccines; three myths around screen time

Notes from a weather observer Trevor Harley

Big data in the big city Catherine Lido on using novel technology to explore inclusion in Learning Cities

Digest Olympic medals, unseen colour, sad songs and more

Why are life events troubling? Ruth Spence, Lisa Kagan and Antonia Bifulco ﬁnd it’s not a straightforward question…

‘Can I sympathise with mothers who have hurt their children?’ Lauren Mountain

‘You don’t have to stay within the barriers’ We meet lecturer Nick Perham

Jobs in psychology Featured job, latest vacancies

Books The anatomy of online grief; Marcus Munafo’s ‘shelﬁe’; and reviews

Culture Emotional Shorts; BTS; more

One on one

In June, we’ll see whether the England men’s football team can win the UEFA Nations League, continuing a remarkable turnaround in both public perception of the squad and their performances on the pitch. This began in last summer’s World Cup, and Dr Pippa Grange has some fascinating behind the scenes insights (p.24). I’ll be glued to the screen for the games. Will this do me harm? Debates around media use regularly hit the headlines, so we’re delighted that Professor Andrew Przybylski (p.16) will front ‘The Psychologist Presents…’ at July’s Latitude Festival. Przybylski has, along with Amy Orben and other colleagues, published excellent papers on the topic recently – showing how, in many ways, ‘screen time’ is psychology’s various ‘crises’ in microcosm. Our regular Latitude appearances are one example of how we’ve built content, channels, and a community. Now we have more to do on strategy, structure and style. We need you – keep in touch! Dr Jon Sutton Managing Editor @psychmag

Tim Sanders/www.timonline.info

Don’t fear jazz

‘No it’s not therapy’, I said. ‘Therapy is one solution definitely. It can help us understand ourselves better. But then it’s a huge problem if we have to go back into a world which doesn’t work for us’. I explain that I still use the same skills but not within the same boundaries. She paused. ‘Oh I get it… so it’s like you’re classically trained, but actually you’re making jazz?’ I try to find different ways to explain my role, and ultimately people have to find their own frame of reference. The work moves faster than my ability to explain it. This particular academic’s interpretation got me thinking. I’m a clinical psychologist by training. It’s ‘classical’ in that you’re taught a traditional method of playing, based on some core theories and ideas. But in order to change policy, you have to improvise with the knowledge base. Everyone requires highly fluid roles, a departure from the music sheet. A different audience need the notes in new ways, with space for others to start improvising with you. There are pros and cons to working outside of a public system, or making a departure from how you’re trained. The freedom to innovate; the people you get to meet and collaborate with; the ability to respond rapidly and change what you do. But that comes with a feeling of isolation

and nervousness and the concern that I’m not doing what I was trained to do. There’s a lot of getting it wrong and trying again. The impact of what I do feels harder to measure. Maybe the idea of a ‘role’ is even outdated. We’ve been carved up into job descriptions, professions and organisations. We need to ﬁnd more things that bring us together. Roles can put armour around us, but they can hinder us too. The ability to make a difference in the world is in no way linked to a title. Yet we’ve created a system that means you’re more likely to be heard if you have one. Growing up in a household of jazz, and named after Nina Simone, it’s not new to me. But I’d complain to my dad that I couldn’t hear the rhythm. ‘It’s there’, he would say, ‘just listen harder’. Jazz musician Don Cherry said ‘When people believe in boundaries, they become part of the problem’, and it’s as if Miles Davis is describing our test and learn approach: ‘when you hit a wrong note, it’s the next that makes it good or bad’. What’s your next note? If, as a psychologist, you were to let go of your script, what might you do differently? Dr Nina Browne Clinical and Community Psychologist The Owls Organisation, London

the psychologist june 2019 letters

Still the science of the sophomore? In her letter in the April issue, Priya Maharaj asks: ‘Do scientists and scientific bodies (universities, journals, funding bodies, etc.) really believe it a worthwhile venture to reflect on their WEIRDness?’ The answer seems to be no. First, we are not questioning why mechanisms of science that perpetuate WEIRDness are thought of as reflections of universal phenomena. Measures studied and constructs developed in such countries usually find a place in the field’s preeminent journals and conferences, win prestigious awards, and enjoy (and often are eligible for) large grants – all for studying such a population. McNemar observed this as early as 1946, when he commented that ‘the existing science of human behaviour is largely the science of sophomores’. Yet we still try to extrapolate insights based on a narrow slice of humanity, as Mostafa

Salari Rad and colleagues noted in a paper in PNAS last year. That 11.41 per cent of the 223 studies explored in their paper did not include any information about their participants ‘demonstrates the scope of the problem we are addressing’. These studies presumably didn’t go out of their way to include a diverse sample. Our science is still the science of North American sophomores. We are also not allowing those who buck this trend to find space in such scientific bodies. For example, scientists trying to publish data from non-WEIRD countries are sometimes nudged towards geographical areaspecific journals. Do behaviours of an Asian population deserve only to be published in an Asian journal? How is this different from orientalism – as if non-WEIRD behaviours are anomalies that need to be read within the WEIRD framework! What’s worse, when WEIRD findings are

not replicated in other countries, instead of questioning the theory, these studies often get diminished as ‘cross-cultural’. Then, the discrepancies are often undermined by explaining them away through the problematic individualismcollectivism framework. Thus, knowledge is created not only about, but also by, only a certain kind of individual. Their blinkers and biases may continue to play a role in what they propose is a universal phenomenon – a neocolonialism, if you like. The need to include diversity is not just political correctness – the lack of it erodes the validity of the very science that is supposed to explain universal human phenomenon. Are we asserting, even now, that the subaltern cannot speak? Arathy Puthillam Monk Prayogshala India

Let’s stop doing the timewarp again Psychology has taken huge strides forward over the years, so why are we still focusing A-level psychology on studies from half a century ago? In her recent opinion piece ‘Respected and Ridiculed’ (March 2019), Ciara Wild raised well-founded concerns that the A-level psychology curriculum remains caught in a time warp. As an A-level psychology teacher of more than 20 years, I want to echo and amplify Ciara’s concern. Although the form of the examination has undeniably altered since I started teaching psychology in 1998, with coursework being axed from the speciﬁcation just over a decade ago (2008), the content of the curriculum remains largely unchanged, and includes research recognised by all English-speaking students of psychology over the past 20 years, such as Bowlby’s attachment theory and Milgram’s shock machine research. I still teach these foundational studies with conviction as they

represent the ground-breaking, shared scientiﬁc knowledge on which our discipline is based, and have been subsequently revisited and commented upon by other more contemporary critics, entertainers and researchers, which makes for interesting asides and class discussions if nothing else. Perhaps the time warp effect Ciara describes is simply the result of looking back from the vantage point

of having studied psychology beyond A-level, but I believe the stagnation in A-level psychology education she cites is real, and is the by-product of a highly standardised examination system, which is not unique to psychology, but true of subjects across the post-16 examination curriculum in the UK. As I enter my third decade of teaching, I am forced to reﬂect that the uniform culture of A-level

studies is increasingly an exercise in conformity, and does not encourage risk-taking or original thinking in psychology, or any other discipline for that matter! It saddens me that young minds are deprived of insights which might come from a more concrete exploration of their interests and the freedom to question the assumptions of this human science. Being the political football that it is, the whole school curriculum is reliably booted into reform once every 5 years or so. This last happened in 2015 when the changes ﬁrst initiated by Michael Gove as Education Minister in David Cameron’s Coalition government brought about some important changes. In the short-term these spelled the welcome end of a resit culture which had gripped schools and contributed signiﬁcantly to student anxiety levels and teacher workload. It also enabled students to once again enter university with three rather than four A-levels. On the other hand, the failure to re-introduce a practical research element to the rebranded 2015 version of psychology A-level

represents a missed opportunity in post-16 education. Indeed, in light of our discipline’s replication crisis, this is a rather ironic state of affairs. Coursework in psychology would enable students to think outside the narrow confines of the examination specification and give them the chance to try to reproduce some of the classic research they encounter in their A-level studies. Since 2015, the mental health and well-being of school students has become a national priority and schools are being viewed as places where early prevention and intervention might ease the burden on an overwhelmed Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service. Yet, the psychology A-level specification still omits to incorporate the well-established insights of counselling psychology, positive psychology, mindfulness, and health psychology in any substantial way. Culturally-diverse the content of psychology A-level is not. Taking a global perspective, many key studies in the specification are based on research in which sample groups are drawn mostly from US groups

that are overwhelmingly WEIRD in their demographic make-up – Western, Educated college student groups drawn from post-Industrial, materially Rich, Democratic nation states. Although A-level students are encouraged to criticise the validity of data and assess the culturebias inherent in the research they encounter, this exercise changes nothing fundamental about the speciﬁcation, and gives them little insight into the behaviour of other participant populations around the world. It is high time to substantially revise the content and structure of the received psychology A-level canon of literature if we want to avoid the accusation of being backward looking, insular and irrelevant as a science, and to prepare the young minds we educate to best face an unknown future in which psychology has something of worth to contribute to a world marked by a changing climate. Emma Liebeskind Woodford County High School for Girls

A demand to avoid demand avoidance?

A growing interest around Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA) has been reflected in letters to this magazine, discussing possible explanations for PDA, specifically as a form of autism or attachment disorder. Nonetheless, the main PDA discourse portrays it as a distinct syndrome that is part of the autism spectrum. Yet PDA is not in the diagnostic manuals and there is a substantially poor scientific case for the construct. The PDA behavioural profile lacks specificity and overlaps many other conditions, including common autism comorbidities. Furthermore, research indicates PDA itself is not unique to autism, its behaviours are not caused by autism and many persons diagnosed with PDA are unlikely to be autistic. This pluripotential nature is compounded by flawed screening and diagnostic tools, containing vague questions and frequent reliance on caregiver reports; therefore much of PDA research has various possible sources of confirmation bias and alternative explanations. Primarily, PDA research is focusing on reliability over validity, partly with the aim to maintain integrity of its dominant discourse. Since autism has moved to validity based nosology, PDA is unlikely to enter diagnostic manuals, and some view it as a threat to validity of clinical

language. Crucially, under the Department for Education and Department of Health’s 2015 Special Educational Needs and Disability Code of Practice, individuals should receive appropriate strategies regardless of their exact diagnosis. Pertinently, according to the short report of a 2019 meeting of the PDA Society (tinyurl.com/yxds7mvc), children with a diagnosis of PDA do not experience an increased number of formal school exclusions, but do experience more ‘informal exclusions’. My own citation survey suggests that the key PDA literature is being accessed thousands of times, with negligible levels critical scholarship referenced. I would argue there is a need for a scientiﬁc approach to PDA, prioritising the integrity and validity of autism, over diagnosing PDA. In a time when psychologists such as Sue Fletcher-Watson are advocating participatory autism research (tinyurl.com/yxmqpgg8), and with my own research (tinyurl.com/y2kwcwsj) suggesting that PDA is not a recognised research priority of the autistic population, an ethical debate is required to discuss the merits of diagnosing and researching it. Richard Woods Nottingham

the psychologist june 2019 letters

Toxic acts, not toxic masculinity Carol Murphy’s letter in the April issue (‘Murder-Suicide: are we up to the challenge?’) raises some interesting questions about the male gender. We applaud this, particularly as she kept an open mind to the possibility that maleness is now becoming pathologised by the academic community. Such stigmatisation of masculinity has most recently been shown by the 2018 American Psychological Association guidelines for psychological practice with men and boys [discussed in the March edition]. As committee members of the newly formed Male Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society we are concerned at the poor level of scientiﬁc evidence on offer in relation to the male gender, and we wish to spearhead more and better research and practice in this area. In particular, we note the tendency across the academic spectrum to generalise from small

samples of damaged men to the whole male population. Murdersuicide is a case in point. There can be no doubt that the vast majority of those who perform these tragic and destructive acts are male. However, the real scientiﬁc question is what differentiates these men from the vast majority of men who do not perform these or other destructive acts? Clearly, gender is a factor but not the main causal factor. Murphy is correct, in our view, to suggest that such men are highly damaged emotionally and are not typical of their gender. To help such men therefore would mean addressing the emotional damage in a way that takes account of gender, but not focusing on the gender itself as the pathology. The tragic irony is that if masculinity is about anything it is about taking risks and offering protection to women, children, families and communities both in times of war and peace. For every destructive act by damaged males there are countless more protective acts. Sadly, only toxic acts tend to be publicised and this reinforces the prejudice that masculinity is somehow inherently toxic in itself. Psychologists should be leading the way in challenging all prejudices, biases and distortions with good science and empathic humanity. The male gender is no less deserving of these high standards and we invite you to join us and help us in this endeavour. Martin Seager Chair, Male Psychology Section John Barry Secretary, Male Psychology Section

Letters online: Find more letters at www.thepsychologist.org.uk/debates Deadline for letters for the July print edition is Friday 31 May 2019. Letters received after this date will be considered for the following month and/or for publication online. Email letters to psychologist@bps.org.uk with the subject line ‘Letter to the editor’.

from the chief executive This is the first chance that I’ve had to write to members since our annual conference in Harrogate, and I want to take the opportunity to thank everyone involved in organising the event, and all of you who attended and made it such an energising two days. We made changes this year to try and make the event more open, and invited some speakers who are not necessarily psychologists but have something important to say to us. I hope you agree that they gave the conference a fresh and exciting atmosphere. I’ve long admired the work of Professor Kate Pickett, along with Richard Wilkinson, and her keynote speech linking socioeconomic inequality and mental health highlighted a number of areas where we can and should be having an impact. We’ll be exploring these possibilities with The Equality Trust in the future. Sir Mark Walport’s keynote on the second day was equally important, and gave us a comprehensive overview of the research landscape which we need to understand and work effectively inside if we are going to achieve positive societal change based on good psychological evidence. It was interesting to hear Sir Mark throw a challenge back at us: to celebrate the differences which exist in psychology and focus on building better, stronger relationships with other organisations to break down boundaries with good research. We’ve already started work on this, both in the UK and internationally, and are devoting a lot of time to developing an effective research strategy which is fit for the 21st century and will give us the best chance of making sure that psychology can inform the development of public policy. Unfortunately I can’t mention every speaker in detail, but Liz Sayce OBE, Anita Charlesworth CBE, Professor Eldar Shafir and everyone who contributed to one of our two lively panel discussions had something important to say, as did all of you who presented your research. As the film which we showed on the first morning, and you can view on our social media channels, said – psychologists are compassionate, curious, and caring, all of which came through in the work presented. I hope that everyone who joined us enjoyed the conference, and I would be very interested in hearing any feedback or ideas that members have for the future. Sarb Bajwa is Chief Executive of the British Psychological Society. Contact him at Sarb.Bajwa@bps.org.uk

John Rowan 1925-2018 John Rowan was a pioneer and ‘early adopter’ of not just one psychotherapeutic theory but of many. His curiosity and enthusiasm, obvious to anyone who met or worked with him, were pivotal in the role he played in embracing the human potential movement. Using his own personal development, John worked his way through many different areas of psychology and psychotherapy, adding his own take on each of them. He was passionate about sharing his knowledge, developing it in his writings, and encouraging others to take his thinking and develop it further. For John, knowledge was not ‘power over’ but ‘power with’ others. The power to learn, to change, to develop and grow; not only in ourselves but in the work we do with our clients, our supervisees and in the wider world. John never had a career plan. He had no burning desire to become a therapist. Having participated in a number of encounter groups in the newly-arrived London growth centres in the early 1960s, John discovered Humanistic Psychology when he was in the USA for a short time. Hugely excited by ﬁnding this movement where human beings were centre-stage and where ‘lab-rat’ experiments so beloved of the medical model, did not feature at all, was a huge breakthrough for him. Having had exposure to social and political radical ideas energised him and led him to seek out further ways in which these ideas could be used and developed in therapy, so that they could be shared more widely. This was the beginning of both John’s career in writing and his becoming a therapist. For many years, John was best known for his devotion to Humanistic Psychology. His curiosity led him to explore and discover other methods and practices which he felt

