the
psychologist special digital edition
psychology4students 2015
20 15
www.thepsychologist.org.uk
Digital edition Archive pieces from some of the speakers at this year’s events in Sheffield (19 November) and London (1 December)
Peter Lovatt 2014 Julian Boon 2013 Susan Golombok 2009 2015 Bruce Hood 2012
Swearing – Richard Stephens 2013 for more information, see www.bps.org.uk/events/conferences/ psychology4students-2015
INTERVIEW
The accidental academic ‘Dance psychologist’ Peter Lovatt (University of Hertfordshire) talks to Gail Kinman
a former life, you were a Ithenprofessional dancer and actor. Why move into psychology? What got you interested? Essentially, I learned to read. I was rubbish at school as I could not engage with the written word. I wasn’t formally diagnosed with a learning disability; I was just seen as stupid. Unsurprisingly, I hated school and left unable to read and write properly. I then went off to study theatre and creative arts and subsequently got a place at the Guildhall School of Drama.
me that it was an incredible cognitive task to hold on to that much information without any prompts.
How did you overcome your academic difficulties? I taught myself to read when I was 20. I realised that if I could learn complicated dance routines, I could learn other types of facts and maybe I could get a qualification in something. There were disadvantages to a theatrical career. I was seeing lots of my colleagues in their early thirties who were brilliant dancers spending more time waiting tables than they were dancing. So I thought I would become a drama or dance therapist as an escape route. I managed to scrape a pass at A-level Psychology and was eventually was given a place at Roehampton. I got really hooked on the science. My third-year project was on acquired dysgraphia (writing-based Peter Lovatt on stage engaging the audience with dance moves… problems following brain injury). I was then offered a Although I didn’t have the required paper scholarship at Stirling University to study qualifications, I passed on audition. After for an MSc in Neural Computation and completing the course, I worked in worked in a multidisciplinary centre professional theatre, but still lacked trying to build models of the confidence in my academic skills. When hippocampus. After my MSc, I was offered I was working in panto, it occurred to me a PhD studentship at Essex in cognitive that people learn to dance without writing neuropsychology. Following my PhD, anything down. Actors have a script and I got a job at the University of Cambridge a prompt, musicians have the dots in front What brought you back to dance? of them and the conductor to follow, but When I got to the end of my journey, dancers have to watch the choreographer, I had a bit of a midlife crisis and wondered learn the dance and remember. It struck
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what to do next. People spend their entire life at Cambridge – the attitude is, you got here, why would you want to leave? I felt like an accidental academic. My passion is dance and I wanted to go back to it in some way. By then I had left Cambridge and was working at the University of Hertfordshire doing experimental cognitive psychology. I went to see my head of department, Ben Fletcher, to let him know that I was going to leave academia and go back to the theatre. Ben was fantastic, he gave me two years and all of the resources I needed to set up the Dance Psychology Lab at Hertfordshire. What do you do in the dance lab? There are four main strands – dance and thinking; dance and health; dance and hormones; and dance and emotions. We conduct theoretical, laboratory-based research on problem solving and have found that structured dancing can enhance convergent problem-solving abilities, whereas improvised dance can develop divergent-thinking skills and creativity. This work has also informed our research on the effects of dancing for people with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Previous research had found evidence that dancing could improve PD symptoms, but only certain types of dance. Reflecting the findings of our problem-solving research, we learned that attending an improvisation dance class enhanced divergent-thinking skills, which is a particular problem for people with PD. We also found benefits for PD symptoms and mood. You have done some very exciting research on the role played by dance in the mate-selection process. Tell us more about this. This research was inspired by research findings emerging from evolutionary psychology suggesting that the way we move our body is part of a mate-selection process. We found that people literally ‘dance their hormones’, in that they communicate their hormonal and genetic makeup through dance and the watcher is sensitive to these signals. For example, our research shows that a woman prefers to watch a high-testosterone man than a low-testosterone man dancing. Women also typically rate more symmetrical men (who have higher levels of prenatal testosterone) as better dancers. Moreover, a man would rather watch a highly fertile woman dance without awareness of the stage of her menstrual cycle. Isn’t it something to do with hip movement? Indeed it is. At the most fertile stage of
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their cycle, women move their hips more for example, here is a movement profile in relation to their other body parts when that represents happiness or anger. Three they are dancing. Our research using eyetypes of information communicate these tracking techniques shows that men emotions – kinematic, dynamic spend more time looking at women’s information and form information. pelvic area during their most fertile stage. I generated a list of 96 emotion-related Women dancers still move their hips words (half with a positive valence and outside their fertile period, but they also half with a negative valence) and put out move their other body parts in relation to a call to choreographers to represent one this. During infertile times, men’s eyes are of these emotions through a three-minute drawn to the entire female piece of dance. body, not just the pelvic I received over region. Research 100 submissions “I had a bit of a midlife conducted by Geoffrey from different Miller has found that choreographers and crisis and wondered what women lap dancers earn selected 23 dances to do next” more tips during their representing different fertile period. He initially emotions. The put this down to choreographers seemed pheromones and soft tissue change, to have a better understanding of which may make women more attractive emotions than scientists. They found during their most fertile stage. This it very difficult to represent discrete undoubtedly plays a part, but our emotion states and recognised that findings suggest that women are dancing emotions bleed into each other. They differently – they are communicating were saying, for example, ‘how can you their fertility through the way they are convey happiness without guilt that other moving their body. people are not happy’. Based on this work, I put on a show for 23 nights What about dance and emotion? where I talked about the science of Research in the field of psychophysics emotion recognition and then invited a has explored the ways in which we different choreographer to come on stage communicate emotion through body to demonstrate their dance. Afterwards movement. This is a very reductionist we asked the audience to describe the approach in that they distil movements emotions they thought were being right down to their fundamental essence: conveyed in the dance. The findings were
.…the audience engaged
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astounding. The audience always got it right, even for the most complex emotional states. You put on a show every year that blends psychology with dance. Every year I work with psychologists and choreographers to put on a show. We have brought psychological studies in areas such as memory, obedience and bystander apathy to life through dance. I initially gave the choreographers a lecture on the different studies and the science behind them, and they then created a dance. In the show, I described the studies to the audience, and then the dancers danced them. Many people are self-conscious when they dance. Given that it is so good for us, how can we help people become overcome this? Small children dance completely freely, but as we get older we become more and more self-conscious. We have conducted two surveys at the dance lab with 14,000 participants with varied demographic characteristics. We found systematic patterns across the lifespan in levels of dance confidence and how people feel about dancing. Generally, people get less confident as they get older. Interestingly, dance confidence for males is generally lower than for females, but men tend to become more confident at 65, whereas women start losing their confidence dramatically at 55. We are not sure why this is the case. It may be that men who are currently 65 years or older come from an era where they used to dance regularly. Alternatively, it may be that when men reach 65 they can start enjoying dancing without the associated pressures of the mating ritual. What do you think is the reason for the huge increase in popularity of dance? Some of the increase in interest is perhaps due to the exposure of people from different walks of life dancing on popular TV shows, showing that they are highly proficient at it and thoroughly enjoying themselves. I’m thinking of the sportsmen who have taken part in Strictly Come Dancing and the all-male dance groups, such as Diversity, Flawless and the Ballet Boys. These dancers represent dance as masculine, competitive, physically demanding and enjoyable, and this, I think, has helped to change the stereotype of
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dance participation that might have been a barrier for some people. There are some interesting academic papers on stereotypes of dancers and male participation in dance. I think there are interesting psychological questions about why men don’t (or won’t) dance and their attitudes towards people who do. A couple of years ago I was working with a rugby league team in Rochdale and I asked the coach what he thought of male ballet dancers. He described them as ‘lesser men’, but once he had seen male ballet dancers train he changed his mind. What I find interesting is how and why such attitudes develop, persist and (potentially) change. I can only speculate that programmes like Strictly, Got to Dance and Britain’s Got Talent are helping to change people’s attitudes about dance and dance participation, but some research on this would be helpful. You are currently researching diverse applications of dance within the field of psychology. Are there any other ways that dance could be used? What are your priorities for future research? There are many questions to be answered. Does dancing really change people’s
maths and creative writing? If there is something about training as a professional dancer that has a negative impact on self-esteem can we develop an educational toolkit that dance students and teachers can use to help and perhaps reduce some of the negative consequences associated with low selfesteem in adolescents.
