the
the psychologist
psychologist march 2018
Placing mind in the metropolis
march 2018
Ella Rhodes speaks to psychologists about what we need to bring to urban spaces
www.thepsychologist.org.uk
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the psychologist
the
psychologist march 2018
Placing mind in the metropolis
march 2018
Ella Rhodes speaks to psychologists about what we need to bring to urban spaces
contact The British Psychological Society 48 Princess Road East Leicester LE1 7DR 0116 254 9568 mail@bps.org.uk www.bps.org.uk the psychologist and research digest www.thepsychologist.org.uk www.bps.org.uk/digest www.jobsinpsychology.co.uk psychologist@bps.org.uk Twitter: @psychmag Download our iOS/Android apps advertising Reach 50,000+ psychologists at very reasonable rates. CPL, 1 Cambridge Technopark Newmarket Road Cambridge CB5 8PB recruitment Kai Theriault 01223 378051 kai.theriault@cpl.co.uk display Michael Niskin 01223 378 045 michael.niskin@cpl.co.uk february 2018 issue 58,276 dispatched design concept Darren Westlake www.TUink.co.uk cover Guido Iafigliola www.glitchdo.com printed by Warners Midlands plc on 100 per cent recycled paper issn 0952-8229 (print) 2398-1598 (online) © Copyright for all published material is held by the British Psychological Society unless specifically stated otherwise. As the Society is a party to the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) agreement, articles in The Psychologist may be copied by libraries and other organisations under the terms of their own CLA licences (www.cla.co.uk). Permission must be obtained for any other use beyond fair dealing authorised by copyright legislation. For further information about copyright and obtaining permissions, e-mail permissions@bps.org.uk.
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www.thepsychologist.org.uk
The Psychologist is the magazine of The British Psychological Society It provides a forum for communication, discussion and controversy among all members of the Society, and aims to fulfil the main object of the Royal Charter, ‘to promote the advancement and diffusion of a knowledge of psychology pure and applied’
The Psychologist needs you! We rely on your submissions throughout the publication, and in return we help you to get your message across to a large and diverse audience. For details of all the available options, plus our policies and what to do if you feel these have not been followed, see www.thepsychologist.org.uk/contribute The main message, though, is simply to engage with us. Contact the editor Dr Jon Sutton on jon.sutton@bps.org.uk, tweet us on @psychmag or call /write to us at the Society’s Leicester office.
Managing Editor Jon Sutton Assistant Editor Peter Dillon-Hooper Production Mike Thompson Journalist Ella Rhodes Editorial Assistant Debbie Gordon Research Digest Christian Jarrett (editor), Alex Fradera, Emma Young
Associate Editors Articles Michael Burnett, Paul Curran, Harriet Gross, Rebecca Knibb, Adrian Needs, Paul Redford, Sophie Scott, Mark Wetherell, Jill Wilkinson Conferences Alana James History of Psychology Alison Torn Interviews Gail Kinman Culture Kate Johnstone, Sally Marlow Books Emily Hutchinson, Rebecca Stack International panel Vaughan Bell, Uta Frith, Alex Haslam, Elizabeth Loftus, Asifa Majid The Psychologist and Digest Editorial Advisory Committee Catherine Loveday (Chair), Phil Banyard, Emma Beard, Harriet Gross, Kimberley Hill, Rowena Hill, Peter Olusoga, Richard Stephens, Miles Thomas
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the
psychologist march 2018
88 A to Z O is for…
Dr Jon Sutton Managing Editor @psychmag
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82 Culture
‘I look forward to the publication moving back towards the objectivity, political neutrality and impartiality it should be practising, once this current baffling trend for post-modernist antiintellectualism dies.’ So concluded a recent comment on our website, bemoaning ‘a blatant shift in the majority of content the magazine has been publishing’. Inevitably, I have views on this. To a large extent, this magazine is you: unlike many publications, we do not have a large team of staff writers or freelancers. Perhaps there has been a ‘blatant shift’ in psychology in recent years. And perhaps it’s high time. When we see psychologists standing up for academic freedom (p.2); acting as ‘revolutionaries’ advocating more robust and open practices (p.10); calling on us to ‘take arms against a sea of troubles’; then it’s hard, for me at least, to see that as a problem. As Daryl O’Connor says (p.11), ‘it’s an incredibly exciting time to be a psychologist’. If you see it differently, get in touch. We’re a forum for debate: your forum.
02 Letters Turkey, children’s mental health and more
10 News Replication and tone
24 The brains of experts Merim Bilalić considers the cognitive processes behind the neuroscience
32 Placing mind in the metropolis Ella Rhodes speaks to psychologists about what we need to bring to urban spaces
56 Looking back Philip Kirby with a brief history of dyslexia
42 Mighty oaks from acorns grow Stella Gkika and Elaine Swift with a ‘Tree of Work-Life’
62 Careers We meet Fiona Kennedy; and hear from Declan Gaule
44 Moving psychology forward – with charisma John Antonakis
70 Jobs in psychology Featured job, latest vacancies
74 Books Including Q+As with Carolyn Mair and Greg Maio
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50 ‘Which of us is not constantly enjoined to transform ourselves into something we are not… yet?’ We talk circles and liminality with Paul Stenner
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Bearing witness and showing solidarity
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Tim Sanders/www.timonline.info
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In early 2016, 1128 academics in Turkey (including 50 psychologists) signed the so-called Peace Petition. This was in response to government operations against the Kurds. It decried the humanitarian abuses and loss of civilian life, arguing that this would escalate conflict rather than bring peace. One of the signatories was Ekren, a young social psychologist who had been researching the crowd protests in Gezi Park. She explained: ‘When you do research on collective action, and you ask people what they would be prepared to do, the minimum is always signing a petition. And so for me, despairing of the violence in my country, I thought signing the Peace Petition was the very least I could do.’ Ekren was not an activist, not a radical, certainly not an extremist. When she put her name to the petition, she never dreamt of what would happen next. Immediately, the President – Recep Erdogan – denounced the signatories as terrorist sympathisers. He then sought to have them dismissed from their posts – calling on universities to do ‘everything necessary’ to deal with their staff whose names were on the petition. Now, his regime has gone from taking their jobs to taking their freedom. In December the trials started, the peace signatories charged with ‘terrorist propaganda’ and facing up to seven and a half years in a Turkish prison. Ekren is one of those on trial. The only evidence against her is the text of the Peace Petition and an analysis which claims there is some correspondence between some words in the text and some words of the leader of the Kurdish PKK leader – akin to arguing that if I, like Mussolini, argue that the trains should run on time, I am spreading fascist propaganda. So why is Erdogan targeting ordinary psychologists like Ekren for doing something so moderate? Well, because it sends a very clear message to everybody that even the mildest criticism of government will not be tolerated. The night before Ekren was brought up before the bench, 11 leaders of the Turkish Medical Association were taken into custody. Their offence? Releasing a statement in the context of the recent Turkish invasion of Syria which said that war is bad for human welfare. In today’s Turkey even obvious truths make you a criminal if those truths are inconvenient for the regime. And how is Erdogan seeking to destroy dissent? His aim is to take away the identities of the Peace Petition signatories, to isolate them and to render them ‘nonpersons’. If you lose your job you also lose your pension, your passport, your right ever to work in the state sector, your access to benefits and to public services. You are branded a pariah. In small towns people have literally been run out of town. In cities, erstwhile colleagues are afraid to be associated with you. Even the legal process seeks to atomise. Despite the fact that all the signatories are accused of the same thing, and despite the fact that their lawyers are want them tried together, the
prosecution refuses. Ekren’s lawyer explains that this is to deprive the signatories of the solace and support of numbers. Such tactics take their toll. Recent research shows clearly how the loss of group identities can impact on mental and physical wellbeing (Haslam et al., 2018). Here, those who have had their connections to the academic world obliterated feel anxious and depressed. Alisan describes how his life was affected after he too signed the petition. He lost his job and his income, he has had to sell his belongings (most recently his car) in order to stay afloat. But that is the least of it. He isn’t even allowed to visit his old department and most people are afraid to meet up with him elsewhere. Turkish journals reject his papers. He feels he is nobody. He has lost all motivation. Already, three signatories to the Peace Petition have died by suicide. But Alisan is not completely hopeless. He describes the support of his union and of his fellow signatories as crucial. If the Turkish regime is trying to destroy its opponents by taking their identity and rendering them ‘non-persons’, the most important thing that can be done to support the peace signatories is to recover their personhood through including them as valued members of the academic community. That work is going on within Turkey. Sacked signatories have come together to provide their own academies for the public – these might not make money,
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the psychologist march 2018 letters but they do make people feel that they are still academics. Organisations like Academics for Peace bring the signatories together while subgroups like Psychologists for Peace regroup those in specific disciplines. On the day that Ekren is on trial, the courtroom is full of her supporters. They have come from far afield to show solidarity. Afterwards we go for a drink and to talk. The atmosphere is intimate, there is much laughter, people hug warmly as they leave. One could almost forget the dire straits that have brought us together. That work is also beginning to go on beyond Turkey. Academia is international. Ekren and her colleagues are part of international organisation. We work with them, publish with them, attend the same workshops and conferences. It matters to show that they are not forgotten. They need to know that they are important members of an international academic community. Ekren explains the value of international observers at the trials. ‘For me it helps – they watched, they saw,’ she says. ‘It makes a difference. It sustains us.’ But sending international observers is just one small element of what we can do. First, we must publicise what is happening. Already a group of organisations, including the International Society for Political Psychology (ISPP), the European Association of Social Psychology, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, and the Social Section of the BPS have signed a joint statement (see tinyurl.com/y9b58d9x). Second, we can provide emergency support funds for those signatories rendered destitute (tinyurl.com/y8fqpthv). Third, we are currently seeking to establish schemes to provide scholarships for Turkish scholars able to leave the country and to form collaborations with those who cannot (these will be posted on the ISPP website: www.ispp.org). After I returned from Ekren’s trial in Istanbul, I got an email from one of her colleagues, Aisha. Aisha had travelled 300 miles from Ankara to show her support, despite having lost her income, her livelihood and her access to any services. Indeed, when Aisha’s five-yearold child was ill, she was barred from state hospitals and could only afford to take her child to a private clinic by selling some of her belongings. Aisha wrote: ‘I’m definitely feeling that we are a part of a great community which is beyond borders, and we’re not alone.’ She also observed: ‘This is the first time I face with our Kafkaesque situation not with a depressive mode but with becoming hopeful.’ More generally, the message is that we can make a difference – and it doesn’t take that much to do so. Our colleagues in Turkey face a dire threat. Academic freedom – and freedom more generally – is under the severest attack. Stephen Reicher University of St Andrews Reference Haslam, C., Jetten, J., Cruwys, T. et al. (2018). The new psychology of health: Unlocking the social cure. London: Routledge.
Note: Names of colleagues have been changed for their safety.
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OK to be mentally ill? Mental health charities are keen to promote themselves as playing a valued role in advancing the interests of the mentally unhealthy. Can we rely on prevalence figures for ‘mental health’, whatever that is, and what could charities be doing to improve the situation? According to the Mental Health Foundation (tinyurl.com/l33v9k8), a survey of respondents (called ‘panel members’) revealed that 65 per cent had experienced a mental health problem, and for the lowest income group the figure was 75 per cent. The MHF seems to be spinning the figures somewhat: in a random sample of the population of England, 44 per cent reported ever having had a mental disorder (diagnosed or undiagnosed); and for only half of this group the problem was current (tinyurl.com/y8tn8f7t). A recent NatCen (www.natcen.ac.uk) survey, based on a random sample of the British population, is also of some interest. People were asked about their worries or concerns. After money or debt, physical health was the next highest concern in 38 per cent of the lowest income group. A concern about mental health was much lower at 18 per cent. (Concern about physical health was at similar levels in higher income groups but mental health data were not reported.) The same survey also asked whether respondents felt they had the power to improve their situation, and who exercised this power. For the lowest income group, 74 per cent rated ‘myself’ as being able to do a little or a lot to influence both physical and mental health concerns. A partner or family member was their second choice. Only 3 per cent thought their GP had the most power (as first choice) and 8 per cent (as second choice). Given that health was highly rated as a concern, and the fact that the GP is usually the first port of call for access to treatment, one might have expected greater faith in the power of GPs to improve matters. The population certainly expects help from the state because 96–98 per cent of the whole sample considered that it was the government’s responsibility to provide health care. I infer from these data that any campaign to raise ‘mental health awareness’ will encounter major resistance from a stoical ‘stand on your own two feet’ attitude. It is not an attitude that is likely to be easily dented by raised awareness of ‘mental health’. It is possible that the prevailing public attitude of selfreliance may be adaptive in the face of adversity or a poor response from state services. People are unlikely to believe that ‘it is OK to be mentally ill’ or ‘it’s just another kind of illness’. The charities could perhaps put out a more positive message, such as ‘You can overcome your problems – and here’s how’. However, given that mental health/ill-health is a near vacuous concept, the message would need to be refined to refer to kinds of problem and types of help. It is obvious that not all kinds of socalled mental ill-health are equally responsive to help. An honest appraisal of what works in practice, and how to obtain it, would serve the charities better than a mindless underwriting of the illness myth.
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It is unquestionably the case that some people are resistant to the idea of asking for help. One survey showed that only around a third of people would feel comfortable talking to a therapist, and over 40 per cent wouldn’t want anyone to know about it if they did. The resistance of young males is higher still; 80 per cent would not be comfortable talking to a therapist (Anderson & Brownlie, 2011). Perhaps this resistance is partly due to a fear of ‘mental illness’ and ignorance about the variety of options for working on problems. This situation is unlikely to change while ‘mental ill-health’ remains such an ill-defined concept, confounding madness, illness and understandable responses to adversity. Richard Hallam Independent practitioner London Reference Anderson, S. & Brownlie, J. (2011). Build it and they will come? Understanding public views of ‘emotion talk’ and the talking therapies. British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, 39, 53–66.
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Tempus fugit I very much enjoyed the research report ‘Is this why life is speeding up?’, News February 2018). A very salient point in the explanation appears missing – time as a percentage of one’s life. If you were five years old and your next birthday was a year away – that is 20 per cent of your life. And that is a lot of time to wait! At age 50, one year is 2 per cent of your life. So the equivalent lived time to you next birthday, as experienced by the fiveyear-old, 20 per cent of your life – means your next birthday would be
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10 years away! And 10 years is a long and slow time, compared with the quicker flash of one year. I believe this is why time passes faster as we get older – because the time itself is this smaller fraction of our experience. I hope this concept can be integrated into the ‘chunking’ research to include both aspects. And now I have to rush, as while I have been writing this – how time has flown! Elaine Iljon Foreman BA, MSc, AFBPsS Director, Freedom to Fly
Letters online: Find more letters at www.thepsychologist.org.uk/debates. Deadline for letters for the April print edition is Friday 2 March 2018. Letters received after this date will be considered for the following month and/or for publication online. Email letters to psychologist@bps.org.uk with the subject line ‘Letter to the editor’.