It is with great sadness that the British Psychological Society marks the passing of Baroness Mary Warnock. Her contribution to the philosophical and intellectual life of the UK is well known. Absent from the numerous eulogies and obituaries published around the world, was her role in the early days of the development of the British Psychological Society Code of Ethics and Conduct. In setting a humanistic, permissive, philosophically sound and incisive example of the importance of clarity and debate in coming to a consensus, she made a tremendous contribution, and is fondly remembered by all those who were lucky enough to serve with her. Richard Kwiatkowski, former Chair of the British Psychological Society’s Ethics Committee Read more on Baroness Warnock and her contribution to the Society’s ethical efforts on our website. 06

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Mary Warnock 1924-2019

complemented the humanistic and his own ideas and he brought these differing disciplines together in a way which was really quite groundbreaking for his time (and possibly still is). John’s last published piece is a chapter entitled ‘I-positions and the unconscious’ in the Handbook of Dialogical Self Theory and Psychotherapy published in November 2018. John was touched that the book would be dedicated to him although sadly he did not live to see its publication. The chapter introduces John’s latest concept; ‘Carnivalisation of therapy’, inspired by the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and John hoped to develop it further. John was also part-way through his latest book on ‘Hegel and Psychotherapy’ when he died. Latterly spirituality became hugely important for John and had a far-reaching inﬂuence on his life. He understood how important it was to take account of the spiritual when working with clients and came to his own spirituality via Wicca and the work of Ken Wilber, with whom he corresponded for many years and visited in Colorado. John meditated daily at around 5am for over 30 years, regardless of where he was or what else was happening in his life. He never missed a day. His connection and devotion to the goddess was at the centre of his life always. John was deeply saddened that spirituality did not receive the recognition he believed it deserved and berated his colleagues accordingly! This is now being addressed by at least one person who has committed publicly to taking action on this. John would have been so pleased. John is survived by his wife Sue, his ﬁrst wife Neilma and their children Peri, Ross, Nicola and Shaun, and four grandchildren. Sue Rowan

the psychologist june 2019 letters

Few, if any, clinical psychologists have touched as many lives as Dorothy Rowe, who has died in Sydney aged 88. Author of 16 books, countless magazine and newspaper articles, and a regular contributor to radio and television programmes, she was also a fierce friend, ardent defender of people’s – particularly women’s – right to choose a more fulfilling life and a constant critic of psychiatric orthodoxy. In March 2002 she appeared on Radio Four’s Desert Island Discs. The following year she wrote for The Guardian, Daily Mail, Daily Express, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph and The Observer on everything from happiness to the Dunkirk landings. She had a column on parenting in Chat, was an agony aunt to the agony aunts and appeared in Openmind as a regular columnist. These columns say much about what is wrong with our society, what hurts people and what is destroying hope for our children. Her views on the inscription of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder are summarised in her chapter title: ADHD: Adults’ fear of frightened children. She always promoted the idea that what most people need, apart from money, is the power of education and knowledge. In the 1990s, Fay Weldon declared her the ‘closest thing we have to a saint’. In 2010 Dorothy was included in the Daily Telegraph’s list of the 100 most powerful women in Britain in Business, Academia & Politics (Daily Telegraph 3/12/10). She is listed in Who’s Who and the Who’s Who of Australian Women. She published in journals of philosophy, psychology and psychiatry and was an Emeritus Associate of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Her books were published in a dozen languages – who knows what South Koreans made of Living with the Bomb, a volume that Dorothy herself thought could be summed up in a couple of Posy Simmonds cartoons. She was born Dorothy Conn in Newcastle, NSW, Australia, in 1930. She was educated at Newcastle Girls’ High and Sydney University where she obtained a degree in psychology and a Diploma of Education. She taught for three years, married in 1956 and her son Edward was born in 1957. She was offered the opportunity to train as a school counsellor (educational psychologist) and went on to become Specialist for Emotionally Disturbed Children. At the same time she completed her Diploma in Clinical Psychology. In 1968 she separated from her husband, embarking with Edward to England where she took an NHS post at Whiteley Wood Clinic in Sheffield. Alec Jenner, Professor of Psychiatry at Sheffield University, suggested to Dorothy that her research PhD topic should be ‘Psychological aspects of regular mood change’. Don Bannister was bringing Personal Construct Theory into something approaching the limelight and Dorothy worked with Patrick Slater at the Institute of Psychiatry in developing computer software for analysing Kellyan repertory grids. In 1972, the year after completing her degree, she was appointed to set up the Lincolnshire Department

of Clinical Psychology at St John’s Psychiatric Hospital, Lincoln. The battles with the cadre of (all male) psychiatrists probably began an hour after she first arrived. Her first book, The Experience of Depression, now called Choosing Not Losing, appeared in 1978. Her second, The Construction of Life and Death (The Courage to Live) was published in 1982. Depression: The Way Out of Your Prison, winner of the Mind Book of the Year Award in 1984 and now in its third edition put her on the map. Dorothy was unstinting in her loyalty and generosity to friends. Her audiences could be vast – she once spoke to well over a thousand people in Westminster. In Perth, in 2006 thousands more were turned away from a conference featuring Dorothy. Her sagacity is legendary: on being asked about toilet training, her answer was, ‘They’ll let you know when their ready’. In 1986 Dorothy moved to Sheffield, leaving the National Health Service to become self-employed. Nine years later she moved to a basement flat in Islington where she continued to write and inspire. Despite extraordinary sales, she saw her writing as a ‘hobby’. Four years ago Dorothy returned to Australia. She described herself as semi-retired. Craig Newnes Read the full tribute on our website.

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Dorothy Rowe 1930-2019

James Ost 1973-2019 Our friend and colleague James Ost passed away in February 2019, too soon and unexpectedly, after a short battle with cancer diagnosed only six weeks earlier. He leaves behind his wife and young son, as well as a sizeable James-shaped hole in the Department of Psychology at the University of Portsmouth. It is difficult to overstate the loss for us in Portsmouth and, indeed, the scientific community as a whole. James was the heart and soul of our department. Transitioning from undergraduate student to Head of Department over a period of 25 years, he contributed in no small measure to a positive departmental culture, through his kindness, subversive wit (including unforgettable impersonations), integrity and unstinting selflessness in the support and encouragement of others. James’ academic legacy lies in his contribution to our understanding of remembering, memory distortion and false memories. Fascinated by the controversial ‘recovered’ memory debate as an undergraduate, James went on to examine false memories of childhood sexual abuse in his PhD work, supervised by Alan Costall, approaching the issue from an innovative angle. Venturing out of the laboratory, he sought to understand what memory distortion looks like ‘in the wild’, by examining actual cases of retractors – people who initially (e.g. in the course of therapy) disclosed childhood abuse but later retracted these ‘memories’. Apart from deepening our understanding of retractors and possible routes to false memories, this body of work includes a well-received theoretical analysis exploring social influence on remembering and a historical piece on misinterpretations of Bartlett’s theory of remembering. James’ fascination with the topics of memory

distortion and social influence continued through his career, resulting in the publication of over 40 articles, chapters and an edited book titled False and Distorted Memories. Notably, for James, research was not an abstract academic pursuit – he never lost sight of the serious implications of memory distortion, particularly within the criminal justice context. To this end, he served as a member of the scientific and professional advisory board of the British False Memory Society and, on several occasions, as an expert witness on memory for Courts of Justice. James’ enthusiasm for his subject was exemplified in his brilliant teaching – numerous awards and other student accolades bear testimony to his skill. He was a wonderful PhD supervisor and mentor who truly cared for his students, and an exceptional role model for maintaining work-life balance – although passionate about his work, he never compromised his family time. Perhaps most importantly, he conveyed to all of us that academic work should be fun (well, serious fun). Although cut tragically short, James’s work has made an invaluable contribution to the science of memory distortion. His legacy will live on and continue to influence the field, his students, friends and the colleagues he has worked with. He will continue to be a strong meme in our department and beyond – something we think he would have liked. Hartmut Blank, Alan Costall, Lorraine Hope and Eva Rubínová (for the Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth) Read the full tribute on our website.

Richard Edmund Warburg 1949-2018

Many of us were saddened last Autumn at the death, following a short illness, of a neuropsychology colleague and mentor who provided a compassionate and highly professional service to all clients who came his way. Richard completed a degree course in Natural Sciences at Trinity College Cambridge. Training in Clinical Psychology followed at the University of Liverpool, and later Richard undertook a top-up doctorate project at the University of Bangor, examining the ways that neuropsychologists go about memory testing in their assessment work. His NHS career started in Shefﬁeld, but Richard spent a good portion of his professional

career heading up the Neuropsychology Service at North Manchester General Hospital. Later in his career, Richard worked with the Acquired Brain Injury Service in Cheshire, as well as Brain Injury Services in Shropshire and Wolverhampton. Over a period of time, Richard also worked in medico-legal settings, working regularly with solicitors such as Slater Gordon (previously Pannone), and Potter Rees. Alun Thomas Consultant Clinical Neuropsychologist GMMH NHS Trust Read the full tribute on our website.

2019 CPD workshops Professional development opportunities from your learned Society We are pleased to launch our popular core programme and some of our workshops for 2019. Organisational compassion

3 June

Respondng to child sexual exploitation (CSE): Psychologcal approaches to supportng young people (Liverpool)

5 June

Organisational compassion (Liverpool)

28 June

Working successfully in private practice

28 June

Attachment in practice: Part 1 – Attachment theory, past and present controversy and understanding

8 July

Attachment in practice: Part 2 – Attachment, what is best practice in respect of the assessment and treatment

9 July

Aviation psychology: Clinical skills for working with air crew

18–19 July

The role of the psychologist in responding to youth suicide in schools

19 July

Supervision skills: Workshop 3 – Models of supervision

30 July

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

31 July

Supervision skills: Workshop 1 – Essentials of supervision

30 August

Supervision skills: Workshop 2 – Enhancing supervision skills

3 September

Expert witness: Workshop 1 – Roles, responsibilities and business

12 September

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

13 September

Supervision skills: Workshop 3 – Models of supervision

14 September

Working successfully in private practice

16 September

Writing for publication

20 September

Expert witness: Workshop 3 – Court room evidence

3 October

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

4 October

The application of rational emotive behavour (REBT) in sport

9 October

Creating compassionate NHS organisations

24 October

How to help your clients lose weight permanently: The principles and practices of appetite training

25 October

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

2 November

Creating compassionate NHS organisations (Liverpool)

6 November

Introduction to advanced psychotherapy skills: Intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy (ISTD)

14 November

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

www.bps.org.uk/cpd

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Inoculating against misinformation

easles cases increased by 300 per cent globally in the first three months of this year compared with the same period last year, according to World Health Organization figures. A recent analysis by Unicef also found more than 500,000 children in the UK did not receive their first measles vaccination between 2010 and 2017; globally, this number was 169 million. While the drivers of these trends are likely to be complex, particularly when considered on a global scale, one concern is the role of vaccination conspiracy theories in so-called ‘vaccine hesitancy’. I spoke to two psychologists who are looking into novel ways to tackle beliefs in misinformation. While there are numerous reasons parents choose not to vaccinate their children, some of Dr Daniel Jolley’s (Staffordshire University) research has shown that a belief in, and exposure to, vaccination conspiracy theories reduce people’s hypothetical intentions to vaccinate a fictional child. ‘These effects mirror our work showing that conspiracy theories may encourage disengagement with politics and climate science, but also potentially

inspire people to act in an unethical way.’ When I asked Jolley about the best approaches or interventions to tackle misinformed beliefs in conspiracy theories he said this was a ‘million dollar question’. ‘I have a paper that has looked into anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and we found that if a person is given anticonspiracy material this seems to inoculate them against the conspiracy theory. However, if they are exposed to conspiracy theories ﬁrst, the conspiracy account becomes enrooted in their belief system and can be somewhat resistant to correction. Conspiracy theories may, therefore, be quite “sticky”.’ Dr Sander van der Linden (University of Cambridge) has researched this idea of inoculation against misinformation within the areas of vaccination and climate change beliefs. While it may seem logical to simply debunk myths which surround vaccinations among those who believe them, the reality is less simple. The very act of repeating incorrect information in the act of debunking can reinforce the memory of this information, which is known as the continued inﬂuence effect.

the psychologist june 2019 news ‘The inoculation approach draws on the medical analogy,’ van der Linden explained. ‘Just as injecting someone with a weakened dose of a virus triggers antibodies in the immune system to help confer resistance against future infection, the same can be done with information: by exposing people to weakened doses of misinformation, or the strategies used in the production of misinformation, mental antibodies can be cultivated that help people from being persuaded by fake news in the future. We have shown this in a variety of studies and contexts. It is very much premised on the idea that prevention is better than cure, especially given what we know about the continued influence effect of misinformation. It is a proactive rather than reactive approach.’ Once a belief in vaccination myths is embedded there are other techniques which may also be more effective than simple debunking. ‘In prior research, we have found that rather than debunking a myth, just reinforcing the scientific consensus that over 90 per cent of doctors think that approved vaccines are safe and recommend that parents should be required to vaccinate their children, not only strengthens scientific beliefs about vaccines, but also reduces endorsement of the falsified autism-vaccine link.’ Another technique is to replace a myth with an alternative story. ‘Once something is debunked or retracted, it leaves a gap, which creates a problem for people in that our assessments of truth often require internal coherence (“well if the flu shot doesn’t cause the flu, how does it work?”). Accordingly, a simple correction doesn’t eliminate the continued influence effect. The correction needs to provide a compelling alternative story to fill the gap in people’s minds. What I mean by compelling is that it needs to be simple rather than too complex to understand and remember.’ A third approach is to appeal to social motivations among those who believe incorrect information about vaccines. ‘Some research shows that by explaining the concept of herd immunity, i.e. that vaccinating yourself and your children is actually helping to protect other members of the community who may not able to receive vaccinations themselves (e.g. elderly, other children), people become more willing to vaccinate. People often don’t think about the social consequences of their actions, so highlighting that if enough people are vaccinated in a community, herd immunity offers protection even to those who cannot get vaccinated, may help. ‘Vaccines are a classic social dilemma: if everyone gets vaccinated we are all better off than if no one vaccinates, in which case, we are all worse off. At the end of the day, it represents a psychological dilemma that is perhaps as old as humans themselves; when do we act in the interest of the collective?’ ER To read a review of the factors which underlie vaccination-related behaviours, published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, see tinyurl.com/y6lx82cx.

