The Psychologist January 2012

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january 2012vol 25 no 1

Psychologyto the rescueLeading psychologists recount atime science was their saviour

praises – five a day for young children 32doppelgängers 36‘see a psychologist? why?’ 40feeding time 44

£5 or free to members of The British Psychological Society

news 10media 20

big picture centreethics 52

Incorporating Psychologist Appointments

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The BritishPsychologicalSociety

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Managing Editor Jon SuttonAssistant EditorPeter Dillon-Hooper Production Mike Thompson Staff journalist Christian Jarrett Editorial Assistant Debbie James

The Psychologist andDigest Policy Committee David Lavallee (Chair),Phil Banyard, NikChmiel, Olivia Craig,Helen Galliard, RowenaHill, Jeremy Horwood,Catherine Loveday, PeterMartin, Victoria Mason,Stephen McGlynn, TonyWainwright, PeterWright, and AssociateEditors

Associate Editors Articles Vaughan Bell, Kate Cavanagh, HarrietGross, Marc Jones, Rebecca Knibb, Charlie Lewis,Wendy Morgan, Tom Stafford, Miles Thomas,Monica Whitty, Jill Wilkinson, Barry Winter

Conferences Sarah Haywood, Alana James

International Nigel Foreman, Asifa Majid

Interviews Nigel Hunt, Lance Workman

History of Psychology Julie Perks

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january 2012vol 25 no 1

A new year and a new volume (thisone being our 25th) always remindsme that The Psychologist mustnever stop evolving. A major projectfor 2012 is redevelopingwww.thepsychologist.org.uk, and theprint version will also see changes.This month, the ‘Media’ page (seep.20) expands to reflect the treasuretrove of material on the web, and westart a new occasional ‘Ethics’ seriesencouraging debate on ethicaldilemmas. In the coming issues, wehope to introduce new coverage ofcase studies, reflecting oninteresting psychologicalphenomena from a variety ofperspectives.

Our cover feature, ‘Psychology tothe rescue’, stemmed from a specialfeature on the Society’s ResearchDigest blog (www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog), celebrating 200 e-mailissues of the Digest. On p.24, Buss,Blackmore, Loftus, Langer, andothers describe a time whenknowledge came to their aid. Thereare more (including my own!) on theblog, where you can sign up for thefortnightly e-mail and find out whyso many subscribers and blogvisitors have appreciated the Digestsince 2003.

Dr Jon Sutton

THE ISSUE

Praises – five a day for young childrenCarole Sutton argues that a campaign is needed

Doppelgängers – a new form of self?Jeremy N. Bailenson on the effect ofseeing the ‘self’ acting independently

‘See a psychologist? Why would I do that?’Peter Daggett on resistance to therapy

Feeding timeSue N. Moore on adult–child feedinginteractions

The life guideJon Sutton interviews Lucy Yardley

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Psychology undergraduate Mark Christmas is driven by anambition: to raise awareness of ex-service people who sufferfrom combat-related trauma, and to get a permanent homefor a statue representing this at the National MemorialArboretum. Christmas has joined forces with sculptor JamesNapier to take the 1.5 metre high sculpture around thecountry. ‘We’re looking to engage with sufferers andpractitioners,’ he says, ‘who will help to facilitate arehabilitation concept model, which may offer new insight andsubstance to future research, with applied understanding.’

The sculpture depicts Lance CorporalDaniel Twiddy, who sustained facial woundsfrom shrapnel in a ‘friendly fire’ incident inBasra in 2003. Twiddy experiencedsubsequent trauma episodes. Napier saysthe sculpture symbolises the forgottenservicemen of recent conflicts, a soldierphysically and mentally broken from theeffects of combat.

In addition to his studies, which follow 12years spent in the British Army, Christmas has

written poetry about servicemen and women whobear ‘an injury not on show’, who may be ‘psychologicallybusted’ and have difficulties in building a ‘mental baulk’against ‘some terrifyingly intrusive past’. He says: ‘The Army,the Navy and the Royal Air Force are trained, in a Pavlovianway, to become “different”. The problem we have is, who“trains” them to become civilians? Where does the domain ofpsychology take its own stance with regard to PTSD, itscauses and effects? I am looking to engage with thepsychological community on this.’I For more information, see www.theabandonedsoldier.co.uk

The abandoned soldierA project by psychology student Mark Christmas, with sculptor James Napier.Photo by Michelle Bull. E-mail [email protected] to feature in ‘Big picture’.

letters 2strikes; secondary data; roots of horror; Tom Troscianko; riots; and much more

media 20

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Francine Béar and Jennifer Wild on My Transsexual Summer, plus much more in our improved and expanded section

society 62

ethics 52

President’s column; Public Engagementand Professional Psychology Awards;picks from the Society’s journals; andmore