Wondering what to do next
behaviour, thinking, mood and selfesteem? If so, what type and how much dancing is necessary? Who does it change and who is resistant to change through dance? How big are the effects and what other factors interact with dance participation to lead to such changes? If the effects are reliable I want to understand how dancing can be applied in the real world. For example, if dancing helps us solve problems and enhances creativity, can we use it as a pedagogical tool to help schoolchildren learn physics,
Finally, you have a book and a TV series coming out shortly about the benefits of dance. Tell us more about this? The book is called Born to Dance and is linked to a TV show called Dr Dance, made by Channel 4. This covers the science of dance psychology and focuses specifically on how people can use dance to overcome problems. I spent the summer of 2012 working with a rugby team to help them improve their coordination on the pitch. I also worked with a couple who had intimacy issues and a young woman who had problems dancing in public and felt socially excluded.
Apply now to progress your career in Psychology this September UEL ‘s School of Psychology is currently taking applications for programmes including MSc Criminal and Investigative Psychology – a dynamic programme, where students will learn how to apply scientific questioning to problems faced by the police and investigators. 1 year full time and part time available New 3 year full time Professional Doctorate in Counselling Psychology (DPsychCouns) ( subject to validation) – focusing on relational perspectives in Counselling Psychology, integrative approaches including generic, problem specific and third wave Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. We offer support with local placements and provide research supervisory teams You will be taught by experts in their field with extensive academic, investigative and practical experience. Our programmes are developed to not only develop and challenge you academically, but to enhance your practical and professional skills to help you progress with your career
Find out more Visit: uel.ac Visit: uel.ac.uk/psychology Email: study@u study@uel.ac.uk Call: 020 8223 3333
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Research. Digested. Free.
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
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The real Boon Julian Boon’s work with the police has been the subject of a Channel 4 series. JON SUTTON met him to discuss his approach to offender profiling. to be a very salient detail to profiling the crime and the perpetrator, but if you’d seen the house it was four stories high and had a huge number of rooms in a tremendous state of disarray. When it gets condensed in a programme, people say ‘anyone would have noticed that, anybody would have interpreted that as being a cue to the motivation of the offender’, but the reality is other people had been to that scene before and had not looked upon it with a psychological eye and had not drawn any such conclusion. And yet when it is condensed from six months of an
JON SUTTON
How accurately do you think you and your profiling techniques were portrayed in The Real Cracker – was that ‘The Real Boon’? The ‘Boon personality’ was deliberately de-emphasised, mostly because of personal safety, and a desire to protect my family from publicity. But in the series we’re filming now they will be focusing a bit more on my lifestyle – though not pictures of us at home eating breakfast! As for the profiling techniques, what you saw was a bit like watching edited highlights of a Formula 1 race – you get the bits which are going to be of interest. They’re going to want to put in what people on the ground floor are thinking, but it may not be reflective of what the senior officer and the profiler are thinking.
crime scene – the infinite array, not the distilled presentation – suggested that it was not someone who was acting out of delusion, or deranged, or acting out of drug-induced behaviour, but someone who had a very strong purpose. That is something that comes with the psychological appraisal rather than the investigative appraisal of the details. This didn’t make sense to the police officers initially, but ultimately it did turn out to be the case. It seemed to me that the more experienced police officers were simply seeking confirmation from you. Then you’ve been misguided in that regard. With every single officer I am most particular to explain two things. One is to say ‘I ain’t God. What we’ve got here is a situation where I am coming at this from a very different angle than you – it’s neither better nor worse.’ If you’re looking for the lost kid on the hills and you get two compass fixes you can get some sort of lock on him. Now if they have a different view from me or I have a different view from them, then the next stage is to discuss why it is that we have these differences, what are the ramifications, how can we take things forward, and that means new questions, new answers, new ideas, new thinking. But one is based in investigative experience, and one is rooted almost purely in an appraisal from a psychological perspective. It is the difference which makes the value.
Dr Julian Boon is a forensic psychologist at the University of Leicester (e-mail: boo@le.ac.uk)
Beyond that, we can all say ‘that’s easy’. We all know about creeping determinism and the ‘knew it all along’ effect, but it goes beyond that – in the programme you see the end result snapshots, whereas the profiler, when analysing the scene, has an infinite variety of detail. One example is that in one of the documentaries they showed a drawer that had been opened and only half of the contents had been removed. That proved
investigation into an hour, it’s correspondingly elevated in terms of its appearance. So the police missed these salient points as well? Interpreted them differently. In that particular incident the front-runners for suspects were someone who was looking for money for drugs or someone who was severely deranged. Everything about the
Do you think the investigative approach of the police and your approach are starting to meet in the middle? I don’t think so – there is overlap, but the techniques and the approaches are very different indeed. There are also divergences in profiling practices. Mine is principally drawing on personality theoretics and research to look at why it is that a given crime has occurred, why a victim has been selected – what are the characteristics of the victim, what are the characteristics of
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the crime, and then draw backwards into understanding what has gone on. I had a case where someone was threatening to put AIDS-infected semen into supermarket sausages. There’s no way you can call up PsycLIT for an exact hit on that. What you can do is look at exactly the mentality and the thinking that’s gone on in the threat letters, drawing in my case on personality theoretics to be able to look and see exactly what you can say about the motivation of the offender and answer particular questions that the police have – will he do it or not? Is it a he? Has he/she done this sort of thing before? How can you address the public perception, and even the perception amongst psychologists, that you’re not just going in there like Cracker and saying ‘Got it. He was an unemployed loner who lives with his mum…’ I say it’s not reality. It’s not what happens. I really don’t care if people are going to persist in saying what’s not true, I can only tell you it’s not reality. If that’s not enough, I would ask why do people not want to believe it? Perhaps because we’ve got to the stage where people have seen so much about offender profiling, be it realistic or not, that people think they have a good idea about what person commits a crime. I’m an old hand now and I can tell you that ’twas ever thus – ‘I’m sure it was the son who did it’, ‘I’ll bet anything you like it was the boyfriend’. People are themselves natural psychologists. You’re always going to get that and everyone’s entitled to their opinion in that regard. Yes, everyone’s an offender profiler, that’s absolutely the case. But everyone’s an economist, everyone’s a medic and chemist, a politician, a better than average driver, and so on. That doesn’t mean they have specialist knowledge beyond simple, straightforward, natural psychology. But are they getting more of this knowledge over the years? The detail of that knowledge isn’t something that you can read in a quick chapter and then apply, it is something that is very deep in terms of understanding of psychology. It’s not something you could just buy over the counter with a quick course. Sure, you could pick up the symptoms and the signs, but the implications of a perpetrator with, say, an anal sadistic personality and how they are going to operate afterwards and the
rationale for why they had done such a thing are extremely deep. With this extreme depth comes a great deal of consideration, thinking and application. Your other interest is love and personality; you teach that an understanding of sadism and necrophilia is important for understanding psychology as a whole. In what way? The very need for you to ask that question shows the difference between not just police and profiler, but between most psychologists (who are not interested, bizarrely, in personality) and the profiler. It is bizarre to me and some others – for example Jim Baxter from Strathclyde University – that the vast majority of psychologists are not interested in personality. I would say that personality research should be psychology’s central purview.