‘I had absolutely no idea…’ When Rebecca Hitchen’s daughter Lucia was born with Goldenhar Syndrome, which affects between one in 25,000 and one in 45,000 babies, she found a lack of understanding among health professionals and little information on its cause and potential outcomes. Now, after her work on a Psychology Masters and developing leaflets on the condition, she hopes future parents of children with the condition will not be left in the dark. ‘I had absolutely no idea whatsoever throughout the pregnancy. Everything was fine and healthy. I went through every scan and was told that everything was fine up until the day of the birth.’ Lucia, who is now seven, was born with bilateral macrostomia (an overlywide mouth), a small cleft lip and skin tags. ‘A paediatric doctor asked us to stay in hospital for tests in the unlikely event that she could have a rare condition called Goldenhar, which is a global medical mystery. I stayed in for a week and every few hours my daughter was having more and more tests where more and more things were discovered… she’s only got one kidney, three sets of missing ribs, hemi-vertebrae, fused vertebrae and hearing loss in one ear. Shortly after they discovered her heart was wired up in the opposite way. It was a very surreal experience. After that initial shock it went on with loads of appointments…’ Hitchen quickly discovered a complete lack of information on the condition available for parents, with medical staff also unfamiliar with Goldenhar. ‘You start asking why. Why was this not detected? Why did this happen? Then you go through with a fine toothed comb everything you might or might not have done during the pregnancy, because there was no explanation about causation. Was it my age? Something I ate? That glass of wine I had? When you think about it logically you realise if it was any of those things there’d be loads of cases… but you never 100 per cent shake off that feeling.’ Lucia has bravely undergone two operations on her face and has

some scars, but any differences she has do not hold her back. Lucia has exceeded all expectations and surprised many people. ‘She is happy, outgoing, bright, confident and excelling in all school subjects.’ When Lucia started school Hitchen embarked upon a Masters Conversion in Psychology at Leeds Beckett University. She decided to do a Goldenhar-specific dissertation due to the paucity of literature and her personal experience. She sought to find out more about Goldenhar and other parents’ experiences. Thanks to a network of families she had met through the Goldenhar UK annual conference, Hitchen qualitatively interviewed parents about their experiences. The key themes illuminated were a need for support and to identify with others, the rollercoaster of emotion parents went through, gendered differences in coping, uncertainty, the lack of clarity over causation, the uncertainty of the journey (‘every time you go to an appointment you don’t know what might happen next’), societal ignorance, acceptance/ normalisation and future positive outlooks. From these results Hitchen – with support from Goldenhar UK and Leeds Beckett University – has developed information leaflets for parents and health professionals. The leaflets aim to reassure parents, providing information on the syndrome, advising parents about likely medical investigations, describing how parents may feel about a diagnosis, and signposting parents to support organisations. Hitchen empathises with medical professionals who struggle to understand the complexity of this rare condition where every child is unique, and hopes the leaflets will offer professionals advice on how to help parents. Hitchen, who works as a teacher with Syrian refugees, is currently hoping to publish her Masters with Dr Trish Holch and is considering a PhD. The leaflets will be available later this year on goldenhar.org.uk and will be available to the NHS. ER

‘We are Psychologists…’ ‘…We are Compassionate, Curious, Caring.’ ‘Psychologists are people who think about thinking… we have an intense curiosity about people and a strong desire to help others understand why we do what we do.’ ‘Psychology is everywhere. We invented the tea break in factories, we changed the face of criminal investigation, and we made advertising a whole lot more effective... sorry about that.’ ‘No, we can’t read your mind, but we can help you to understand it better.’ ‘Every day, psychologists are working to tackle stigma, to find answers, to learn more about our behaviour as humans.’ The British Psychological Society has produced a short film to showcase the diversity of the psychologists. The film, which was written by members, also starred members, including Dr Hamira Riaz, Dr Dan O’Hare, Professor Carolyn Mair, Steven Sylvester, Zak Sylvester, Jo Hemmings and Lloyd Emeka. Watch it now via tinyurl.com/WeArePsych

the psychologist june 2019 news

Our Research Digest shortlisted for award The British Psychological Society’s Research Digest blog’s founding editor Dr Christian Jarrett, and its staff writers (past and present) Dr Alex Fradera and Emma Young, are finalists for the Dr Katharine Giles science blog award in this year’s Association of British Science Writers’ Awards (ABSW) for Britain and Ireland. The Digest first began as an email newsletter in 2003, with the blog (http://digest.bps.org.uk) launched in 2005. It provides accessible summaries of recently published journal and preprint articles every weekday, alongside feature posts. It reaches millions of readers every year, is widely cited in the media, and receives frequent positive feedback from the psychologists whose work is covered. Recent years have seen an expansion, including the introduction of guests posts by science writers and psychologists, the launch of the PsychCrunch podcast (sponsored by Routledge Psychology), a move to the WordPress platform, a new and free app, and with Dr Fradera and later Ms. Young joining as staff writers. The blog has been a finalist and winner in other schemes, but this is the first time it has been recognised by the UK and Ireland’s top science writing awards. Dr Jarrett said: ‘It’s wonderful to see the Research Digest team getting this recognition from our peers in the world of science writing and journalism. I’m proud of the team and also grateful to our many excellent guest

writers over the years. Fingers crossed for the night – 28 May at the Science Museum in London!’ Dr Matthew Warren, who replaced Dr Fradera as staff writer earlier this year, has been shortlisted individually, in the ‘Newcomer of the Year’ category, for work ﬁrst published in Nature and Science.

Poet Ian McMillan, cartoonist Tony Husband and photographer Ian Beesley have worked with people with dementia and their carers to create this banner. Members of Age UK Exeter’s Budding Friends group, who regularly meet to tend an allotment, unfurled the banner at an event in April.

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The Psychologist Presents, at Latitude Festival…

Screen time debunked Ahead of his appearance for us at this summer’s event, Professor Andrew Przybylski (Director of Research at the Oxford Internet Institute) picks three myths around screen time – and how science, and some common sense, can help

Professor Andrew Przybylski

Seldom a week goes by without a new study claiming screen time is inﬂuencing us in some way. Given a relentless drumbeat of headlines one could be forgiven for concluding digital screens are the cause of all of humanity’s problems. But what does the actual science say? And what are the most prevalent myths about this form of digital technology?

Myth 1: Screen time is a thing At best, screen time an umbrella term, but not a particularly useful one. It’s a fuzzy term encompassing rich worlds of social interaction, argument, content consumption, and production. Finishing your online shop is miles away from swiping through Tinder but they, and thousands of other uses, fall under this heading. An hour of your son or daughter playing guitar hero on Xbox counts the same as practicing the guitar by following lessons on YouTube. Still, this shorthand does grab your attention. You can remember instances of screen time that bothered you, perhaps an inattentive spouse or focused child. But this isn’t a good representation of what’s going on when you’re using tech. Using one term is an over-simpliﬁcation for this kind of digital life. It’s as if you wanted to understand your nutrition in terms of food time.

Myth 2: Screen time is easily measured… Contrary to common belief, you can’t just ask people to tell you how much time they spend on devices. First, people have no idea what screen time is really (see Myth 1), and second, people are pretty lousy at estimating the amount of time they spend doing just about anything. How many notiﬁcations did you get today? How many times have you picked up your phone? How many times did you glance at Twitter or send a text? If you know the answers you’re either fooling yourself, me, or should really get a job in our lab. The fact of the matter is that numerous studies have been done on this and people consistently miss estimate (over and under) what they with devices. Recent studies we’ve done indicate that how and when you ask about screens has a huge impact on the amount of time people say they use device; much larger effects than screens could possibly have on people. Speaking of which…

Myth 3: Screen time causes problems The headlines are as relentless as the questions I get from my in-laws. No, there is no evidence that screen time causes problems. This is to say, there is no scientiﬁc evidence that screen time as it’s currently measured (see Myth 2) inﬂuences (i.e. has a cause-effect relationship) with behavioural or psychological problems. This myth is pervasive for a few reasons. First, most longitudinal work on this topic is particularly poorly done. It’s a bit of a ‘spray n’ pray’ situation. Researchers test a large number of statistical models and only a very small set of these come out with results. This kind of cherry-picking creates scary headlines, but it isn’t good science. Second, in these studies the cherry-picked effects are tiny. We’re talking one quarter of one per cent of a kid’s psychological or behavioural problems. If the data analysis were done well (they’re not) this would be a problem for scientists and policymakers; not individual parents.

None of this is to say that digital technology and the digital world don’t impact us. It’s just that we’re asking the wrong questions and barking up the wrong tree when we pay attention to screen time. It’s a poor stand-in for a rich digital world that has a lot of ups and downs. There is a cottage industry of fear merchants. They sell us on ideas like screen time changes the brain, destroys generations, or is more addictive than narcotics. One might commend their entrepreneurial spirit but lending them credence runs us the very real risk of distraction. There are wolves in the forest, but if we listen to their screen time claims, we risk missing the real challenges and opportunities of the digital age. Professor Przybylski will lead ‘The Psychologist Presents…’ at Latitude Festival, which takes place in Suffolk from 18-21 July. See www.latitudefestival.com. For transcripts and reports from our previous appearances, see https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/ psychologist-presents-latitude-festival

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The joy of medalling? Bradley Busch digests new research from the 2016 Olympics

Find our Research Digest at www.bps. org.uk/ digest Editor: Dr Christian Jarrett Writers: Matthew Warren, Emma Young and Jesse Singal Full reports and much more on the Digest website

o win a medal of any kind at the Olympic Games takes years of training, hard work and sacrifice. Standing on an Olympic podium is widely regarded as the pinnacle of an athlete’s career. Nonetheless, only one athlete can win gold, leaving the two runner-up medallists to ponder what might have been. Intriguingly a seminal study from the 1992 Olympic Games suggested that this counterfactual thinking was especially painful for silver medallists, who appeared visibly less happy than bronze medallists. The researchers speculated that this may have been because of the different counterfactual thinking they engaged in, with bronze medallists being happy that they didn’t come fourth while silver medallists felt sad that they didn’t win gold. However, subsequent research based on the 2000 Olympic Games did not replicate this finding: this time silver medallists were found to be happier than bronze medallists. To further muddy the waters, a study from the 2004 Games was consistent with the seminal research, finding that straight after competition, gold and bronze medallists were more likely to smile than silver medallists, with these smiles being larger and more intense. Now further insight into the psychology of coming second or third comes via Mark Allen, Sarah Knipler and Amy Chan of the University of Wollongong, who have released their findings based on the 2016 Olympic Games.

These latest results, published in Journal of Sports Sciences, again challenge that initial eye-grabbing result that suggested bronze medallists are happier than silver medallists, but they support the idea that the nature of counterfactual thinking differs depending on whether athletes come second or third. In the first study, the researchers had 20 participants rate how happy 486 Olympic medallists looked whilst standing on the podium. The participants based their judgments on full headshot photos of each athlete, deliberately cropped so that they could not see which medal the athletes had won. Participants rated gold medal athletes as being significantly happier than those who won either silver or bronze. They rated bronze medallists as marginally happier than silver medallists, though by such a small margin that it is ‘likely to be trivial or negligible’, according to Allen and his team. In their second study, the researchers explored how much counterfactual thinking the different athletes did by having participants analyse the media interviews of 192 silver and bronze medallists. They explored frequency (i.e. how much they dwelt on ‘what if…’ scenarios), direction (i.e. what things could have gone better vs. what things could have been worse) and reference (i.e. reflecting on what they could have done differently vs. what their opponent could have done differently).

the psychologist june 2019 digest They found that silver medallists engaged more frequently in counterfactual thinking than bronze medallists, and that this was likely to be directed towards how the event could have gone better. Interestingly, both silver and bronze medallists primarily focused on their own performance, but silver medallists more often than bronze medallists also spent time talking about how their opponents had performed. This study provides updated evidence that suggests that gold medallists are happiest on the podium and that no meaningful difference exists in happiness levels between silver and bronze medallists. However, the thought process and reflections between second and thirdplaced athletes do seem to vary, with silver medallists being more preoccupied by thoughts of how things could have been better and what would have happened if their opponents had behaved differently. These thought processes may act as a defence mechanism in order to protect their self-esteem and self-image. By reflecting on external factors, such as their opponent’s behaviour, it provides a shield to hide behind and deflect personal criticism away from any shortcomings of their own individual performance. This study builds on previous research by using a larger sample size, blinding the participants to the outcome of the athletes’ medals, and by using equivalence tests to supplement standard statistical methods (such tests help identify whether a statistically significant finding is actually meaningful). That being said, the researchers note several important limitations, such as that some athletes were so well known that the participants probably knew what medal they had earned. Other limitations include only using static photos of the athletes posing for the media on top of the podium. If that was to be broadened out to include either video footage or full body shots, this may be beneficial as evidence suggests that body language may be a better indicator of emotions than facial expressions. This research makes a valuable contribution given the mixed findings previously reported. Furthermore, it may inform sports psychologists and coaches who work with athletes that have finished second or third in major competitions, helping them to provide appropriately tailored support.

Morning glory The age of social media has opened up exciting opportunities for researchers to investigate people’s emotional states on a massive scale. For example, one study found that tweets contain more positive emotional words in the morning, which was interpreted as showing that most people are in a better mood at that time of day. The premise of this line of research is that our word choices reﬂect our psychological states – that if someone uses more positive or negative emotional words, this is a good indication that they are actually experiencing those emotions. But now a study involving voice recordings and mood reports from 185 American

students has thrown a spanner in the works. The results showed that – for spoken language at least – this assumption might not hold up. In their preprint posted recently on PsyArxiv, Jessie Sun and colleagues found that emotion-related words do not in fact provide a good indication of a person’s mood, although there may be other sets of words – speciﬁcally related to socialising, such as ‘you’ and ‘we’ – that do. The study demonstrates the importance of checking the validity of tools in psychology research, to make sure that they are actually measuring what we think they are measuring. [Matthew Warren]

The sleeping brain is capable of paying attention to the outside world in a more sophisticated way than we usually realise. Researchers played sleeping volunteers passages of either meaningful speech or nonsense speech. Analysis of their brainwave patterns suggested the volunteers’ brains had discerned the difference between the two and had ampliﬁed the meaningful speech. (Nature Human Behaviour)

Imagining unseen colour Think about the concepts of ‘red’ and ‘justice’ and you’ll notice a key difference. If you’re sighted, you’ll associate ‘red’ most strongly with the sensory experience, which relates to signals from cone cells in your eyes. ‘Justice’, in contrast, doesn’t have any associated sensory qualities – as an abstract concept, you’ll think about its meaning, which you learnt via language, understanding it to be related to other abstract concepts like ‘fairness’ or ‘accountability’, perhaps. But what about blind people – how do they think about ‘red’? A brain-imaging study of 12 people who had been blind from birth, and 14 sighted people, published recently in Nature Communications, shows that while for sighted people, sensory and abstract concepts like ‘red’ and ‘justice’ are represented in different brain regions, for blind people, they’re represented in the same ‘abstract concept’ region. ‘You could be talking to a blind person, and if you didn’t know they were blind, you would never suspect that their experience of red is different from yours, because

People with greater intellectual humility also tend to have superior general knowledge. (The Journal of Positive Psychology)

in fact they do know what red means,’ argues Alfonso Caramazza at Harvard University, US, senior author on the paper. ‘They know what it means in the same way that you know what justice means.’ That is, by hearing and reading about ‘red’. This idea, that for blind people colour concepts are treated more like abstract concepts, was backed up by the new findings. Lead author Ella Striem-Amit at Harvard University, together with Caramazza and other colleagues, used fMRI to look at their participants’ brain activity while they listened to words pertaining to different types of concept: concrete concepts that are familiar to both sighted and blind people, and which can be perceived in some way by both groups (like ‘cup’); visual concepts that are imperceptible only to blind people, such as ‘red’ and ‘rainbow’; and abstract concepts without any sensory features, such as ‘freedom’ and ‘justice’. The results suggest that, for all of us, the medial anterior temporal lobe (ATL) is the brain area most responsible for the representation of concrete concepts with any kind of sensory perceptibility, while abstract concepts that are understood based on the meaning of the word, and which have no associated sensory information, are processed by the dorsolateral ATL. This led to a group difference for colour words, which were associated with increased activity in the anterior ATL in sighted participants, and increased activity in the dorsolateral ATL in the blind participants. Though blind people lack the sensory experience of colour, they can nonetheless – thanks to language – form rich and accurate colour concepts, Caramazza notes. Not only do they learn that it’s a property of objects or scenes that’s unlike other sensory properties that they experience, but they can learn about differences between colours. Earlier work has shown, for example, that they know that orange is more similar to yellow and red than to green or blue, Caramazza says. ‘Studies of colour knowledge in blind individuals have confirmed this aspect of their understanding of colour terms. However, our study has shown that this type of colour knowledge is represented in a region of the brain that is typically associated with knowledge of words that do not have sensory referents, like justice or virtue,’ he says. ‘This reflects the important role of this region in acquiring meaning through language.’ [Emma Young]

the psychologist june 2019 digest

Take a sad song… You’re feeling rather chirpy, but then a tear-jerker of a song comes on the car radio and you arrive home feeling morose. Or a happy tune lifts your spirits. For most of us, these effects are not a big deal. But what if you are living with depression? Acording to a provocative study published a few years ago, far from seeking out uplifting music, people diagnosed with depression are notably more inclined than healthy controls to choose to listen to sad music (and look at sad images). The controversial implication is that depressed people deliberately act in ways that are likely to maintain their low mood. Now a study in the journal Emotion has replicated this ﬁnding, but the researchers also present evidence suggesting depressed people are not seeking to maintain their negative feelings – they ﬁnd sad music calming and even uplifting.