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Overexposure to cognitive tests The publicity around the recent assessment of the US President using the MoCA test caused a surge of interest in cognitive assessment. People rushed to do the MoCA themselves either out of curiosity or to selfassess their own cognitive function. In response, the authors of the test created an alternative shorter version for people to try instead and asked the media not to reproduce the test. Their concerns are justified: overexposure to the test will affect its sensitivity to detect cognitive impairment. However, the MoCA incident is not isolated, but rather highlights the issue that cognitive assessments are now easily accessible outside the lab or clinic. People currently in their 50s and 60s, who are comfortable using computers, are signing up for online services offering cognitive ‘MOT’ and ‘brain training’ services. Although the number of users is currently unknown, the number of available apps and services on offer, suggests that there is substantial demand. Stroop, n-back, paired-associates, digit and spatial span are some of the tests that are no longer exclusive to neuropsychologists but available to everyone who signs up for such services. There are obvious advantages and disadvantages to making such services accessible. On the one hand, it brings awareness to the risk of dementia and encourages people to remain cognitively active. On the other hand, people become overtrained on tasks that are commonly used to assess cognitive function in the clinic, thereby affecting the tests’ sensitivity to detecting cognitive impairment. In the domain of clinical trials, this is not an issue, because overexposure is often necessary to minimise practice effects. However, in clinical practice were patients only do the assessment once for diagnosis, this is more of a concern. As the generation who grew up with computers and online games matures and enters the neuropsychology clinic, many of them will have been overexposed to our tools and we will no longer be confident that they are still effective. If a patient has practised the digit span 10 or 20 times before coming to the clinic, is their score an accurate reflection of their cognitive capacity? Probably not. People could, for example, develop strategies to improve their performance thereby masking early signs of cognitive impairment. So what can we do? Although the MoCA would be kept out of the public eye for the time being, this is not the case for other online cognitive training services. Therefore, to start with, we need to know about it – what ‘programme’ is our patient currently following? Then we can decide whether to modify our assessment to provide alternatives or not. In the long term, neuropsychology will hopefully move away from the, single-session assessment
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the psychologist march 2018 letters
president’s letter
diagnosis model and use new technologies, for example to monitor cognitive function outside the clinic or simulate complex environments. Such methods are currently being developed and used in neuropsychology labs and will hopefully move to the clinic in the not too distant future. Dr Marina Papoutsi Institute of Neurology, UCL
Tricky diagnosis
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Chris Timms is right: retro-diagnosis of celebrated historical figures such as Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery does not bear close scientific scrutiny (‘Stark raving normal?’, February 2018). This is especially the case where the diagnosis being made is one of autism or autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). As Simon Baron-Cohen and others have pointed out, ‘autistic’ behavioural traits are normally distributed across the population. Bernard Montgomery certainly had some of these traits, but then so do we all. Bernard Montgomery is not the only historical or contemporary figure to be the subject of such retrodiagnosis, since his death the mental health of the former US President Richard Nixon has been the subject of considerable speculation. However, we should be very wary indeed when tempted to suggest any psychiatric diagnosis of the present incumbent of that post. Indeed, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) has forbidden its members from doing so. Such an embargo dates from 1973 after Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate, Richard Nixon sued Fact magazine for diagnosing him as being unfit to be president. Thereafter no APA member has been allowed an attempted diagnosis or warn of any public figure’s mental functioning, lest they bring opprobrium on the profession (see Hamilton, N., New Statesman, September 2017, pp.25–29). Be warned. I would not want any BPS member to be guilty of ‘fake news’. It would be best to keep our thoughts on the subject to close friends. Dr Jeremy Swinson Liverpool
Our conferences are key events in the Society’s calendar. Our Annual Conference is the centrepiece for the Society as a whole. Many of our member networks also hold conferences focused on their particular area of the discipline. All of these are vibrant events, designed to showcase research and practice. They also provide a forum for members to network, engage with current developments, and celebrate success. At one such conference recently, the sense of belonging was described to me as ‘like family’. Our Annual Conference attracts around 500 delegates each year. We would like more, given the size of the Society. This year it will be held in Nottingham (www.bps.org.uk/ac2018) and will have an international flavour as part of the UK’s hosting of the European Semester (see January issue, p.5). Sessions planned include an address by the EFPA President (January, p.48), a joint ‘Hands across the water’ lecture with the Psychological Society of Ireland (PSI), and an international roundtable that will include the American Psychological Association’s (APA) senior director for international affairs. There are international keynotes and international and cross-member-network symposia too, aligned with the conference themes of Open Science, Leadership, Development, and Community and Society. Other psychological societies have different models. The PSI conference includes streams for the different elements of the profession, CPD workshops, and ‘Inspire’ sessions designed to do just that. The APA’s annual convention attracts thousands of delegates from across the discipline and profession and makes their services, for example career support, readily accessible to their membership. Another option is to bid to host one of the large-scale (often biennial) international events, for example the Society is the preferred bid to host the 2021 European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology congress in Glasgow, an opportunity to showcase both our occupational psychology research and practice and our capacity to stage a major event. Are you attending Conference this year? If not, what could we do to make it more attractive to you? Our teams are looking at the options. The Board of Trustees has agreed £150,000 extra funding for 2019 to increase accessibility. Please send suggestions to annualconference@bps.org.uk, and Thomas Elton, Professional Development Centre Manager, and his team will be pleased to receive them. Nicola Gale is President of the British Psychological Society. Contact her at PresidentsOffice@bps.org.uk
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An exciting time to be a psychologist Ella Rhodes reports from an event on replication
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ith hints at hope and progress, but still with a healthy dose of scepticism, the British Psychological Society, Experimental Psychology Society and Association of Heads of Psychology Departments, in association with Wiley, hosted a second event at the Royal Society to discuss the state of replication and reproducibility in psychology. Two years since the first such event [tinyurl.com/ydgqd62b] it is plain to see change has been fast, unforgiving at times, and has sparked even more debate across the discipline. Professor Andy Field (University of Sussex) posed the question of whether researchers should really analyse their own data – he answered quickly with a resounding no. Field said while some researchers engage in questionable research practices on purpose to inflate their effects, many simply ‘know not what they do’. He pointed to p-hacking – a practice where researchers either selectively report data or use certain statistical analyses that result in seemingly statistically significant results. While few researchers would admit to doing this, Field showed a graph of expected and observed p-values. Perhaps unsurprisingly there is a disproportionately high number of p-values just below .05 – the threshold for statistical significance across much of psychology. Another of these questionable research practices is ‘forking paths’: similar to p-hacking, but rather than analysing data to get a significant result, researchers might see an interesting effect in their data and analyse it post-hoc or later choose to ignore outliers in the data. Field said using independent analysts would avoid many of these potential problems. Nothing is new under the sun, as they say, and Professor Susan Fiske (Princeton University) was
witness to another crisis in social psychology during her early career in the 1970s – many were worried then about the lack of replications and relevance of the research in general. Fiske said she had wandered into the current crisis naively, and after her own experience has turned her attention to how psychology researchers communicate with each other via methods blogs. In a turn of events she dubbed ‘Fiskegate’, Fiske was asked to write about the effects of new media on science and scientists. In her article, which was leaked before publication, she described ‘self-appointed data police’ giving out ferocious critiques, and colleagues leaving the field entirely because of ‘methodological terrorism’. Her comments drew a sharp response from methodological critics – many of whom post about their findings on blogs. It is also worth mentioning that one of Fiske’s PhD students was Amy Cuddy, whose work on power posing was openly critiqued in methods blogs recently. Two of Fiske’s graduate students were given the task of finding out more about the online methods blogs that concerned her. They looked at 41 blogs, which averaged around one post per month. While we might have expected these bloggers to be younger researchers, they tend to be slightly more established; the bloggers were 71 per cent male, 92 per cent white, and 74 per cent mid- to late-career researchers with established citation counts. Fiske and her colleagues also looked at who the blog posts were about. It seemed bloggers mentioned specific ‘targets’ in around 11 per cent of posts, and those individuals tend to be male rather than female – contrary to the suggestion seen on social media recently that this is largely a case of male critics targeting female
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the psychologist march 2018 news
researchers. Fiske said she was hoping to bring data to bear on the controversies she had been involved with. Since the replication crisis hit, the psychology community is beginning to see some hope, and to look back at what’s been achieved with a great deal of pride. Professor Daryl O’Connor (University of Leeds), also Chair of the British Psychological Society’s Research Board, said since Brian Nosek’s 2015 paper – which revealed only 36 per cent of psychology studies replicated – psychology had seen some key changes that would be important for the whole of science. He pointed to the Center for Open Science and Open Science Framework set up by Nosek and colleagues. He also welcomed the surge in journals accepting registered reports, a campaign fronted by Professor Chris Chambers (University of Cardiff). In an attempt to remove publication bias, researchers register their proposed hypotheses, methods and statistical analyses with a journal prior to publication and, if their plans are accepted, they are guaranteed publication after the experiment is complete regardless of whether their results are significant or not. One BPS journal, published by Wiley, the Journal of Neuropsychology, has recently begun offering this type of publication with an aim for it to be rolled out to all 11 BPS journals eventually. Of course, O’Connor said, all was not entirely rosy. While some see this era as something of a renaissance for psychology, a recent article in the Boston Globe sparked a debate about the debate itself, with several prominent psychologists calling for an end to ‘social media hate mobs’ (see ‘Quibbling while Rome burns?’, below). O’Connor said this division reminded him of Brexit, with people on both sides of the debate – those
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publishing critiques and those bearing the brunt of them – were all in their own personal echo chambers, not quite seeing the viewpoint of the other. He said that while there was a relatively small amount of bullying going on as part of this movement, when it does happen it can be hugely damaging to individuals. O’Connor concluded positively, saying that psychological science had truly been a trailblazer over the last two years. He praised those revolutionaries who have improved practice and propelled us forward: ‘It is an incredibly exciting time to be a psychologist,’ he said. Professor Eric-Jan Wagenmakers (University of Amsterdam), an expert in Bayesian statistics, began his talk on radical transparency in statistical reporting with a dilemma: ‘Dr X has a favourite theory that she has worked on and published about previously, Dr X designs an experiment to test a prediction from her theory, Dr X collects the data, a painstaking and costly process. Part of her career and those of her students ride on the outcome. Now the data need to be analysed. If p <.05, the experiment is deemed a success, if p >.05, it is deemed a failure. Who is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most biased analyst in the entire galaxy, past, present and future?’ Of course, the answer is Dr X, and herein lies the problem, Wagenmakers said. Data are analysed, as a matter of routine in psychology, by the world’s most biased analyst, who will usually have little statistical training, and with absolutely no supervision. When psychologists find a p-value of less than .05, Wagenmakers added, there is rarely any further doubt cast upon that finding. Researchers set out to find the truth behind a given question, but they also hope to find data that will leave little room for doubt, develop a coherent theoretical framework and publish papers that make interesting claims. Wagenmakers said that as well as perverse incentives within academic publishing, we are also faced with a deep fear of uncertainty – both of which lead to publication bias, massaging the data and HARKing (or ‘hypothesising after results are known’). There was a clear need, he added, to become more transparent about what we’re doing in psychology. People as a result may become more honest and we may become more forgiving of imperfections or unclear results if our statistical methods and data were less opaque. In attempt to instil scientific rigour in undergraduate students and to increase replications in the field, Dr Katherine Button (University of Bath) has set up a project to help third-year psychology students collaborate on a replication study for their final-year dissertation project. Button said that third-year students’ projects are often underresourced and carried out under heavy time constraints. Assessment of these projects also tends to be focused on individual contributions and the novelty of an experiment or its findings. Button realised if she could have undergraduate students collaborate on a project to replicate an established research finding, also pre-registering the study’s methods and proposed analyses, this would give students the best start in terms of methodological
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training, but would also add an invaluable replication attempt to the literature. Eight undergraduate students from Bath, the University of Exeter and University of Cardiff, worked together on their project along with supervision from Button, Professor Chris Chambers and Dr Natalia Lawrence, attempting to replicate research by Chambers and Lawrence that explored training response inhibition to food. The supervisors came up with a research question and protocol in the year prior to the students’ involvement, and later asked them to come up with their
own hypotheses to test at the same time. Methods and statistical analysis plans were pre-registered on the Open Science Framework. Once the results are in, the full data set will also be published on the framework. Button said it was indeed an exciting time to be a psychologist. While rigorous research takes more time and more resources, she said, funders and publishers were increasingly aware of the need for more rigorous and transparent research. Consortium studies, she said, were a way to tackle some of the problems with psychology, building best practice from the ground up. er
Quibbling while Rome burns? Jon Sutton reports on the debate about the replication debate The clamour around the ‘tone’ of the debate on replication and reproducibility in psychological science grew again in January, following the publication of a Boston Globe piece by Pardis Sabeti titled ‘For better science, call off the revolutionaries’. But is anybody listening? And should they be? Sabeti, a computational geneticist and professor of biology of Harvard, wrote of her ‘hope that scientists of all stripes – but especially social psychologists – will slow down and start approaching one another with greater respect’. Referring to numerous examples from the field of psychology, Sabeti concluded that ‘the attacks on these scientists have become so personal and so threatening that there may be no one in the field willing to speak up on their behalf… revolutions can also lead to a bandwagon effect, in which bullies pile on and bystanders fearfully turn a blind eye’. Many big-name psychologists immediately weighed in on social media. Daniel T. Gilbert, a Harvard colleague of Sabeti’s who has previously referred to ‘Psychology’s replication police’ as ‘shameless little bullies’, called
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the piece ‘one of the smartest essays about the politics of social psychology that I’ve ever read’, and told me: ‘Criticism and correction is how science works… Doesn’t have to become the politics of personal destruction.’ He added that ‘the “gotcha” game isn’t merely unkind, but can destroy a science by making scientists too fearful to explore. Sciences die by playing it safe, not by getting it wrong.’ Steven Pinker (also Harvard) advocated ‘rigor, of course, but put a lid on the aggression and call off the social media hate mobs’. Susan Cain called the piece ‘brave’. Some commentators brought gender into the debate, with Alberto Diaz-Cayeros saying ‘it is not a coincidence that men are the attackers (replication advocates), women their targets!’ – despite numerous counter-examples on both fronts. There was a swift and dismissive response from many open science advocates. Chris Chambers (Cardiff University) tweeted: ‘First they ignored us. For decades. Then they smirked from their Ivy League thrones & corporate boxes. Then they got desperate & cried “bully”, “sexist”, “terrorist”. Finally they realised they hadn’t even lost b/c they were simply not worth fighting.’ At an event the week before, Chambers had said: ‘You’ll never change lobbyists. They have their own agenda.’ I put it to him that if he had been talking about some of the figures in this debate so far, that could partly account for the occasional tone of it: they think they are scientists and that others should try to persuade them, slowly and gently, whereas open science advocates may see some as cautionary examples, to simply be held up to encourage the spread of open practices as mainstream. ‘I think that’s a good observation,’ Chambers replied. ‘I don’t have time to coddle the unconvincible. Things have progressed to where they are now because we’ve focused on the people who matter most – funders, journal editors, learned organisations, policy makers, and above all early-career researchers.’
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the psychologist march 2018 news
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Writing in Slate, Daniel Engber pointed out that virtually all of the examples of ‘cruel and hurtful rhetoric’ cited in Sabeti’s piece were actually from a single source (Columbia statistician Andrew Gelman’s blog and associated comments), and aimed at just one target (Amy Cuddy). He concludes: ‘Not every replication failure ends up in a fight, and most discussions of these issues have been forward-looking. Indeed, social psychology has already done far more to solve its problems – implementing systems at journals and in labs that help prevent the spread of falsepositive results – than most other scientific fields.’ Christopher Soto, an Associate Professor at Colby College, agreed, writing: ‘As a psychologist whose research has been the target of a replication attempt, [Sabeti’s] characterization strikes me as inaccurate and unfair.’ Engber also took issue with the ‘call off the revolutionaries’ aspect of the heading to Sabeti’s piece, ‘as if a “calling off” could be ordered from the top, decreed by some generalissimo psychologist… the current revolution in psychology, like the one that happened in genomics, isn’t under anyone’s command’. I put it to Chambers that if there was any ‘split’ in this debate worth characterising, it is to do with how ‘public’ the person having their research examined has been in their dissemination: how ‘lofty’ is their throne and how much do they therefore feel they have to lose in being (as they see it) fairly publicly and brutally toppled from it? ‘Right’, Chambers replied. ‘And notice how this narrative is all about them, not the public or scientific community. They occasionally insert unsubstantiated fearmongering that critical discourse puts young people off science, but it’s really all about them and their own fears.’ That suggests to me a debate that is in need of more data, about what it actually feels like to be the ‘target’ of failed replication attempts and therefore questions around your whole approach to science. Some have indeed written about this, notably Susan Fiske. But perhaps it’s time for a social psychology of the (largely social) psychology replication debate. It seems, though, that those engaging with the ‘tone debate’ are unlikely to be the main open science advocates. They have already left it behind. ‘Things are moving quickly,’ said Professor Dorothy Bishop (University of Oxford). Chambers has written, ‘We are in an intensely political period, and whenever you argue about tone you are playing your opponents’ game by your opponents’ rules. While we tear ourselves sideways worrying about such trivial nonsense, they are smirking from their thrones.’ Chambers has concluded that ‘we need to change the way psychological science works, not the way some people talk about psychological science’. He told me: ‘[These are] death throes. We’re approaching the point of no return. (In fact we have probably already passed it). We’re witnessing the fall of Rome in real time. Quite something isn’t it?’
Creativity and depression There’s a stereotype that mental distress is an almost inevitable part of being highly creative. But is there any substance to this idea, or have we been misled – by biographers drawn to artists with colourful and chaotic lives, and the conceits of cultural movements like the Romantics? Scientific attempts to resolve this question, which have mainly focused on disorders of mood, have so far struggled to reach a definitive answer. However, in a new review in Perspectives on Psychological Science, Christa Taylor of Albany State University has applied surgical precision to open up the existing body of research and lay out what we currently know. Taylor identified 36 studies on the creativity-mood disorder relationship from a set of almost 3000 that were potentially relevant. She combined data from these different studies into separate ‘meta-analyses’, depending on the specific question she was trying to address. We can be confident in the findings from these meta-analyses because they involved data from thousands or even millions of participants. Taylor first looked at whether creative people are more likely to have a mood disorder compared with noncreative controls. She looked at data from 10 studies involving fine arts students, creative writers and eminent figures from creative fields, and found that yes, there was a clear relationship between being creative and having a diagnosis of a mood disorder such as depression (overall the association had a moderate-to-large effect size). This finding held across different ways of measuring creativity, such as musical performance or tests of divergent thinking (finding new ideas or solutions). Creativity was most commonly associated with bipolar disorder (a condition marked by periods of low and high mood). It was not associated with all mood disorders – for instance, dysthymic disorder (mood depression
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that is longer-lasting but milder in nature than clinical depression) was no more common among creative people than controls. To address a slightly different question – compared with healthy controls, are people with a clinical diagnosis of mood disorder more creative? – Taylor used a second meta-analysis combining 13 studies, including a set of mega-studies involving millions of people. The answer was a quavering no, not really. Overall, differences in creativity between people with mood disorder and control were statistically non-significant. Taylor only detected any meaningful differences by narrowing the definition of creativity – people with mood disorders scored higher for painting ability, for instance, but not for many other measures, such as on laboratory tests of creativity.
Research digest US researchers have uncovered preliminary evidence that they say shows avid players of violent video games are ‘callous, cool and in control’. They recorded gamers’ brainwaves during a version of the ‘stop-signal’ task that involved ignoring emotional expressions on faces. Compared with controls, the gamers’ brains showed less responsiveness to the emotions and they seemed to require fewer neural resources to control their responses. Social Affective and Cognitive Neuroscience A study that tested out different video interventions to reduce the collective blaming of Muslims for Islamist extremism found that only one was effective. This video focused on showing the hypocrisy of blaming Muslims collectively while not holding all Christians accountable for isolated acts of extremism. White Christian Americans who watched the video not only showed less collective blaming of Muslims but also less anti-Muslim prejudice in general. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin A lot of the discussion around the menopause tends to be negative, as illustrated by the tone of ‘Menopause Week’ held recently on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. Yet a recent survey of nearly 400 women aged 40 to 60 found their attitude towards the menopause was overall positive, and was most positive among those who’d experienced it than those who hadn’t. ‘In other words,’ the researchers wrote, ‘for most women the menopausal transition may turn out to be not as bad as they think.’ Journal of PsychoSomatic Obstetrics and Gynecology By Dr Christian Jarrett. These studies were covered, along with many more, by him, Dr Alex Fradera and Emma Young on our Research Digest at www.bps.org.uk/digest 14
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Focusing on specific disorders, Taylor found some evidence for superior creativity among those with bipolar disorder and major depression (but still the differences from controls were modest). The new findings appear contradictory, but to simplify, they suggest that creative people are indeed liable to mood disorder, but overall there is little evidence that a mood disorder makes you more creative. Why might this be? Perhaps mood disorder is a boon to creativity, but this benefit is typically buried under a host of disadvantages and so doesn’t show up in most studies. (Compare with the clutch of successful people who attribute their success to struggles in early life; their existence doesn’t mean that we should expect disadvantage to reliably yield success.) If low mood does have an (often hidden) beneficial effect on creativity, one possibility is that it can initiate reflections that lead to new ways of seeing the world. This could explain why the deep dives of depression were associated with higher creativity but the chronic, less extensive dip of dysthymia was not. Moreover, by combining lows with motivation-charged highs, perhaps bipolar disorder combines the deep dives with a return to the surface, giving a chance for these insights to manifest. An alternative explanation for the new findings is that mood disorder doesn’t help creativity at all, but creativity creates mood disorder as a by-product. The lifestyle required in many creative fields can be punishing – I’m thinking of the musicians and stand-ups who spend most nights in Holiday Inns or on unfamiliar sofas; the financial instability and tournament-like nature of many artistic fields; the profligate substance misuse. The first metaanalysis showed that as mood disorder symptoms topped out, creativity actually dropped off, which could fit with this picture (but could also fit the boon-plus-disadvantage model, if the boon was only activated by mild symptoms). Finally, it could be that being creative just makes you appear clinically abnormal. Taylor points out this could happen in an affected manner, to ‘play creative’, but could also be because many aspects of the ‘flow state’ – extended bursts of activity, disregarding the need for sleep or food, absorption or attentional wandering, rapidly flowing thoughts – are also treated as markers of bipolar disorder. This research doesn’t fully resolve the long-running questions about whether and how mood disorders and creativity are linked, but it does pour cold water on some perspectives, such as expecting those struggling with a disorder to thrive creatively. Where the results are most unambiguous is in the higher incidence of disorder in creative people, which yields clear questions for future research, such as whether this is related to how strongly a culture makes assumptions about the temperament of ‘real artists’. And for you and me, it’s an important reminder that headlines like ‘creative people tend to get blue’ does not imply that ‘being blue, you tend to get creative’. Dr Alex Fradera for www.bps.org.uk/digest Read the article: tinyurl.com/y93uwml2
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the psychologist march 2018 news
Advising Wales Internationally renowned psychologist and neuroscientist, Professor Peter Halligan, has been appointed to the post of Chief Scientific Adviser for Wales. Professor Halligan will provide independent scientific advice to the First Minister and lead the development of the Welsh Government’s science policy. He will also work to promote the study of science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine to help build a strong science base in Wales.
Professor Halligan has played a key role in a number of innovative developments including establishing the Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre, the Wales Research and Diagnostic Positron Emission Tomography Imaging Centre , the Wales Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, the Haydn Ellis Distinguished Lecture Series and Cardiff University Research Institutes. First Minister Carwyn Jones said: ‘Professor Peter Halligan is an excellent scientist and world-renowned psychologist and neuroscientist… His appointment is a huge boost to Wales’s growing science and research sector.’ Professor Halligan said: ‘I very much look forward to taking up this important role, and working with the scientific community to ensure research evidence is taken into account as part of the government policy making process. I also hope to continue to build on the progress of my predecessors in growing Wales’s research and innovation capacity, to help raise Wales’s profile and grow its economic capability.’