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Anne Scoular talks about her late-blossoming career in business coaching; the realities of a part-time PhD; the latest vacancies; and how to advertise

looking back 90

new voices 88

the ‘figure–ground’ distinction at 100, with Jörgen L. Pind

in the latest of our series for budding writers, David Horrocks outlines hisresearch with Premiership footballers, and its implications for the game

one on one 92…with Bruce Hood

news and digest 10questionable research practices; strike action; self-harm; educational psychologytraining; Daniel Kahneman speaks; nuggets from the Research Digest; and more

book reviews 56minority influence; errors; 30-secondpsychology; and more

the first of a new series invitingdiscussion and debate on a dilemma

careers and psychologist appointments

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Secondary data analysis refersto second-hand analysis ofexisting data sets; datacollected by someone else forsome other purpose (e.g.General Lifestyle Survey). Due to limited fundingopportunities, manyresearchers are embracing thepractice of secondary dataanalysis. For example,Emerson and Einfeld (2010)reanalysed the first two wavesof data from the UK’sMillennium Cohort Study andthe Longitudinal Study ofAustralian Children to explore

emotional and behaviouralproblems in disabled and non-disabled children. What ismore, such practice isencouraged by journals,including the prestigiousBritish Medical Journal, whichpromotes a culture of datasharing (see Groves, 2009).

With the current caps onfunding for primary research,it could be argued that thereare palpable gains to be madeby capitalising upon sourcesof existing data. Such datahave already been collected,thereby negating the

expensive and time-consuming collection methodsassociated with primaryresearch (e.g. surveys,interviews or video footage).Exploiting secondary data setscould thus prove cost-effectivefor the lone investigator, smallresearch team or thoseworking on time-limitedprojects, such as studentdissertations. In these times ofausterity surely this can onlybe a good thing?

Yet few researchers possessthe complex skills needed tomake effective use of

secondary data sets.Secondary sources can bedifficult to locate and accessparticularly for those withlimited research experience.What is more, analysts maynot understand the dataespecially when key variablesare missing or only come inaggregate form. The size ofthe data sets, as regards boththe number of variables andrespondents involved, can alsobe difficult to manage. Thereare further concerns thatresearchers may misusesecondary sources of data,

These pages are central to ThePsychologist’s role as a forumfor discussion and debate, andwe welcome your contributions.

Send e-mails marked ‘Letter for publication’ [email protected]; orwrite to the Leicester office.

Letters over 500 words are less likely tobe published. The editor reserves theright to edit or publish extracts fromletters. Letters to the editor are notnormally acknowledged, and space does

not permit the publication of every letterreceived. However, see www.thepsychologist.org.ukto contribute to our discussion forum(members only).

Existing data – worth a second look?

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An erosion of rights and patient care?The public sector strike on 30 Novemberwas supported by several major unionsincluding UNITE, who had 75 per centsupport for the strike from those whovoted (31 per cent response rate).Professional bodies, such as the BritishMedical Association and Royal Collegeof Nursing, also supported the strike,even if they did not ballot for action onthis occasion.

It isn’t possible to say exactly whatnumbers of psychologists voted for thestrike, nor how many psychologiststurned out on the Day of Action. Butmany did decide to support the strikebecause of an ongoing erosion of publicservices, and now major threats to theterms and conditions of staff. Thesethreats will also jeopardise the future ofpsychology as a profession, and wealready see that there are fewer trainingplaces available for people who want totrain in applied psychology, reduction of NHS posts and a move to downgradeexisting posts. Our profession cannotafford to ignore these threats if webelieve psychology has a realcontribution to make to Society.

As the economic downturn bites evenharder, we are seeing cuts, closures ofservices and expanding workloads. Thishurts local communities at a time whenpublic services are even more important

as a safety net to catch those who willfall below the poverty line. Mental healthneeds increase during recession and thelink between unemployment and suicideis well documented. The public sector is

under attack and this willincrease the gap between richand poor. The proposals oncutting pensions are part ofthis wider picture – staff willwork longer, for less, despitehaving saved throughout theirworking lives. They will alsohave to pay an additional ‘tax’of just over 50 per cent of theircurrent pension contributions,which will not be going totheir pension fund but straightto the treasury towards the‘debt’ (see Unite info attinyurl.com/6ktg2jb).

There is a bigger agenda totry to privatise public services– if staff are cheaper, then thisis attractive to private

companies. Again, this is athreat to applied psychologists,and to psychology as a

Khadj Rouf with her children and other protestorsoutside David Cameron’s constituency office

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cherry-picking findings tosupport their arguments.