‘who’s old Ma Hindley, who’s old Ma Teresa, and why did they develop like that?’ In understanding human personality it is necessary to look at both the positive actualising and negative gratification patterns of growth in the behavioural and psychological spectrum. On the negative side first of all antisocial, then sado-maso, then on to necro. Without that compass rose to interpret behaviour it’s impossible to even begin to get a handle on the infinite stimulus array and work out what’s gone on. How many people in police circles know about Erikson, Freud, Fromm, Maslow? All of these things could be so helpful, but it’s impractical to say that an officer who is carrying a ridiculous caseload of nine or ten murders at any one time can simply be sent off to pick up that kind of information – that would take in my view the best part of two or three years to get under your belt. It’s just not practical or resource-efficient. That’s why they come to people with an alternative perspective. That’s where the value comes in. What happens next for profiling? I think profiling can make a contribution, but it must always be at the discretion of the senior investigating officer of the day. Is the profile judged to be helpful? If not, don’t use it. I can say that the precision that my colleagues and I can offer has grown over the last ten years, and as a consequence I think our role is more
effective than it was before. And now that the profiling work is audited with peer review under the auspices of the National Crimes and Operations Faculty it should develop further in a unified way. It’s also a reciprocal relationship, in which we’ve learnt more about personality. You can’t get data like these from taking two dozen first-year psychology students and testing them with items on questionnaires. This is a unique source of data and it’s uniquely educative, propelling you forward in terms of understanding psychology – not only on the negative front but also the positive, asking who’s old Ma Hindley, who’s old Ma Teresa, and why did they develop like that? And finally… which psychologist do you most admire? Norman Wetherick. His contribution of highlighting the futility of adopting the empiricist approach for studying the unique preserve of psychology has been immense [see The Psychologist, January 2003, p.22]. The fact that few have taken any notice of what he’s been saying with razor-sharp logic for decades is a great mistake. Until more people take the time to understand his view that it is essential to adopt a realist approach to the scientific study of psychology, then the vast majority of the future will just be more of the same: a whirlygig of data-collection, loads more papers which will be forgotten about fast, and virtually no evidence of unified growth which should be a hallmark of our science. His way is much more difficult to do – but far more rewarding in terms of any genuine development and understanding of psychology. I think he’s very incisive in encouraging psychologists to think what’s going to become of their research papers 20 years down the line. Will they become a relic from a research seam which people have long since got bored with, or will they form part of a unified, truly scientific way forward for psychology? So yourself in 20 years time – do you think you will be remembered? I shouldn’t think so for a second. But in 20 years time I would like to think that I had at least taught a little bit about what could be usefully done at crime scenes and had learnt a deeper understanding of the psychology and motivation of those that commit the crimes. I’d like to think that this would have both applied and academic consequences for understanding personality. Meantime I’ll plod on to my rapidly approaching senescence! 309
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ARTICLE
Swearing – the language of life and death Richard Stephens leads us through a colourful research journey
references
resources
questions
Liverpool FC manager Bill Shankly once said, ‘Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.’ The same could be said for swearing and taboo language, as this article explains. Swearing is a relatively new focus for psychology research but an apt one. From swearing in pain to swearing in foreign tongues, and several points in between, a number of investigators have begun to rise to the challenge of striving to understand the emotional power undoubtedly contained within some of the shortest of utterances in the lexicon. Here, then, is a brief introduction.
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Is swearing essential, or a bad habit best kicked? Could you live without it?
Pinker S. (2007). The stuff of thought: Language as a window into human nature. New York: Viking. Chapter 7: ‘The seven words you can’t say on television’ Jay, T. & Janschewitz, K. (2012). The science of swearing. Observer, 25(5), May/June. tinyurl.com/cw9fxnc
Bowers, J.S. & Pleydell-Pearce, C.W. (2011). Swearing, euphemisms, and linguistic relativity. PLoS ONE, 6, e22341. Bryony Shaw prompts BBC apology by swearing after Olympic windsurfing bronze (2008, 20 August). Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 18 June 2013 from tinyurl.com/cl5w3pp Dewaele, J. (2010). ‘Christ fucking shit merde!’ Language preferences for
n 2004 my second daughter was born and, aspiring to be a modern dad, I stayed with and supported my wife through the labour. After a while it became clear that things were not going according to plan. This was mainly because our daughter was trying, unsuccessfully, to come out feet first. What followed was a very long and difficult labour for my wife, and towards the end her pain was such that she swore out loud. Indeed, she produced a rather impressive selection of expletives during each wave of agonising contractions. But as the contractions passed and the pain subsided, she became embarrassed and apologetic over having let fly in front of the nurses, midwives and doctors, only to redouble her efforts when the next wave of contractions struck. The staff, however, had clearly seen all of this before. A midwife explained to us that swearing, four-letter words, cursing, profanity, bad language – whatever you care to call it – is a completely normal and routine part of the process of giving birth. Amid the joy at the arrival of our healthy daughter and the mental disorientation of a very difficult and emotional day, I found this fascinating. When I eventually returned to my desk at Keele University School of Psychology I wondered why it was that people swear in response to pain. Was it a coping mechanism, an outlet for frustration, or what? I did some literature searching to find out what psychologists thought of the link between swearing and pain. To my surprise I could not find anything written on this topic, although there were some
swearing among maximally proficient multilinguals. Sociolinguistic Studies, 4, 595–614. Dooling, R. (1996). Blue streak: Swearing, free speech and sexual harassment. New York: Random House. Jay, T. (1999). Why we curse: a neuropsycho-social theory of speech. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Jay, T. & Janschewitz, K. (2012). The science of swearing. Observer, 25(5),
papers on the psychology of swearing more generally. Professor Timothy Jay of Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in the States, whom I have since had the pleasure of meeting, has forged a career investigating why people swear and has written several books on the topic. His main thesis is that swearing is not, as is often argued, a sign of low intelligence and inarticulateness, but rather that swearing is emotional language. In his words: ‘Curse words do things to sentences that noncurse words cannot do’ (Jay, 1999, p.137). Indeed, Professor Jay is rather scathing at psycholinguists’ tendency to have largely ignored swearing. He says: ‘Linguistic definitions of language [that omit cursing] are ultimately invalid, although polite’ (Jay, 1999, p.11). I spoke with colleagues. Two psychological explanations of why people might swear when in pain were put forward. The ‘disinhibition’ explanation was the idea that in the momentary stress of acute pain we enter a state of social disinhibition (a diminished concern for social propriety) and reduced self-control so that words and ideas that we would usually suppress are expressed. The other explanation was that swearing in response to pain represents ‘pain catastrophising’ behaviour. Pain catastrophising is an exaggerated negative ‘mental-set’ brought to bear during pain experience (Sullivan et al., 2001). Catastrophic thinking exaggerates the level of threat posed by a painful event and heightens the pain intensity experienced. While there was some plausibility to the idea of swearing being an expression of pain catastrophising, it also seemed illogical. Swearing as catastrophising would serve to increase feelings of hurt and discomfort, whereas most people seek to reduce the pain they are feeling.
Our research Over the next few years my students and I worked up a laboratory procedure for assessing swearing as a response to pain. We used the ice-water challenge (or more
May/June. Retrieved 18 June 2013 from tinyurl.com/cw9fxnc Ringman, J.M., Kwon, E., Flores, D.L. et al. (2010). The use of profanity during letter fluency tasks in frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer disease. Cognitive & Behavioral Neurology, 23, 159–164. Robbins, M.L., Focella, E.S., Kasle, S. et al. (2011). Naturalistically observed swearing, emotional support, and
depressive symptoms in women coping with illness. Health Psychology, 30, 789–792. Stephens, R. & Allsop, C. (2012). Does state aggression increase pain tolerance? Psychological Reports, 111, 311–321. Stephens, R., Atkins, J. & Kingston, A. (2009). Swearing as a response to pain. NeuroReport, 20, 1056–1060. Stephens, R. & Clatworthy, A. (2006).