Green Paper concerns Members of the British Psychological Society have responded to a child and mental health Green Paper by calling for an end to austerity policies and a greater focus on prevention. While the Society welcomed the aim of reducing waiting times, it raised concerns that the paper did not consider the effects of government cuts or the wider impact of social and political circumstances on mental health. The Green Paper, Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision, sets out plans for an extra £300 million in funding. The government has proposed that every school and college in England should have a designated senior lead for mental health; that a four-week waiting time for child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) should be piloted in some areas; and that new community-based mental health support teams will work with schools and colleges to support children with mild to moderate mental health problems. However, in its response to the Education and Health Select Committees, members of the Society,
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working with its Policy Advisor Nigel Atter, said the timescale for implementing these new approaches was limited. The initiatives will be rolled out to 20 per cent of the country over the next five years. It also pointed out that cuts to CAMHS, school nurses, schoolbased counsellors, educational psychologists, Sure Start and Children’s Centres undermined efforts to promote wellbeing. Overall the authors made several recommendations, emphasising the need to end austerity measures and reverse the rise in childhood poverty to help reduce adverse early experiences which can then affect people across the lifespan. Others have raised concerns for teachers, who will be heavily involved in overseeing the proposed changes. In a letter to The Psychologist (see p.7) Dr Zoë Boden and Alice Scotcher point to the retention crisis in teaching and the great deal of responsibility teachers already have in supporting distressed students with little or no professional training. er
Correction
Professor Elizabeth Kuipers OBE
Lucy Marks MBE
In our news report last month ‘Honoured psychologists’ an error on our part led to us wrongly captioning the picture of Professor Elizabeth Kuipers OBE as Lucy Marks MBE. We apologise for this mistake.
News online: Find more news at www.thepsychologist. org.uk/reports, including a new exhibition from the London Brain Project For much more of the latest peer-reviewed research, digested, see www.bps.org.uk/digest Got a potential story? Email psychologist@bps.org.uk
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Committed to change Penny Priest with a personal take on the launch of the ‘Power Threat Meaning’ Framework As psychologists, we are often asked: ‘We know diagnosis is flawed, but without it how would you do X, Y, Z or make A, B, C decision?’ Can we use a ‘patterns of distress’ framework rather than a ‘diagnosis’ model, in concrete, practical ways, to reorganise health and social care, legal and welfare systems, as well as providing a basis for commissioning, public education and research? To address this question, the British Psychological Society’s Division of Clinical Psychology (DCP) has funded a project leading to the publication of the ‘Power Threat Meaning’ Framework. Previewed at the DCP conference in London in December 2015, the report synthesises evidence about the causal roles of power, evolved threat responses, social discourses, and personal meanings and narratives. The launch event on 12 January attracted a great deal of interest, with the 400 tickets selling out in less than 48 hours. The day was an opportunity to hear the Framework explained in more detail by members of the project team (Lucy Johnstone, Mary Boyle, John Cromby, Jacqui Dillon, Dave Harper, Peter Kinderman, Eleanor Longden, David Pilgrim, John Read and Kate Allsopp, joined on the day by Phil Wilshire). Time was also allowed for people to discuss in smaller groups how they might apply some of the ideas and to think about how they might wish to take the framework forward in their own workplaces. The main aspects of the Framework are summarised in these questions, which can apply to individuals, families or social groups: • ‘What has happened to you?’ (How is Power operating in your life?) • ‘How did it affect you?’ (What kind of Threats does this pose?) • ‘What sense did you make of it?’ (What is the Meaning of these situations and experiences to you?) • ‘What did you have to do to survive?’ (What kinds of Threat Response are you using?) In addition, two further questions help with thinking about what skills and resources people might have, and how these ideas and responses might be pulled together into a personal narrative or story: • ‘What are your strengths?’ (What access to Power resources do you have?) • ‘What is your story?’ (How does all this fit together?)
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I have found myself so ground down by the state of much applied psychology recently, particularly my own profession of clinical psychology. I was therefore feeling quite cynical prior to attending the event, despite my admiration for many in the project team. Being already familiar with the framework, my sense was that this is not so much a new framework as a relaunching of an existing one that, however hard various individuals and groups
try, keeps getting sucked down by the undertow, only to emerge again later back out at sea. This is why the project team have been so keen to spell out concrete ideas about how to do things differently; no matter how many times the current diagnostic system in mental healthcare is challenged, it very firmly remains fundamental to the way mental health services are commissioned, organised and delivered. It is therefore understandable that something more active needs to happen as the talk has not done much to shake things up. This was a common theme in the discussions in the small group I was part of after lunch. But clinical psychology also has a part to play in the durability of diagnosis, as many in the profession continue to be complicit with the diagnostic direction of future services, including the use of things like care clusters and pathways, and payment by results. This is not only due to the personal and professional interests of many psychologists who are invested in diagnosis, its association with particular psychological therapies, and therefore its relevance in marketing psychological services. It is also due to ideological power, which operates in the very same way on us as workers, as it does on the people who are referred to us; we feel threatened by things like savage cuts to services so we get with the diagnostic programme in order to protect ourselves. This again was acknowledged in our group discussions. It is the business model that dominates mental health services, and a diagnostic model fits nicely with this. However, it does not need to be like this. The Framework opens up a variety of ways in which we might adopt different practices across a variety of domains (e.g. public health, commissioning of services, managing access to services, the legal system, etc.). In many of these domains, there is a need to communicate to external non-psychologist stakeholders a description of people’s problems in a manner relevant to the particular domain and addressing the key issues. How might we adopt a more psychologically informed approach to commissioning and gatekeeping access to services? One approach here would be to focus on reliable and valid psychological descriptions of problems, including some assessment of intensity and severity. In research, different kinds of research question (e.g. epidemiology, studies of psychological processes, therapy efficacy and effectiveness) could be posed that, instead of relying on diagnostic concepts, focus on specific problems and outcomes, which not only might be more valid and reliable phenomena to address but might also be much more useful in informing service provision. We have had a hundred years of mental health services and the world is getting worse. We’re at a similar stage to diesel cars, which for so long were seen as cheap
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the psychologist march 2018 news and efficient but now the reality has been exposed. The tireless commitment of the project team is impressive, yet part of me wonders whether, however many coherent and workable alternatives are suggested, this tanker may take quite some turning. For all those doubters and Eeyores like me, we were reminded that society and culture can and does change. There were also a great many ideas about practical ways to begin implementing some of these ideas, across clinical work, research, training and beyond. What was also particularly refreshing was that psychological therapies were hardly mentioned all day. So, as I’m writing this on the train journey home from the event, I am resolving to chip away at this in small ways in my own workplace. But I also know I am now part of an important movement, and I am already in discussion with
my local pub landlord about sharing the PTM Framework at a Psychology in the Pub event. To end with a quote from Margaret Mead: ‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.’ Dr Penny Priest is a Clinical Psychologist with South Staffordshire and Shropshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust Read the Framework, plus FAQs at tinyurl.com/ PTMFramework See www.thepsychologist.org.uk/we-dont-have-behomogeneous-we-just-have-hear-each-other for much more from the Division of Clinical Psychology Annual Conference, from our reporter Lexie Thorpe.
Fall asleep more quickly
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You’ve had all day to worry, but your brain decides that the moment you rest your weary head upon your pillow is the precise instant it wants to start fretting. The result of course is that you feel wide awake and cannot sleep. Two possible solutions: (1) spend five minutes before lights out writing about everything you have done. This might give you a soothing sense of achievement; or (2) spend five minutes writing a comprehensive to-do list. This could serve to offload your worries, or perhaps it will only make them more salient? To find out which is the better strategy, a team led by Michael Scullin at Baylor University, invited 57 volunteers to their sleep lab and had half of them try technique 1 and half try technique 2. Their findings are published in the latest issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. The participants, aged 18 to 30, attended the sleep lab at about 9pm on a weekday night. They filled out questionnaires about their usual sleep habits and underwent medical tests. Once in their sound-proofed room and wired up to equipment that uses brain waves to measure sleep objectively, they were told that lightsout would be 10.30pm. Before they tried to sleep, half of the participants spent five minutes ‘writing about everything you have to remember to do tomorrow and over the next few days’. The others spent the same
time writing about any activities they’d completed that day and over the previous few days. The key finding is that the participants in the to-do list condition fell asleep more quickly. They took about 15 minutes to fall asleep, on average, compared with 25 minutes for those in the ‘jobs already done’ condition. Moreover, among those in the to-do list group, the more thorough and specific their list, the more quickly they fell asleep, which would seem to support a kind of offloading explanation. Another interpretation is that busier people, who had more to write about, tended to fall asleep more quickly. But this is undermined by the fact that among the jobs-done group, those who wrote in more detail tended to take longer to fall asleep. ‘Rather than journal about the day’s completed tasks or process
tomorrow’s to-do list in one’s mind, the current experiment suggests that individuals spend five minutes near bedtime thoroughly writing a to-do list,’ the researchers said. Unfortunately, the experiment didn’t have a baseline no-intervention control group, so it’s possible that the shorter time-to-sleep of the to-do list writing intervention was actually a reflection of journalling about completed jobs making it harder to fall asleep. Also, note the current sample didn’t have any sleep problems. Scullin and his team say the next step is to conduct a longerrunning randomised control trial of the to-do list intervention outside of the sleep lab, with people who do and don’t have sleep-onset insomnia. Dr Christian Jarrett for the Research Digest www.bps.org.uk/digest The article: tinyurl.com/y86schqm
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Screen time – no longer black and white Jon Sutton reports from a one-day event on research, policy and communication in a digital era
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Now that I have a teenage son, I regularly find myself saying things like ‘You’re not even playing Fifa, you’re watching videos of people playing Fifa!’, or (my new favourite) ‘When you’re older, you’ll wish you’d used this time to learn how to play guitar’. Opening this event at the Wellcome Collection in London, Dr Pete Etchells, a Reader in Psychology and Science Communication at Bath Spa University, promised to ‘start changing the conversation a little bit’. Would the assembled scientists, parents and journalists give me a fresh perspective on screen time? With a ‘30,000-foot view of the area to ease you into the topic’, Professor Andy Przybylski (University of Oxford) began by pointing out the lack of theoretical or philosophical grounding in the area. We don’t talk about ‘book time’, ‘food time’, yet the idea has grown that there is ‘an analogue way’ that is wholesome, genuine, and draws out our true selves. ‘Everything was fine until a second way of being, the digital way, was invented.’ This is core to the ‘displacement hypothesis’ that every moment in front of a screen displaces an analogue moment (which would inevitably have led to you being a rock star of the future). Yet the evidence simply doesn’t back this up. It’s nearly all correlational work, and even the best evidence (from large-scale social data) shows only
very small effects on sleep (duration, onset), health (activity, general), functioning (social), and behaviour (aggression). Why are we talking about something that accounts for 1 per cent of variability? Why is it the topic of countless scaremongering headlines, of pop science books (Greenfield, Zimbardo, Atler, Twenge), of recommendations (the American Academy of Pediatrics 2x2 rule – no screen time under two, two hours over two), and even laws (South Korea’s ‘Cinderella Law’)? It comes back to this idea that there’s something intrinsic about screens that sets them apart from other fields of human endeavour. But there’s nothing new under the sun: similar concerns were raised in the past around the printing press. There’s another perspective: techno-utopianism. Could screen use help us make friends online, feel connected, and receive social support in tough times? Przybylski partnered with NHS Digital on the What About YOUth Study, adding four items to a questionnaire for 120,000 English 15-year-olds. He found some support for the ‘Goldilocks Hypothesis’ – that increasing doses of screen time are positively associated with wellbeing up to a point, and then are associated with lower levels of wellbeing. That point is around an hour, but the subsequent effects are quite small anyway: ‘It’s about a third the size of missing breakfast or not getting enough
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sleep, even with excessive amounts of screen time such as five to eight hours.’ Dr Sue Fletcher-Watson (University of Edinburgh) was also leaning towards techno-utopianism, or at least away from ‘some heyday on the Tube in London with everyone singing Knees up Mother Brown in the aisles’. She works with children with ADHD, ASD, and developmental language disorder, and finds important positives of screen time with these sometimes marginalised groups – cognitive and perceptual stimulation, supplementary modes of communication, connections with peer communities, participation, self-confidence. ‘We need to translate beyond the specific thing being explored, to say something broader about transactions in a digitally enabled space,’ she urged. Technology can be used as a motivator, or facilitator, for social interaction. In her research she has used ‘discrepant’ game versions, with added/subtracted/changed elements used to encourage communication. It’s difficult to change established narratives to consider these more positive views of screen time. Alice Kay, a Press Officer at Science Media Centre – an organisation that works with journalists and scientists to improve the accuracy of news coverage of science – pointed out that screen time is often linked to things people love to hate… sedentary behaviour, tech companies. As scientists, make yourself available, she urged: ‘there is safety in numbers’, and ‘we’ll get the media to “do” science better when scientists “do” the media better’. Tom Chivers, until recently Buzzfeed
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the psychologist march 2018 news science correspondent, agreed. Journalists and scientists need to better understand each other’s timescales, he admitted (‘It’s like mayflies trying to understand continental drift’). Public understanding of science is also key: ‘Most people don’t realise science is an ongoing process… the subconscious model is that the scientist goes into the science mine with a data chisel, and comes out with a nugget.’ This makes research areas such as screen time – with its correlational studies and tiny effects – problematic. Chivers was hopeful though, that the state of science will improve, and that the media will move on. One of Douglas Adams’s brilliant laws will come into play: anything that is in the world when you’re born is just a natural part of the way the world works, anything that’s invented between when you’re 15 and 35 is new and exciting and revolutionary, and anything invented after you’re 35 is against the natural order of things. The media will soon be run by people who grew up with iPhones. In fact the debate has already moved on somewhat, with video-game violence becoming less of an obsession. ‘We’ve wasted a lot of good scientists and research time trying to answer this one question,’ said Pete Etchells, ‘when it’s just one part of video-game use.’ And it’s another aspect that’s plagued by confounding effects: family environment, personality, what your friends do. Etchells and his colleagues recently looked longitudinally at game play and a clinical measure of aggression (conduct disorder), and did find an association between playing violent video games at age eight, and aggressive behaviour at 15. ‘But it’s a weak absolute risk’, and other factors such as competitiveness in games may be as important as the ‘violence’ aspect. What even is a ‘violent’ game anyway? Minecraft was banned in Turkey. ‘We can do better than this I think,’ Etchells concluded. ‘It’s a big mess, basically.’ The man to sort out a mess is Chris Chambers, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at Cardiff University. A tireless advocate of Reproducible Open Science, he considered what makes a research field controversial. Political bias and partisan framing, high media traction and high potential public impact through policy all play a part. So we need believable research findings to inform the debate: methodologically sound, presented impartially, reported openly and transparently, reproducible/questionable quality relative to impact. Screen time ‘strikes out pretty big on this,’ Chambers said: ‘It’s a bit of a wasteland.’ We see small samples, publication bias, retrofitting of hypotheses, analytic cherry-picking… ‘it’s spraying bullets at a wall and drawing the target around where bullets happen to land’. The solution? The ‘open science evidence pyramid’. Too often in this area (and others), psychologists are ‘languishing down here in hell’ at the base of the pyramid with ‘status quo research that is barely worth a mention’; above is ‘exploratory open science’, which is fine for generating questions but should not directly inform policy; confirmatory open science (relevant to policy makers but beware of publication bias); registered reports (with methods and planned analyses shared in advance,
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and publication regardless of results); Changing screen behaviour and, right at the top, meta-analysis of registered reports. It’s not the At an event held at the at the Houses of Parliament at the end of way many psychologists work, and January the British Psychological Society launched its briefing Chambers has inevitably met with paper Changing Behaviour: Children, Adolescents and Screen Use (see resistance and a frustratingly slow www.bps.org.uk/news-and-policy/changing-behaviour-childrenpace of change. But, he told me later, adolescents-and-screen-use). The evening event, jointly hosted by the ‘I’m right, and they know I’m right. BPS and Mental Health Foundation, was chaired by Dr Lisa Cameron They come round in the end’. MP, Mental Health Spokesperson for the SNP and Chair of the So is the area of screen All-Party Parliamentary Group on Psychology. time simply a ‘perfect storm’ of In addition to calls for studies to identify causality and for the use methodological, media and policy of more qualitative methods, the briefing paper’s recommendations for confusion? Psychology in microcosm, families or carers include: even? In discussion, Professor • Minimise screen use before bedtime. Dorothy Bishop (University of Oxford) • Encourage children to engage in a variety of activities away from suggested the problem is wider. screens. A lot of epidemiological research is • Parents/carers should discuss the different aspects of digital like this: around food and alcohol media with their children and encourage positive media use. for example. People, she said, are • Spend time online together to help young children get the most naturally vigilant for the ‘tiger in from educational content. the undergrowth’, and they tend to discount negative findings. ‘Even a lot of people who have jobs as researchers are not particularly good at considering their own cognitive processes.’ We ‘lean heavily on the crutch of the precautionary principle’ when considering how much risk is acceptable, particularly for our children. What do parents want from us as psychologists? Tamsin Greenough Graham represented the Parenting Science Gang, 2000 parents united by a desire to have scientific evidence to drive parenting. She said that a The day made me see screens differently in two ways. common fear amongst parents is the judgement of other parents and healthcare professionals, many of whom ask: Firstly, there seems no doubt that we need to make open research and replicated designs more commonplace ‘How long does your child spend in front of screens each in all areas, particularly controversial ones. But given day?’ In determining whether it’s a problem, Greenough that parents and policy makers don’t want to know what Graham said ‘We don’t know those answers. The evidence they can’t use, they want to know what they information has not been made available to us, at least in can use, we need to become more comfortable with a way we can use it.’ But she also reported that parents saying ‘We don’t know. But here’s why we don’t know’. want to know the benefits of screen time, and what Secondly, screen time is no longer black and white. screen time life skills we need to teach our children. As Fletcher-Watson pointed out, there is a harm ‘If our children were off playing with LEGO during that associated with taking screens away. They are important time, none of us would feel guilty. We value LEGO. for connection, and they offer opportunities for learning, What is there to value about screen time? Tell us.’ particularly with vulnerable populations. As she There was still time to flick across several other concluded: ‘We’re putting screen time into a bucket on channels in the discussion. Press releases – read your its own. Instead, we should be taking what we know own, include what the study doesn’t show, avoid hype). from other areas of psychology. Przybylski concurred: Schools have a role to play – there is a suggestion they ‘A discussion of screen time that is divorced from a are financially rewarded for finding ‘problems’ with discussion of family life in general is pointless.’ their pupils, and Pete Etchells pointed to the important With Fletcher-Watson’s encouragement to ‘join Wellcome project to train trainee teachers to critically children in the online worlds they inhabit’ uppermost analyse neuroscience. There’s the question of how we in my mind, I arrived home. ‘I’ve been to an event on model ‘responsible’ screen use as adults and parents. screen time,’ I told my eldest. ‘I’m going to try to better And the thorny issue of the financial models of the tech understand what you’re doing and why.’ ‘Oh great,’ companies, and the behavioural science they conduct he replied, barely looking up. themselves (internal, unseen, closely guarded).
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The brains of experts
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Getty Images
Merim BilaliÄ&#x2021; considers the cognitive processes behind the neuroscience
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the psychologist march 2018 expertise
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Understanding the ways in which experts achieve their incredible feats would satisfy our curiosity, and also give us insight into the functioning of the human brain at its best. This may help us prepare better training programmes for future experts. The study of expertise is as old as the discipline itself, but what does modern psychology and neuroscience say about peak performance?