Undoubtedly, the researchquestion should dictatewhether an analyst collectsprimary or secondary data,not concerns regardingbudgets or analytical skills.However, given the currenteconomic climate andwidespread availability of data,I wonder whether researchersshould exploit secondarysources, providing, of course,they have the necessary skillsto do so. Primary data wouldthen only be collected whenthe data set is unfeasible orlacks the methodologicalrigour needed to address theproposed problem.

What do fellowpsychologists think? Is itworth exploiting secondarysources for psychological

research? And should weensure our students have thenecessary the skills to makeeffective use of such data?Joanne WilsonSchool of Sociology, Social Policyand Social WorkQueen’s University Belfast

ReferencesEmerson, E. & Einfeld, S. (2010).

Emotional and behaviouraldifficulties in young children withand without developmental delay: A bi-national perspective. Journal ofChild Psychology and Psychiatry,51(5), 583–593.

Groves, T. (2009). Managing UK researchdata for future use. British MedicalJournal, 338, b1252.

discipline. How will we continue toreach the public?

We hope that the government will be prepared to rethink its proposals onpublic sector pensions. At a time whenthere are a million unemployed youngpeople, it seems peculiar to ask olderpeople to work for longer, and for many,they will claim a pension at the end of itthat will not keep them above thepoverty line. As it is now, half of womenpublic service pensioners get less than£4000 per year. This is not the ‘goldplating’ caricature of certain sections ofthe media.

What could the British PsychologicalSociety do? Help raise awareness of whatis happening to our profession and morewidely to public services as part of ourcommitment to social justice. We shouldnot be afraid to speak out at a time whenpatient care is under threat, and whenthe rights of the public sector workforceare being eroded.Dr Khadj RoufConsultant Clinical PsychologistApplied Psychologists Occupational AdvisoryCommittee, Unite the Union

NOTICEBOARDI We are carrying out research across England to find out what happenswhen therapy or counselling makes someone feel worse or ‘goeswrong’ in some way. This will help us to develop some practical ways toidentify and prevent therapies from failing.

We are seeking to interview 20 clients and 20 therapists who haveexperienced failed therapies to explore what they would have foundhelpful in preventing this occurring. If you have experienced therapy as a therapist or client, that you feel has ‘gone wrong’ or been harmful, weare keen to hear from you.

To take part in the study, you will need to complete a questionnaire.After this, you may be asked to take part in an interview or focus group(although there is no obligation to do so).

If you would like more information, you can visit our website:www.shef.ac.uk/scharr/sections/hsr/mh/mhresearch/adept Dr Rachel O’Hara Eleni ChambersSchool of Health and Related Research & Centre for PsychologicalServices ResearchUniversity of Sheffield

Susanne Vosmer’s thoughts abouthypnosis not yet being part of mainstreampsychology (Letters, December 2011) canbe connected to the news piece in thesame issue about Professor Happé (‘Willwe ever understand autism?’), inparticular that autism represents adifferent ‘cognitive style’. Now link this tothe search by the Brain Mind Forum forthe most important problems to be solvedin neuroscience (also in Letters,December 2011).

The science of the end of the 20thcentury was perhaps in the closing stagesof the longstanding segmentation ofeverything, in the desperate hope thateventually truth would lie beneath.Hypnosis and autism offer challenges to a segmentation approach to humanbehaviour because they hint at thepossibility that only an accurate, holisticview of how mind and brain operate willadvance our knowledge. Sequentialinformation processing systems, whereinput eventually leads to output, cannotresolve the logical conundrums of Wherelies free will? Where lies the ‘decision’?Where is judgement formed?

Does attention exist as a ‘willed’ event,or do decisions precede attention; doesattention create cognitive style or doescognitive style create attention? So one of the most important questions for

psychology and neuroscience is centredon the very nature of the motivationalalgorithms, with the systems for attentionand decision as interwoven event-ladenbut holistic emergent phenomena.

The answers may well suggest thathypnosis is a very simple normalextension of attention, motivation anddecision making and that autism, forsome at least, is a cognitive style wherethese are simply operating with differentweightings as they bring influence indifferent directions to those that occur formost of the time for most people.

And this may explain why people,especially those who have to make bigdecisions affecting us all, sometimes slipfrom one pattern that has been successfulto another that is pure disaster, or fail tochange direction between the coreactivities when the context changes, sothat successful attention weightings tripover to quite absurd patterns of decisions.

I think those looking back from the22nd century will see us starting on thefoundations of a science of psychology,the next 90 years will be interestingindeed. For only now are we beginning toget a hint of the insight we need to createsuch a science, for most of the rest will benothing but historical curiosity.Graham RawlinsonChichester

Some important questions

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Psychology undergraduate Mark Christmas is driven by anambition: to raise awareness of ex-service people who sufferfrom combat-related trauma, and to get a permanent homefor a statue representing this at the National MemorialArboretum. Christmas has joined forces with sculptor JamesNapier to take the 1.5 metre high sculpture around thecountry. ‘We’re looking to engage with sufferers andpractitioners,’ he says, ‘who will help to facilitate arehabilitation concept model, which may offer new insight andsubstance to future research, with applied understanding.’