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formally, the cold pressor paradigm) to provide a stimulus that is painful but not harmful. Participants are asked to hold their hand in ice water for as long as they can tolerate, to a maximum of five minutes. While doing this we needed them to swear and we thought it important that they used swear words of their own choosing. Initially we had them read a passage of text and they filled in blanks with either swear words or neutral words (Stephens & Clatworthy, 2006). Later on we just asked them to provide a swear word they might use if they banged their head or hit their thumb with a hammer, and then we asked them to repeat that during the cold water immersion. The words most popularly chosen were, as you would expect, ‘fuck’ and ‘shit’.
In our first published paper (Stephens et al., 2009) we showed that people withstood the ice-water challenge for longer, rated it as less painful, and showed a greater increase in heart rate when repeating a swear word throughout the procedure, as opposed to repeating a neutral word. We theorised, based on the rise in heart rate with swearing, that participants were experiencing an emotional reaction to swearing, setting off the fight or flight response, in turn producing stress-induced analgesia. Next, we replicated the findings for cold-water immersion time and heart rate, but additionally showed that the reduction in pain from swearing was moderated by daily swearing frequency (Stephens & Umland, 2011). Let me explain this point further. In this second study we asked
Swearing, four-letter words, cursing, profanity, bad language – whatever you care to call it – is a completely normal and routine part of the process of giving birth
Does swearing have an analgesic effect? Poster presentation at the British Psychological Society Psychobiology Section annual conference, 18–20 September 2006, Windermere. Stephens, R. & Umland, C. (2011). Swearing as a response to pain – Effect of daily swearing frequency. Journal of Pain, 12, 1274–1281. Stone, T.E., McMillan, M. & Hazleton, M. (2010). Swearing: Its prevalence in
healthcare settings and impact on nursing practice. Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, 17, 528–534. Sullivan, M.J., Thorn, B., Haythornthwaite, J.A. et al. (2001). Theoretical perspectives on the relation between catastrophizing and pain. Clinical Journal of Pain, 17, 52–64.
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people to estimate how often they swear in everyday life. The responses we got ranged from zero to 60 swear words per day. Interestingly, the higher the daily swearing frequency the less was the benefit for pain tolerance when swearing, compared with not swearing. This suggests that people become habituated to swearing so that it has a lesser impact the more you do it. On the strength of these findings, sensible advice is not to swear overmuch in everyday situations, so that the impact of swearing can be at its fullest when needed most! We then aimed to investigate how an emotional response can lead to increased pain tolerance (Stephens & Allsop, 2012). We began with the assumption that the emotion that speakers feel when they swear is aggression. Then we assessed whether increasing state aggression alters the experience of pain. In this study we had participants play a first person shooter video game which led to them reporting feeling more aggressive compared with the control condition of playing a golf video game. We went on to show that participants withstood the ice-water challenge for longer and their heart rate remained elevated after playing the first person shooter game compared with the golf game. This is consistent with our theory that swearing acts on pain perception via the emotion aggression. So, our research shows that swearing can help people better tolerate pain, that too much swearing in everyday situations can reduce its effectiveness, and that swearing probably works by making people feel more aggressive, in turn setting off the fight or flight response. Swearing as a response to pain appears not to be an expression of pain catastrophising, because if it were, there should have been a heightened sensation of pain with swearing. The idea of swearing in response to pain as disinhibitory behaviour also seems unlikely as this predicts no alteration in pain perception, contrary to our findings. Our research instead indicates that swearing as a response to pain represents a form of pain management. While this had never been empirically demonstrated before, it seems nevertheless to have been well known anecdotally by nurses, midwives and mothers-to-be. The media reaction to our research was unbelievable. When the first paper was published in late July 2009 my phone rang off its hook as journalists from all over the world sought to arrange interviews: with Evan Davis on The Today Programme, with Arthur Smith for The One Show and with Stephen Fry and Brian Blessed for Stephen Fry’s Planet Word.
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Actually, on reflection, we were probably quite lucky in the timing of our research on swearing and pain. Maybe a few years earlier and it would still have been too much of a taboo topic to secure peer review publication. This is not so today. Indeed, it really does appear that ‘now’ is the time for researching the psychology of swearing, as demonstrated by the recent publication of a number of fascinating studies.
word ‘fuck’ is ‘pathognomonic’ for frontotemporal dementia (‘pathognomonic’ means ‘characteristic for a particular disease’). However, they acknowledge that a diagnostic tool based on this phenomenon would have limited sensitivity, since over 80 per cent of the fronto-temporal dementia patients did not produce any swear words. Swearing in this context seems to reflect disinhibition arising from the frontal-lobe impairment that is characteristic of fronto-temporal dementia. Overall, this paper presents an Recent swearing research interesting phenomenon, but it concludes In 2010 Jean-Marc Deweale of Birkbeck, that swearing can only assist with University of London, published the diagnosing dementia to a very limited entertainingly titled paper ‘“Christ extent. fucking shit merde!” Language In the same year, Teresa Stone of preferences for swearing among the School of Nursing and Midwifery maximally proficient multilinguals’ in Australia’s University of Newcastle (Deweale, 2010). The paper describes an produced a paper examining verbal online survey of 396 multilingual adults aggression, including swearing, within who, uniquely, can choose what language healthcare settings in Australia. Stone et al. to swear in. Where preferences for (2010) surveyed 39 male and 68 female swearing in a second language were nurses across paediatric, adult mental observed it was for languages used health, and child and adolescent mental socially and frequently. But, interestingly, health departments. One third of the they overwhelmingly opt usually to swear nurses reported being sworn at by patients in their first (native) language rather than at least weekly, and this did not differ languages acquired later on. This was according to specialism. The swear words despite similar levels of self-perceived perceived as most offensive were: ‘cunt’, proficiency and frequency of use of the ‘cocksucker’ and ‘motherfucker’. These acquired language. It appears the papers highlight a hitherto uninvestigated emotional resonance of swearing is felt but serious problem in healthcare. to be greater in the native language. Aggressive swearing at nurses causes Also in 2010, John Ringman and distress and the nurses interviewed had colleagues at the University College of Los few effective strategies to deal with it. Angeles Easton Center for Alzheimer’s Other researchers, at Bristol University, Disease Research produced a paper looking assessed changes in autonomic activity at whether swearing can help diagnose brought on by reading aloud swear words dementia (Ringman et al., 2010). In it they (Bowers & Pleydell-Pearce, 2011). Their describe noticing something unusual main interest lay in the theoretical area of during their dementia screening clinics. linguistic relativity, which is the idea that There is a neuropsychological test known how we think is influenced by the form colloquially as the ‘FAS test’ of language that we use. (and more formally as the An example of this is Controlled Oral Word the word ‘friend’. English “the emotional Association Test). It requires speakers can speak of resonance of swearing participants to generate as a friend without having to many words as they can in consider gender. However, is felt to be greater in one minute beginning with Spanish speakers must the native language” each of the letters F, A and consider the gender of the S. One patient believed to person concerned because the have fronto-temporal dementia produced Spanish words for friend are amiga (for a only two words in the ‘F’ section of the woman) and amigo (for a man). According test: ‘fuck’ and ‘fart’. Given that it was still to the theory of linguistic relativity, not possible to diagnose specific dementias speakers of English and Spanish would until autopsy, the researchers wondered have different conceptualisations of the whether a tendency for dementia patients idea of a friend. They examined emotional to produce swear words on this task might responsiveness to two different forms of help. words that nevertheless carry the same Looking back over archived data they overall meaning. They used a very found that a number of fronto-temporal offensive swear word (‘cunt’) and dementia patients produced the word ‘fuck’ a euphemism (‘C-word’) that captures but no Alzheimer’s patients did. This, they the semantics of the word while being said, indicates that the production of the expressed in a different verbal form. They
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also used ‘fuck’ and ‘F-word’. Unsurprisingly they found that participants exhibited greater autonomic arousal, indicating stress, when they read aloud the swear words compared with the euphemistic forms. This, they argue, provides evidence for linguistic relativity, since the same concepts appeared to be processed differently according to the form of language employed. They also argued that swear words may access emotional centres of the brain without mediation by higher-level cognitive systems. This is an intriguing idea as it provides a neurological basis to the argument that swearing is emotional language. Finally, we have a paper from Megan Robbins and colleagues at the University of Arizona Psychology Department (Robbins et al., 2011). The study was concerned with the implications of swearing for coping with and adjusting to illness among women with rheumatoid arthritis and breast cancer. They used what they called the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), a device that sampled recordings of what participants were saying for 50 seconds every 18 minutes throughout the waking day. Swearing made up 0.1 per cent of the participants overall speech, and was related to increased levels of depressive symptoms and reduced emotional support. Of course, these findings are correlational and one cannot determine whether swearing was a precursor or a consequence of the increase in depressive symptoms and the decrease in emotional support. Nevertheless, they indicate that how and when people choose to swear may have negative consequences as well as positive.