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atching the best experts can leave you struggling to come to grips with what you have just seen. Consider the ease with which Serena Williams, who has already won 23 Grand Slam titles, returns the fastest tennis serves. Or how the current world chess champion, Norwegian Magnus Carlsen, takes on and demolishes a dozen opponents simultaneously while blindfolded, in a game where there are more possible combinations of moves than atoms in the universe, and even the most powerful computer would need an eternity to go through all the possibilities. You would be forgiven for thinking that some kind of trick or magic is involved. You do not even have to look for the very best experts; a trip to your local radiologist, who takes only a split second to realise that all is fine with the X-rays of your lungs, should suffice. After all, radiological images are so complex that it is almost impossible for an untrained eye to spot suspicious tissue, especially with a single glance. It’s human nature to seek to understand such feats, so it should not surprise us that the scientific study of expertise is as old as the science of psychology itself. Beginning with Alfred Binet’s work on how chess masters play games without sight of the board, expertise has become an established part of any curriculum or textbook in cognitive psychology. Here I will summarise the main findings from the emerging subfield of expertise research, the neuroscience of expertise, which deals with the way the brain accommodates experts’ outstanding performance. Different kind of experts, same cognitive mechanisms Given the near impossibility of experts’ feats, it seems plausible to expect some outstanding basic abilities, if not supernatural powers. Unfortunately for comic book fans, the reality seems different. Athletes do not necessarily react faster than other people of the same age; chess experts’ ability to plan and pick the right strategies disappears when away from the chessboard; and radiologists are no better than you would be when they have to look for Wally instead of pathological tissues. Yet they remain vastly superior in their chosen domains. To understand the working of experts’ brains, it might help to look at situations where most people are everyday experts. Most of us can immediately realise upon entering a room what kind of room it is. We will also have no problem in finding a light switch,
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should the lights suddenly turn off. Since we have encountered numerous versions of various rooms, we know what kinds of objects to expect in certain rooms, as well as how those objects relate to each other. We will certainly not look for the light switch on the floor or the ceiling, nor would we expect to find a bed in an office. People who lack such ‘room-knowledge’, such as small children, will have a much harder time orienting themselves in rooms. Only through years of exposure to rooms with all their contents and different variations – through remembering, explicitly or implicitly, things that occur together in the environment – will they be able to reach a high level of proficiency even in such a routine everyday Key sources task. We find a similar situation Binet, A. (1966). Mnemonic virtuosity: with experts. Through years of A study of chess players [M.L. Simmel & exposure, experts have acquired S.B. Barron, Trans.]. Genetic Psychology knowledge about consistencies in Monographs. (Original work published their domain. Complex domains, 1894) Bilalić. M. (2017). The neuroscience such as radiology, chess or sport, of expertise. Cambridge: Cambridge obviously take more time to master University Press. than our everyday example of Bilalić, M., Grottenthaler, T., Nägele, rooms. However, all these domains T. & Lindig, T. (2016). The faces in feature ‘rules’ that are stable as well radiological images: Fusiform face area as situations that arise again and supports radiological expertise. Cerebral Cortex, 26(3), 1004–1014. again in one form or another. Bilalić, M., Kiesel, A., Pohl, C. et al. This knowledge, the information (2011). It takes two: Skilled recognition about the main features of the of objects engages lateral areas in domain and the relations between both hemispheres. PLoS ONE, 6(1), them, is stored in memory. Once e16202. experts encounter a seemingly new Bilalić, M., Langner, R., Erb, M. & Grodd, situation in their domain, they will W. (2010). Mechanisms and neural basis of object and pattern recognition: automatically activate the previously A study with chess experts. Journal of stored domain-specific knowledge. Experimental Psychology: General, 139(4), The consequence of this automatic 728–742. matching of patterns in the outside Bilalić, M., Turella, L., Campitelli, G. world and in the memory is that et al. (2012). Expertise modulates the experts quickly grasp the essence neural basis of context dependent recognition of objects and their of the new situation. Their memory relations. Human Brain Mapping, 33(11), has accumulated not only similar 2728–2740. combinations of details to the one at Ericsson., K.A., Hoffman, R.R., Kozbelt, hand, but also ways of dealing with A. & Williams, M.A. (Eds.). (2018). such situations. These methods are The Cambridge handbook of expertise automatically retrieved and help to and expert performance (2nd edn). Cambridge: Cambridge University focus on the important aspects and Press. ignore the irrelevant ones. Gobet, F. (2015). Understanding expertise: Experts, then, do not A multi-disciplinary approach. London: need extraordinary abilities to Palgrave Macmillan. comprehend the complex situations Hambrick, D.Z., Campitelli, G. & Brooke they face. Their knowledge enables N. Macnamara, B.N. (Eds.). (2017). The science of expertise: Behavioral, neural, them to look for the ‘light switch’ in and genetic approaches to complex skill. the right place. London: Routledge. Stored patterns of abnormalities, Nodine, C.F. & Krupinski, E.A. (1998). which recur in radiological images, Perceptual skill, radiology expertise, often allow experienced radiologists and visual test performance with NINA to spot that something is amiss even and WALDO. Academic Radiology, 5(9), 603–612. when they are allowed just a single glance at the image. This initial
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impression also leads to highly efficient searching – radiologists often zoom in on the suspicious tissue immediately, unlike residents at the beginning of their training who have to check the whole image to identify the elements of interest. Chess experts do not necessarily look further ahead than their less skilled colleagues; rather, their vast knowledge enables them to quickly identify promising paths. It might be too late to react even for the fastest among us when the tennis ball is in the air, but those who have enough experience would be able to tell the trajectory of the ball well before it is in the air. The positioning and movements of feet, knees, shoulders and the serving hand in tennis give away clues about the direction and power of a tennis serve. Experts, then, may not possess extraordinary abilities, but their knowledge is akin to a flashlight that is used to find the right path in a complex and seemingly badly lit environment. Novices, lacking such a tool, have no other strategy but to slowly and carefully feel their way forward in hope they will eventually stumble on the right solution (see Figure 1). The universal expertise mechanism The influence of knowledge is also evident in the way the brain accommodates the described cognitive machinery. Radiologists’ knowledge is visual in nature and it engages the brain areas responsible for dealing with visual information. There are no differences between experienced radiologists and medical students in the early visual areas in the occipital cortex, which process stimuli for basic visual characteristics such as shape and size. The later visual areas in the inferotemporal cortex deal with complex visual patterns, such as words and faces. In particular, the fusiform gyrus (FG), a spindle-shaped area at the bottom of the brain, is more activated in radiologists when they look at radiological images. The activated part of the FG is responsible for holistic processing, a process whereby a complex stimulus, usually formed of several parts, is perceived as a single unit. Faces would be a prime example of such holistic perception, as we do not really notice the individual parts of the face, but rather process the face as a whole. The same seems to be the case with radiological images, which, like faces, are made up of variable elements situated in fixed locations. Chess positions are also visual stimuli, but unlike radiological images, chess objects in chess positions need to be mentally manipulated. Players need to simulate how the situation will look at some time in the future. This means that besides the aforementioned FG, chess experts activate the neighbouring area important for scene perception, the parahippocampal gyrus, as well as the brain parts specialised for navigation, the retrosplenial cortex. These two brain areas are responsible for quick orientation within a chess position, as they are highly active in expert players while being only sporadically engaged in
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the psychologist march 2018 expertise
relevant knowledge to achieve novices, who lack knowledge about their outstanding performance. chess constellations. Another neural signature of The fact that the human brain expertise is that the network of possesses neural mechanisms for brain areas that experts engage is dealing with stimuli, which are larger than that of novices. This both new (on an evolutionary is in contrast to a widespread timescale) and artificial (not belief, among not only laypeople occurring in the ‘natural’ but also other researchers, environment), such as radiological Merim Bilalić is Professor that the reduction of neuronal images and chess positions, is of Cognitive Psychology at activity, often taken as an index a testament to its adaptability Northumbria University merim. of neural efficiency, is a hallmark and plasticity. We find a similar bilalic@northumbria.ac.uk of expertise. The reduction in situation in sports, where sequences neuronal activity makes sense given of movements similar to those of that experts’ performance is mostly effortless, based on everyday life are of crucial importance. The central automated and parallel processes. This may indeed be areas responsible for the initiation of movements are the case with fronto-parietal areas that are important also engaged when experts observe the movements of for executive functions. What is often forgotten other athletes. With the help of prefrontal and parietal is that these processes require domain-specific regions, which are believed to simulate the outcome knowledge in order to function efficiently. Experts’ of the movements observed in the central areas, tennis performances may look effortless, but there is complex experts, and other sporting experts, foresee what is cognitive machinery behind them that requires the going to happen. This anticipation skill, powered by support of a number of brain areas. The activation the brain areas aptly named the action observation and manipulation of all the necessary knowledge network, is the reason why the very best athletes unavoidably leads to neural expansion in the areas that regularly give the impression of having all the time are associated with that knowledge. Novices, on the in the world in an environment where split-second other hand, lack the necessary knowledge and cannot responses decide between success and failure. rely on those complex but efficient knowledge-based strategies. Their performance may look cumbersome and effortful, but it is only because it relies on crude Double-take of expertise strategies that do not require that much in the way of As we have seen, different domains require vastly different brain areas, whether it is inferotemporal areas neural reserves. One way in which the brain deals with increased in radiology and chess, or parietal and central regions demand from experts’ strategies is greater activation in sports. The underlying principle, however, is the within a single brain area, usually one that is important same, because the brain has differently specialised for the neural mechanism necessary for the task at neural mechanisms for dealing with different kinds hand. Often the same areas in the opposite hemisphere of information. All experts nevertheless use domain-
Figure 1. The global impression in radiology and experts’ efficient search in chess based on the first impression. When presented with chest X-rays for a very short time that precludes deliberate search, radiologists are still able to identify a large number of pathologies (dotted line, 50 per cent, is chance level). Expert chess players do not need to search the whole board to identify certain objects like novices, but instead focus immediately on the important aspects in the environment.
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of the brain also become engaged in experts. This is not only the case in the expertise domains we have discussed so far, but also in other fields, such as mental calculations, abacus calculation and mathematics. Most likely, the engagement of the additional areas in the opposite hemisphere, dubbed the ‘doubletake of expertise’, is related to the complexity of strategies employed by experts. We know that most tasks recruit brain areas in one hemisphere. Only when the task becomes difficult and the brain needs additional resources does it recruit additional areas. These supplementary areas regularly happen to be the same areas as previously employed, but in the opposite hemisphere. The sharing of the computational burden between both hemispheres may support the parallel processes so common and essential in experts’ performance.
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Transfer of skill The performance of Serena Williams is in many respects exactly the opposite of the performance of Magnus Carlsen. Being physically fit is certainly not a bad idea in chess where games can last up to six hours, but it is not going to propel you to the elite (unless you are taking part in the newly established sport of chess-boxing). Similarly, looking ahead and calculating your opponent’s moves, even if they are physical movements, won’t win you many points in tennis. At first sight, the performances of experienced radiologists, chess grandmasters and professional athletes have little in common, save only their exceptionality. Even the brain areas that they engage to support their outstanding performance are different. Yet, all experts, without exception, employ the numerous patterns from their domain to circumvent inherent cognitive and neural limitations. This is also the reason why there is limited transfer between domains. Most people would agree that Magnus Carlsen would probably not be a good tennis player just because he is an amazing chess player. Similarly, it is difficult to imagine that Serena Williams could transfer her considerable tennis skills to the chessboard. However, even if we take more similar domains, transfer is questionable. It is a fair guess that neither Serena nor Magnus would be outstanding at another racket sport, badminton, and another board game, Go, respectively. Tennis and badminton are similar, but the seemingly small differences, such as the weight of the racket and the size of the court, add up to vastly different game situations. All the patterns and sequences of movements and moves stored in Serena’s and Magnus’ memories are of little use in badminton and Go. The fact that natural talent is no substitute for experience was clearly on display back in August, when a mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter, Connor McGregor, took on one of the best boxers of recent years, Floyd Mayweather Jr, in a boxing match. Even though boxing constitutes only a small skill set in
Figure 2. The double-take of expertise. Radiologists activate both fusiform gyri when they deal with briefly presented chest X-rays, unlike medical students who engage only single hemisphere.
MMA, where striking and grappling with both hands and legs, both while standing and on the ground, is allowed, at least some people believed that McGregor’s speed, athleticism and youth could erase the advantage of accumulated knowledge acquired through years of experience. McGregor was not completely embarrassed, but proved to be without a prayer in a one-sided beat down. Conclusion I hope it is clear that we cannot understand the neural basis of expertise if we do not take into account the cognitive processes behind the phenomenon. Traditional research on expertise demonstrates how basic cognitive processes, such as memory, attention and perception, come together to enable experts’ outstanding performance. It tells us why some athletes appear to have all the time in the world in domains where everything changes and moves quickly, why chess grandmasters can foresee the future without really looking more than a couple of moves ahead, and why radiologists need just a split second to realise that something is amiss in a radiological image. Somewhat disappointingly, there are no superpowers, but the beauty of expertise lies exactly in the way that experts nevertheless circumvent their limited cognition to pull off their amazing feats. The end product of expertise may look mesmerisingly simple, even effortless, but the process requires a complex interplay between basic cognitive processes to make it work. That our brain is able to accommodate such complex machinery is a testament to its incredible adaptability.
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the psychologist march 2018 expertise
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Placing mind in the metropolis Our journalist Ella Rhodes speaks to psychologists about what we need to bring to our urban spaces
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the psychologist march 2018 cities Guido Iafigliola www.glitchdo.com
More than half of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s population lives in an urban area. According to the United Nationsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; World Cities Report 2016, three-quarters of cities have higher levels of income inequalities than 20 years ago; there are growing populations, slums and insecure settlements; more people than ever are having to migrate involuntarily; and many cities are facing threats associated with the environment and climate change. Could the design of our cities combat some of these challenges, and embrace the changes technology will bring? Is psychology well placed to form the foundation of the cities of the future?
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ities can sometimes feel like the world in microcosm… beyond the wide-open spaces of rural areas, the everyday interactions and experiences of people can feel squashed and squeezed into urban life. Psychology itself can feel concentrated and magnified. The rich and powerful rub shoulders with the down and out. Sometimes this is brought into sharp relief: when I talk to Dr Daniel Masterson, who works as a consultant giving advice to local authorities on healthy urban planning, the Grenfell Tower disaster is fresh in his mind. Masterson wasn’t surprised that cost (in a deprived part of the borough) and the external appearance of the building were placed ahead of the safety of residents. ‘The reason for this cladding wasn’t to improve the Key sources community, it was done to the community for the benefit of another area of the community. APA Task Force on Urban Psychology The work we do as psychologists (2005). Toward an urban psychology. is to help people to live longer tinyurl.com/y7vtmt8p Centre for Urban Design and Mental with better quality of life. A lot Health: www.urbandesignmentalhealth has been undone by inequality in Clayton, S. et al. (2017). Mental health society; where you’re born seems and our changing climate. Washington, to have a greater impact on your DC: APA and ecoAmerica. tinyurl.com/ health and wellbeing than anything ycznk2yb psychologists can do. I think it’s Corcoran, R. et al. (2017). Places change minds: Exploring the psychology of something we’re obligated to inform urbanicity using a brief contemplation in some way.’ method. SAGE Open, April–June, These are challenging times pp.1–11. doi:10.1177/2158244017707004 for crystal ball gazers. Society Environmental Design Research has reached a strange impasse Association: www.edra.org. where technology has never Galeo, S. (2016, 16 September). Shaping the urban brain [Blog post]. Scientific been smarter and unimaginable American Mind. tinyurl.com/y8q8zeqj advances are likely to be affecting Glaeser, E. (2017). Triumph of the us very soon, but where we also city: Engines of innovation. Scientific face enormous threats, politically American Mind, March, pp.102–105. and environmentally, which make Javadi, A-H. et al. (2017). Hippocampal the future difficult to see. Yet all and prefrontal processing of network topology to simulate the future. Nature the psychologists we spoke to Communications, 8. doi:10.1038/ vehemently agreed on two themes ncomms14652 as vital in helping our cities of Lido, C. et al. (2016). Older learning the future to flourish – health and engagement in the modern city. inequality. They felt that psychology International Journal of Lifelong has an opportunity to place itself in Education, 35(5), 490–508. United Nations Human Settlements the heart of cities, but that to do so Programme (UN-Habitat) (2016). psychologists must embrace their Urbanization and development: Emerging neighbours in other disciplines futures. World Cities Report 2016. and use all available tools to build Nairobi: Author. better, fairer urban areas.