‘The current study is the most deﬁnitive to date in probing depression-related preferences for sad music using different tasks, and the reasons for these preferences,’ write the team at the University of South Florida, led by Sunkyung Yoon. The research involved 38 female undergrads diagnosed with depression and 38 non-depressed female undergrad controls. The ﬁrst part of the study was a replication attempt using the same materials as the 2015 paper that found depressed people preferred sad music. The participants listened to 30-second excerpts of sad (‘Adagio for Strings’ by Samuel Barber and ‘Rakavot’ by Avi Balili), happy and neutral music, and stated which they would prefer to listen to again in the future. Successfully replicating the earlier research, Yoon and his team found that their depressed participants

University students with higher levels of inflammation in their bodies (usually an indicator of the immune system’s response to injury or illness) tended to have a style of decision-making characterised by impulsivity, a focus on the present, and an inability to delay gratification. Although more research is needed to establish causality, the findings suggest the activity of the immune system may affect decision making, with implications for treating addiction and other problems. (Scientific Reports)

were more likely to choose the sad music clips. However, Yoon’s team also asked their participants why they made the choices they did. The majority of the participants with depression who favoured sad music said that they did so because it was relaxing, calming or soothing. The second part of the study used new music samples: 84 pairs of 10-second clips of instrumental film music, contrasting happy, sad, fearinducing, neutral, and also high and low energy tracks. In each case the same participants as before indicated which music they would prefer to listen to again later. They also heard all the samples again at the end and stated what effect they had on their emotions. The researchers found again that people with depression had a far greater preference than controls for sad, low-energy music (but not fear-inducing music). Critically, though, when they heard these clips again, they reported that they made them feel more happiness and less sadness. This study is unable to speak to why depressed people find lowenergy, sad music uplifting, although common sense suggests that if you are feeling down, then a fastpaced, happy clappy tune might be irritating and inappropriate, whereas a more soothing, serious tune could be comforting. Further clues come from another recent study that investigated why (non-depressed) people generally like listening to sad music when they’re feeling down – for instance, some participants said the sad music acted like a supportive friend. The new research involved only a small sample of female undergrads, and it only looked at emotional effects over a short time frame. Yoon and his colleagues acknowledge more research is needed to find out why exactly depressed people favour sad music. For now though, the new findings suggest that this preference ‘… may reflect a desire for calming emotional experience rather than a desire to augment sad feelings.’ (Christian Jarrett)

Pippa Grange ‘The World Cup demonstrated what changes when people feel differently’ Pete Olusoga (Sheffield Hallam University) meets Dr Pippa Grange, the sports psychologist with the England men’s team at last summer’s event. The Football Association made the approach to you – what were you up to when they found you? I had gone out on my own to build a consultancy, Bluestone Edge. I did that for a number of years, across sport and business, and in time it became more culture, leadership and ethics work… work first with the leaders, work first on the quality of relationships and the way that things get done. These are the things that become culture. That led to some interesting work, including a review of Australian Olympic swimming after London. The psychology foundations came from formal

learning, but learning how to do culture work was more experiential. Working in the heart of football clubs – working with player groups, mostly leaders, ‘coach whispering’ as it was called then! I would be in the coach’s box, in the dressing room, in the game reviews… in the inner circle. I could marry that with my understanding of psychology and leadership coaching. It all came together under this umbrella of ‘culture coaching’. It felt right and, importantly, it felt useful. The FA came calling in April 2017. They had done a global search, but were looking for someone who could add the culture and leadership piece to the sports psychology. They specifically didn’t want ‘just pure sports psychology’, by which they meant just player work, whether on field or off. They wanted a more rounded, holistic model of organisational change and a deep dive on improving how the England learning system was working. How do we help people grow within that system? Was the work around culture something you specifically set out to do? The FA were very specific about what they wanted, and the last few years of Bluestone were specifically around culture and ethics too. I found that I did less player-facing work, and more on the people who were working with players. That’s a model we have at the FA. I’m a big believer that the environment you walk into is a massive factor in how you are going to behave. Psychological safety, how any of us feel when we walk into a place and see whether we fit, and whether it’s OK to have a go and to risk failing, is critical. Let alone whether we can hear what it is we need to learn. We quite deliberately work on the system and the people who are closest to the athletes. So actually some of the stuff I do with the kit men and the physical therapists is as powerful as anything else, because they’re spending an hour at a time in intimate, one-on-one

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settings where people talk. Having them understand what great culture looks like, giving them a lens into what kind of challenges an athlete might be facing, and encouraging good inﬂuence skills, good relational skills, a really solid understanding of who we are… I think that’s quite powerful.

It seems like football has become more receptive to sports psychology? It’s interesting for me coming into football, which I don’t have a background in… the work that had been done over the last few years, with Lane 4, there’s a receptivity internally to us, but I’ve actually found that football per se hasn’t been as open yet as I thought it would be. I think that’s in part about how performance psychologists are having to work in football, as consultant staff or peripheral. If you’re trying to change a system, you can’t be wheeled in to do a session on a Thursday afternoon before a game and expect to create profound change. The piece that has to evolve is understanding that the psychologist or the ‘culture coach’, whichever term we use, should be an embedded part of the performance system. They should be useful to the multidisciplinary team – the physical therapists, doctors, ops team, sports scientists, analysts and coaches, etc. – as well as to the players. An integral part of the system. Often a psychologist is someone who is brought in to ﬁx an issue, an add-on. Deﬁnitely. I think that all coaches have a stronger understanding of the importance of mental skills for performance… things like resilience and anxiety management. But I still feel the way we describe the discipline is still quite academic. It’s not necessarily very ‘clean’ and approachable yet to the lay person.

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In engineering these cultural shifts, is there a particular theory, method or way of working that you ascribe to? Yes there’s a process. When I came into the FA, Lane 4 had already designed a high-performance curriculum, and we’ve just deepened that to make it really football-centric – relevant and usable for coaches and players, and added robust method. We work hard at making it approachable and straightforward without losing any rigour. One of the things I’ve noticed with sports psychology, or with culture work in general, is that people often don’t know how to describe how it works or even what it actually is. As somebody said to me this year, ‘a bit horoscopey’. Alas, we are still seen by some as snake oil merchants! Of course sports psychology or culture is always in a battle to prove itself, because it’s not quantiﬁable in the way that other disciplines are that contribute to a performance model. So I think it’s useful to have frameworks and models that help coaches and leaders understand what you do and why, and how you’ll do it, and how they’ll know it’s working.

Most sports psychologists have a hard time feeling successful even if they’re making good change, because they are on the edge of the system. When they’re deeply embedded in the system, we really can see some change. It’s easier said than done, because it’s much more comfortable to belong, to be fully involved in the team; but you need that ability to step back and be a witness, to coach and challenge where you need to.

It’s a tough spot, being a psychologist in a team. If I mentor younger psychologists I talk a lot about how the most important work is the upfront work before you ever get in front of any players or staff members. Negotiating what it will look like, what you can and can’t do, what to expect. Unless there is not just permission but buy-in, it is almost impossible to optimise a psychology service. Are there still pockets of resistance? I don’t see that much wholesale resistance – ‘this could not possibly be useful, I don’t believe in it’ – but I see resistance in ‘we’re ﬁne as we are, we do this stuff already, or we don’t fully understand how this can be of optimal beneﬁt’. Even in our organisation there’s some proving to do over time, as there would have been with other disciplines. Everyone has to demonstrate how it works. It’s resistance to jumping in with both feet and embracing it and loving it, seeing it as a ‘must have’. Do you think the success of the men’s team in the World Cup has had an impact on that? The World Cup experience was a culmination of a couple of years before as much as anything else, but it opened people’s minds… it demonstrated what changes when people feel differently. It wasn’t that there was this brilliant model for culture that changed everything immediately, magic pixie dust stuff, but what everybody really talks about – especially externally to the organisation – is how good it was to see the players feeling free and relaxed. That I

think has turned the dial around a little bit. People understanding why the experience of sport matters, from a psychological perspective, and how culture and environment change that. There was such a great feeling. How do you carry that on? We’re a team of eight, and we do on-camp work and off-camp work. Because it’s international we may only see the players for 60 days a year, depending on the tournament year. Summer gave us a huge luxury with the senior men’s team for eight weeks, so you really build momentum. The senior coach has been very open, very willing, but we’ve got 16 teams and we’re tasked to cascade and embed those high performance culture factors which we believe are important, a particular way of working with the people. It’s a strategy. We plan for good culture, in negotiation with the coach, and it’s almost periodised from under-17s through to seniors. What do we want these players to be equipped to do, and how do we want them to feel as they go through? How do we want them to feel about England as they go through their journeys as athletes?

During the World Cup, manager Gareth Southgate talked about a team that represented modern England, with the chance to affect things other than football. I’m a big believer that high-performance culture needs to have a spirit of contribution to something more than the scoreboard. That’s part of what Gareth and the team achieved during the summer. We talked long and hard about it before prep camp in May. Particularly in one-on-one conversations. What would success look like to us, separating out what would success on the scoreboard look like, what would success in terms of learning look like, how do we want people to feel, how do we want our fans to feel, what do we want Three Lions to represent? When did it feel great? We had a lot of that exploratory negotiation of what we would commit to before we ever set off. So what we saw and felt across the summer was better than we could have ever imagined – people really enjoyed it, and that was thrilling for us, and particularly thrilling for the players, and we shared that public enjoyment all the time with them. Keeping the balance between any sense of ‘we’re already done, we’re already a success’, and ‘we’ve still got games to play, we must keep focused and in our bubble’. It really did change, but of course that potential was already in each of those players. The environment shifted. Gareth offers such calm leadership, and he’s a great storyteller, so he’s easy work for me in regard to his narrative, his open mind. That shifted everything. Kyle Walker tweeted that ‘this unity amongst the

country is just brilliant, let’s stick together, I love you!’, and it become a London Tube station quote of the day… I saw it in a media feed and shared that with him, and he was genuinely thrilled that something he said had an impact on others like that. We started to break down the stereotypes of what these footballers were, and that lens into their life was curated not by them but by other media outlets. We encouraged them to tell their own story. We asked them what they would like to talk about, rather than ‘don’t say this’. That freedom really came across, as a fan watching on TV. But I was drained just watching, so did you do ‘emotional hangover’ work after the summer? Yes, with players and staff. Anyone who has worked in Olympic cycles or tournaments will know about the effort to get there, and then the adrenal rollercoaster that is the event, and then you come back and life carries on. Five million emails in your inbox. That extreme euphoria and success we felt – not winning success, but something that was really worthwhile – that juxtaposed so hard with life when we got back. A lot of us were even tired with the positivity… we just needed to go in a hole somewhere. The players may have had two or three weeks at best, and then they were back into playing. Some players who weren’t from the big six clubs, their lives had shifted dramatically in that time. So there was a lot of emotion swirling around, most of it positive but still draining. We didn’t see them until September, so we did emotional hangover work when they came back in, but we did it with the staff too. A comprehensive unpacking of what happened, how we felt about it, where were our learnings, next steps. And a full stop. Not that we don’t talk about this again, but more like this is where we are, where are we stepping next? With the momentum of summer, everyone was up for that. Speaking to a colleague who had worked in an Australian Olympic cycle, one observation she made was that she felt that things were parked too quickly… never rest, never embrace the growth or success, just refocus… and that had quite grave consequences in her sport. So it’s important to manage that. But emotionally it was big. I don’t think any of us realised how the country responded until we got back. Our families and friends had sort of narrated it for us, but when we got back the emotions rolled on and it was important we put that in context and processed it. You were credited in the press with changing the culture, getting us that far… I was six months in when we went to the World Cup, and there was some brilliant work before I even stepped through the door. Bryce Cavanagh, he did the unicorns in the pool, I didn’t do the unicorns! We worked as a collective. I have quite a strong antihero policy, but I think particularly for our discipline… human emotion is so dynamic, and culture is a live thing which is made every day. Yes we had a plan, and yes it went well, but there were so many factors that

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Managing myself within that, and knowing when I was having a moment, or when my mood had dipped. Being willing to be imperfect: I’m a big believer in that. I also reflect on people’s feedback… some of the things that I thought were most important were not what other people saw as most important. I did a lot of one-on-one with staff members, on nipping negative group dynamics in the bud… some fed back that that was most important. To take the time to have the space to fully unpack it, that’s interesting. I’m grateful for the luxury of a full review. Your own confirmatory bias When England were knocked out, there was a sense – shifts, memory is notoriously unreliable, so having people feed back into what worked was very valuable. rightly or wrongly – that it was again a psychological I hope it has made me a better culture coach. issue. That we’d almost over-achieved mentally, with the penalty shootout, and maybe when we got within I notice where I stepped back, where I saw myself thinking ‘I don’t want to have that chat right now’. touching distance of the final it all got a bit much? I think I got to understand more about subtlety… Was it psychological? Obviously it has an impact. I sometimes sport has quite a masculine view of ‘go hard don’t think that they ran out of steam psychologically. when you’re challenged’, and it’s I don’t think that they capitulated or not my understanding of what gave in. I’m privy to those meetings works generally. You do need to and conversations, and alongside “I don’t think that be bold enough to challenge, but Gareth I run the leadership group. they ran out of steam for the dynamics when you’re I know what the level of desire psychologically. I don’t away in one hotel, under pressure, and intent was going in. But we saw across a number of teams, the think that they capitulated” even if its good pressure, subtlety really matters. I think I learnt a lot emotion of holding it right until about that. the end of a game or the end of a tournament is something that is a learnt experience Interesting that you talk about masculinity around as well. That was the youngest World Cup squad bar sport… let’s go back to where you started really, in one, and the youngest we’ve had for a very long time. mental wellbeing. UK Sport launched their mental I think about it in those terms, and psychological health strategy recently… how far have we got to go? resilience to hold out to the end is just as learnt as A long way. That’s not just specific to sport, but sport is playing a 3-4-3 or any other aspect of managing a so visible and has particular nuances about the lifestyle game. It’s part of a development path that they’re on. that are both protective and risk factors. I still feel that I also think they weren’t homogeneous in that. There the conversation we’re having is around mental illness might have been some players who really gritted it out rather than a parallel conversation around how we until the end, and some who maybe felt differently flourish, how we stay mentally robust. I’m only a year along that path. into football, so everything is caveated with a relative But really it wasn’t any more of a factor in my rookie view, but I still think there are some old school eyes than their physical conditioning, or their game ideas around what performance has to involve in experience. It’s part of a whole. I think also England terms of suffering, ‘toughing it out’. Your own work on had just really convinced itself that psychologically we burnout is relevant here. I’m thrilled we can have open were weak, before that. When I came into the group discussions about it, but if I look at a five-year horizon I thought ‘this team is a bit of a secret’, because there was good work already done. They were willing. It was I want to see a conversation about flourishing rather than just about people who are unwell. the guidance and permission to be themselves, it was the frameworks and encouragement and relationships, Now you have the Nations League finals this year. that would help them really build that momentum. Anything you’ll do differently? They weren’t actually as bad as all that! Going out to We’re focusing on the shift to playing with expectation Iceland in 2016, there’s a whole story built up around while maintaining that sense of freedom, going big on the horror and shame of the England team, but of confidence… and we’re keen to further develop the course they had been working on it since then. leadership within such a young team so that they feel a deep sense of capability over time. Going through that as a psychologist, what changes Also, I’m going to put Chartered Psychologist Ian did you see in yourself? Mitchell in with the men’s seniors. I’ll be by his side One of the interesting things was observing my own as confidant and enabler, but if I’m a leader, I need to emotions through it. There’s usually only one psych walk my talk in growing my team as culture coaches, in a team; everyone else had a team, and we need to psychologists and leaders. It will also leave me some keep in that position where we can still coach. That room to work on mental health and the women’s game! meant a degree of separation; it can feel quite lonely. went into it, including a staff team who pulled together really well. And luck – which we don’t like to talk about! So myriad factors, and it makes me cringe when I think about the overplayed credit I got. When I really think about what I added – I got people around the table having the right conversations at the right time. That sparked something. It wasn’t a brilliant session on ‘red head blue head’, or managing anxiety, or the work on staying composed on the penalties… none of those things in isolation.

In 1990, when the UK temperature record was beaten with 37.1°C recorded on 3 August in Cheltenham, and when the record fell again in 2003, with 38.1°C at Kew Gardens, the media went crazy and people sweltered and complained in the heat. My suffering was of a different type: pure psychological torment, as in both cases by some misfortune I was out of the country.