Future directions Despite a flurry of activity in recent years, research on the psychological effects of swearing is still in its infancy. Our research at Keele suggests that daily swearing frequency affects how much power swearing has – and that the power lessens with increasing amounts of everyday swearing. This raises interesting issues around how long the effects of swearing last. Our research and that of Bowers shows there is a physiological response to swearing, in terms of faster heart rate and increased skin conductivity. The phenomenon of swearing would be better understood if it were known for what timescale these physiological changes in response to swearing persist and how long it takes to recover them once they have become depleted. Research to answer this question is ongoing in my laboratory at Keele. There are numerous other pressing
vol 26 no 9
september 2013
swearing
an ambulance, to swear as a means of obtaining shortterm relief until medical intervention is possible. There are interesting questions around the emotional effects of swearing. It seems likely that swearing may help people not only express their emotions but also experience them more vividly – as predicted by the principle of linguistic relativity that I mentioned earlier. It is certainly true that people swear in positive as well as negative emotional contexts. A good A coping mechanism, an outlet for frustration, or what? example of this was when windsurfer Bryony Shaw spontaneously expressed her questions. We have shown that swearing euphoria on live daytime TV having just can ease the acute pain of the ice-water won Olympic Bronze, proclaiming ‘I’m so challenge. What about clinical pain? It fucking happy!’ (‘Bryony Shaw prompts would not make sense to suggest swearing BBC apology’, 2008). as a clinical tool, but it might be sound At first blush swearing may seem a clinical management advice for anyone frivolous research topic for a psychologist unable to access medical care because they to pursue. But if one considers that are in a remote location, or even awaiting psychology is the study of people, and if
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one agrees that people are emotional beings (more Captain Kirk than Mr Spock), then understanding swearing, as the language of emotion, can improve our understanding of people. In his book the comedian Richard Dooling makes an excellent point when he says that the fourletter words are ‘inextricably bound up with almost everything’ (Dooling, 1996). When I give research talks I usually end with a slide containing transcripts of the final utterances of air-crash pilots, captured on the black box flight recorder, taken from www.planecrashinfo.com/ lastwords. I use it to emphasise an important point: that swearing is the language of life and death. This surely explains the great interest in how and why people swear, and I join with others (Jay & Janschewitz, 2011) in calling out for more research on the psychology of swearing. Richard Stephens is a Senior Psychology Lecturer at Keele University r.stephens@keele.ac.uk
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CAREERS
‘We need to link our research to the real world’ Ian Florance talks to Susan Golombok
usan Golombok’s work has influenced family policy and law in the UK and around the world (see also p.538). It has been, and still is, controversial. Susan is Professor of Family Research and Director of the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge and her new book Modern Families: Parents and Children in New Family Forms is a summary of a life’s work in research as well as, it seems to me, a preparation for the next stage in her career. We met at the Wellcome Trust, which Susan praises for ‘making much of my research possible’. ‘I grew up in Glasgow and went to university there,’ she tells me. ‘Like many students I thought psychology was all about mental health, but I quickly found
out it covered more and very different things. I took a four-year degree and I’m a big supporter of that longer course. It enabled me to study other subjects ranging from chemistry and biology to sociology – it wasn’t really psychology that changed my life so much as sociology. A course on inequality opened my eyes to a side of Glasgow that had been invisible to me, as an only child of older parents living in an advantaged area of the city and attending a school that was a dead ringer for the school in the film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. At that time the sociologists at Glasgow were undertaking the ground-breaking Bad News project, the first systematic study of media bias. In my psychology course, Maternal Deprivation Reassessed by Michael Rutter was the most inspiring book I read. All these things came together and, I suppose, made me aware of political issues. I became interested in feminism.’ Susan moved to London to take a master’s degree in child development. ‘When I was rooting around for an interesting topic for my dissertation I came across an article in the feminist magazine Spare Rib describing the experiences of lesbian women who were losing custody of their children during divorce proceedings on the grounds that lesbian mother families would be psychologically harmful to children. The article in Spare Rib called for someone to carry out an
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independent study of children with lesbian mothers, and I volunteered. Little did I know that I would still be researching this issue almost 40 years later!’ I asked Susan whether she had ever been concerned about the tension between her role as a researcher and her personal views. Given what I knew about her beliefs and attitudes, there must have been a feeling that she wanted to disprove commonly held judgements of lesbian and – later on in her research – other new family structures. ‘There is a tension between political commitment – or any other kind – and scientific empiricism. Any researcher who’s serious about a social science subject must think about this, and it has been a worry for me. That original study of lesbian families was a risky endeavour in terms of how it might impact on real people. But there were good theoretical reasons for thinking the prevailing view was simply wrong. Those who argued that lesbian families caused damage to children tended to be psychoanalysts, and there was growing opinion that what mattered most for children’s psychological wellbeing was the quality of family relationships rather than the presence of a mother and a father.’ From 1977 Susan spent 10 years at the Institute of Psychiatry. ‘I carried out my PhD there and worked in parallel as a research assistant in the sex therapy clinic, which was very new and exciting at the time. I loved being at the Institute, but I realised in the end that I couldn’t live on “soft” money for ever, jumping from research grant to research grant. Students who want to have academic careers need to think about these sorts of practical issues.’ Susan was offered a lectureship in social psychology at City University, London, ‘which I knew very little about. For six months I was reading textbooks, delivering lectures and looking after a sixmonth-old baby. In the end I “came out” as a developmental psychologist and was able to return to teaching and researching
vol 28 no 7
july 2015
careers
in the field of psychology that interested egg donation. These families combine me most. While at City University I set several new family features as the up the Family and Child Psychology children grow up with two fathers, two Research Centre, where I extended my “mothers” (an egg donor and a surrogate research on new family forms to include mother) and no mother in the family studies of families created by assisted home. We are also studying single reproductive technologies such as in vitro mothers by choice, donor siblings (halffertilisation (IVF), egg donation, donor siblings born from the same donor who insemination and surrogacy. We carried are growing up in different families) and out the very first studies of these families adolescents born through egg donation, and assisted reproduction remains a donor insemination and surrogacy.’ major part of my research Do you influence programme to this day. policy? ‘Our findings The Wellcome Trust have certainly had an “we should not dodge funded much of this influence. We engage moral and ethical issues” work – they’re very farwith government sighted and could see that departments and these emerging family the Human Fertilisation forms were interesting not and Embryology Authority, just in their own right but also for for instance. Our research findings increasing understanding of what it is contributed to the Human Fertilisation about families that matters most for and Embryology Act 2008, changing the children’s psychological wellbeing.’ emphasis from a child needing a father to Susan’s work has always been needing supportive parents. I hope this controversial. ‘I got used to it though. new book will also influence debate on Criticism of research on modern families issues such as same-sex marriage, is not new. Neither are politically surrogacy, and adoption by gay and motivated attempts by right-wing lesbian couples and single people. In the religious organisations to discredit the book, I make a distinction between new academics whose research has shown the families and non-traditional families. The children to be no different from children term “new families” refers to family types in traditional families. What is new is the that were either hidden from society and deliberate strategy of conducting sham became visible through the growth of the research that shows children in new women’s and gay rights movements, or family forms to be at risk of psychological did not previously exist and arose from harm and dressing this up as science. the introduction of IVF and other assisted These organisations are setting up and reproductive technologies. These include funding their own spuriously scientific lesbian mother families, gay father studies and claiming that their results families, families headed by single disprove ours. The view that children mothers by choice and families created in modern families would experience by assisted reproductive technologies psychological problems used to be based involving IVF, egg donation, donor on prejudice and assumption in the insemination, embryo donation and absence of research on the actual surrogacy. The term “non-traditional consequences for children of growing up families” generally refers to families in new family forms. Empirical evidence headed by single parents, cohabiting played an important role in countering parents and stepparents. These families false beliefs. Today the challenge is not result largely from parental separation simply to conduct research but also to be or divorce and the formation of new vigilant about the quality of this research cohabiting or marital relationships. New and the motivations and provenance of families represent a more fundamental those who carry it out.’ shift away from traditional family Susan stayed at City University for structures than do non-traditional 19 years ‘working with great people and families formed by relationship doing truly innovative research. The job breakdown.’ at Cambridge as Director of the Centre You’ve given some advice to new for Family Research came up when I was psychologists and students. Have you any starting a sabbatical at Columbia more? ‘Please think about other aspects of University in New York. I almost didn’t the subject than cognitive psychology and apply. It’s amazing to be there now – the neuropsychology. We need to link our Centre for Family Research, which will be research to real-life issues; we should not celebrating its 50th anniversary next year, dodge moral and ethical issues. Also, is such a great place to work. And there don’t ignore other disciplines: are so many issues to research – one of psychologists don’t have all the answers our latest studies is of gay fathers who and working together produces more have had children through surrogacy and nuanced and interesting results.’