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Finding direction My journey into the heart of the city begins with Dr Hugo Spiers from University College London. We start off with bricks and mortar, but quickly veer off into psychology’s accepted place in a city. Spiers tells me there used to be psychologists within many architecture departments [and indeed see our piece at tinyurl.com/psyoct06]. Yet he adds, ‘I’ve spoken to large construction firms and they’ll say, “Look, we don’t want to hear about p-values, we just want to know does it work?” But that’s the antithesis of what we do as scientists. I don’t go on the Today programme and say, “Our data shows it works 100% of the time!” Buildings are a piece of engineering and
From the ground up The problem with integrating nuggets of psychological wisdom into our design of a whole city is that even if we can make sense of the evidence and translate it into a design, it cannot easily be integrated into a comprehensive approach. Designs of many post-war housing estates have taken into account the needs of users at the time and often featured lots of green spaces, access to transport and shops. Although these estates were designed with the needs of ordinary people in mind, many of them are now considered model examples of how not to design modern housing. Where did it go wrong? Of course, there is not one simple reason. One factor might be the scale of these designs and the impossibility of one masterplan to accommodate the many different small-scale interactions and transactions inhabitants might need or want. Whatever the looks of the city of the future, we know people will thrive when they have the ability to make a living, when they belong to different groups and have stable relationships, when they can rely on being cared for when necessary, when they feel a sense of control over their environment and future and when they trust neighbours and local government to do the right thing. The challenge in designing cities of the future is in organising the conversation surrounding these questions, not just among psychologists but across disciplines, and especially involving residents and other institutions. The future city is not designed topdown by some all-knowing visionary but has scope for horizontal exchange and bottom-up influence. In order to achieve that, the process of building a thriving community becomes part and parcel of the design process itself. Professor Tom Postmes University of Groningen
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the psychologist march 2018 cities
Transport choices
what goes into them now is incredible, but you can’t apply smart technology to buildings and just assume it’ll work for people… human beings are very complex. The jump to psychology, neuroscience and smart technology is big, but it’s really hard for firms to get their heads round.’ While companies happily accept ‘neuroscience’ in guiding buildings and urban plans, Spiers said psychology was also essential. ‘A lot of what we need to do is bring psychology into this field with just a sprinkling of neuroscience. Over time I expect more neuroscience will enter the game, but what is really needed now is methods and innovations from psychology. People’s perception of psychology isn’t fully rounded, and that’s very true in real estate – a major focus is on spending money, organising sites and energy consumption calculations. From their world of green or smart buildings neuroscience fits in as a ‘hard science’, but psychology doesn’t.’ Spiers has spent his career exploring the neural mechanics of navigation, and how the modern age is affecting this ability. He recently worked with the company The Centric Lab in London on secondment. The company is trying to create a vision of the city of the future using psychology and neuroscience. In recent years Spiers has been assessing people’s navigation within real cities, rather than in simulated experiments. One study has shown the areas of the brain involved with navigation don’t tend to be activated when people are passive in navigation – or using a sat-nav for example. ‘A big challenge we face is going from “this is how your brain responds” to “this is predictive of a good experience”. Your brain might well be doing all sorts of things, but it doesn’t mean we can say, “Because your brain will be active in these ways, we know you will be upset or confused.” You need to ask people things and you need to study human behaviour and psychometrics and psychology, characterising how people behave and their emotional reactions to things, in well-constructed questionnaires. Carefully understanding people’s experience using experimental psychological methods has a lot of potential and needs to be brought into the worlds of real estate and architecture more.’ Spiers and colleagues are embracing technology as a useful tool for those designing buildings and spaces
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Our city centres are clogged with cars, so I expect we will see many changes to the modes of transport people use in them. But I think many people are overly optimistic about how fast the use of driverless cars will grow, and about the success they will have. They will have major benefits in terms of safety and mobility for our ageing society, but people will take time to adjust to the changes. We see that with Europeans sticking to manual gear-shift cars despite automatic cars being readily available. And with the introduction of ABS we expected to see fewer accidents but, actually, people felt safer so braked later and more accidents happened. It’s difficult to know how people will respond to new transport technologies. Driverless cars may also appear in cities last, given the complexity of the road systems and the number of pedestrians and cyclists. Lots of progress has been made, but we can’t afford machines to make an error here. With automated vehicles, it’s likely we’ll see fewer accidents, but when accidents do happen they’ll probably involve many more vehicles and get a lot of attention in the news (like plane crashes do). There is also likely to be an increase in the diversity of means of transport – we see it a lot in the Netherlands already with bicycles which can reach 45 km/h. Professor Dick de Waard University of Groningen
with people in mind, allowing them to experience a place before it really exists. ‘You can put someone in immersive virtual reality in a film simulation and they can experience a journey through streets. This changes the power of psychology experiments; you will be able to put people through the exact same 3D film experience, can measure where they all look, how they feel, plot their head and eye movements, delete and edit the landscape and move buildings and delete them.’ While navigation will be important for new and growing cities, Spiers said he hoped that health would be at the forefront of designing for new metropolises. ‘In a nutshell, I’d like to see cities of the future designed with health in mind… Can we make inspiring cities that nurture our mental and physical wellbeing?’ Towards better mental health Writing for Scientific American Mind Dean of the Boston School of Public Health Sandro Galea described the increased health risks cities bring with them. Asthma,
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depression, cancer and overall rates of mortality have been linked to living in a city. In the 1930s sociologists Robert Faris and H. Warren Dunham documented a high concentration of schizophrenia and other mental health problems in the slums of Chicago, while a recent meta-analysis showed urban areas were associated with a 39 per cent greater risk of mood disorders and a 21 per cent greater risk of anxiety disorders. PTSD symptoms are also more commonly found in the city, with an astonishing 40 per cent of patients arriving at Chicago’s John H. Stroger Jr Hospital showing signs of the disorder. Psychology Professor Rhiannon Corcoran (University of Liverpool) and her husband, Urban Designer Graham Marshall, have teamed up in recent years on the Prosocial Place Programme (PPP). This aims to tackle this higher prevalence of severe mental health problems in cities, called the urbanicity effect, and improve cities in terms of how good they are for mental health and wellbeing. ‘What we want to do
is provide a decent social scientific evidence base… trying to analyse what it is about places that make them distressing for us so we can then begin to build hypotheses on how to make them better.’ There are many theories about why cities seem to be so bad for mental health, with ‘social drift’ being favoured by some – the idea that those in distress may move to cities to find work or accommodation. Yet birth cohort studies in Scandinavia seem to suggest the ill effects of cities are dose-dependent – the more time we spend in cities as children, the more likely we are to experience mental illness. ‘People are also starting to think about things such as traffic, highways and pollution and the stress of inner-city living. Some have suggested that it’s got to do with the perceived resource of an environment, whether or not you believe you’re living in areas of deprivation or low quality,’ Corcoran tells me. One of the PPP’s first published studies asked participants simply to contemplate photos of
Beyond basic needs Cities should fulfil our ‘basic needs’, in terms of Maslow’s hierarchy – food, water and shelter. But that is not enough for the cities of the future. The built environment also needs to make us feel safe, connected, and inspired (to learn, be creative, play and be active). How can our cities be enhanced to optimise and fulfil these needs? First, architectural practices need to focus on building relationships with and between their users. For example, the Living Architecture Systems Group looks at how architecture can elicit qualities that come close to life – environments that can move, respond, learn, adapt and empathise with their inhabitants. As well as needing spaces that interact with their users, we need spaces that enable interactions between users. Helping people build connections with others is a major part of a healthy city. The built environment also needs to care for its inhabitants. The design of a building should focus on having the maximum impact on wellbeing, and this is particularly important in schools and hospitals, where things like the amount of nature and light available to people affects their healing and learning. Finally, we need to consider how the physical aspects of the built environment can affect us psychologically, so that we can optimise the design of a space to enhance needs such as perceptions of safety or inspiration and awe. This is
where neuroscience comes in. For example, researchers in the built environment have begun to use skin conductivity or EEG data to understand the ‘emotional topographies’ of an area (Colin Ellard, Urban Realities Laboratory). Augmented and virtual reality can also be used to experiment with different designs or scenarios even before they are built. Understanding the psychological impact of a design on its potential users means that the design can be reworked and optimised to elicit a desired feeling or response. As new technologies develop and cities become smarter, the built environment is likely to become more emotionally in tune with its users. Although there is a lot of promise in this area, as with any psychological research, there are also ethical considerations to make sure this work is not causing harm to the city’s inhabitants. How can we ensure the psychological impact of a design is positive for all users? How can we make sure a place actually is safe and doesn’t just feel safe? As long as we take these sorts of questions into account, the incorporation of psychological methods in designing cities is likely to help make them healthier and happier places to live. Lucy Barrett Design Researcher for the government-funded Future Cities Catapult
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the psychologist march 2018 cities
The personality of cities We created the Urban Psyche assessment, where you can do a personality test on a city… we’ve carried these out in around 20 cities. It’s not perfect, but it leads to a different form of discussion about where the city can go. You can focus on healing the fractures that come out. Mannheim, in Germany, came out as having a lack of confidence… what do you do when a place lacks confidence? Arts programmes may be one thing. These assessments force you to get out of whatever silo you’re in and consider that the solution may be a combined one.
So much about cities is calculated in an economic way, but human emotions are just so much more sophisticated. Our social and tribal natures bump into each other all the time. When we feel at ease, we’re more social and the city becomes more pleasant in general; when things feel like they’re moving too fast, people close in. Many of the things that make people feel psychologically good are to do with old-fashioned words like beauty. Confusing the priorities, not thinking there can be another way: those are barriers to psychologically healthy cities. We need to really understand the
residential places and assessed distress-related variables before and after. After looking at the photos, participants seemed to think about the future less and felt more risk of threatening events when looking at the less desirable areas. In more recent work, submitted for publication, groups of students were guided on a walk around Liverpool from its leafy, relatively affluent suburbs to inner-city areas of deprivation. They filled in diaries along the way. ‘Some of the more interesting findings for me were incidental things we did,’ Corcoran says. ‘We asked students to assess the relative socio-economic status of their family at the beginning and end of the walk. At the end they recognised their relative privilege rather better – there was a significant increase in how well off they saw themselves. It seems going to places reminds you of your place in the social world. That was really quite powerful.’ People were also asked to imagine they had a certain amount of money that could be given to community groups to improve the neighbourhood. Across the walk there was a significant change in the amount people would theoretically give. ‘We think places have a powerful effect on altruism – which is where the Prosocial Place Programme really came from, the idea that our social cognition, our ability to be a sociable species and cooperate, will be impacted by the places we live.’ Beyond the immediate What do Corcoran’s findings mean for urban planning? She talks in terms of resources. ‘If people perceive resource in their environment – and I mean resource in a very wide sense, including green space, features like heritage buildings, beautiful windows, well-maintained gardens – this will tell people whether they can afford to behave in a prosocial manner. This is consistent with life history theory, from evolutionary psychology:
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deeper motivations and feelings of the people living in a city and what makes life meaningful for them. You must link things about health and mental health with other aspects like jobs or the aesthetics of the place. Then embed characteristics of what makes you feel good about a place or project into designs of buildings. Charles Landry Co-author with Chris Murray of Psychology & the City: The Hidden Dimension (2017, Comedia), who both also created the Urban Psyche assessment
that if we live in an environment that seems to be low on the resources we need to thrive, we are going to quicken our life history, we’re going to future discount. We’ll do things for immediate gratification, we’ll get hedonic wellbeing and quick rewards, because we can’t afford to think about the future too much if we don’t know if we’re going to be flourishing. This is an adaptive reaction: the behavioural life choices people make are primed by their environment, and it potentially explains a lot of the characteristics you see in groups of people living in deprived conditions.’ So if we change places to feel more well-resourced, more cared-for, could this lead to better community spirit and potentially more altruism? ‘I think it’s really important for psychologists to be involved with this,’ Corcoran says. ‘We can ask the right questions. Architecture in the 20th and 21st century has been about “starrytechture” – the big impressive buildings. These tend to be statements of the architect, not about the human experience of the building or how well a place makes people feel. Those human questions are the ones we want to ask and the ones we’re trained to ask.’ Yet even more so than psychologists, communities need to be involved too. ‘Most people know what makes a nice place and somewhere people want to live,’ Corcoran says. ‘We can analyse those kinds of responses to build the themes that would then build guidance and policy. Furthermore, we have shown that getting people involved in designing their places is good for them – it has wellbeing benefits.’
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complain to the local authority that there’s too many cars on the streets, roads are too busy, so the priority for elected members is to think about improving traffic flow and parking provision, but they don’t prioritise reducing traffic volume by promoting cycling or walking – and that gets passed on to officers through the chain of command. This is how the planning system works.’ Big data and big opportunities Dr Catherine Lido (University of Glasgow) has been working alongside the Urban Big Data Centre within the integrated Multimedia City Data (iMCD) project since it launched in 2013. The project has involved an in-depth household survey of 1500 people, capturing movements using GPS tracking, taking real-time recordings of people’s day-to-day lives in cities using wearable cameras, and capturing the holistic activity of Glasgow using social media posts about the city across a year. Her team’s survey measured demographics, attitudes, behaviours and knowledge in an attempt to capture how inequality emerges within education. In one of the first published studies from the data they found older adults struggle to continue learning, both formally and informally, if they felt unsafe or as if they didn’t belong in their urban communities. Lido said psychologists shouldn’t be coy about coming to the table in terms of urban design. ‘We can work at the individual level and the academic level, and we occasionally dip a toe into the policy level. But I rarely meet psychologists involved with urban planning. The movement towards smart cities had to start with digital and infrastructure issues, and now they’ve got them rolling I think social inclusion is very much on the radar. What’s going on in the world now with Brexit, Trump, the migrant crisis, hate crimes and ethnic tensions has made us realise we can’t just look at digital infrastructure of cities and smart cards, now
Getty Images
Cold, hard realities Resources. ‘Beautiful’, ‘nice’ places. I don’t want to shatter the futuristic visions of clean, green, opulent city spaces, but are they realistic in these ‘austere times’? I think back to Daniel Masterson, who knows the realities of local authorities having worked closely with Stoke-on-Trent City Council public health and planning staff. He told us that while the National Planning Policy Framework in England makes reference to the importance of health in new developments, very often such impacts are considered an afterthought. Masterson delivered training on Health Impact Assessments (HIAs) and guided planning officers and developers. Yet many were not aware of their own healthy urban planning policies, or were simply too overstretched to give these policies their full attention. ‘Planning officers are very dedicated, but they’re constantly overworked, and health was largely seen as a bolt-on.’ Inequality emerged as a key issue for Masterson while working with developers. He noticed affluent areas attracted better-quality and healthier developments, while in poorer areas developers tend to invest less in healthy urban planning. In deprived areas, he said, there is greater pressure on local authorities to attract investment, which restricts a planning officer’s ability to negotiate. In addition, planning officers also have to consider a wide range of statutory requirements as well as local authority priorities. Masterson gave one example of a proposed development in Stoke-on-Trent that included green space but limited parking. Planning officers subsequently suggested removing some of the green space in favour of more parking: ‘I was involved in this proposed development and I thought the plans were fantastic. During a meeting one planning officer suggested leaving out some of the planned green space to fit more parking on the site. I was mortified. People
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the psychologist march 2018 cities
we need to work on the social inclusion aspects. That’s where psychologists have a much bigger role to play in the future, I hope.’ Interdisciplinary work is central to this, according to Lido. ‘I think the attitude towards stepping outside mainstream psychology is changing… psychologists are appearing increasingly in open access and non-psychology outlets, but there’s still a tension over whether that’s perceived academically as rigorous, and how it will impact our careers as psychologists. We are often told to specialise and not try to be ‘jack of all trades’, but how does this affect our responsiveness to change, particularly when novel data, methods and urban challenges come along? We need to listen to others in different disciplines, we need to be open to new conceptions of what data is, what psychology is, and new ways to communicate and collaborate so our findings are meaningfully used to address social challenges.’
and positivity. As Edward Glaeser wrote in Scientific American Mind, cities can be places that foster creativity. More cities in a country means higher income overall; in our cities life expectancy is higher; and in New York City the death rate by vehicle accidents is 70 per cent lower than the USA as a whole. Yes, concentrated populations can result in group conflict and tension, but the American Psychological Association’s urban taskforce concluded in their report that cities also have the capacity to develop intercultural harmony and sensitivity. Psychology is at the crossroads, perfectly placed to promote health, equality and togetherness in order to make cities places of not just technological, but social advances.
Coming together Amidst the uncertainty, and mountains to climb over equality and health, there is hope that cities will be places of unimaginable technological advance
When the waters come
Coastal zones are areas of deep concern when it comes to climate change; 60 per cent of the world’s population live in these areas, and 80 per cent of coastal populations live in cities. Of the world’s 19 largest cities, 14 are port cities. There are two primary threats to human wellbeing: slow-onset events (sea-level rise) and extreme weather events (hurricanes). EcoAmerica and the American Psychological Association have recently published two documents that illustrate the human impact of storm surges, sea-level rises, and more. These documents starkly demonstrate that climate change is already affecting communities. Areas in coastal Louisiana and islands in the Chesapeake Bay are losing land to erosion and rising seas. Recently, residents of the Isle de Jean Charles in Louisiana, which has lost 98 per cent of its land since 1955, became the first climate refugees in the United States. Currently, and in the future, coastal cities will need to address adaptation, resilience and risk preparedness from sea-level rise and extreme weather, not only for the physical infrastructure but also for the resident populations. The impacts on the individual of slow-onset events may include displacement, a sense of loss, helplessness, substance abuse and anxiety, while extreme weather events may lead to trauma, shock and strain on social relationships.
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The impact on community health may include loss of sense of belonging, increased violence and aggression, and social instability. Many of these outcomes are discussed in both the IPCC Group II Fifth Assessment and in the joint publications by ecoAmerica and the APA. The report Mental Health and Our Changing Climate states that psychology is well placed to address group process, community problemsolving, social cohesion and connectedness, a lack of trust between community members and institutions, differences in vulnerability, attitude–behaviour links, risk perception, and fear appeals. The report also argues that leaders in mental health have the opportunity to raise awareness of many of these issues. It suggests those in the field should remain up to date with climatechange news, run workshops on climate issues to inspire action in others, encourage and work with local community leaders to find solutions to climate-related issues, and support solutions by publicly sharing expertise to influence the media and policy makers. Dr Peter R. Walker Environmental psychologist and Representative for the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues at the United Nations in New York
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Elmore
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the psychologist march 2018 interview
Paul Stenner ‘Which of us is not constantly enjoined to transform ourselves into something we are not… yet?’ Our editor Jon Sutton meets social psychologist Professor Paul Stenner (Open University)
Talk to me about circles. If someone is suspended, in limbo, between these The German poet Rilke, who was a bit of genius, circles, these transitions, that’s when your idea of wrote ‘I live my life in ever widening circles’. I think ‘liminal hotspots’ comes into play? we all ‘move in circles’… within circles of friends Yes. I developed this liminal hotspot idea along with and acquaintances, and between cycles of activity Monica Greco, Johanna Motzkau, Megan Clinch and and routine that more or less repeat, like having a whole bunch of other great people. The concept of breakfast, travelling to work, writing a report, liminality is about movement between circles. If the trying to persuade our kids to do their homework. idea of a circle draws our attention to the more or Circulation is not just a shape less stable, recurrent things, then but a movement – like when a the idea of liminality draws our “If all goes well, as we spinning top gets its stability from attention to the movements and grow, we are able to affect activities between circles and to the its circular movement. Life is quite well described as a series of points at which a circle changes more things around us, interconnected circles of activity or and becomes something else. We and to be affected by more need both of these concepts: the practice. things around us” positions and the transitions, or I can identify with that… the stations and the relations. ever-decreasing circles… In anthropology, for example, Well, no, actually. Rilke wrote about a life of the ‘liminal phase’, is the middle phase of a rite of ever-widening circles – he was conveying a kind of passage. People in a rite of passage are between worlds. optimism about such ‘worlds’, our spheres of activity Young women going through an initiation ceremony, which are bound together into one big circle that for instance, are no longer girls but not yet women. gives our life as a whole a kind of unity, a ‘world’ of After the ceremony they will move into the circles experience. He was suggesting that as we get older, the of activity typical of young adults, but during the limits of our ‘world’ come to expand, qualitatively as liminal phase those social norms and expectations are well as quantitatively. If all goes well, as we grow, we suspended. Formal rites of passage may be much less are able to affect more things around us, and to common nowadays, but we still go through changes as be affected by more things around us. But there are we develop and as we move from sphere to sphere. always limits. Rilke ends his poem by saying ‘I may not complete this last one [i.e. last circle], but I give So you feel it’s still a relevant concept? myself to it’. I like that attitude. So, although Very much so. Sociologists like Zygmunt Bauman I appreciate that these circles might sound a bit and, more recently, Árpád Szakolczai have made abstract, for me they return us to a very concrete strong arguments about the contemporary relevance way of thinking about human life and psychology: of liminality. As a concept in anthropology, it had been a way of thinking that starts with embodied social limited to small scale, so-called ‘tribal’ societies, and practices. people like Victor Turner tended to stress only the
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positive side of liminal experience. If you apply the concept to today’s global and post-modern societies you see that, in lots of places, it is becoming less likely that there will be a temporary phase of transition from one stable circle of activity to another. Instead, the societal expectation is that a certain experience of liminality will be the norm rather than the exception. Give me an example. The changing nature of work. The expectation of a ‘job for life’ is being replaced by multiple, temporary, phases of quasi-employment, for those lucky enough to be employed at all. But also, if you listen to the rhetoric of diverse politicians from Blair to Obama to May to Trump, or to the bosses of our corporations, you will hear the assumption that only those capable of proactively responding to an ever-changing and unpredictable world can expect to survive into the future. Instability, change, uncertainty and ambivalence are now the default assumptions, and in all sorts of spheres people are encouraged to flexibly ‘self-manage’ their careers, health and wellbeing and to become ‘active’ citizens and Further reading ‘active agers’. The flip side of this is the message not to rely on the Greco, M. & Stenner, P. (2013). old institutions, and this is Happiness and the art of life: Diagnosing accompanied by a certain societal the psychopolitics of wellbeing. Health, deconstruction of old categories Culture and Society, 5(1), 1–19. Greco, M. & Stenner, P. (2017). which are increasingly perceived From paradox to pattern shift: to be redundant. To give another Conceptualising liminal hotspots and example, the new discourses and their affective dynamics. Theory and practices of active ageing go handPsychology, 27(2), 147–166. in-hand with a rejection of the Stenner, P. (2015). A transdisciplinary value and validity of dividing the psychosocial approach. In K. Slaney, J. Martin & J. Sugarman (Eds.) The Wiley life-course up into clear categories handbook of theoretical and philosophical like ‘childhood’, ‘adolescence’, psychology: Methods, approaches and ‘adulthood’ and ‘retirement’. ‘Active new directions for social science. New ageing’ is not a discourse aimed York: Wiley. at the ‘old’ – it is a discourse that Stenner, P. Church, A. & Bhatti, M. implies getting rid of those societal (2012). Human–landscape relations and the occupation of space: Experiencing categorisations and institutional and expressing domestic gardens. practices that construct the very Environment and Planning A, 44(7), notion of the ‘old’, now seen as too 1712–1727. massive and arbitrary a category. Stenner, P., Cross, V. McCrum, C. et al. (2015). Self-management of chronic low back pain: Four viewpoints from people with pain and healthcare providers. Health Psychology Open, 2(2), 1–11. Stenner, P., McFarquhar, T. & Bowling, A. (2011). Older people and ‘active ageing’: Subjective aspects of ageing actively and becoming old. Journal of Health Psychology, 16(3), 467–477. Stenner, P. & Moreno, E. (2013). Liminality and affectivity: The case of deceased organ donation. Subjectivity, 6(3), 229–253. Full list available in online/app version.