Notes from a weather observer Trevor Harley on the effects of weather and climate on personality and behaviour

have always been obsessed by the weather. One of my earliest memories is of a thunderstorm in London, and my earliest datable memory is when I woke to the Great Winter of 1962-1963 arriving in Southampton on Boxing Day. While other people might mark their autobiographical memories by family events, I mark them by severe weather

events. As soon as my life settled into some semblance of post-student stability in the mid-eighties, I fulﬁlled my long-held dream of being able to set up my own weather station. Anyone can do this, although with most hobbies you can spend a great deal of money if you wish. You at least need a maximum-minimum thermometer, a rain gauge, and some way of measuring the wind direction. Traditionally conditions are measured at 9am GMT. And that is the problem; what if you’re not there at 9am? The answer is obvious: you don’t go away.

A serious, systematic hobby Weather observers take their hobby seriously. There are several internet groups and forums devoted to the

weather. I have studied the characteristics of the users, and it is perhaps not surprising that 95 per cent of them are male. Many keep their own weather records, and most observers are at least as dedicated as I am. They produce monthly and yearly summaries which are distributed among fellow observers, and many submit them to central databases. I have one colleague who has the benefit of having collected records from the same site for 51 years (a window of 30 years is thought to be sufficient to construct the current climate). We take great pride in the completeness, thoroughness, and accuracy of our records. This kind of male obsession fits well with Simon Baron-Cohen’s suggestion that men need to systemise their environment, and some more than others. The weather is, in survival terms, important: farmers and hunters need to predict the weather for crop planting, growing, and harvesting, and predicting the movement of animals and occurrence of nuts and berries. The construction of elaborate spreadsheets is similar to the other examples of extreme systemisation that BaronCohen describes. It is notable that weather observers also have other kinds of systemising hobbies, such as bird watching (or more accurately bird listing). The good news is that with modern technology I

the psychologist june 2019 weather

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Confounds There are many confounds that we need to consider when no longer need to be there, or have investigating the relation between a reliable weather sitter. Measuring climate and weather and behaviour. instruments are now wireless, and For example, the long dark nights a logger stores the data remotely of northern winters are invariably and downloads it to a computer. accompanied by cooler if not cold Distressing accidents nevertheless weather. The nearer the equator still happen, such as cutting Trevor Harley is Emeritus you go, day lengths are more equal the wire from the anemometer Professor of Psychology at across the year, and the sunnier (which measures wind direction the University of Dundee. He is it tends to be but also the hotter. and strength) when trimming the a full-time writer and science Poverty tends to be higher in hedgerow, or the rain gauge filling journalist, and has unbroken equatorial regions too; but perhaps with autumn leaves (invariably weather records since 1988. the poverty is in some underlying during an interestingly heavy Inbetween staring at the sky and way related to the climate? It’s easy rainfall). It is, however, difficult spreadsheets he has written to go round in circles, struggling to shake off an obsession; extreme several books: the latest is to tease out the causal effect of the weather events are still best The Psychology of Weather. variables of interest. experienced in person, not through taharley@dundee.ac.uk As an example of how climate a graph. affects our psychology, Wei et al. (2017), in a large-scale study in China and the USA, found that among weather A British preoccupation variables temperature has most effect on the openness It isn’t just weather observers that are affected by the measure of the ‘Big Five’ personality constructs, weather; of course we all are to differing extents. It is particularly on socialisation and social growth. often claimed that the British are peculiarly obsessed by the weather; it is believed we talk about the weather The causal reasoning sometimes strikes individual differences researchers as simplistic, but that does not more than the inhabitants of other countries, and use mean that it is wrong. Warmer weather means that the topic of the weather as an ice-breaker and safe children are more able to wander around outside, topic of conversation. exploring, meeting people, and taking more risks There are good reasons why we might be particularly fascinated by the weather. Britain’s location than they would do if stuck indoors. A a result a child growing up in southern California is more likely to be at the edge of the continent, influenced by the Gulf friendly, outgoing, and inquisitive Stream, and at the boundaries of than one growing up in Minnesota. large-scale convection cells, means “People born in summer The season in which a person that our weather is highly variable is born matters too. People born (and difficult to predict) and often tend to be healthier and in summer tend to be healthier underneath battling large-scale more outgoing, with again and more outgoing, with again air masses. If you live in Russia temperature apparently temperature apparently being you can predict what your winter is going to be like: very cold or being the most important the most important variable. The results are complex however, and extremely cold. As I write this variables” may be moderated by gender – a sentence in November 2018 we study in Japan found seasonality have nothing but a glimmer of an effects but only on females (Kamata idea of what our winter this year will be like (changeable December, slightly colder than et al., 2009). And season of birth affects both normal average January and February). In spite of this putative and pathological behaviour. People born in spring and early summer have an elevated risk of suffering from obsession there is no clear data that we are indeed major depression later in life and completing suicide, obsessed more than others; indeed, it seems that particularly by violent means. People born later in the everyone everywhere is fascinated by the weather. summer and in autumn are more at risk from suffering We should distinguish climate and weather. from obsessive-compulsive disorders. (I was born in Climate is the underlying weather pattern, August.) conventionally defined over 30 years. Britain has In line with the complex ways in which season and a temperate oceanic climate. Weather is what is climate at bitter affects later behaviour, the ways in happening day-to-day; today’s weather in Dundee is which weather affects mood are also complex. Surely best characterised as ‘horrible’ (windy, wet, and dull). good weather leads to good mood, and bad weather The season is the typical weather for the time of year. bad mood? No, it’s much complicated than that. The Climate, weather, and season all affect our personality most famous modern study is that by Jaap Denissen and how we behave, but, it turns out, not always in and colleagues (2008), who found few effects of ways that people expect.

Not all psychiatrists accept the existence of SAD, some weather on mood. This much cited study important suggesting it is another example of the pathologisation because it used an unusually large sample (over 1200 of normal behaviour. But most accept that some participants) and a sophisticated statistical analysis. people are particularly affected by the lack of light, Among the few reliable effects the researchers found with DSM-5 labelling the disorder ‘Major Depressive were that the amount of sunshine, temperature, and Disorder with Seasonal Pattern’. It is estimated that 5 humidity affects mood and energy levels – a little. But per cent of the population may suffer from it. I look the complexity of the results is demonstrated by their favourably on the existence of SAD partly because I finding that rising temperature also makes people less experience it (it can be particularly anxious and less sceptical. grim living in northern Scotland; Why are these results, at first sight, counter-intuitive? I “Civil conflicts were more how I miss Hampshire sometimes) and also because there is a think a particularly important common between 1950– plausible biological mechanism study in the field was published for how day duration might affect in 2011 study by Theo Klimstra 2004 in tropical areas mood in terms of light levels, the and colleagues. They found large during El Niño events” retinohypothalamic tract, and levels individual differences in the type of melatonin and serotonin. of weather people say they like, In the northern hemisphere and this interacts with how the days are at their shortest in late December, around weather affects their behaviour. People can broadly the winter solstice, and as might be expected there be divided into ‘summer lovers’ and ‘summer haters’. is a significant seasonal variation in the suicide rate. Rising temperatures affect these types differently. However the suicide rate peaks not in the depths of Consider also that it’s very pleasant in spring when winter but in late spring and early summer. We can the temperature reaches an optimum 22°C, but very different in summer when it reaches 32°C. On a related currently only hazard guess as to why this might be. Victor Hugo notched that ‘the miserable do not rebel’ note, how people say they will behave and how they – revolutions tend to happen when things start to get actually behave may be very different: we might like a little better, and perhaps suicide is similar. Perhaps the prospect of a hot summer’s day, but the reality the rate is linked to seasonal variations in hormonal of struggling to work when it is changes, particularly on the levels of melatonin. Here blisteringly hot and humid (the clearly the legendary ‘more research is needed’ applies. Key sources interaction of temperature and As well as varying with time of year, one would humidity being another issue) may be very different. Weather observers expect suicide rates to vary with latitude, increasing Bell, P.A. (1992). In defense of the the further north one goes. Very broadly there is such themselves are motivated by negative affect escape model of heat an increase, although as I have noted changing latitude recording extremes: in my study of and aggression. Psychological Bulletin, their preferences, a weather observer is confounded with many other variables. In addition 111, 342–346. Bridges, F.S., Yip, P.S.F. & Yang, there is a broad east-west decline, such that suicides loves severe weather, whether it is K.C.T. (2005). Seasonal changes in increase northeastwards across Europe. The suicide very hot, very cold, or very wet, suicide in the United States, 1971 to while apart from at Christmas, most rate in Russia is the highest in Europe, with 26.5 2000. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 100, suicides per 100,000 people, with the vast majority of dread a long snowy cold winter. 920–924. these being men (WHO, 2018), but of course many What remains to be determined Denissen, J.J.A., Butalid, L., Penke, other factors might be responsible for Russia’s high is where these particular differences L. et al. (2008). The effects of weather on daily mood : A multilevel approach. rate. Within an individual country such as the USA come from. There is some Emotion, 8, 662–667. rates generally are higher in northern states, but only intergenerational concordance: Hsiang, S. M., Burke, M., & Miguel, in central ones, with northern coastal states generally summer loving and rain hating E. (2013). Quantifying the influence of being lower, with the exception of Alaska, which has mothers are more likely to have climate on human conflict. Science, 341, a high rate. All we can conclude is that lack of light children who are summer loving 1212–1226. in winter might increase the likelihood of suicide and rain hating. But obviously this Kamata, M., Suzuki, A., Matsumoto, Y. et al. (2009). Effect of month of birth on the following spring, although it is just one of many concordance could come about in personality traits of healthy Japanese. variables. The weather also has a weak effect on the many ways. European Psychiatry, 24, 86–90. suicide rate. My colleague Fhionna Moore and I have Klimstra, T. A., Frijns, T., Keijsers, L. looked at the effect of weather on suicide in Scotland, et al. (2011). Come rain or come shine: and the fairest summary is that it’s very complicated. A SAD and suicide individual differences in how weather summary is that suicide is slightly more likely at times People with Seasonal Affective affects mood. Emotion, 11, 1495–1499. Moore, F. R., Bell, M., Macleod, M. of pleasant weather (reflecting the seasonality finding). Disorder (SAD) are particularly et al. (2018). Season, weather, and affected by the season, becoming suicide - Further evidence for ecological depressed when the days shorten complexity. Neurology, Psychiatry and Hot heads (which in the northern hemisphere Brain Research, 30, 110–116. is in winter, particularly January and Violence can of course be directed to others as well February, although some people can as the self. In Spike Lee’s film Do the right thing, a Full list available in online/app version. hot summer’s day in Brooklyn leads to violence and suffer for 40 per cent of the year).

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temperature. There is a belief that hot weather leads to hot-headed behaviour, but as you will expect by now, the relationship is not a simple linear one. In countries with a long northsouth axis, with a reasonable difference in temperature along that axis (such as the USA and France), violent crime is indeed more common along in the hot southern areas. Civil conﬂicts were more common between 1950-2004 in tropical areas during El Niño events, which lead to more storms and hotter than usual weather in some areas. And violent crime anywhere generally increases when it Swans on ice, from the winter of 1962–63 gets hot. The relationship is not linear, however, but curvilinear: sometimes but they do so in complicated ways that are modulated it’s just too darned hot to do anything much (Bell, by many other factors, particularly individual 1992). Perhaps paradoxically, higher rainfall increase differences. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by the violence as well as higher temperature (Hsiang et al., small size of these effects. We are after all complex 2013). systems whose behaviour is determined by countless variables, and the weather comprises just a few of these. It is the very variability and unpredictability of Complex systems weather and climate that makes its effects on us so People are ﬁrst surprised and then bored when I try complex – and fascinating. telling them that, yes, weather and climate affect us,

Big data in the big city Catherine Lido on using novel technology to explore inclusion in Learning Cities

It’s time for psychologists to rethink their engagement with novel streams of data. It can help us to explore concepts such as belonging, social inclusion, quality of life and participation (in learning and in cultural and political activity). Psychologists are beginning to realise that existing data (be it administrative, third sector, private or public) may capture our everyday lived experiences. We begin in large cities, where the ‘dataverse’ is ubiquitous, and our movements, purchases and health metrics are regularly recorded.

Above images derived from the work of Lido et al. (2016), on older adults’ mobility in Glasgow in iMCD sub-set. The left map illustrates six older adult travel patterns around Glasgow over one week, via different modes of transport. The three learning engaged older adults indicated in green. The right map illustrates the learning engaged older adults in black travelling widely across central Scotland (over a one week period).

ave you heard the term ‘Urban Big Data’? Perhaps you have dismissed it as irrelevant to you as a psychologist. I must admit that when I was offered a post researching inclusion in learning with ‘big data’, I thought ‘Oh, that’s for computing scientists, urban planners and transportation nerds’. As the only psychologist in the building, I often wondered where I ﬁt in. But in this article, I’ll explain the emerging concepts of big data and novel technologies, and how I’ve come to realise they may be the key to illuminating our behaviour in a naturalistic and reliable way. Data can be ‘big’ in various ways, but most people agree it’s about more than numbers and size. We can think in terms of the ‘Various Vs’, talking in terms of its Volume, Velocity, Variety (Kitchin, 2014); the less frequently mentioned Veracity and Value (Demchenko et al., 2014); as well as Variability and Visualisation (see Li et al., 2016, for overview). So big data, for example from social media or body sensors, may be collected continuously in ‘real-time’, or it may be ‘big’ due to the complexity of the data, and the ‘big’ aspect can refer to the need for novel methods to capture, analyse, interpret and/or visualise it (Osborne & Lido, 2015)

the psychologist june 2019 big data in the big city

Such datasets are becoming bigger, more interrelated and more open. Psychologists can use such data, tapping into existing resources to improve knowledge of our cities (or where data exists, rural regions), and to ensure equal and equitable participation in all aspects of life. Ethical and methodological challenges to the use of big data must be acknowledged: we are intensely aware of ethical, privacy/ surveillance concerns of such big and open datasets, and we write about these elsewhere. We must understand that we live in a society where our ‘data’ is regularly mined by private enterprise – our purchases, footfall, use of public transport, health, and more. Here we offer directions for the collection of novel and open datasets for social good, including citizens in the use of their own data…researching ‘with’ and not ‘on’ people. Harnessing the power Since its launch in 2014 I have had the privilege of working in, and with, the Urban Big Data Centre (UBDC) at Glasgow University. UBDC was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council as part of the investment in big data to ‘harness the power’ of existing data to improve the social, economic, and environmental wellbeing, speciﬁcally to address urban

challenges (following on from the creation of the UK’s Administrative Data Research Service). UBDC’s fundamental mission is to improve urban citizens’ lives. Its remit is interdisciplinary, but focuses mainly on transport, housing, technology, civic (and cultural) participation and educational inclusion. It attempts this partially by making data more open to the public, offering skills training and creating international networks for knowledge exchange around data usage, linkage and implications. But how does this all relate to psychology? Centres such as UBDC (and related big data investments such as Consumer Data Research Centre and Business and Local Government Data Research Centre) offer researchers opportunities to work with realtime, naturalistic data, without the cost and effort of having to collect it. They also offer opportunities for training and networking with non-psychologists, offering complimentary perspectives, alternative academic languages, and diverse statistical and visual-spatial modelling methodologies. Through such interdisciplinary ‘knowledge exchange’ I have personally rediscovered my love of maps, and have been able to engage with training on geospatial analyses, such as using multilevel approaches to explore neighbourhood, regional and national ethnic

Key sources This article is based on work soon to be published in a special issue of the Oxford Review of Education on Learning Cities: Lido, C., Reid, K. & Osborne, M. (2019). Lifewide Learning in the City: Novel big data approaches to exploring learning with large-scale surveys, GPS, Lifelogging images & social media.