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INTERVIEW
‘We are not in control’ Jon Sutton enjoyed a curry with Bruce Hood (University of Bristol), Royal Institution Christmas Lecturer and author of new book The Self Illusion
as presenting the Royal H Institution’s Christmas Lectures opened doors for you? The response was excellent, and now I’m looking at how I can build on it. I’ve been given an opportunity, and I think that psychology could do with an even stronger profile, so I’m hoping to try to take what I’ve got out to the masses a bit more. Not necessarily just with television – I’m doing projects that involve science centres, and the RI has just introduced a teacher’s package based on the lectures. I want to develop something for the general public too. We had an event in April, for more than 300 children from deprived schools in Bristol. We bussed them in to the university, gave them a version of the Christmas lectures and an evaluation, and we’re going to follow up at six months to do a proper empirical assessment of impact. Your new book, The Self Illusion, lends itself very well to introductory lectures. There’s a clear theme and argument, but you cherry pick from so many different areas… I’m not actually saying anything that is that new. I’m putting it together in a framework that we don’t normally think about. Psychology is all about unconscious processes. Most neuroscientists agree that the brain is a complex, multifunctional system, and we all know that when things start to break down, the personality and identity of the individual fractionates. So I don’t think I’m saying anything bizarre. But to the layman in the street, when you confront them with the idea that they are not an integrated individual but rather a collection, then that seems a really strange notion. But does it, really? Do most people find your idea, that ‘the self is a constantly changing story’, that surprising? People think of themselves as a character on a journey through life. So they see
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themselves as a protagonist, a central individual in control, making choices and being influenced by individuals. But that creates the problem of the homunculus, the individual at the centre. I still think there’s this misconception of the self as the individual in the first place, when in fact it’s this emergent property of all the other things that come together. That’s what I’m challenging. In just about every area of psychology, there’s a lot of evidence that we’re not necessarily in control, we’re very much influenced by those around us… so I definitely pay lip service to all those areas of psychology, all the classic studies of Asch, Milgram, etc. Even though they are controversial, they still demonstrate that people are malleable. Even though participants in these studies may be role playing, they’re still doing something that is interesting psychologically. When you combine that with all the new stuff, the neuroscience, I think there’s a very interesting story. As psychologists, we forget that intuitions often clash with the science, so this book was about trying to bring together the sheer overwhelming evidence that people do behave differently, and they certainly don’t behave as they think they would behave… we do have this idealised notion of what we think we’re like, but change the constraints and the context and we find ourselves doing all manner of things. We’re dancers not statues. That’s right. Or we leap away from ships that are sinking, and then we judge people for that, and say that they’re lacking moral fibre or they’re not being true to themselves. We say ‘I wasn’t myself last night?’ Well, if you weren’t yourself, who were you?… We all want a culprit, and that culprit is the self. The book made me think that you’re a bit of a knowledge magpie, picking out the shiny titbits, and so many great real-life examples as well.
Absolutely. I think you’ve always got to make it relevant to a general audience, and references to pop culture always help. I think The Matrix is an amazing film! It tackles some very profound issues. What is reality? What is illusion? How could we ever tell the difference? If you adopt the materialist position, which I do and most neuroscientists do, the answer is you would never know, because we are a product of the brain. The book is packed with those shiny titbits, from doppelgänger hamsters, to forcing students to watch torture, to asking people attitude questions at the height of masturbation. What’s your own favourite psychology study? I have to say that last one, the Dan Ariely study. To even get that past an ethics committee, strikes me as unbelievable! Although I do like the ego depletion work of Roy Baumeister, I’m fascinated by that. He actually believes in the self, he thinks there is an individual. I’m not convinced by the strength of the effects, but I do think it’s plausible that if you abstain or stop yourself from doing things then there are rebound effects. Certainly I know that. But whether it’s this ‘glucose muscle’, I’m not so sure. Given how immersed you are in knowledge, and how many influential colleagues you have worked with over the years, do you think that your self is more of a construct than most? I think knowing and writing about the self as a constructed narrative, I can’t escape the subjective experience that I feel I’m an individual. On reflection I like to reinterpret a lot of my behaviour in terms of the narrative of the self, but ultimately I don’t think it’s going to change the way that anyone behaves, because that’s the whole point – we’ve evolved a brain that deals with selves and deals with individuals. We have all these moral systems that necessitate the existence of an individual, so to completely abandon that is really a folly. However, they are attempting to do that in neuroethics – there are moves in the States, for example, to keep going for defence pleas that deny culpability based on some neuroscience of the mind. Yes – in the book you cover examples like Charles Whitman, Ken Parks, even Mary Bale the ‘cat in bin’ lady, of people committing antisocial acts with mitigating factors of mind. Where do you stand on free will and responsibility for those kinds of acts? I don’t think that any of the new science is going to change, or should change,
vol 25 no 10
october 2012
interview
how we treat others. If you have a judicial system that is premised on individual responsibility, that in itself is a good thing because it creates another set of factors that are fed into the multitude of decision-making processes. Because we have a legal system, it’s another thing you take into consideration, it’s put into the mix. So trying to say that no one is responsible, because it’s a multitude of factors, that simply doesn’t work. It’s not really feasible to look for every antecedent that has fed into someone’s behaviour: there would be too many degrees of freedom.
brain anatomy that just makes you more humble, in terms of the problem you’re trying to unravel. The complexity of it, but also the simplicity – like any other complex network, it boils down to on/off switches. Yes. Whenever I talk about materialism, or that the mind is a product of the brain, a lot of philosophers in particular regard that as reductionism, too simplistic. I think they just don’t understand the complexity of the structure they’re trying to demean. It really is phenomenal. Dan Wolpert told me there are more possible connections with just 500 neurons than estimated atoms in the observable universe! As psychologists, we tend to be in awe of the hierarchy of science, with mathematics up there, then physics and chemistry… but we should be a little bit more bullish about what we’re trying to do, which is understand a really complex system.