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That feels like a positive message, but possibly one that places quite a burden on the individual? Liminality, as the word suggests, relates to the removal of such limits, and this incitement to ‘become different’ can be both thrilling and terrifying as it plays itself out in multiple spheres of life. The assumption of the army of ‘change agents’ that has multiplied in recent years is that these ‘limits’ are basically obstacles, the removal of which is our only
hope of survival. But this removal of what are seen as arbitrary limits creates paradoxes and other so-called ‘wicked problems’, especially if it is not clear what we should ‘become’. ‘Becoming’ can then become a rather troubled experience, and this has psychological implications. The basic idea of a liminal hotspot is the idea that it is possible to get stuck in transition. This is a paradox, but it is a paradox that I think marks people’s lives more and more – permanent liminality. Let me try to put the notion of a liminal hotspot in a nutshell through one more example. Large numbers of people – especially those with chronic health conditions or with conditions that are medically unexplained – find themselves caught in the uncomfortable position of being held suspended, as it were, between the categories of ‘health’ and ‘illness’. They are both sick and healthy, but we might as well say that they are neither sick nor healthy. This can be formulated as ‘both both/and and neither/nor’, and this is a paradox. But it is a paradox many people have to live, navigate and manage in their daily lives. For us (and Monica Greco’s work has been very important here), this notion of paradox is the first feature of a liminal hotspot, and it is partly about not being able to go through a transition. Those whose symptoms are medically unexplained, for instance, cannot easily make the transition to what used to be called – following Parsons – the ‘sick role’, because their symptoms do not meet the usual standards for defining illness. This can lead people into disconcerting and chaotic experiences. Those with chronic conditions, on the other hand, cannot transition from ‘ill’ to ‘healthy’ but must find a way of coming to terms with a more ambiguous and troubled status. If and when these paradoxes lead – as they often do – to situations akin to paralysis, or to situations of tension and conflict that we call ‘polarisation’, then we are dealing with what we call a ‘liminal hotspot’. The value of the concept is that it draws attention to the troubled becoming at play in a situation, and that it illuminates certain common features in settings that might otherwise appear completely unconnected. In our recent special issue of Theory and Psychology, for instance, the concept is applied to a variety of situations including cyber-bullying, child-protection work, social work with young drug users, romantic relationships, doctor/patient relationship around thyroid treatment, and even the Kiev uprising of 2013/14. Liminal hotspots, wicked problems, troubled becoming… you’re introducing me to all sorts of new terminology. How do you caution against your ideas becoming overly jargonistic, and detached from the real world? I’m wondering what Mick Billig would make of it all… Mick Billig’s work was a big inspiration for me, and I buy his argument about the need to repopulate psychology with concrete people and situations, and to avoid a spurious jargon which presents what are in
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the psychologist march 2018 interview
if what he means is that we cannot stay too long in fact abstractions (cognitive mechanisms, personality the liminal phase of self-reflection, but must work out traits, etc.) as if they were the real concrete things. how to go on, how to begin acting again. Camus, in But, as Mick would be the first to agree, there are two his own way, is warning us not to get stuck in a liminal sides to every story, and two horns to every dilemma. hotspot. He is, quite rightly, calling us to ‘take arms Sometimes the use of unfamiliar words is pure jargon, against a sea of troubles’. But he can only write that but sometimes it is necessary to find a new form of because he has managed to get himself unstuck, as it words to describe an unfamiliar territory. Ordinary were, and I would hazard that he is the better writer for language is a tricky thing, and it shapes our concepts having escaped ‘the rub’ of a liminal hotspot. So, yes, and our ways of thinking without us noticing. We ‘Psychology is the dialectic of action and thinking about think of the mind, for example, as a kind of substance oneself’, and it is inherently social and embodied. because the word is a noun, and then we qualify that You asked about the current substance with predicates – a fast health of the discipline in this mind, for instance. This makes “For many people – respect. Well, I am optimistic, communication about the simple despite the fact that for too things easy and convenient, but it especially those who long psychology has tended to deceives us when it comes to the for reason of social degenerate into an instrument complexities, and ‘psychology’ is disadvantage receive more for the instrumentalisation of pretty complex. For example, as people (to borrow a phrase from soon as we want to express the idea than their fair share of Canguilhem). There are some that mind is not in fact a substance, the ‘slings and arrows really positive things going on. but a process, our familiar words of outrageous fortune’ – Take the 2017 British Psychological and forms of expression fail us. Society conference, for example. So I excuse myself the odd foray self-assertion is not so In her keynote, Ros Gill gave a into unfamiliar language, although straightforward” brilliant demonstration of how I do feel an obligation to bring neo-liberalism can capture our things back to common sense. But subjectivity, and of why a feminist only once that common sense has perspective is so relevant. And Peter Kinderman gave been challenged a little. In fact I’ve had this argument an excellent speech showing real commitment to a with Mick. I like to think that he agreed with me. more open, eclectic and politically engaged psychology. He even quoted Martin Luther King insisting that there We all like to think that! Albert Camus said are some things in our world that we should never ‘Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself’. ‘adjust’ ourselves to. Just so. Is there plenty of scope in your approach for it to be both, and what’s your assessment of the current Are you in any kind of liminal hotspot yourself? health of the discipline in that respect? I’ve been in a few. That’s why the concept has meaning That’s a lovely quotation, and I have long maintained for me. Personal experience is very important. And on that the great writers are amongst the very best a more institutional level, which UK university is not psychologists. But you are right, my approach in the midst of the permanent liminality of constant would question Camus’ ‘either/or’ assumption and re-structuring towards an end that is never quite take a ‘both/and’ stance: Psychology is both action specified? Which of us is not constantly enjoined to and self-reflection. Camus continues by saying: transform ourselves into something we are not… yet? ‘We continue to shape our personality all our life. But these issues pale into insignificance next To know oneself, one should assert oneself.’ For me, to quote Hamlet (when he found himself in something to those multitudes facing the seemingly endless of a liminal hotspot), ‘ay, there’s the rub’. If only it were transitions of migration, permanently suspended between ‘belonging’ and ‘not belonging’; or those facing so easy to have such a clear knowledge of yourself the now routinely permanent ‘wars against terror’; or that you can assert yourself, pull yourself up from those stuck in the suspension of revolution without your own bootstraps and shape your own personality sign of resolution. Psychology faces some big issues and destiny. For many people – especially those who here, and in tackling these issues it is important to for reason of social disadvantage receive more than recognise that, in my view, ‘action’ is not everything. their fair share of the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous Not long before he died, René Girard described history fortune’ – self-assertion is not so straightforward. as a test that human beings are failing. We are at one of those moments during which it is necessary also to So ‘action’ is easy when things are going your way? step back and to reflect. More action of the same sort Yes – when you run up against an obstacle, or when things are not what you had assumed them to be, those may not help us. If Martin Luther King was a person of action, this is because, as we know from his most are the moments during which we tend to be thrown famous speech, he was also a dreamer. No action into ‘thinking about oneself’. Those are the points without sleep. No reason without dreams. To sleep: at which our selves, to paraphrase Saint Augustine, become a problem to us. But, of course, Camus is right perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub.
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Paul Stenner’s latest book is Liminality and Experience: A Transdisciplinary Approach to the Psychosocial, (2018, Palgrave)
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A brief history of dyslexia Philip Kirby on the significance of evolving views of the condition, and efforts to preserve records of them
I Rudolf Berlin coined the term ‘dyslexia’
t is 130 years since the term ‘dyslexia’ was coined by Rudolf Berlin, a German ophthalmologist and professor in Stuttgart. In the course of his practice, Berlin observed the difficulties faced by some of his adult patients in reading the printed word. He could find no problem with their vision. He speculated, therefore, that their difficulties must be caused by some physical change in the brain, even if the nature of this eluded him. The term Berlin used to describe the condition (meaning ‘difficulty with words’) would ultimately become more famous than he. One of the few biographic entries on Berlin describes him, somewhat poignantly, as ‘[the man] who named the ship, even though he never became her captain’, Berlin himself had been influenced by the writings of another German, Adolph Kussmaul, a Professor of Medicine at Strassburg, remembered today principally for his work on diabetic ketoacidosis. It was Kussmaul
who first identified the kind of difficulties Berlin described, in 1877, entitling them Wortblindheit (word-blindness). (Berlin coined ‘dyslexia’ to bring the diagnosis in line with contemporary international medical literature, which elsewhere described the similar conditions of alexia and paralexia.) ‘To Kussmaul’, writes James Hinshelwood, his contemporary, ‘must be given the credit of first recognising the possibility of this inability being met with as an isolated symptom.’ In the UK several Britons were working on the topic, including Hinshelwood, another ophthalmologist; James Kerr, a council medical officer; and William Pringle Morgan, a general practitioner. These three focused not only on word-blindness as an isolated symptom, like Kussmaul, but broadened accounts of the condition to include children. This weakened the explanatory power of brain injury or disease as dyslexia’s cause, which had hitherto been favoured, setting up a distinction between acquired and congenital word-blindness – the former occurring suddenly during adulthood, the latter present at birth. Pringle Morgan’s and Hinshelwood’s reports of children with word-blindness are key to understanding dyslexia’s later history. Pringle Morgan’s is the more famous, perhaps partly because he humanised his account by using his patient’s name:
Percy F. – a well-grown lad, aged 14 – is the eldest son of intelligent parents, the second child of a family of seven. He has always been a bright and intelligent boy, quick at games, and in no way inferior to others of his age. His great difficulty has been – and is now – his inability to learn to read. This inability is so remarkable, and so pronounced, that I have no doubt it is due to some congenital defect.
Pringle Morgan’s description of Percy is almost identical to that of a child who Hinshelwood, in his first paper on congenital word-blindness, calls ‘Case 2’:
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Samuel T. Orton, a neuropathologist from the State University of Iowa
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A boy, aged 10 years, was brought to me by his father on Jan. 8th, 1900, to see the reason of his great difficulty in learning to read. The boy had been at school for three years, and had got on well with every subject except reading. He was apparently a bright and in every respect an intelligent boy… It was soon evident, however, on careful examination that the difficulty in learning to read was due not to any
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the psychologist march 2018 looking back lowering of the visual acuity, but to some congenital deficiency of the visual memory for words.
According to Peggy Anderson and Regine Meier-Hedde (2001), in one of the few academic accounts of this period in medical history, ‘This body of work became enormously significant for several reasons. First, the United Kingdom physicians wrote with a clarity and organization that heretofore had not been observed in the literature. Second, they turned attention to the plight of children, and, third, these physicians wrote numerous case reports on word blindness, which resulted in an accumulation of information about this enigma.’ To this list might be added Pringle Morgan and Hinshelwood’s role in associating dyslexia with high intelligence – a link that would endure for decades, with several ramifications. Dyslexia, psychology and the rise of modern advocacy Between the wars, research on dyslexia drifted in the UK, but expanded in the US – coalescing around one figure, in particular. Samuel T. Orton, a neuropathologist from the State University of Iowa, presented his first paper on word-blindness to the 1925 annual meeting of the American Neurological Association in Washington, DC. ‘In this work,’ write Anderson and Meier-Hedde, ‘which was destined to become a classic treatise in the field, Orton referred to the original work of Kussmaul, Morgan, and Hinshelwood, but drew different conclusions based on his own case studies and clinical observations. He disputed the premise that the roots of reading disability could be located in the angular gyrus and advanced his own theory that attributed reading disorders to a lack of cerebral dominance.’ Although Orton’s theory of cerebral dominance proved incorrect, it was key to shifting discussion of dyslexia’s aetiology toward theories of cognitive development. For Tim Miles, one of the pre-eminent researchers in dyslexia’s history (to whom we return below), ‘Of all the early pioneers he [Orton] was the one who, more than anyone else, put what we now call developmental dyslexia on the map.’ Orton was also one of the first researchers to advocate phonics instruction for those with dyslexia, the general approach still recommended today. In 1949 the Orton Society was formalised by Samuel’s widow, June, and continues today as the International Dyslexia Association. By the 1960s dyslexia was attracting the attention of UK researchers again. Given the shift toward theories of cognitive development, psychologists were now foremost. In 1962 the Word Blind Centre opened in Bloomsbury, founded by the Invalid Children’s Aid Association under the direction of Dr Alfred White Franklin. Formed after a conference on the subject at Barts Hospital, the Centre’s first committee consisted of Macdonald Critchley, Oliver Zangwill, Patrick
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UK Dyslexia Archive Dyslexia has a fascinating history, but it’s a history that’s yet to be charted and much could disappear. Many of the pioneers of dyslexia research, practice and advocacy are retired or retiring; some of the earliest to help children with the condition have now passed. The same is true of specialist organisations. Some of them, like the Word Blind Centre, were never intended to last; others, in the wake of recent government retrenchment and other pressures, are struggling to stay afloat. In 2016 ‘The History of Dyslexia’ project started at St John’s College, University of Oxford – funded by the Wellcome Trust and John Fell Fund. Its purpose is to record as much of this history as possible, so that the struggles and achievements of the dyslexia community can be preserved. Through this, we hope to learn something not only about the story of dyslexia, but also how psychological research and concerted advocacy can affect public policy. To date, the project team – William Whyte, Maggie Snowling, Kate Nation, Philip Kirby, Robert Evans and Denise Cripps – have collected papers and records from many of the leading dyslexia organisations in the UK, including the Word Blind Centre, the Helen Arkell Dyslexia Centre, Dyslexia Action (formerly the Dyslexia Institute) and the British Dyslexia Association. The project has also recorded testimonies from many of the key figures in dyslexia’s history, including Helen Arkell, Susan Hampshire, Elaine Miles, Sandhya Naidoo, Jim Rose and Mary Warnock. Their stories are enabling us to understand how dyslexia went from a condition that few were aware of (and even fewer accepted) to a wellestablished specific learning difficulty with support readily available. These materials are telling us much about the social history of the UK during the latter half of the 20th century, too. Much of the pioneering work on dyslexia – psychology, advocacy and specialist tuition – was undertaken by women, many of whom were mothers of dyslexic children. Their work, often conducted outside of formal policy channels and unpaid, represents a hidden history that the archive is beginning to uncover. The story of dyslexia is far from over, though. In recent years, funding cuts have seen state support diminish. Recurring debates over whether dyslexia is a useful label have contributed to a climate in which dyslexia is not always recognised. The UK Dyslexia Archive will chart these shifts, while standing as a testament to the gains that have been made for children with dyslexia, and a warning against their loss. For more on the project, or to contribute to the archive, please visit: https://dyslexiahistory.web.ox.ac.uk.
Meredith, Maisie Holt and Tim Miles – neurologists or psychologists all, and amongst the foremost names in the field at the time. The Centre’s first director was Alex Bannatyne, succeeded by Sandhya Naidoo, an educational psychologist. In the years that followed, a series of seminal texts on dyslexia emerged, authored by some of those attached to the Centre. In 1970, Critchley published his sympathetic account, The Dyslexic Child, which identified ‘developmental dyslexia’ as an issue requiring urgent official attention. In 1972 Naidoo published Specific Dyslexia, the first account in Britain to make
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a systematic comparison of dyslexic and non-dyslexic children, which remains instructive today. Focusing on how children develop literacy, Naidoo argued that, ‘Preventive and supportive steps taken early are immeasurably more humane and fruitful than attempts to remedy a problem which becomes increasingly complex as the child grows older.’ To expedite such steps, and following the closure of the Word Blind Centre in the early 1970s, several organisations dedicated to dyslexia were founded. They included the Helen Arkell Dyslexia Centre (1971), the Dyslexia Clinic at Barts Hospital (1971), the British Dyslexia Association (1972), the Dyslexia Institute (1972), the Language Development Unit at Aston University (1973) and the Bangor Dyslexia Unit (1977), amongst others. Some of these remain in operation today, providing a source of support for children, their parents, and adults with dyslexia, as well as professionals working in the area. These organisations worked alongside other researchers, campaigners and practitioners in psychology and education. Notable figures of the period include, but are not limited to: Bevé Hornsby, head of the Dyslexia Clinic at Barts; Marion Welchman, who orchestrated the creation of the British Dyslexia Association and was involved in the early days of the Word Blind Centre; and the actress Susan Hampshire, former president of the Dyslexia Institute, who has dyslexia herself and was awarded the OBE in 1995 for her advocacy work. Women were not the only voices in the struggle for the rights and recognition of people with dyslexia, but theirs have been crucial.