Demchenko, Y., De Laat, C., & Membrey, P. (2014, May). Deﬁning architecture components of the Big Data Ecosystem. Paper presented at the International Conference on Collaboration Technologies and Systems (CTS). Halford, S., & Savage, M. (2017). Speaking sociologically with big data: Symphonic Social Science and the future for big data research. Sociology, 51(6), 1132–1148. Kitchin, R. (2014). Big data, new epistemologies and paradigm shifts. Big Data & Society, 1(1), 1–12. Li, S., Dragicevic, S., Castro, F. A. et al. (2016). Geospatial big data handling theory and methods. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 115, 119–133. Lido, C., Osborne, M., Livingston, M. et al. (2016). Older learning engagement in the modern city. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 35(5), 490-508. Longworth, N. & Osborne, M. (2010). Six ages towards a learning region: a retrospective. European Journal of Education, 45(3), 368–401. Osborne, M., Houston, M., & Lido, C. (2018). The role of big data in elucidating learning cities ancient, present and future. In J.R. Stenger (Ed.) Learning cities in late antiquity (pp. 24-46). Abingdon: Routledge. Osborne, M. & Lido, C. (2015) Lifelong learning and big data. In U. Gartenschlaeger & E. Hirsch (Eds.) Adult education in an interconnected world (pp.116–125).Bonn: DVV International. Osborne, M. (2013) Access and retention. In T.G.K. Bryce, W.M. Humes, D. Gillies & A. Kennedy (Eds.) Scottish education (pp.316–326). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Pattaro, S., Vanderbloemen, L. & Minton, J. (2018, 29 September). Exploring age-speciﬁc and cumulative cohort rates using composite fertility lattice plots. doi:10.31219/osf.io/fruhz UN (2015). Transforming our world: The 2030 agenda for sustainable development. New York: Author. UNESCO (2013) Key features of Learning Cities: Introductory note. Hamburg: UIL.

segregation (with Richard Harris, Professor of Quantitative Social Geography at Bristol University). In my own research, part of my role at UBDC consisted of exploring educational disadvantage and how it is situated within ‘place’ in the Greater Glasgow area. My main achievement to date has been in contributing to UBDC’s ﬁrst open dataset – the integrated Multimedia City Data (iMCD) project. The iMCD consists of a large-scale, representative survey of 1500 households within the Glasgow area (including a 24-hour travel diary), combined with a sub-sample of sensor data; namely, GPS trails for one week’s worth of travel, and ‘Lifelogging’ camera images from 48 hours of travels (with an additional 24-hour travel diary matched with the GPS trails and Lifelogger images). Set over the same 12-month period of data collection, we also have archived a large-scale social media capture (of photos and text), some of which are geolocated in Glasgow, and some of which includes topical hashtags (covering the Commonwealth Games, Scottish independence referendum and educational events/ organisations within the city). The iMCD is data is housed alongside administrative data for the city (in domains that include education and a range of urban indicator data), as well as cycling app data (STRAVA), mobile phone data, satellite and LiDAR data. Exploring only a single strand of the iMDC data – the ‘Understanding Glasgow’ representative household survey (of every eligible adult in the household) – we can see that it holds a host of usable data of interest to psychologists. This includes measuring attitudes, behaviours and literacies (operationalised as knowledge) in the domains of education, transport, sustainability, technology, and cultural and civic engagement, as well as a travel diary assessing adults’ patterns of travel activity and daily tasks. Developing a survey for ‘open

data use’ by academics and non-academic stakeholders alike, was a major challenge. We had to collect data without specific research questions and without specific researchers in mind (for a diverse variety of potential users from academics to citizen hacktivists). Following widespread scoping activities with potential users, we developed the survey iteratively, with a review of (largely UK) national survey questions in the domains of interest, and content validity was assessed by a team of eight subject matter experts (SMEs) from interdisciplinary backgrounds. The draft survey content was compared against the 42 UNESCO (2013) features of Learning Cities to ensure we could explore key concepts for social inclusion and learning participation. The survey collected a rich variety of demographic information, including age, ethnicity, nationality and religion, as well as household demographic information, such as children, housing and employment (full income and benefits information). The survey also collected extensive data on educational qualifications and engagement in any learning (formal, non-formal and informal learning). One interesting idea for use of the iMCD survey concerns UNESCO’s Learning Cities agenda. Learning Cities, unlike Smart or Future cities, acknowledge that knowledge lies at the heart of the economic, social and civic success of any urban context (or wider region). The concept of ‘Learning City or Region’ has been well documented within education since the 1970s (Longworth & Osborne, 2010), and historically perhaps for centuries (Osborne et al., 2018). Equitable participation in lifelong education has remained at the forefront of political and social interests worldwide over several decades, and is now acknowledged as key to UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goal vision for 2030 (Goal 4; United Nations 2015). UNESCO have consistently advocated for wider participation in further and higher education, and have placed lifelong learning at the heart of their Learning Cities agenda, operationalising the key features for success (2013). Thanks to education researchers, such as Professor Mike Osborne (Professor of Adult and Lifelong Learning), iMCD data was developed to offer benchmarks or comparisons to the hundreds of cities in the UNESCO Learning Cities Network worldwide. Triangulating data from surveys, sensors, GPS trails, images and social media allows global and holistic comparisons, for instance surrounding educational inclusion. Let me give an example. In our 2016 study on learning engagement in the modern city, we illustrated that older adult engagement in physical, social and learning activities was lower than their

the psychologist june 2019 big data in the big city

Symphonic social science The recent push for large-scale confirmatory research, to ensure counterparts and national averages. replicability and best practice in However, there was a subset of traditional psychological research, ‘actively ageing’, socially and is great to witness. However, technologically engaged olderit feels to me that the future of adult ‘learner-citizens’, participating psychology is mixed and multiin educational, physical, cultural, methodology, triangulating findings civic and online activities, as well Catherine Lido is Senior from as many disciplines as as working and care-taking. These Lecturer in Psychology and Adult possible, often by accessing more older adults reported better health Learning, School of Education, naturalistic real-time data. Our overall, and their GPS trails show University of Glasgow work with the Digital Preservation more city activity (than matched catherine.lido@glasgow.ac.uk Coalition illustrates that there is counterparts). We can even zoom clear resistance, particularly by in to see that the engaged ‘Silver some funding bodies, to considering diverse strands Citizen Surfers’ are engaging in more walking around of data – particularly alongside each other, and when their communities, even stopping (presumably talking or shopping) in their local area, as well as taking public the research is conducted by early-career researchers. I was recently introduced to the concept of Symphonic transportation across Scotland. By then linking the Social Science (Halford & Savage, 2017) – a call for survey to the Scottish Indices of Multiple Deprivation, re-examining social science approaches to big data, and other place-based variables (data zone, local moving beyond inductive and deductive approaches. authority), such as feeling safe and belonging to We should go beyond the quantitative–qualitative the area, we could see how such factors moderated divide, to the notion of using theory to guide our participation in learning activities. This provides exploration of big data, looking for meaningful shapes interesting avenues for how to keep older citizens and patterns (and patterns within patterns) using mentally, physically and socially active (particularly in ‘abductive’ reasoning and iterative approaches. Halford areas of deprivation). Through my recent research with Kate Reid (fellow and Savage conclude: ‘Overall, the mobilisation of big data with a symphonic approach calls for the selfpsychologist in our School of Education), we have conscious and iterative assemblage of data, method and incorporated public engagement into our research theory addressing major social questions and informed project, supported by our ESRC Impact Acceleration by sociological [and psychological?] theory’ (p.1143). Grant. We have been committed in involving the My UBDC colleague Jon Minton refers to wider public with more opportunities to consider and demographic and population data as ‘old big discuss the use of ‘urban big data’, and specifically the data’. More modern developments, or using novel iMCD survey and GPS findings surrounding ‘Lifewide Literacies’ (specifically, health, environmental, financial visualisations, are in line with the aims of the Farr and digital literacies). We have created, in collaboration Institute in advancing health through big/novel data methods (www.farrinstitute.org). We are presently with digital artists’ collectives (Maklab and Creative working on an interdisciplinary collaboration on Stirling), interactive 3-D laser cut objects on plywood. ‘Data Cakes’, led by Jon, whereby we use 3-D printed We have been keen to use these interactive objects visualisations to produce moulds, baking ‘data so good to promote discussion and debate around big data you can eat it’, using archival data from humanities, research as it relates to our own specific project and epidemiology, demography and education, to go from have met with a range of public audiences at the graphs and stats into edible treats (e.g. a lexis cube of flagship Glasgow Science Festival and the ESRC fertility rates in Scotland 1945–2011: Pattaro et al., Festival of Social Science hosted by Glasgow Ikea in 2018). November 2017. The objects created include a moving map of Glasgow, a large-scale jigsaw representing the local authorities where the ‘big data’ was collected, and It’s out there a child-friendly ‘literacy’ person badge, which could I hope to have illustrated some applied and impactful be personalised with desired literacy tokens, such big data research. It doesn’t need to be ‘faceless’ as reading/writing, maths, science, artistic/creative, and scary… big data should be inclusive, engaging cultural, digital, foreign language and geo-literacy. At academics and the public alike in dialogue. There are our first event (Glasgow Science Sunday) over 150 badges were created, coloured and taken away, and our interdisciplinary networks out there, data holders, and sources of secondary data looking to work second event at IKEA we produced over 300 more (as with psychologists just like you and me. In times part of the ESRC Festival of Social Sciences), with an of dwindling funding and increasing demands for estimated footfall of 8000 people through the stall area data that is large and valid, why not look outside our on the day. Our UBDC blog explains the design-led discipline to engage in social research? If the data is strand of our project and how ‘good design took big there, why not use it? data to IKEA’ (see tinyurl.com/lidoikea).

the psychologist june 2019 life events Dominique Duong

Why are life events troubling? Ruth Spence, Lisa Kagan and Antonia Bifulco ﬁnd it’s not a straightforward question…

ife happens. In Kipling’s words, the twin impostors of ‘triumph and disaster’, the best and worst the world can throw at us. Not all ‘life events’ are life-changing. At face value, many appear benign (leaving school, getting a job, moving in with a partner); whilst others seem inherently damaging (the death of someone close, a life-threatening illness, relationship break-up). Yet the extent to which a life event is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is not necessarily intuitive, and it may surprise you to know that psychologists often continue to act as if it is. This matters. Negative life events are critical in understanding psychological disorder. Clinicians look to life events as the precipitating factor when creating formulations of client symptoms. ‘Ask not what is wrong with a person, ask them what happened’ has become something of a mantra for psychologists. Likewise, life-events research is based on the idea that severe (very negative) life events coupled with prior vulnerabilities (e.g. childhood experiences, genetic predispositions, negative cognitions of self or the world) are important in explaining the onset of mental health problems. So what is it that makes an event negative? Given the rich volume of research around life events, that question should be easy to answer. Yet when you move beyond events that are obviously tragic – and even here there’s room for some subjectivity – most people falter in explaining why something is negative or troubling. Looking at the way life events have been studied can help explain the complexity involved. From checklists to context Traditionally, life events have been measured by checklists, which take an event category, such as a divorce, and give everyone who endorses it the same rating. The stress experienced is then calculated by adding together the number of life events that have

occurred. A good example of this is the Holmes and Rahe stress scale, from 1967. But not everyone experiences life events similarly. Let’s use the example of a divorce – most people will agree this will usually be negative. Reflecting this, it gets a whopping 73 out of 100 from Holmes and Rahe. But what if the formal divorce proceedings happen after a long separation? Or after a short marriage? With or without children? In a traditional cultural or religious setting? What if the relationship was abusive? Given the variety of factors that could be involved, can all divorce events really be rated in the same way? Whilst there would always be some negative element of loss, some divorce situations could clearly be far more troubling than others. Or consider pregnancy. It might indeed be very positive if the pregnancy is planned and Some divorce situations could clearly be far more troubling wanted, and in the context of a good relationship. But than others if the context is changed, the valence can immediately become stressful, negative and troubling. four underlying areas is more important than its We believe all these contextual issues influence category, whether, for example, it’s exam failure, the severity of the event, sometimes radically. When mugging, financial loss or relationship break-up. And checklist measures ignore what is going on around the life event, they are actually ignoring key factors in what within these key areas there are important features that increase the likely damage to it is that makes it negative. They wellbeing. One is the degree of miss the clues to how it is damaging “Often a client’s impact – from mild to marked levels to psychological wellbeing. The life depending on intensity, threat, impact of a life event helps define vulnerability and and change involved. For what makes it negative. This has maintenance factors will finality example, an event threatening been borne out by studies that be examined more closely attachment can be on a continuum use in-depth interviews of life from ‘hassle’ (minor argument events, such as the Life Events and than the life events that with partner) to serious negative Difficulties Schedule (LEDS: Brown have precipitated their event (major row), to life-changing & Harris, 1978). Events measured symptoms” (threatened divorce) or trauma in such detail predict psychological (violent attack). disorder such as depression with How does this model fit with far more precision than self-report previous work? Studies have illustrated that other checklists. features typify events that are highest on severity and provoke depressions. These include loss (with more or less finality) and danger (threat of future loss), Our model entrapment/defeat (the event underlines lack of escape Based on the analysis of numerous narrative accounts from a punishing situation) and humiliation (the event of life events and their surrounding contexts, we is stigmatising) (Brown et al., 1995; Kendler et al., have developed a conceptual model that explains 2003; Harkness & Monroe 2016). So let’s now turn to why life events may be experienced as more or less some examples of how the dimensions of loss, danger, severe and troubling. We uncovered four key areas entrapment, humiliation and impact can act to increase of psychological need that, when threatened, tend to negativity in our four key areas of psychological need. make an event negative: • Attachment – events that involve negative changes in close relationships often involving loss or Examples rejection. Think of an individual having fertility treatment and • Achievement – events that prevent or hinder the needs that might be affected by this – identity (as reaching a desired goal. • Security – events that jeopardise physical or mental parent) and perhaps achievement (i.e. not being able to reach the goal of having a baby). An unsuccessful safety and uncertainty of possession, routine or round of IVF would be considered to have aspects of physical existence. immediate loss but still contain some hope – the next • Identity – events that compromise how we and others view the self, involving stigma, belonging or treatment might be successful. Compare this with being told that after many years of entrapping failed physical deterioration. fertility treatments there is nothing left to try. Here, there is a sense of final loss and futility. We believe that how a life event impacts on these

the psychologist june 2019 life events

Another example, paralysis following a stroke, could involve include information about various features of loss, danger and Ruth Spence, Lisa Kagan event attributes. Such detail allows entrapment. This may also affect and Antonia Bifulco are at the for more meaningful analysis. identity (self as functioning agent). Centre for Abuse and Trauma The online system means events On a closer analysis security may Studies, Middlesex University can be gathered on a wide scale be affected if the person gives up R.Spence@mdx.ac.uk and prospectively. We have used their job and earning capacity, the data to quantitatively check and attachment may be affected if whether the attributes we have identified truly are it leads to deterioration in a close relationship due to important in helping to differentiate between severe caring responsibilities or hospitalisation. and non-severe life events. At the very least, we hope So on a simplistic level a person could experience loss in attachment (bereavement), achievement (failing a that by outlining this model researchers using life key exam), security (eviction) or identity (confirmation events should be inspired to think more critically about the measurement tools they use. of infertility). What about in the realm of applied psychology? Yet the most damaging events are those that hit at a Often a client’s vulnerability and maintenance factors number of areas of our core functioning. They have an will be examined more closely than the life events impact on the very meaning of our lives. that have precipitated their symptoms. And although We believe that the conceptual model developed sometimes it will be obvious why a certain life event helps explains not only why intuitively negative might have contributed to a client’s symptomatology, events are seen as such (death, divorce, destitution), at other times it will be less so. It may be that the but also why lesser events under certain conditions client does not spontaneously describe all the events are so negative. Breaking a finger or wrist might seem and their accumulation, or outline all the relevant inconvenient, painful but relatively minor. But if it context. They may not see such factors themselves stops the individual doing their job, performing their as important. Our approach could serve as a way of parenting role or having contact with close others, it thinking further about events that may appear at first may involve greater hardship. Suppose the breakage glance to have had a disproportionate effect on the was due to an attack – either from someone close or randomly in the street – this would have greater impact client’s wellbeing. It could also enable links between on felt security and the belief in a benign world. Events predisposing events and cognitive or historical vulnerabilities to can also escalate: the individual may be told they will Key sources be clearly drawn out during never recover full mobility in their hand and then formulation (e.g. a history of lose not only functioning but also their livelihood and rejection or a fearful attachment future goals. Conversely, such context also points to Bifulco, A., Spence, R., Nunn, S., et style, may sensitise to events the availability of ‘safety nets’ or available resources al. (2018). Computerized Life Events and Assessment Record web-based involving humiliation). Thus, we can that reduce negativity (e.g. another household wage measure of life events: A preliminary devise notions of matching of event earner cushioning the impact of job loss or parenting study of reliability, validity, and to vulnerability. demands). association with depression. JMIR We hope that having a more Mental Health. sophisticated framework for Brown, G.W. & Harris, T. (1978). estimating negative life events will Seeing CLEARly Social origins of depression: A study of psychiatric disorder in women. London: mark a new phase for life events The average reader might be finding it hard to believe Tavistock Publications. in psychological research and that this is still an issue, in a science that has arguably Brown, G.W., Harris, T.O. & Hepworth related clinical practice. Much moved consistently from nomothetic to idiographic C. (1995). Loss, humiliation and like the ongoing debate between a understanding. We can assure you that it is. We entrapment among women developing dimensional rather than categorical believe it’s hampering research, for example producing depression: A patient and non-patient approach to mental health, perhaps inconsistent results in genetic studies that often still comparison. Psychological Medicine, 25(1), 7–21. a better understanding of the use a checklist approach. We continue to argue that Harkness, K.L. & Monroe, S.M. (2016). complex features of life events on all negative events are likely to affect one of our core The assessment and measurement a continuum of negativity – rather psychological needs (attachment, achievement, security, of adult life stress: Basic premises, than as discrete identical categories identity) and that furthermore, the dimensions of loss, operational principles, and design – would further our understanding danger, entrapment, humiliation and life impact enable requirements. Journal of Abnormal of how environments impact us to understand further aspects of events, how they Psychology, 125(5), 727–745. Kendler, K.S., Hettema, J.M., Butera, individuals. It may also serve to are experienced and how they affect our lives – its F., et al. (2003). Life event dimensions avert stigmatising inferences of meaning and enjoyment. of loss, humiliation, entrapment, and weakness in relation to mental We are currently testing this model using a new danger in the prediction of onsets of health. Let’s seek to better online measurement of life events: the Computerised major depression and generalised Life Events and Assessment Record (CLEAR: Bifulco et understand the true extent of the anxiety. Archives of General Psychiatry, al., 2018). The measure not only gathers data regarding damage inflicted by life’s ‘slings and 60, 789–796. arrows of outrageous fortune’. event type and context but also allows individuals to