I suppose some people are concerned that the biological determinism angle will trump everything else. Exactly, this is uncharted territory. In many instances I can imagine that we would readily accept that someone with a brain tumour is not responsible, because it seems to be a very obvious, physical, parasite almost. But describing someone’s circuitry as ‘overreactive’, that doesn’t sound the same, that’s not like an alien system. So we have all these naive conceptions about what it is to be an Bruce Hood is Professor of The development of individual, what cancer Developmental Psychology the connections is at is… people talk about it in Society at the University its peak in childhood. like it’s an alien invader, of Bristol Is that when you see but of course it’s your bruce.hood@bristol.ac.uk the construction of the own cells just changing self as at its peak as and mutating. So you do well? have to conceptualise I think there are individuals as milestones, or periods of significant independent of the forces which are change. I don’t think the infant has a exerted upon them. sense of self that we would recognise. I In the book you talk about think they have self-monitoring and can reconnecting with that biological be aware of their own movements, so matter, through the experience they have conscious awareness of the of holding a human brain. Is that correlates of their activity, but I don’t something you would advocate for think they have a self-story. I think that everyone in psychology? fits with the work on infantile amnesia Would you learn anything additional in and also self-recognition, which doesn’t terms of the neuroanatomy, which you really appear until quite late. may have studied already? Probably not. Would that suggest that selfWhat you do get, as soon as you see the construction is at its peak around physical structure, is a real insight into the ‘reminiscence bump’, the tendency the problem you’re facing! There are for older adults to have increased no arrows, no boxes with diagrams, it’s recollection for events that occurred a lump of very densely packed tissue. during their adolescence? There’s an emotional component to
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It turns out you can facilitate infant memory if you talk to your children. Charles Fernyhough talks about the evidence that different cultures have different cut-off points for memory. In the Far East where they describe the child’s day and engage in elaborate storytelling, they’ve got better memories. So I think that fits with the general idea that you have to construct an autobiographical memory in terms of all the information. I think it’s true to say that during adolescence, children have to establish their identity separate to that of their parents. I think that explains a lot of their teenage rebellion, that attempt to mark their own territory out. I’ve certainly seen that in my own children! Do you sometimes feel you know too much about yourself and others? I think psychology has given me an insight into some of my weaknesses. We do have this persona which we present to the outside world. I think everyone has anxieties, concerns, and I think understanding that is a powerful way of thinking. When you understand that other people have social anxiety… some people can be paralysed with fear about speaking in front of others. Understanding the importance that we place on self value from others has helped me in many ways. Your presence on the social networking site Twitter is interesting from that point of view, because it’s a way of performing in public and sharing your anxieties. I remember a study which created two Twitter personas, one who just tweeted random academic pieces of information, and one who interspersed it with little bits of gossip. Clearly the one with gossip ended up with more followers. So I think the social brain is a gossiping brain. The power of Twitter is this illusion it creates that you have a personal relationship with the people that you follow. It’s to do with self-affirmation again… we like to think that if we have something to say, we’re on that soap box and we’re not alone. At two o’clock in the morning, in your converted barn…! You do have to be careful, because after a bottle of Merlot it does go completely to pot, and then you have to eat humble pie! If they could build a breathalyser into Twitter I’m sure it would be a lot better! But there again, people are too fearful that their persona is somehow corrupted by things said indiscreetly… clearly you have to be careful, but we all like a bit of personality!
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Do you think that’s pretty close to your true self? Yes, everyone knows I’m a terrible gossip! You reckon you spend half your waking life online. Does it worry you, in a Susan Greenfield-esque way, or do you embrace the way that is changing your self? In the book, you say, ‘Who we are will increasingly become shaped by the mediums in which we exist. Some people find this scary. For many it is liberating.’ Which camp do you fall in? I’m the liberating guy. I do think there’s an interesting issue, and I’m not sure how it’s going to play out. Certainly the younger generation are spending more and more time social networking. I try to make a case in the book that that is returning us to a situation where we have more interaction, whereas previously media were always one directional – books were read, TV was watched, radio was listened to. Now people can actually start to take part, it’s re-establishing a bidirectional form of communication. And now it’s not just amongst 12 people, it’s a thousand people; it’s not just your neighbours, it’s across continents. That’s a totally different dynamic about how information is distributed. What might be paradoxical is that rather than giving you a broader viewpoint, what it in fact might be doing is leading to greater extremism. If you think about it, if you hold an extreme view, normally you would be socially isolated, but with the internet you can find someone who holds those same views. So I think we might see more examples of extremism facilitated by the communication the internet provides. When you get grouping, you get the dynamics of polarisation. I get a bit uncomfortable about the way that seems to be happening with a liberal population. You expect it to happen almost, with a conservative population, but there is a ‘Twitterati’, of which you are part, that seems able to marshal a liberal wrath of frightening speed and intensity. I happen to agree with you… it’s almost like cyberbullying, you can build up and attack someone on the flimsiest of evidence. Psychologists, of all people, should be alive to that… You were born in Toronto. Your mother is Australian, your father was Scottish, and you’ve lived and worked around the world, with so many of ‘the greats’. I’ve been very fortunate. I really do think I’ve got the best job in the world. I hate to
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use the word ‘blessed’, because as you know I’m not much of a religious person, but I feel very fortunate to have had the career I’ve had. Of all those people, who has had the biggest impact on your ‘self’? Without a doubt, Susan Carey at Harvard. She’s a formidable thinker and she has been so influential and so highly regarded, not just by people in her field but outside as well. She has a great stable of graduate students who are now in top positions in the States: Paul Bloom, Karen Wynn, these are all her students. Presumably you’re creating the same kind of stable now with your students? No, I don’t think I am to be honest. The American system is very different to the British system. You tend to have just one or two graduate students at a time, whereas in the American system they will have these big labs with five or six. I haven’t actually stayed in one place for long enough to do that, and the funding’s never actually been that good in the UK to do that. What are your views on the Research Evaluation Framework in terms of impact? You’ve had more than most with the RI Christmas Lectures, but that’s not going to count for anything? Well it will actually, because 20 per cent is due to public engagement or impact… … but doesn’t it have to be traced back to a specific research paper? We’re putting a case forward on my activities, because you can trace it back to the book, Supersense, and there are some papers which are in that. I think it would be relatively unfair to deny the impact of that whole activity. That’s just it, I thought that was a great example of how the system was unfair, so it’s great to hear that. We’re looking to make that argument. I think it’s quite unusual for scientists to write popular books, so I don’t think it would have factored in as an obvious criterion. As for the whole REF thing… I do think academics need to take stock of where they are. We are publicly funded, and we shouldn’t forget that. I think it does help sometimes to sit and consider what kind of influence you’re having. So I’m not totally against the whole idea of being accountable, but I think this whole idea of a massive process seems an overly bureaucratic way of doing it. Dorothy Bishop at Oxford did that interesting blog and column in The Psychologist about people bringing in marketing people to
streamline their REF, which does seem ludicrous. We mustn’t forget that less than 1 per cent of this country’s GDP goes into science funding, so it does seem to be a lot of effort for a very small piece of pie. So, who are you? I’m a number of things. I’m a father, I’m a male, I have all these attributes I can describe. Do I have a core as a self? I think I do… I feel I’m struggling all the time, I feel I’m inadequate. When you start to read about great people in your research for a book, you hear about Kant, the philosophers, Helmholtz, or you meet people like Carey, inevitably you feel that you’re inadequate. And that’s a core part of your self, that feeling of inadequacy? Yes, and time running out. I’m always in a hurry, I’m the most impatient person. I try to instil that in my students, they know that if they hand me work it will be turned around within 24 hours. If there’s any delay in the process it’s not because of me. I’m impulsive as well. Sometimes I’m a little too quick off the mark to criticise, or I’m less generous. But ultimately, what I do has worked to some extent. And I think I’m transitioning out of a pure research role into one that is trying to broaden in a public way, and I think that’s good, I think we need more people like that. Psychology needs to punch above its weight. I’m really frustrated by the way psychology in this country has been portrayed as a little bit common sense – some of the most interesting questions, which are psychological questions, are not common sense. So I do see a purpose now, to move towards that impact aspect. And in doing that, you’re getting the positive feedback that should reduce that core sense of inadequacy. That’s true, but as soon as you put yourself out in the public limelight you do attract a lot of criticism. There are some people who don’t think that academics should have to justify themselves, or market or do public engagement. But I think they’re just living in the wrong era. I think it’s very difficult to balance that engagement role with being a good academic, and I’m not sure I’m going to be able to do that. But at this time when psychology funding has been really slashed, rather than just sitting on my own and lamenting that, I’m going to redirect, be flexible, put my efforts somewhere else. Hopefully we may get someone in the corridors of power who understands why it’s so important to support social sciences research.