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The struggle for recognition The years following the opening of the Word Blind Centre in 1962 are key to dyslexia’s later history. They marked not only the start of modern research on, and advocacy for, the condition – which would ultimately result in recognition by government Key sources and protection for people with dyslexia under legislation like the Anderson, P.L. & Meier-Hedde, R. 2010 Equality Act – but also the (2001). Early case reports of dyslexia in rise of the notion of dyslexia as the United States and Europe. Journal a ‘middle-class myth’. Through of Learning Disabilities, 34(1), 9–21. this, dyslexia was construed as a Elliott, J.G. & Grigorenko, E.L. (2014). The dyslexia debate. New York: pseudo-medical diagnosis used Cambridge University Press. by middle-class parents to explain Hinshelwood, J. (1917). Congenital their children’s poor performance word-blindness. London: H.K. Lewis. in reading – an argument that has Miles, T.R. & Miles, E. (1999). dogged campaigners ever since. Dyslexia: A hundred years on (2nd edn). Early reticence to acknowledge the Buckingham: Open University Press. Rose, J. (2009). Identifying and teaching condition came from educational, children and young people with dyslexia medical and political quarters. and literacy difficulties. London: One of the historical factors Department for Children, Schools and driving the notion of ‘middleFamilies. class myth’ was reliance on what became known as the discrepancy Full list in online/app version diagnostic model. Under this,
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a person could only be considered dyslexic if they exhibited a marked difference between their reading age and general intelligence (IQ), in favour of the latter – an argument with precursors in Pringle Morgan’s and Hinshelwood’s accounts of their ‘otherwise bright and intelligent’ child subjects. It was this model that was initially relied upon by many of the organisations above. Naturally, such a definition was desirable to parents wanting to prove that, despite their child’s struggle in one academic area, their general intelligence was unaffected. Coupled with this, dyslexia (then as now) was being diagnosed in higher proportions in children from wealthier socio-economic groups. Differential access to dyslexia specialists and their tests was a reason for this, sparking accusations that dyslexia was curiously prevalent in Surrey. (Today, Dyslexia Action, the British Dyslexia Association and the Helen Arkell Dyslexia Centre are all located within about 20 miles of each other – across the Surrey/Berkshire border.) Parents with higher education levels were also more likely to be aware of the condition, and earlier. Again, it is notable that the children considered by Pringle Morgan and Hinshelwood, from what we can derive of their backgrounds (through references to their education, father’s occupation, and so forth), were firmly middleclass – presumably for similar reasons. But if historical aspects like this explain dyslexia’s association (and disassociation) with certain socioeconomic groups, they do not fully explain accusations that the condition is a myth. Why has there been a reticence to affirm dyslexia’s existence? For some, most obviously policy makers, the reason for rejecting the dyslexia label has been pragmatic. In the 1970s passing reference was made to the condition in the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act, further investigated by the Tizard Report two years later, Children with Specific Reading Difficulties. The latter claimed to be ‘highly sceptical of the view that a syndrome of developmental dyslexia with a specific underlying cause and specific symptoms has been identified’. This despite the evidence, described above, that was emerging during this period. In 1978 the Warnock Report on special educational needs was published by the then Department for Education and Science. Here, the government’s antipathy to the term was proactive. The report’s author, Baroness Mary Warnock, recalls being summoned by a senior civil servant of the Department, who told her that she ‘should not suggest that there is a special category of learning difficulty called dyslexia’. Presumably, this reflected an unwillingness by the Department to expend resources on the condition, with estimates suggesting that up to 10 per cent of the population might be affected. In the aftermath of the Warnock Report, the government fudged, justifying its reticence to engage with questions about dyslexia by claiming that it did not recognise distinctions under the umbrella term ‘specific learning difficulties’. This eventually changed
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the psychologist march 2018 looking back
in 1987, when the government rather than jettisoning the term, announced (a little ironically) was to better define it – ‘The fault its desire ‘to dispel a myth’: ‘that lies not in the word,’ he suggested, the Department of Education ‘but in the fact that those who use it and Science and its Ministers have not always a clear conception do not recognise dyslexia as a of what Kussmaul meant by it.’ problem’. In fact, ‘the Government In querying the term ‘dyslexia’, recognise dyslexia and recognise what recent criticism does highlight the importance to the education Dr Philip Kirby is in the History is that dyslexia is more than a progress of dyslexic children, their Faculty, University of Oxford psychological classification, the long-term welfare and successfulphilip.kirby@sjc.ox.ac.uk parameters of which are being function in adult life, that they continually debated as per the should have their needs identified at scientific method. Dyslexia is also a ‘construct’ that an early stage. Once the assessment has been made… meets, in the words of The Dyslexia Debate, ‘the the appropriate treatment should be forthcoming.’ social, psychological, political and emotional needs of In 2009 the final report of the Rose Review, appointed by the government as an independent group multiple stakeholders’. This shifts the emphasis toward how dyslexia has been constructed through disciplines ‘to make recommendations on the identification and like ophthalmology and psychology, and the advocacy teaching of children with dyslexia’, defined dyslexia of the actors described above – and how changes in unequivocally: society, not just in medical science, enabled dyslexia to Dyslexia is a learning difficulty that primarily affects emerge. the skills involved in accurate and fluent word Before the advent of highly literate societies, reading and spelling. Characteristic features of dyslexia could not exist in the way that we understand dyslexia are difficulties in phonological awareness, the condition today – notions of ‘disability’, learning or verbal memory and verbal processing speed. otherwise, are dependent on time and place. Dyslexia’s Dyslexia occurs across the range of intellectual emergence coincided with other changes in Western abilities. Co-occurring difficulties may be seen in society around the time Kussmaul, Hinshelwood and aspects of language, motor co-ordination, mental calculation, concentration and personal organisation, their peers were writing. These included the advent of widespread literacy and schooling, the expanding but these are not, by themselves, markers of medical profession, and the increasing requirement for dyslexia. people to process linguistic information in everyday life. Later, in the 1960s and 1970s, dyslexia advocacy was entwined with changing gender roles, the Psychological diagnosis and social construct expansion of civil society, and the early rise of what In some quarters, however, the dyslexia debate would now be called the ‘professional parent’. continues – principally educational psychology. To gain political purchase for such a cause, The most notable recent criticism of the term is the the complexities of dyslexia research, at least in the 2014 book The Dyslexia Debate. This does not query public sphere, were necessarily simplified, so that ‘whether biologically based reading difficulties exist the cause could be understood and thus advocated for (the answer is an unequivocal “yes”), but rather in a variety of settings. Such reduction, alongside the how we should best understand and address literacy absence of a precise and universal definition, exposed problems across clinical, educational, occupational, the dyslexia label to accusations of politicisation and social policy contexts.’ One of the factors and conceptual simplicity. Adding to the complexity, preventing such understanding, it is claimed, is the definitions and understandings of any medical word itself: ‘In respect of word-reading difficulty, the condition, whether a learning difficulty or otherwise, construct reading disability is surely preferable for use by both researchers and clinicians. This term dispenses necessarily develop over time. In this way, it is useful to think of dyslexia as with much of the conceptual and political baggage both an ongoing psychological diagnosis and a associated with dyslexia.’ social construct, with all that entails. While drawing What’s interesting, from a historical perspective, is that such definitional debates have been seen before. attention to the cultural meanings around a condition like dyslexia is important, especially when looking In The Dyslexia Debate, it is lamented that, ‘Clearly at its history, it is also necessary to remember that there are very significant differences in the ways in such meanings refer, ultimately, to a group of people which this label [dyslexia] is operationalized, even by who struggle with a skill fundamental to life in leading scholars in the field’ – a polysemy, it suggests, that undermines the term. In 1896, Hinshelwood made contemporary society. Irrespective of current debates the same point: ‘the word [‘word-blindness’],’ he noted, around the utility of the term, the work of the researchers, practitioners and campaigners discussed ‘has frequently been used by writers loosely with in this brief history has been crucial in helping young different meanings attached to it and therefore it has people and others overcome this struggle. been frequently misleading.’ Hinshelwood’s solution,
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Sharing our science… scientifically A look at the science of science communication, reviewed by Phil Loring
The Oxford Handbook of the Science of Science Communication Kathleen Jamieson, Dan Kahan & Dietram Scheufele (Eds.) Oxford University Press; Hb £105.00
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his handbook about science communication, published under the umbrella of the Oxford Library of Psychology, features 57 mostly American authors working in almost a dozen different disciplines. The thread the editors use to bind these 49 chapters together is a scientific approach to science communication. Most existing work on science communication, they argue, has relied on intuition rather than evidence to illuminate how science can best be communicated, and how science engagement can best be cultivated. Two of the book’s most powerful chapters are in its first section. Chapter 3, by editor and psychologist Dan Kahan, points out that fixating on the relatively small number of cases featuring persistent conflict over facts (climate change, evolution, certain vaccinations) leads to mistaken explanations of where that conflict comes from. A true science of science communication, Kahan argues, is a form of enlightened selfgovernment, because it protects science communication from forces that diminish individuals’ ability to recognise valid sources of science. Chapter 6, by historian and science journalist Bruce Lewenstein, points out that fascination with controversies is nothing new to historians, sociologists, and philosophers. Scientists hoping to create a science of science communication, he argues, often look to this older literature for guidance on both understanding and managing controversies. However, much of this literature is itself suspicious of the claim that a science of science communication can produce guidance in managing controversies. It may be that the science of science communication can only be
descriptive, and that the goal in studying controversies can only be to understand their dynamics, not to manage them. Highlights in the rest of the book include a chapter on museums and science centres, one on popular representations of scientists, and one on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. The book’s complex construction undoubtedly happened under different sorts of time pressure, and some wrinkles show. Each of the book’s six major sections closes with a ‘recap’ written after the other chapters by one or two junior members of the Annenberg Public Policy Center authorial team. These often cite chapters using placeholders (‘p. XX’) rather than the real page number. Furthermore, the index is spotty, and for example a reader looking for material about Facebook or Twitter would get from the index the false impression that Facebook only appears in two chapters and Twitter not at all; in fact, there are several chapters that deal with both, as the book rightfully reflects the role these applications have played in changing the face of the media landscape in recent years. Without making it explicit, this handbook poses a fundamental question about psychology: Where does psychology fit within interdisciplinary research today? Science communication is not a field that has previously come under the umbrella of psychology, but the material in this book, and the way it is presented, will be of interest to a broad range of psychologists. Reviewed by Phil Loring, Curator of the History of Medicine, Norsk Teknisk Museum, Oslo, Norway
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the psychologist march 2018 books
Beyond binaries As its authors claim, this book offers a ‘map and a compass in this ever-changing gender landscape’. The book is written for those questioning their gender identity but with a view to professionals also benefiting from engaging with it. The authors are both therapists, scholars and community organisers who are trans identified and have written a book they wish their younger selves had had access to. The book is divided into a number of sections guiding the reader through an exploration of what gender is, inviting the reader to think about their own gender and reflect on whether they are comfortable as they are or would like to explore other possibilities. It also considers gender in relation to relationships and sexuality as well as communities and role models. Throughout the book there are reflective activities and lists of further resources. The authors warn that the contents may trigger strong emotional responses, and the book is peppered throughout with mindfulness exercises, encouraging the reader to slow down and take stock of how they are feeling.
How to Understand Your Gender: A Practical Guide for Exploring Who You Are Alex Iantaffi & Meg-John Barker Jessica Kingsley Publishers; Pb £14.99 The book begins by exploring what gender is before leading to more personal self-reflection. The authors also provide their own illustrative self-reflections throughout. A theme that runs through the book is an emphasis on the huge variation that exists within gender that goes beyond the simple binaries of man/woman or of transgender/cisgender. (For those unaware, cisgender refers to those whose gender matches expectations associated with the sex they were assigned at birth.) The book invites the reader to reflect on whether there are any changes they would like to make regarding their gender while emphasising that it is fine to make no changes or that one may make changes in some areas but not
others. It sensitively discusses types of changes, including changing one’s name, pronouns, identity labels, gender expressions (e.g. the way one dresses) and body modification. The book is not an instruction manual but an invitation to self-reflect on what such choices might ‘open up or close down’ in terms of their consequences and future possibilities. As a ‘cis’ person I wouldn’t presume to suggest how useful or not this book may be for those pondering their own gender identity, however from reading other reviews by gender diverse folk it seems to be have been very well received. I would however, highly recommend this book to anyone who has a trans friend, colleague or family member, and for any psychologist working with clients in relation to gender identity. The book will not only help you to relate to the experiences of gender diverse people but it may also get you questioning your own taken-forgranted assumptions about gender. Reviewed by Dr Adam Jowett, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Coventry University
Empathy – the magic explanatory bullet? The Empathy Instinct draws heavily from Simon BaronCohen’s writing to assert that empathy is instinctive, quantifiable and a good thing. More empathy makes us feel bad when other people suffer; less empathy leads to indifference and underpins genocide. The book’s keystone proposition is that our empathy instinct requires nurture for it to flourish. Without nurture, whole societies can ‘lack empathy’, for example Hitler’s Germany. So Bazalgette proposes that children should be trained to empathise – thereby reducing their natural prejudices towards outgroups and creating a more ‘civil society’. Few would dispute Bazalgette’s view that ‘bad’ parenting can end with ‘bad’ adults. And his view that excessively bad parenting (as with Harlow’s monkeys and in Romanian orphanages) will damage developing brains is also entirely credible. However, Bazalgette’s boldest proposal – that by tackling ‘lack of empathy’ we might resolve social problems ranging from unsympathetic dementia care to genocide – surely endows empathy with the status of a psychological ‘magic bullet’. Unfortunately, sustaining this magical status requires Bazalgette to fudge conceptual issues (especially the
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difference between empathy and sympathy) and ignore alternative explanations for the phenomena he wants to attribute to ‘lack of empathy’. The genocide issue is illustrative here… Bazalgette could have explored the learning processes that determine how we ‘choose’ targets for our individual stereotypes, prejudices and intolerances (particularly social learning and stimulus discrimination/generalisation). Similarly, he might have explored the decades of experimental research into conformity, perceptual bias and cognitive dissonance. But all are ignored – even though a combination of inbuilt psychological processes with learning and socio-political circumstances offers a compelling explanation for the ‘ubiquity of evil’. The Empathy Instinct identifies many social challenges that training people to be more thoughtful might help to resolve. But people hoping to understand how and why such training works (and sometimes fails) need to know where to look for useful answers. My money is on social learning, rather than empathy.
The Empathy Instinct: How to Create a More Civil Society Peter Bazalgette John Murray; Hb £16.99
Reviewed by Dr Chris Timms, who taught psychology at colleges and universities for 25 years
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Gender and the Organization: Women at Work in the 21st Century Marianna Fotaki & Nancy Harding Routledge; Pb £34.99
Mad or Bad? A Critical Approach to Counselling and Forensic Psychology Andreas Vossler, Catriona Havard, Graham Pike, Meg-John Barker & Bianca Raabe (Eds.) Sage; Pb £24.99
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Feminist psychology gone missing Fotaki and Harding have tasked their academic and feminist imaginations to play with ideas about women, management and organisations moving their disciplinary agenda into the 21st century. Despite the ubiquitous feminist thinking from literary criticism, film and theatre studies, generic social and political sciences, the authors reproach their own discipline for assigning the existing feminist critiques to female thinkers and researchers alone. This book then has enabled Fotaki and Harding explicitly to depart from content that would normally be submitted to academic journals in management and organisation studies, so as to re-examine much of their earlier work within a framework shared by well-known feminist writers including the exemplary Judith Butler, Denise Riley, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva. Chapters address organisational matters such as the contemporary relevance of feminism, genderdifferentiated language, the construction of women’s working identities, feminist ethics, the othering of women and the psychoanalytic understanding of power, and finally advocating that feminism should be of concern to men as well as women. This work is as important as the authors are convincing in their chosen undertaking. But should potential feminist academic contributions to management and organisation studies hinge exclusively upon interdisciplinary concepts underpinned by post-Freudian psychoanalysis from a core of poststructuralism? While the mission is smartly accomplished by the authors, who provide much
interesting and informative, albeit heavy reading, there is a major, unforgivable flaw. Psychology appears to have been consigned to the interdisciplinary melting pot of ‘psychosocial’, while feminist psychology is rendered invisible. The Psychology of Women Section (POWS), whose members have studied, challenged and written about gender (and other) inequalities across the social, political and organisational spectrum, is celebrating its 30th year within the BPS. This volume should have been timely given the evidence of shameful sexual harassment and bullying, compounded by criminal sexual assault and rape across entertainment, academic and political organisations. Most perpetrators have been identified as men while victims have come forward from each sex, so that the psychological and emotional impact of such behaviours on gender and work is now firmly under the spotlight. As a regular enthusiast of POWS events I have witnessed excellent scholarship and practice concerned with the sexualisation of women at work, the reproductive cycle, sexual harassment, bullying, rape, motherhood and fatherhood all in the context of organization life. Sadly, the contributions of feminist psychologists to this otherwise admirable project have fallen well below the radar of this book. Reviewed by Paula Nicolson, Emeritus Professor, Royal Holloway, University of London
An area in dire need of critical thinking Vossler and colleagues have produced a timely and informative book that can serve as a gateway for students and practitioners interested in furthering their understanding of critical thinking in forensics as well as mental health theory in general. It covers a wide range of topics relevant to forensic work, but also to nonforensic therapeutic settings. The book is divided into five sections, which cover areas such as ‘setting the scene’, ‘identities’, ‘sex and sexuality’, ‘treatment’ and ‘dichotomies in forensic and therapeutic practice’. Chapters are well-researched and argued, with useful case studies, ‘pauses for reflection’ and suggested reading included in each. As the book takes a critical position, it would have been useful to have a chapter introducing some basic ideas and terms relevant to critical theory as they are made
reference to throughout but never elaborated upon fully. Critical theory and thinking is not always intuitive to the student, and many professionals for that matter, and it can take a bit of practice to adopt. The authors appear to assume that the reader has at least a working understanding of the language used in critical theory, but if the reader does not some of the more subtle messages included within the text might be lost. As an example, in the chapters titled ‘Diagnosis and categorisation’ and ‘Paraphilias’ the authors diligently explain how discourse and power determines what is considered ‘pathological’ and what is not, but for a novice reader it might not be apparent why certain mental health diagnoses or sexual behaviours are positioned that way. Perhaps this would help position the authors
themselves and their arguments too. Also, the chapter titled ‘Context’ in the final section might have been more useful at the beginning of the book as it provides a useful oversight of psychology and therapy in forensic settings, and would help set the scene for the remainder of the chapters. These points aside, the book does provide a very helpful, and thoughtful, critical overview of therapeutic matters related to forensic settings. Considering the recent coverage of the state of forensic settings in the United Kingdom, both for service users as well as those who work in them, it is clear that it is an area in dire need of critical thinking. Reviewed by Patrick Larsson, Deputy Clinical Lead, Health in Mind (Mid Essex), Braintree
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the psychologist march 2018 books
More than frills We spoke to Carolyn Mair, Professor of Psychology for Fashion, on the eve of the publication of her new book, The Psychology of Fashion (Routledge) ‘It’s not an easy conversation to have with a kid who thinks they’re invincible’ Dr Carla Sofka is a Professor of Social Work at Siena College, Loudonville, New York. She has a chapter on ‘The role of digital and social media in supporting bereaved students’ in a new book, Supporting Bereaved Students at School. She told us: ‘I first wrote about how teenagers are using social media to cope with loss in 2008/2009. However, my interest in monitoring this more closely intensified the day after the “518” case, a December 2012 car crash involving people from two neighbouring communities. That Sunday afternoon, I asked my teenage daughter “What’s up in cyberspace?” when I saw her fingers flying on her phone. She responded that she was tweeting for Missy to call Bailey and for Tim to call Matt, and I realised that these were the names of the two high school students who had survived the crash. At that point, I knew that something unique was happening with social media… I’m a psychologist by background, now a Professor of Social Work. I would love to see the collaboration around social media and bereavement become even more diverse with more involvement from the human computer interactions field, the technology experts, and the communications and media studies scholars. I would love to see us all work together to figure out how we can do a better job. And we need to involve educators and professionals in the schools. In Taiwan, life educators teach kids from kindergarten through high school about different aspects of life that help them to have a healthy, happy life and to cope successfully with challenges, including death and grief. In the United States we don’t do a whole lot of that. I’ve been asking my students in my death and dying class here at Siena, “how many of you had death education content in high school?” Sometimes they look at me like “what, why would they do that”?’ Read the whole interview at tinyurl.com/carlasofka More books online: Find exclusive extracts, Q+As and more reviews at www.thepsychologist.org.uk/reviews, including Craig Barton on his book Difficult Not Impossible: How to Survive Clinical Depression
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Do you think fashion has had the attention it deserves from psychology? Fashion as an area of interest has been largely neglected by psychologists. There could be many reasons for this oversight. For example, fashion has been considered by academics from a range of disciplines, including psychology, a frivolous topic concerned only with frocks and frills. However, regardless of our attitude towards the academic or social value of fashion, it’s an important global industry… in the UK alone, fashion employs almost a million people and generates more than £26 billion annually. Fashion is creative, exciting and dynamic, and because of its nature and inextricably close relationship with the body, the fashion industry manifests many issues which affect us psychologically at individual, societal and global levels. How are some of these issues expressed? Whether or not we consider ourselves fashionable, we all wear clothes… well, most people do, most of the time! In line with other appearance-based judgements, what we wear says something about us to those we interact with. Our clothes have the power to align us with a particular group and dissociate us from others. In this respect, clothing is an important aspect of our identity. Clothes can influence how we behave across all ‘core’ areas of psychology: biologically, cognitively, socially, developmentally, and across personality and individual differences. In the book you refer to research identifying three perspectives of self in relation to clothing (from a study by Guy and Banim): ‘the woman I want to be’, ‘the woman I fear I could be’ and ‘the woman I am most of the time’. When shopping, which self should we have in mind? It depends on what item you’re shopping for and for what purpose, event, context it will be worn. But it would be wise to bear all three in mind. For example, if you’re buying an outfit for a job interview, it might seem obvious to buy for the woman you want to be to formulate positive self-projections, but you should also consider the women you fear you could be to avoid a shopping faux pas, and the woman you are most of the time to increase the chances of deriving pleasure from the item. That way you’ll be more likely to love the item, wear it more and keep it longer. Carolyn had much more to tell us about psychology and fashion – read the full Q&A with her via www.thepsychologist.org.uk/meets
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‘Values provide a social glue’ We got in touch with Professor Greg Maio (University of Bath) about his new book, The Psychology of Human Values (Psychology Press) Why this book, why now? Actually, the idea for the book began about 15 years ago, and the topic became even more timely as the years passed. The Editor of the European Monographs in Social Psychology Series, Professor Rupert Brown, asked if I would like to write a monograph related to my research. It seemed like an exciting opportunity. In particular, it was a great opportunity to write a book on human values. Milton Rokeach’s influential volume The Nature of Human Values was published in 1973, and the enormous amount of subsequent work on values had yet to be incorporated into a single book. I saw an opportunity to bring this exciting research to a wider audience in a simple and, hopefully, engaging way. But it took me much longer to write the book than I hoped, because I felt I couldn’t do the topic justice without reading broadly across other social sciences first (e.g. philosophy, political science). Even though I wasn’t intending to write a lot about values from the perspective of other social sciences, I wanted to be sufficiently familiar to signpost at least some areas of overlap for readers. What came first for you – an interest in human values or in psychology? The interest in values came very soon after my interest in psychology. Campus life as an undergraduate in psychology exposed me to diverse debates. In the midst of heated discussions of controversial issues, I noticed perplexing differences in how people would refer to the same abstract values (e.g. freedom, equality) in different ways, and I ended up wondering whether people really knew what they meant by these terms. I wondered if I knew what I meant by them. Over time, I discovered that social psychologists study values in connection with other closely related constructs, like attitudes and goals. The study of values has been the domain of philosophers for millennia. What does modern psychology bring to the table? Modern psychology brings empiricism. We are pushing forward increasingly different and sophisticated methodologies to test theories of values and to understand the role of values in everyday life, while intermeshing this understanding with our growing understanding of basic psychological processes. Gradually, we can demystify values and better understand their privileged status in our thinking. At the same time, however, we need other disciplines. Philosophers have developed rigorous ways conceptualising related constructs, and other disciplines help to place values in a bigger context (e.g. societies, economies, historical contexts).