The anatomy of online grief Elaine Kasket’s new book is All the Ghosts in the Machine: Illusions of Immortality in the Digital Age.

laine Kasket is a digital immigrant masquerading as a digital native, an American masquerading as a Brit, and a committed urbanite masquerading as a chicken farmer… but she is a genuine psychologist, writer, and public intellectual. A former principal lecturer in counselling psychology, she left formal academia behind to spend more time communicating to general audiences about the topics that most fascinate her. When she isn’t writing or speaking about the murky and weirdly compelling junctures where life, death and the digital meet, she provides psychological therapy, is a producer for the Mortiﬁed live storytelling project, tells tales on stage, and makes unsuccessful attempts at learning the banjo.

She lives in East London with her husband, daughter and a revolving cast of troublesome bantams. Her book All The Ghosts in the Machine, published by Robinson, is available now. Here, we whet your appetite for a full chapter you can ﬁnd on our website… Wherever I go, especially when I’m speaking with digitalimmigrant audiences, I still encounter some level of concern about going online to grieve. Radio and TV presenters express their reservations in exaggerated, emotive ways, turning up the provocation to keep the audience tuned in: isn’t this all a bit creepy? I mean, it’s

the psychologist june 2019 books

The key to consciousness? pretty morbid, talking to dead people online, isn’t it? Everyone asks questions that pull for binary, black-andwhite answers: is it good or bad to mourn online? Is it healthy or unhealthy? Should we be worried or not? When I went to speak to the Psychological Society of Ireland in 2014, I fully expected to hear some of the same kinds of questions. Psychologists and other practitioners well versed in grief and mourning tend to simply frame their scepticism in a more sophisticated way, such as whether interacting with digital remains in mourning carries a risk of ‘complicated grief’. Sure enough, this group of psychologists raised the usual issues, but there was something additional repeatedly rearing its head. It struck me because I hadn’t heard it expressed to the same extent anywhere else. I was in the midst of pointing out a particular benefit of grieving online, which is that the bereaved can have access to a community of mourners twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. A young woman – surely a digital native herself – raised her hand suddenly and with the air of having a very definite point to make. ‘I don’t see how that can be helpful,’ she said. ‘That can’t be good. They should be with their families.’ Others nodded, chiming in with similar comments. Yes, surely people in grief should not be on their devices, in their rooms, interacting with digital remains and talking to dead friends and fellow mourners online. It was inappropriate and possibly downright wrong. They should shut their laptops, put down their phones and go and grieve with their families. I thought that I understood what I was hearing here. I was familiar with the attitude, particularly amongst psychologists and other kinds of mentalhealth practitioners who privilege face-to-face interaction. I’d even done a study of English psychologists’ attitudes to digital technologies, and one of the major findings was that, whatever their age, they saw online interaction as an inferior type of relating, somehow not ‘real’, a substitute for authentic contact. In possession of these recently gathered data, I was confident in my response and encouraged people to reflect upon the underlying, knee-jerk beliefs they had about the ‘right’ thing to do in the face of grief. ‘You’re making several assumptions here,’ I said. ‘You’re assuming that family members will be able to speak about the death, when they may be struggling with grief themselves. You’re also assuming that they’ll be willing to speak about it – people often believe that children and young people should be protected from death. The online environment might be the only place where someone feels comfortable expressing their grief or talking about the dead person; there may be spoken or unspoken rules against that at home.’ In other words, while I was exhorting them to reflect upon their assumptions, I was blissfully unaware of how many I was expressing myself… Read the full chapter via thepsychologist.bps.org.uk

Reber argues that we need to reconceive what we mean by mind if we are going to ‘resolve’ (rather than solve) the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness – the explanatory gap between brain physiology and phenomenology. He contends that unicellular organisms exhibit dispositions that indicate mental experience. They seek environments that support homeostasis (the right nutrients, temperature, and population). As he argues, ‘a unicellular organism must be able to move, have a sense of its own physicist argues for a quantum physical form, have a representation explanation; an octopus enthusiast of self that is distinct from the senses sees the origin of mind of others’ (p.135). in cephalopods; a Drawing on research The First Minds: linguist looks for it in in microbiology, Reber Caterpillars, Karyotes, ‘generative language’. offers compelling and Consciousness So consciousness examples: separate Arthur S. Reber studies is in a colonies of the Oxford University Press rut, and Reber bacterium Bacillus believes research on communicating to unicellular organisms calibrate reproduction and other species may be the rates favourable to both; the protozoa solution. He acknowledges that little Stentor roseli ‘uses the cilia on its to no research has been conducted upper surface to guide potential food to support his argument. Without sources into its funnel’. that research, it’s difﬁcult to know Reber’s writing is a lively whether his distinction between synthesis of research in solving and resolving the hard consciousness studies and problem is merely rhetorical or a microbiology. His aim is to genuine reconceptualisation. He demonstrate that examining does identify concrete avenues for the material mechanisms of research that might answer the communication among bacteria or question. the feeding functions of protozoa may resolve the hard problem by Reviewed by Jason Tougaw, Queens showing how they generate mental College & The CUNY Graduate Center, experience. He offers a persuasive author of The Elusive Brain: Literary (and hilarious) demonstration of Experiments in the Age of Neuroscience how often theories of consciousness and The One You Get: Portrait of a reﬂect the research – or personal Family Organism agendas – of their proponents. A

Owning a dog is an integral part of many peoples’ lives from childhood through adolescence and adulthood up until older age. Everyone has their reasons for owning a dog but does research support any of those reasons? Can owning a dog truly be a beneﬁt to each and every owner? Is there a darker side to dog ownership in childhood? Find out in our exclusive extract from The Psychology of Dog Ownership, by Theresa Barlow and Craig Roberts, published by Routledge Psychology as part of their ‘The Psychology of Everything’ series. https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/lifespan-dog-owner

My shelﬁe… Marcus Munafo (University of Bristol) Cigarettes are Sublime Richard Klein (1994) Much of my career has focused on cigarette smoking, and in particular how to help people stop smoking. Even in the relatively short period since I completed my PhD, smoking rates have declined dramatically in the UK as a range of tobacco control policies such as standardised packaging and the ban on point of sale displays have been introduced. But the social context of smoking – why people smoke – is easy to lose sight of. Richard Klein wrote Cigarettes are Sublime as therapy when he stopped smoking. It is simultaneously an analysis of popular culture and an ode to cigarettes. It reminds me of the human and social aspect of my work, which can so easily be reduced to numbers and biology. The Concept of Mind Gilbert Ryle (1949) My undergraduate degree was in psychology and philosophy – in fact, I originally wanted to just study philosophy, but at the university I went to I had to do it with something else and chose psychology. Despite ultimately pursuing psychology as my main subject, I’ve always remained interested in philosophy, particularly in the context of my work on reproducibility (https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=JEQ_tcweqz8). Ryle’s Concept of Mind has always fascinated me because of the extent to which it challenges us to think critically about the concepts we use. As a biological psychologist, the question of how mental states arise from biological activity is central to my work, and one for which there are no clear answers (yet!). How to Lie with Statistics Darrell Huff (1954) For several years I have been interested in reproducibility issues in science. Perhaps this can be traced back to How to Lie with Statistics, which my mother gave to me before I went to university. Written by a journalist, it is a highly accessible introduction to simple errors that can be made when reporting and interpreting statistics. We continue to wrestle with the problem that our statistical training, as a profession, is uneven. Perhaps even

more importantly, current incentive structures in science arguably act against the proper use of statistics – we are supposed to discover ground-breaking insights, and we are rewarded for publishing eyecatching results whether or not they are likely to be true. Black Box Thinking Matthew Syed (2015) I’m fascinated by the culture of academia, which in many ways remains rooted in the 19th Century. Current debates around reproducibility, diversity, and bullying and harassment can all be understood as cultural issues. Perhaps we can learn better ways of working from other industries. For example, in any human endeavour there will be human error, but the structures and cultures we work in can either exacerbate or mitigate those errors. Black Box Thinking describes how the aviation industry – which, probably more than any other, is acutely aware of the need to mitigate human error – achieves this through a robust and healthy attitude towards failure, and a culture of openness. We should take note. Legacy James Kerr (2013) One of the cultural problems that I think we have in academia at the moment is that it remains a very individualistic enterprise. I’ve always found this uncomfortable – an important theme throughout my career has been building teams, including a period where much of my spare time was spent coaching elite athletes. Legacy describes how the New Zealand All Blacks has retained its position at the pinnacle of world rugby for decades, and is arguably the

most successful sporting team of all time. Academic research groups could learn from their approach – instilling core values, empowering early career researchers, and creating a culture where it is the team, not the individual, that succeeds. Radical Candor Kim Scott (2017) One of the challenges that senior academics face is that they often have little or no training in the key dayto-day skills they need – personnel management, project management and so on. This includes having difﬁcult conversations. Radical Candor describes the need to ‘challenge directly’ (i.e. not shy away from speaking hard truths), whilst also ‘care personally’ (i.e. make it clear that this is done to help the person grow and develop). We should give feedback to our teams in a way that drives excellence whilst creating a culture of openness and honesty. Perhaps we need to move to a culture where we spend at least as much time developing these broader skills, as well as our skills as scientists.

the psychologist june 2019 books

A menagerie of human concepts Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny Michael Tomasello Belknap Press of Harvard University Press

Tomasello is one of the most productive proponents of a theoretical stance that characterises behavioural innovation – development – as an expression of a cascade of evolutionary adaptations to selective regimes lost in the mists of time. According to this approach, our ancestors evolved unique capacities for representing others’ minds and unique motivations for engaging in collaborative activities. Humans, in Tomasello’s view, are a profoundly different kind of being; explanations for human behavioural development are radically discontinuous with the kinds of explanations we might use to explain development in other kinds of creatures, animals who learn through associative learning, for example. Tomasello’s theory is, in a compound word, antiDarwinian. Darwin looked at the expressive capacities of animals and saw a continuum, a deep unity between animals and humans; Tomasello, unabashedly, does not. Rather than appeal to developmental processes welldescribed in other organisms, Tomasello wheels out a veritable smorgasboard of uniquely human cognitive and motivational states: we have a sense of ‘We-ness’ unique in the world; other animals might display intentional behaviour, but we have uniquely human ‘shared intentionality’; humans, but not other animals, display a kind of ‘true’ joint attention; and so on. Tomasello and his colleagues have produced a body of work that is breath-taking in its breadth and originality. There is no question that Tomasello is one of the most creative and productive scientists of our generation. At the end of the book, he urges the reader to consult some of the videos from his experimental work. The reader will most deﬁnitely be rewarded by perusal of these stunning visual records in which we see skilled young children displaying their expertise in environments for which they have been well-prepared by their prior learning histories (and apes who are not well-prepared for these testing environments). Apparently, Tomasello sees organisms without regard to their prior learning experiences,

relevant or not. Hence, he rejects over a century’s worth of psychological study into principles of learning and instead invents a menagerie of novel theoretical concepts that he deems necessary to account for the skills these children display. The bulk of Tomasello’s evidence was gained from the experimental study of children raised in what Joseph Henrich and colleagues termed Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies – these represent less than 5 per cent of the world’s population. In Tomasello’s theory, development in WEIRD societies is taken as representative (and a gold standard) of all humans, everywhere and everywhen. Moreover, the experiments bolstering this theory of human uniqueness are what has been termed ‘Observation-and-DescriptionDeprived’ (ODD, a term coined by Tage Rai and Alan Fiske): almost none of the evidence cited is based in naturalistic observations. Finally, much of the foundation for Tomasello’s claim of human exceptionalism is based on comparison of young children raised in WEIRD societies with, typically, much older apes that have been raised in what we (with William Hopkins) have called Barren, Institutional, Zoo, And other Rare Rearing Environments (BIZARRE), without acknowledging that institutionalised rearing, for example, negatively impacts the cognitive and socio-emotional skills of chimpanzees (as it does for humans). It turns out that orphaned apes raised in cages don’t act very much like Western middleclass children raised by their parents – how Tomasello can take this as evidence of evolutionary, rather than developmental differences between apes and humans is an enduring mystery. Therefore, we think this book might have been better titled, ‘Becoming a WEIRD human: an ODD theory of ontogeny with BIZARRE comparisons’. Reviewed by Kim A. Bard (University of Portsmouth) and David A. Leavens (University of Sussex).

Challenging assumptions about how people work This book isn’t just about work-life balance, it’s also about the future of work environments and how we (as individuals) and organisations need to change to create environments that are more inclusive. It is coincidental I’m sure that this book is released at the same time as Invisible Women by Caroline Carido Perez, but there is a consistent message from both that the workplace has been designed by men for men (Meller refers to this as the notion of the ‘Ideal Worker’), and that we all need to challenge assumptions that exist about how people work and how jobs get done.

Mellor has a wealth of organisational experience and her academic rigour also shines through. The book is aimed especially at women juggling family and work commitments, although I think it has relevance to a wider audience. She presents the challenge of how we all need to change the way we think about work and careers in order to create lives that are healthy, sustainable but also fulﬁlling. The writing style is accessible. Although I didn’t particularly warm to the way that the content was ﬁtted into a model (PORPEL – to address

balance), there are some really useful tips in here for individuals wanting to adjust how they work; and, most importantly, how to negotiate that with your organisation. I want the leaders in organisations (let’s face it, often men) to read it. The book adds value by clearly presenting the case for challenging assumptions that have long been embedded in work environments. Reviewed by Emily Hutchinson, Associate Editor Books, Director EJH Consulting Ltd

#Upcycle your job Anna Meller Practical Inspiration

what to seek out on the

psychologist website this month

Extras The mother you need Elisabeth de Mariafﬁ with an essay from the collection Whatever Gets You Through: Twelve Survivors on Life after Sexual Assault The anatomy of online grief The full chapter from All the Ghosts in the Machine: Illusions of Immortality in the Digital Age, by Elaine Kasket The lifespan of a dog owner From The Psychology of Dog Ownership, by Theresa Barlow and Craig Roberts

From the archive Themed trawls on inequality, lobotomies, and the essence of things…

Take part Details of our 2019 ‘Voices In Psychology’ Programme: this year’s question is ‘What makes a Psychologist?’