vol 25 no 10
october 2012
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Annual Conference 2016 East Midlands Conference Centre, Nottingham 26–28 April Submissions now open Themes: G Faces G Ageing G Impact G Wellbeing General submissions invited for all other research areas New for 2016 Haiku Deck – simple yet powerful visuals that support verbal presentations Don’t miss your opportunity to share research, gather feedback and inspire others. Visit our website for guidelines, key dates and to register for Conference updates
www.bps.org.uk/ac2016 ‘big picture’ pull-out www.thepsychologist.org.uk
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ONE ON ONE
shift is towards more applied work. Psychology and especially theoretical work seems to be falling in between the cracks.
…with Bruce Hood Professor in the School of Experimental Psychology at the University of Bristol and Director of the Bristol Cognitive Development Centre
One book that you think all psychologists should read I think The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins was probably the most influential book I read as a student that really shaped my thinking as a psychologist and a human.
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One thing that you would change about psychology Many people consider psychology to be a soft science partly because the media often portrays it as common sense. This really annoys me. Understanding the complexity
of humans makes scientific inquiries into how we tick some of the most difficult problems to solve. Just because our psychological processes seem effortless, we should not underestimate the complexity of what’s going on. We need to get some really good communicators out there doing our field justice. One thing I get out of Twitter I am utterly fascinated by Twitter and believe that it is a very powerful mechanism. It’s mostly concerned with gossip and trivia, but then the human brain is a gossiping brain. Twitter gives the impression of intimacy with celebrities that one would not normally have the chance to meet, and also creates an inflated sense of selfimportance when other strangers respond to your tweets. This can create two types of distortion: increasing polarisation of opinions when groups coalesce around a topic, and contagious emotions.
The 2011 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, on BBC Four on 27, 28, 29 December (and iPlayer). ‘The three lectures cover “What’s inside your head?”, “Who is in control?” and “Are you thinking what I am thinking?” My book, The Self Illusion, follows in the spring.’
One hope for the future More psychologists in positions of power in the boardroom to temper the irrationality of decision
One reason we believe the unbelievable Because it is an inevitable byproduct of a brain that tries to make sense of the world around it. One nugget of advice for aspiring psychologists Write every day. Keep writing and you will get better at it. It is just like any other skill and writing is the key to communication. It forces you to be more coherent and relevant.
Bruce Hood Bruce.Hood@bristol.ac.uk
makers who can sometimes lead the rest of us into ruin. One challenge you think psychology faces Psychological research used to straddle topics of interest covered by the different research councils but as budgets have been cut, the
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One inspiration I had the privilege to know Richard Gregory well. I used to drop by his office every Thursday afternoon for a cup of coffee, discussion and his incorrigible punning. Richard was very supportive of my activities and helped me to take immense joy at being a scientist. He knew all the greats and always had wonderful anecdotes. He was my direct link to a bygone era of romantic science.
One regret Never acquiring a second language. I always feel incredibly inadequate when I hear colleagues conversing in another language. I have tried but, regrettably, I think my window of plasticity has shut down firmly in that domain.
One cultural recommendation A much under-rated 2006 film, The Prestige with Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale who play two rival Victorian magicians. The reason I love it is because it addresses the philosophical problem of identity and duplication. One psychological superpower Mindreading of course! But there again, maybe it is better not to know. More answers online at www.thepsychologist.org.uk
Think you can do better? Want to see your area of psychology represented more? See the inside front cover for how you can contribute and reach 48,000 colleagues into the bargain, or just e-mail your suggestions to jon.sutton@bps.org.uk
ONE ON ONE
One nugget of advice for aspiring psychologists Don’t ever give up until the door is finally closed. Just because one person, or one group of people, is not excited by your work does not necessarily mean that others will feel the same.
…with Susan Golombok Director, Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge
One moment that changed the course of your career In 1976 I read an article in the feminist magazine Spare Rib about lesbian mothers losing custody of their children when they divorced, on the grounds that the children would develop psychological problems if they grew up in a lesbian family. The author of the article asked for a psychologist to carry out an independent study of the children. I was taking a master’s degree at the time and rooting around for a project. I volunteered and more than 30 years later I find myself still carrying out research on lesbian mother families.
at home with their children, he writes beautifully and compellingly about the interactions between infants and their mother. This aspect of his work has been lost to those not closely involved with the study of attachment relationships.
One challenge In my area, it’s to convince others – particularly policymakers – that just because people hold strong opinions about families does not necessarily mean that they
One pet hate The tendency for psychologists to study narrower and narrower aspects of a phenomenon to the point that their research becomes totally meaningless to anyone other than the three other individuals in the world who are pursuing the same futile question.
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One proud moment I feel proud when the research of my team has an impact on policy and legislation in relation to Susan Golombok family life, e.g. by seg42@cam.ac.uk informing debate on aspects of the Children Act and the Human Fertilisation are right. For example, the and Embryology Act. relationship between single parenthood and outcomes for children is highly complex and has less to do with the absence of a parent than with Golombok, S. (2000). Parenting: What really counts? Routledge. other factors that go with ‘This book examines the relative importance of family structure and single parenthood, such as family relationships in children’s psychological well-being.’ low income and low social support.
Articles on intensive interaction, performance prediction, the chameleon offender, and much more... I Send your comments about The Psychologist to the editor, Dr Jon Sutton, on jon.sutton@bps.org.uk, +44 116 252 9573 or to the Leicester office address I To advertise in The Psychologist: psyadvert@bps.org.uk, +44 116 252 9552 I For jobs in the Appointments section: psychapp@bps.org.uk, +44 116 252 9550
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One book that you think all psychologists should read Attachment by John Bowlby. We are much more likely to read critiques of Bowlby’s theories than the original work. Although his views had a negative impact on the lives of women after the Second World War by putting pressure on mothers to stay
One great thing that psychology has achieved Psychological research has challenged prejudice and discrimination based on unfounded beliefs. One cultural recommendation Central Station, a Brazilian film about a boy who is separated from his family. It is a visually stunning, touching and endearing tale of resilience and the strength of family bonds. One heroine Some time ago I was invited to give the oration for Lady Helen Brook, founder of the Brook Advisory Centres, when she was awarded an honorary degree at City University. In researching her past, I was amazed by the battle she fought against deeply prejudiced opposition in order to achieve her aim of providing contraception for young women and reducing unwanted pregnancies. One problem We are losing many bright and enthusiastic young people who cannot find funding to support a PhD. We need to find financial support for a larger number of PhD students in psychology. One hope for the future That more men will become psychologists.
Think you can do better? Want to see your area of psychology represented more? See the inside front cover for how you can contribute and reach 45,000 colleagues into the bargain, or just e-mail your suggestions to jon.sutton@bps.org.uk
vol 22 no 8
august 2009