Can human values be said to be improving? Or are there no absolute benchmarks when it comes to values? There are conflicting views on this issue. Some researchers in the USA point to increasing selfishness in values and motives in recent decades. Other researchers point to differences between nations, cultures and communities. Finding benchmarks is difficult, because the data we have available changes over time. Even if we use words published in newspapers, these media outlets, their users, their contexts, and their functions among other outlets (e.g. social media) have also changed over time. To me, the more tractable question is whether our immediate social contexts influence our values. By tracking situational influences, we can find out more about how values change, including changes over time (which beget changes in situations). Conflicts in values – political, social, religious, and so on – underpin most, if not all, of the existential threats the world faces, including environmental threats. As a scholar of the psychology of values, are you optimistic? I agree, but I am cautiously optimistic. The high degree of abstraction in values (e.g. What does equality mean? What exactly is national security?) is not just a problem, it is a functional asset. By using values in our expressed reasoning, we are using social devices that function as pledges of consistency. They are the assurances that we give to others that we cherish particular guiding principles, which enable us to be consistent across situations, and for people to catch us when we are not being consistent. People can judge us on these claims of upholding particular values and decide whether to trust us. We can use values to decide for ourselves whether we need to change. They provide a pivotal social glue in making large-scale societal change. The more we abandon using values, the more we make it harder for others to see what we are trying to achieve. What’s next for you? Any more book projects in the pipeline? I am currently finishing on the third edition of The Psychology of Attitudes and Attitude Change (with Geoff Haddock and Bas Verplanken). I am really excited about current multiinstitutional ESRC- and Templeton-funded projects focusing on children and prosocial values, intellectual humility in debate, and the role of values in close relationships. These projects will take up most of my research time in the next five years, but they cover very important theoretical and practical issues (in my own biased estimation).
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08/02/2018 13:16
Tales of the undiagnosed Our Associate Editor for Culture, Sally Marlow, on a theatrical depiction of Functional Neurological Disorder
play Still Ill New Diorama Theatre
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F
unctional neurological disorder (FND) is a disorder where no organic cause can be identified, but the symptoms are catastrophic – seizures, tremors, paralysis and blindness. Informed by extensive research with clinicians and patients, Still Ill gives insight not only into FND itself, but also into what it feels like to have FND, and the fear and confusion that runs alongside the idea that there may be no physical cause underlying its devastating effects. The play is a three-hander, and motors through at pace. The protagonist Sophie (Sophie Steer) is an actress, who has jobbing work as a patient in medical training for doctors, and who lands a part as a neurologist with a brain tumour in a television medical soap opera. So far, so meta; but this is not just tricksy writing, it also allows the audience to get a sense of our attitudes and our approaches to medicine. We see how diagnosis in particular can become a conveyor belt – as an actress Sophie is on the bed, off the bed; pushing her leg up, pushing her leg down; hearing Hello Sophie, my name is…, Hello Sophie, my name is… There’s little patientcentred care here. The actors Harriet Webb and Hamish
MacDougall form an endless cast around Sophie of doctors, interspersed with television cast and crew, the latter provoking much laughter from some of the audience, who I guessed were actors themselves. This play is funny, at times hilarious, but it’s also dark. As Sophie’s FND progresses, the medical caricatures and circus-like processes she encountered as an actress become her day-to-day. She’s on the bed, off the bed, pushing up and down, becoming increasingly distressed, her symptoms worsening. In a particularly poignant scene the other two characters throw pills, files and hospital detritus over her bed as she becomes more and more agitated and lost in her illness. Throughout there is immersive, haunting music, performed live on stage, and this accentuates the high emotion that runs through the whole drama. When Sophie sings, or rather shouts, ‘Still Ill’ (the song of the same name by The Smiths), I find myself in tears. Spoiler alert: There’s no happy ending, in fact there isn’t really an ending. I suppose that’s the point. Dr Tim Nicholson, Neuropsychiatry Consultant at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and NIHR
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the psychologist march 2018 culture
Standing up to shyness Ray Crozier, Honorary Professor at Cardiff University, tells us about working with stand-up comedian Rhod Gilbert on a TV programme
clinician scientist advised Kandinsky, the theatre company responsible for the performance. He told me afterwards that the latest meta-analysis suggests some 39 per cent of those with FND are no better and no worse seven years after diagnosis. Nor does the play make lazy assumptions about causes – Sophie seems to have suffered little trauma, and, according to Tim, patients without traumatic backgrounds are as common as those with. The play doesn’t quite sustain its momentum in the last third or so, but this is a minor quibble. The best theatre provokes, informs, engages and entertains, and this play does all of these, and more. I know more about FND now, but also more about the experience and the distress of unexplained symptoms. I know more about the strain this can put on family relationships, and how quickly deterioration happens. Thanks to a twist in the very last scene, I also understand that there are many ways of coping in a world that can often be chaotic and hostile, and FND is just one way, no worse and no better than, say, having a drink or two, just different. Still Ill is a brave play because of the history of sensitivities around illnesses such as FND, which too often in the past have been dismissed under the umbrella and sometime pejorative term ‘psychosomatic’. Again, Tim Nicholson had some wise words: The clue is in the disorder’s name. It’s not fake, it’s not physical, it’s functional.
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When I was invited by producers at BBC Wales to assist with making a television programme about Rhod Gilbert’s shyness I was intrigued. It was not so much that he’s a shy person who is also a stand-up comedian and television personality – it is not uncommon for public performers to be privately shy. It was more how they would make a successful programme about shyness. I met Rhod for the first time in Cardiff University, where we were filmed discussing shyness for more than an hour, Professor Ray Crozier and Rhod Gilbert covering psychological prepare and eventually deliver a research into social anxieties as stand-up routine to an audience in well as his own experience. He is a comedy club in downtown Cardiff. a sociable and witty man yet still All three successfully do so. The film finds many mundane tasks (such as movingly captures something of the eating in public) difficult. He recalls palpable nervousness and relief that not leaving his room for days when Rhod and the audience, including he started university. His shyness me, experienced – as well as the continues to dog him but has never affected his stage performances. Like fear and courage of the performers. I believe they benefited greatly from many shy people he finds that not tackling this challenge. Perhaps, everyone he knows considers him too, making the programme helped to be shy; in an amusing episode in Rhod to embrace his own shyness, the programme, his fellow comedian an aspiration for him that his wife Greg Davies believed that he had expresses in the film. been invited to participate in the I think that viewers will take away programme because of his shyness, not Rhod’s; neither believed the other from the programme that social anxieties are common; that people to be shy. who consider themselves to be shy The film took shape over the are not alone in this experience; that next months. The first half deals other people are less censorious with Rhod’s exploration of his own than they imagine them to be; and shyness and the nature of shyness, that the self-consciousness, anxious including asking members of the symptoms and inhibited behaviours public in a shopping centre whether that characterise shyness to various they consider themselves to be shy. degrees can be negotiated with Many do, as previous survey research the help of encouragement and has found. In the second half, Rhod empathetic support. encourages three shy novices to
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tv Stacey Dooley Investigates… Second Chance Sex Offenders BBC Three
play Beyond My Control IMPACT workshop
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No evidence, no nuance As somebody who has spent his career so far examining public responses to sexual crime and the people who commit them, I was encouraged by the title of Stacey Dooley’s recent documentary – Second Chance Sex Offenders. I’ve previously conducted research on how presenting firstperson narrative accounts of people with sexual interests in children can have positive effects on people’s attitudes towards them. Knowing that this is Dooley’s usual presentation approach, I started watching with a lot of hope that this could be a watershed moment in popular coverage of issues related to sexual offender management. That hope was quickly extinguished. Within 10 minutes, Dooley was already slipping into established patterns of speech, talking about ‘sexual offenders and sexual predators’ without (a) operationalising what she meant by these labels, or (b) any apparent awareness of the implicit dehumanisation within the latter. Already, the audience was in the mindset for ‘othering’ the men who Dooley was about to interview on camera. This fetishisation of othering was something that occurred throughout, with an ‘us-versusthem’ narrative underpinning a large proportion of the interactions screened in the documentary. All of this isn’t to say that Dooley didn’t raise some important points, including her observation that residency
restrictions and community notification laws appear to be driven more by public demand and emotional argument than by any objective benefit to offender rehabilitation, or indeed to public protection. Even this point, though, was presented as Dooley’s conjecture. Some research into experts in the area would have revealed the presence of Dr Jill Levenson at Barry University in Miami – where large portions of the documentary were recorded – who is one of the world’s most eminent writers on the effects of US sexual offender legislation. The overwhelming point that I took away from the documentary was the fatalistic tone of Dooley when talking about people who have committed sexual offences, their past achievements and their chances for redemption. When talking to one man who expressed disappointment that his athletics career now counted
Beyond expectations There seem to be fewer and fewer occasions where subjectivity and neural disorder are married together without causing controversy; thankfully, Beyond My Control is raising the numbers. The public engagement initiative IMPACT – a collaboration between the University of Exeter and Exeter Northcott - communicates in equal measures the science, maths, and complex humanness of experiencing recurrent seizures. Beyond My Control incorporates improvised acting to demonstrate the intricate relationship of neural networks, and what might happen when a seizure strikes. The show introduces us to a family, the Brains – a dad, mum, daughter, and her boyfriend – as they work their way through plausible social dilemmas. This helps explore what happens when communication goes awry, relating this to excessive synchronous activity in the brain. Not only is this a great analogy, but involving the audience to suggest ways forward for the family to work through an issue is actually pretty therapeutic (and entertaining!). The main takeaway from the show was the recorded lived experiences of those with epilepsy and their relatives – the embarrassment, guilt, confusion, and sometimes pleasure, that a seizure can bring. This really helps drive home the human behind the diagnosis, and the show
makes no bones about making this explicit. Diagnosis is treated as practical and sometimes helpful labelling, but by no means thought to be fully encompassing those labelled with it. While the show emphasises how complex – socially and psychologically – experiences can be for those with recurrent seizures, no one ever disregards the neural basis of the experience. This non-mutual exclusivity is really something special, which we need to see more often. Too frequently there appears to be a split between those who want to treat neural syndromes as a biological or psychological and social phenomena, and Beyond My Control shows that is can be all three at once: saying someone has a brain disorder does not mean their psychological and social experience is meaningless. Public engagement is rarely something that is put at the forefront of scientific research – it can be clunky and underinvested. Beyond My Control goes above what is often expected from a science and art collaboration – more like this please. Reviewed by Joe Barnby, PhD student studying the cognitive neuropsychology of beliefs and delusions, at King’s College London
08/02/2018 13:56
the psychologist march 2018 culture
Reviewed by Craig A. Harper, Lecturer in Human Psychology at Nottingham Trent University. Links to research can be found in the online version of this review.
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‘Sarah’s Blurred Green’, by Stefania Laccu
for nothing because of his offending (which included sexual contact with young girls he was coaching), Dooley suggested that his past achievements were indeed irrelevant in light of his actions. This isn’t a new idea, with many people of my age now resistant to listening to once-loved music from the rock band Lostprophets, after frontman Ian Watkins was sentenced to more than 30 years imprisonment for sexual offences involving infants in 2013. While this kind of reaction to sexual offenders makes sense at an emotional level, what this does is tell somebody with sexual convictions that this is the only part of their identity that counts. If they begin to buy into this idea (something referred to by criminologist Shadd Maruna as ‘the Pygmalion effect’), the hope that they may have to eventually be an accepted and law-abiding member of society begins to dissipate, making them more likely to reoffend in the future. From my perspective as a researcher interested in sexual offender reintegration, though, the most objectionable statement from Dooley came towards the end of the documentary. Speaking to one man with convictions for the possession of indecent images of children (and an unconvicted contact sexual offence against a young child as a juvenile), Dooley asked him: ‘Do decent people molest children? It’s a simple question.’ Dooley is correct on one level. It is a simple question – far too simple for somebody purporting to be a serious journalist inquiring into such a nuanced topic. The motivations for committing sexual offences against children are varied, and are specific to each individual offender. What Dooley is doing when asking such a question is activating an entity-based view of sexual offenders. I’ve conducted research with Dr Ross Bartels (University of Lincoln) where we found such an implicit theory – where sexual offending is seen to reflect a (or the) core part of an offender’s personality – is associated with more negative attitudes, harsher policy responses and the endorsements of specific and narrow stereotypes about ‘sexual offenders’. In short, the hope that Dooley’s documentary might herald a new, more reasoned, approach to discussing sexual offender policy was unfounded. Her avoidance of alternative ways to discuss this topic, whether wilful to appease viewers, or unintentional through a lack of research, is likely to have precisely the opposite effect.
The University of Leicester’s Attenborough Arts Centre, just around the corner from the British Psychological Society, is home to a ‘DeStress Fest’ until the end of March. Exhibitions, performances and workshops will be held on the themes of mental health, neurodiversity, body image and stress alleviation. As part of the ‘All Brains Are the Same Colour’ exhibition, which runs until 4 March, local Fine Arts PhD student Stefania Laccu showcases her ‘Overlapping’ technique, which she describes as ‘symbolizing how the health status of the human body can be emotionally affected and this therefore becomes embodied as a psychosomatic disorder’. Other exhibitions in the series include Nottingham-based artist Denise Weston’s large-scale portraits of women throughout history and fiction who were linked to the perception of ‘madness’. For more information, see www.attenborougharts.com and #DeStressFest on Twitter.
08/02/2018 13:56
AZ the
psychologist
Karla Novak
to
O ...is for Observation
Suggested by Michelle Newman, Honorary Research Assistant, City, University of London @MichelleStock5 ‘Observation is essential to the study of psychology. Not only do we observe behaviours, responses and reactions to collect data, we are also observing patterns and trends within that data. When I think of an example, it’s Piaget and his observation of his own children’s development.’
In a 2017 study covered on our Research Digest blog), Erica Boothby and her colleagues showed we have a tendency to believe that we are incredibly socially observant ourselves, while those around us are less so. These assumptions combine to create what the researchers called the ‘invisibility cloak illusion’.
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In a brazen example of combining work and pleasure, psychologist Geoff Beattie decided in the 1980s that ‘Beaches are the perfect place to study human behaviour’. His observations led to a book, Beachwatching,
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coming soon… You? We’re looking for cover stars and contributions… see https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/ what-we-are-looking for some current areas of particular interest
which discusses (amongst other things) ‘the propensity for splashing and horseplay which breaks out amongst otherwise mature adults when they are near water’. Recollection, Testimony, and Lying in Early Childhood is a 1909 monograph based primarily on material that German philosopher and psychologist William Stern and his wife Clara recorded in diaries, beginning with the birth of their first child, daughter Hilde (tinyurl. com/ya2fsnpx). In a 2016 study covered on our Digest blog, Richard Bethlehem’s team staged a bicycle accident along a university footpath, to observe whether empathy level in a questionnaire actually predict the likelihood people will show real-life altruism.
A to Z Tweet your suggestions for any letter to @psychmag using the hashtag #PsychAtoZ or email the editor on jon.sutton@ bps.org.uk Entries so far are collated at https:// thepsychologist. bps.org.uk/ psychology-z
contribute… reach 50,000 colleagues, with something to suit all. See www.thepsychologist.org.uk/ contribute or talk to the editor, Dr Jon Sutton, jon.sutton@bps.org.uk, +44 116 252 9573 comment… email the editor, the Leicester office, or tweet @psychmag to advertise… reach a large and professional audience at bargain rates: see details on inside front cover
Search for more on this topic and any other via www.bps.org.uk/thepsychologist and www.bps.org.uk/digest
08/02/2018 14:02
Find out more online at www.bps.org.uk
President Nicola Gale President Elect Professor Kate Bullen Honorary General Secretary Dr Carole Allan Honorary Treasurer Professor Ray Miller Chair, Membership and Standards Board Dr Mark Forshaw Chair, Education and Public Engagement Board Professor Carol McGuinness Chair, Research Board Professor Daryl O’Connor Chair, Professional Practice Board Alison Clarke
society notices Division of Counselling Psychology Annual Conference Gateshead, 6–7 July 2018 See p.8 BPS conferences and events See p.22 BPS Annual Conference Nottingham, 2–4 May 2018 See p.31 Psychology in the Pub (South West of England Branch Exeter, 28 March 2018 See p.48 Education and Public Engagement Board Initiatives Fund for Member Networks See p.54 CPD workshops 2018 See p.65 Developmental Psychology Section Annual Conference Liverpool, 12–14 September 2018 See p.79
The Society has offices in Belfast, Cardiff, Glasgow and London, as well as the main office in Leicester. All enquiries should be addressed to the Leicester office (see inside front cover for address).
The British Psychological Society was founded in 1901, and incorporated by Royal Charter in 1965. Its object is ‘to promote the advancement and diffusion of a knowledge of psychology pure and applied and especially to promote the efficiency and usefulness of Members of the Society by setting up a high standard of professional education and knowledge’. Extract from The Charter
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