Find all this and so much more via

thepsychologist.bps.org.uk

Two new episodes of the PsychCrunch podcast, sponsored by Routledge Psychology, available now – on mindfulness, and aphantasia

Shortlisted for the 2019 Science Blog Award by the ABSW Science Writers’ Awards for Britain and Ireland

Research Digest www.bps.org.uk/digest ‘Easy to access and free, and a mine of useful information for my work: what more could I want? I only wish I’d found this years ago!’ Dr Jennifer Wild, Consultant Clinical Psychologist & Senior Lecturer, Institute of Psychiatry ‘The selection of papers suits my eclectic mind perfectly, and the quality and clarity of the synopses is uniformly excellent.’ Professor Guy Claxton, University of Bristol 66

Emotions in the past and present

podcast Emotional shorts Centre for the History of the Emotions

motional shorts is a collection of podcasts developed by experts at the Centre for the History of Emotions at the Queen Mary University. Blending the humanities with science and history, each podcast candidly explores ways in which humans have engaged with emotions such as anger, love, anxiety, the gut feeling, disgust, compassion, grief and ecstasy throughout time. They are seasoned with charm and in-depth knowledge, which makes them inviting and deeply absorbing. Professor Thomas Dixon analyses the feeling of anger through the powerful words of the Greek philosopher Seneca. With a solemn tone which vividly encapsulates the atmosphere of the times, the podcast brings to life the famous phrase ‘The greatest remedy for anger is postponement’. We are encouraged to bear our brief inconveniences with kindness and ‘cherish the qualities that make us human’ in an effort to defeat this ‘polymorphous evil’, as Seneca brutally envisages one’s angers. Moving on, we delve into the often misunderstood feeling of ecstasy or ‘standing outside’ ourselves with Dr Jules Evans. Ecstasy, he tells us, describes moments when ‘you go beyond your ordinary sense of self and feel deeply connected to something greater than yourself’, be it God, the nation, or other people. It can be euphoric or rather terrifying, yet it may enrich our inner lives. He asks us, with urgency, what happened to the experiences of ecstasy in today’s society – where can be go beyond ourselves in a healthy, balanced way? His inspiring storytelling surely leaves some valuable threads to unravel.

Another podcast episode focuses on disgust, an often overlooked emotion. If we payed £10 for a second hand cardigan that once belonged to Hitler, we’d be perhaps both surprised and conflicted to find out that this may counterintuitively tie in with our political views. ‘The less likely you are to wear Hitler’s cardigan, the more likely you are to have a distrust of people who behave as if they are outside your group – be that national, sexual, political, ideological’, Dr Richard Firth tells us. Clearly, this gives us much to think about. So does the rest of the series which, at times, can leave us perplexed and endeared. Whilst to a large degree being universal and inherited, the way in which we experience and express emotions has been shaped by time and cultural norms. The Emotional Shorts series creates a space between the past and the present – a space that allows us to bring knowledge from the past into our everyday lives. Knowing about the understanding of different emotions throughout history can be a useful anchor point for interpreting our own emotions and, perhaps, an incentive to redefine them as we deem suitable. This may ultimately refocus our attention on how to nurture them in a healthy way and bring us closer to making the most of ‘living with feeling’. Emotional shorts is part of the Living with Feeling project funded by the Welcome Trust and is part of the BBC Free Thinking Festival. You can access the podcasts here: https://soundcloud.com/user-357683788/sets/emotionalshorts Reviewed by Alina Ivan, King’s College London

the psychologist june 2019 culture

‘Simple interventions can be extremely effective’ Dr Roberta Babb is a Highly Specialised Clinical Psychologist, Forensic Psychodynamic Psychotherapist and Organisational Consultant. Recently, she was an expert on the BBC programme ‘Sex on the Couch’. Debbie Gordon (Assistant to the Managing Editor) asked her about her work and the series. How did you ﬁnd making the programme? I found the experience of making the programme interesting, and enjoyable. I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to be part of something that is actively helping to give a real insight into the world of therapy and also common issues in relationships that may appear to be about sex, but which are often about communication difﬁculties and more painful issue which have yet to be resolved. As a clinician who often works with clients over several years,

Dr Roberta Babb

I also found it useful to witness the significant and meaningful change that couples can experience in a much shorter period of time. While all couples on the series were offered follow-up sessions after filming was complete, it is clear from the three sessions viewers will see that the couples were able to really improve their situation during the course of the episode. It certainly helped me to develop as a clinician, because even with the solution focused structure I used, I found that I was still able to work in a psychodynamic way. It felt like a nice integration of two ways of working which are often seen in opposition. I was also impressed by the couples I worked with, and their dedication and commitment to openly engage with the therapy discussions, therapy process and homework tasks within a context that is usually private. They all made significant progress by changing little things in their lives – which again highlighted

to me that simple interventions can be extremely effective. How did you overcome the presence of the cameras during therapy sessions? The production team were extremely thoughtful about the development of the set and worked with myself and the other therapists to ensure that the set looked and felt like a genuine and authentic therapy clinic. Prior to ﬁlming I had a detailed conversation with a senior member of the production team who asked about my therapy room, including what it looked like, what I had in it and how I had decorated it. They were also interested in why I decorated my room the way I did, and how that linked to aspects of my psychodynamic therapeutic modality. I was asked about what I felt were important things to have in a therapy room, as well as what may be unhelpful or create an uncomfortable environment. Once on set, it was clear that the production team had considered what I and the other therapist had said. The set was beautifully designed and felt like a real and comfortable place. As a result, it was easy to develop an attachment to the set and use it as a secure base from which to engage in the therapeutic work. The camera crew never interfered in therapy sessions, and remained behind the scenes from the second a client entered the studio. Cameras were well hidden amongst plants, room decorations or mounted on the wall. They didn’t look like cameras at all, and it was easy to forget that they were there – I was only really reminded of their presence when I heard them move within their casing. Read much more about how Dr Babb’s background informed the programme on our website.

The hero’s journey exhibition The EY Exhibition: Van Gogh and Britain Tate Britain

When I am feeling melancholy, I sometimes journey to the National Gallery in London to see Vincent van Gogh’s Sunﬂowers and The Chair. Why? There is a disturbing,

In last month’s issue, editorial oversights led to us referring to Richard Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, rather than Robert; and getting Javaad Alipoor’s name completely wrong. Many apologies, and we are conﬁdent that ﬁnally having a Deputy Editor in place will prompt the return of our meticulous standards…

voyeuristic comfort seeing masses of people congregating around the artworks of an impoverished, proliﬁc artist. Maybe that is a reason Vincent van Gogh is a ubiquitous artist; we can use him as a mirror for our greatest fears and desires. Thankfully, the Tate Britain exhibition, Van Gogh and Britain, complements this spectatorial narcissism. The exhibition’s labyrinthine combination of artefacts, documentation and possessions from Van Gogh’s English life, to the new artist genealogy that he started, places us in a precarious position. Should we continue to indulge in his tortured artist mythology, or

joyfully embark on his hero journey from answering the ‘call’ to a foreign country in May 1873? The choice depends on our mood and disposition. Although Van Gogh loved London, his letter to his brother Theo in 1873 suggested otherwise. He found London life ‘very expensive’, and complained about the cost of rent, and having to have dinner in the city. The malaise (of which he was aware and called the ‘blues’) underneath his initial contentment is one of life’s universal struggles to maintain our basic needs of food and shelter, while trying to ﬁnd meaning.

the psychologist june 2019 culture The exhibition, itself, quietly wrestles between meaning and sustenance, by (unsuccessfully) resisting the urge to portray the artist as the ‘lost ideal version of ourselves’. In its first half, Carol Jacobi’s curation exalts Van Gogh as a discerning reader of Victorian literature, a collector of over 2,000 British graphic prints, a self-taught artist, and an empathic observer of human and botanic nature. And of course, not an obsessive compulsive hoarder with a propensity to self destruction, loneliness, and idealism. Quite absurdly, although the second half from Room Five focuses on Van Gogh’s influence, it repeatedly exploits Van Gogh’s ‘madness’ – undoing the enobling curation of the previous rooms. Why? It is here the sadness endures. Beneath the inspired works of others such as Vanessa Bell and Francis Bacon, the championing of his mad genius, outsider status at the 1910 Manet and the Post-Impressionist exhibition, the vast literary and culture output about his life, and the 1947 Tate Exhibition that left the gallery floors worn, we are reminded of Van Gogh’s unprosperous obscurity despite his intelligence, and supreme dedication to his craft and peers. The exhibition’s highlights are Van Gogh’s self portraits from 18861889. They are a documentation of an evolving identity, and a mirror of his own suffering. With his abundance of symbolic blues, animated brushwork, and stark gazes, these works almost come alive with anxiety and torture. With this aura of tragedy clinging like a limpet to the show it fails to try and dismantle the creativitymental illness paradox. Instead, it complicates it. Does constantly bringing something new to existence cause distress? Or does one create to relieve suffering? Visitors cannot expect Van Gogh and Britain to provide answers. The exhibition is at Tate Britain, London until 11 August 2019. Reviewed by Nikki Hall, a Masters graduate of Goldsmiths, University of London, in Comparative Literature.

Rediscovering the Map of the Soul it is noteworthy how engaged and Like many psychology teachers, I find intellectually stimulated fans have students get to grips with psychology been by the content, discussing best when they can relate it to their the music’s links to psychological everyday lives on some level. Yet theories in such depth that it is pop music is probably one of the last clear they are taking enjoyment in places many teachers would look for the learning of it. Fandom is often a way of helping the understanding believed to be an escape of complex psychological from reality, yet the basis theory. Could they be music of BTS’s new concept missing a trick in a ‘K-pop’ Map of the Soul: is to encourage others band who have just hit top Personna to face their reality and spot in UK album charts? BTS accept it. The ARMY are The Korean boy band learning about their ‘self’ BTS recently released in a psychological sense an album in April called and learning to love all facets of ‘Map of the Soul: Persona’. The themselves through introspection. album is heavily rooted in the Fanbases such as this are also often psychology of the self: in particular, viewed as juvenile, yet evidently the it is named after and inspired by Dr Murray Stein’s introductory book on analytical psychology, Jung: Map of the Soul. The book became so popular amongst the BTS fanbase (nicknamed the ARMY) that it sold out on the band’s official online shop within a matter of days before the album was released. A quick search on YouTube shows countless videos from fans explaining in many languages what Jung’s theory of self is, and how it has built the concept. There are so many guides on the importance and meanings of the upcoming album titles (hidden in their videos and lyrics): Persona, Shadow and Ego. Quite radically, millions of people from all educational backgrounds recent popularity of Jung’s theory have been encouraged to explore demonstrates otherwise. a branch of psychology that they As a psychology teacher and now arguably would not have looked into, postgraduate psychology student, simply because of this Korean boy it has always been my goal to take band. On the viral Twitter hashtag, learning outside of the classroom, #PersonaChallenge, fans have and to encourage students to think shared their stories of personal about the practical applications of growth following difficulties in psychological theory in their lives. examining and accepting themselves, Carl Jung said ‘Who looks outside, whether that involves accepting dreams; Who looks inside, awakes’, their physical or mental health, and ‘the most terrifying thing is race, or gender identity. This was to accept oneself completely’. a widely welcomed follow-up to I definitely consider it a success the Love Yourself campaign, last seeing so many people so committed year’s worldwide attempt by BTS to trying. and UNICEF to encourage selfacceptance that was promoted by the Reviewed by Sabrina Elasri, band at the UN General Assembly. Psychology of Education postgraduate Whilst it is not news that at the University of Manchester fanbases can be very dedicated,

We dip into the Society member database and pick… Constantina Demosthenous, a Clinical Psychologist at Limassol Hospital, Cyprus, and a PhD candidate at the University of Cyprus studying family caregivers of people with dementia. One book all psychologists should read Three classics have reflected the evolution of my interests in psychology. Sigmund Freud’s The psychology of everyday life; The situation is hopeless, but not serious: The pursuit of unhappiness by Paul Watzlawick; and The man who mistook his wife for a hat by Oliver Sacks. One thing that you would change about psychologists To be more assertive, market orientated in the sense of promoting our know-how, and believe in the capacities and knowledge our discipline has offered us. We must become acknowledged not only as therapists but also as scientists and important contributors in various fields of intervention. One reason I’m a member of the BPS The richness of opportunities it offers to members for stimulation and thought. One motto Treat others as you would like them to treat you. This guided me during my first years as a Clinical Psychologist. I found it empowering, especially while working with older people and people suffering with dementia. If you were old, fragile and incapable, how would you like others to treat you?

One moment that changed my career When I ﬁrst started studying Psychology in Montpellier, France I had a particular interest in working with children. However, during the third year of my Licence (the equivalent of a Bachelor’s degree) I was volunteering in the Internal Medicine Department in one of the University Hospitals in Montpellier. There, I ﬁrst realised that working with older

one on one

people suited me more. This triggered a special interest into clinical psychology and neuropsychology of the elderly. One proud moment Motherhood has been a life changing experience… to witness the development, evolution, and accomplishments of a little human being. It has helped me appreciate daily life and achievements in a completely different way.

One place Upi Bay in the Isle of Pines in New Caledonia. If you have the opportunity to be in that area of the Earth it’s not to be missed. A real paradise! One ballet performance The Swan Lake ballet with Tchaikovsky’s enchanting music in the Vienna State Opera… The combination of the place, the performance and the music mesmerised me. One article from The Psychologist Christina Richards on the restorative power of the natural world (July 2018). Its personal tone touched me and reminded me of the importance of contact with nature as a means to cope with emotions and pressure in life. One alternative career path I had the option of getting into Law School but circumstances where such that I ended up choosing to study Psychology in France! Even though the idea of law is sometimes lingering in my mind I’m really grateful to have had the opportunity of becoming a Clinical Psychologist and I wouldn’t change it. One nugget of advice for aspiring psychologists We are not born psychologists, we become one! It can be a harsh process with ups and downs. Enjoy the process of learning, from others and from yourself. Be respectful to yourselves and others. Be patient in the pursuit of your own unique path of becoming a psychologist and a better you. Read more in the online version

coming soon… a special feature on alcohol use and abuse; plus all our usual news, views, reviews, interviews, and much more... contribute… reach 50,000 colleagues, with something to suit all. See www.thepsychologist.org.uk/ contribute or talk to the editor, Dr Jon Sutton, jon.sutton@bps.org.uk, +44 116 252 9573 comment… email the editor, the Leicester ofﬁce, or tweet @psychmag to advertise… reach a large and professional audience at bargain rates: see details on inside front cover maybe you missed… …June 2013, David Dunning on ‘the paradox of knowing’ …Search it and so much more via www.bps.org.uk/thepsychologist the

psychologist vol 26 no 6

june 2013

The paradox of knowing Do we have greater insight into others than ourselves? David Dunning investigates.

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

letters 382 news 390 careers 444 looking back 462

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

President Professor Kate Bullen President Elect David Murphy

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

Vice President Nicola Gale Honorary General Secretary Dr Carole Allan Honorary Treasurer Professor Ray Miller Chair, Education and Training Board Dr Juliet Foster Chair, Practice Board Alison Clarke Chair, Public Policy Board Vacant Chair, Research Board Professor Daryl O’Connor

Chief Executive Sarb Bajwa Change Programme Director Diane Ashby Director of Communications Rachel Dufton (Interim) Director of Corporate Services Mike Laffan Director of Finance Harnish Hadani Director of Membership Services Annjanette Wells (Acting)

society notices CPD workshops 2019 See p.10 BPS conferences and events See p.28 BPS/POST postgraduate award See p.34

Director of Policy Kathryn Scott Director of Qualiﬁcations and Standards Karen Beamish (Interim) Governance Manager Christine Attﬁeld

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’. The Society has offices in Belfast, Cardiff, Glasgow and London, as well as the main office in Leicester (see inside front cover for address).