The sculpture depicts Lance CorporalDaniel Twiddy, who sustained facial woundsfrom shrapnel in a ‘friendly fire’ incident inBasra in 2003. Twiddy experiencedsubsequent trauma episodes. Napier saysthe sculpture symbolises the forgottenservicemen of recent conflicts, a soldierphysically and mentally broken from theeffects of combat.

In addition to his studies, which follow 12years spent in the British Army, Christmas has

written poetry about servicemen and women whobear ‘an injury not on show’, who may be ‘psychologicallybusted’ and have difficulties in building a ‘mental baulk’against ‘some terrifyingly intrusive past’. He says: ‘The Army,the Navy and the Royal Air Force are trained, in a Pavlovianway, to become “different”. The problem we have is, who“trains” them to become civilians? Where does the domain of psychology take its own stance with regard to PTSD, itscauses and effects? I am looking to engage with thepsychological community on this.’I For more information, see www.theabandonedsoldier.co.uk

The abandoned soldierA project by psychology student Mark Christmas, with sculptor James Napier.Photo by Michelle Bull. E-mail [email protected] to feature in ‘Big picture’.

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Questionable research practices are rifeamong US psychologists, according toresearch obtained by The Psychologist.Leslie John at Harvard Business Schooland her colleagues George Lowenstein ofYale and Drazen Prelec of MIT surveyednearly 6000 academic psychologists inthe US. Based on anonymous repliesfrom 2155 of them, it’s estimated thatone in ten psychologists falsify data, and the majority are guilty of selectivelyreporting studies that ‘worked’ (67 percent), failing to report all dependentmeasures (74 per cent), continuing tocollect data to reach a significantresult (71 per cent), reportingunexpected findings as expected (54per cent), and excluding data post-hoc (58 per cent).

Admissions were higher amongcognitive, neuroscience and socialsubdisciplines, and lower amongclinical psychologists. The morequestionable practices a psychologistadmitted to, the more likely theywere to claim such practices weredefensible. However, 35 per cent ofrespondents said they doubted theintegrity of their own research.

Surveys of this kind have beenpublished before but this is the first to incorporate an honesty incentive,which has led to far higher admissionrates than previously identified.Participants were told, truthfully, thatmore money would be donated tocharity by the researchers based onan estimate of their honesty. Thisestimate was computed by comparingthe participants’ own confessions toquestionable practices against theaverage rate of admission andparticipants’ estimates for how manycolleagues indulge in such practices.

In their report on the findings, to bepublished in the journal PsychologicalScience, John and her colleagues(psychologists by background) describethe methods they investigated asrepresenting a large ‘grey zone’ of

acceptable practice. These practices‘threaten research integrity and produceunrealistically elegant results that maybe difficult to match without engaging insuch practices oneself’, they concluded.‘This can lead to a “race to the bottom”,with questionable research begettingeven more questionable research.’

John told us that she has no data onUK research practices but has no reasonto believe a survey here would producedifferent results. She told The

Psychologist she’d like to see bodies likethe American Psychological Associationand the British Psychological Society puttheir weight behind the reforms neededto reduce the use of questionableresearch practices.

On the Society’s Research Digestblog, which was first to break details ofthe study, debate centred on theseriousness (or not) of the reportedpractices, and on whether they say moreabout the wider publishing culture as

opposed to individual ethics.‘Neuroskeptic’ thought that‘many of the questionablepractices are actually quitehard to avoid doing withinthe current academicpublishing system’. He alsoqueried ‘why this kind ofmethodological self-criticismseems to be focused onpsychology’, although it isarguably to the discipline’s

credit that it is. Others highlighted thereforms needed to address the issue:Alex Holcombe (University of Sydney)pointed to his psychfiledrawer.org, setup to act as a repository for failedreplication attempts in experimentalpsychology, which should help counterthe publishing bias towards positiveresults.

The new survey results come hot onthe heels of the unfolding investigationinto the practices of the disgraced social

psychologist Derek Stapel (seeDecember news), and theymake for worrying readingwhen considered alongside a paper ‘False-positivepsychology’ published inPsychological Science inNovember (free PDF fromtinyurl.com/canb33z). In thatpaper, Joseph Simmons at theWharton School, University ofPennsylvania and hiscolleagues used computersimulations and a real exampleexperiment to show how thequestionable research practicesdocumented by John’s surveycan greatly increase the risk offalse-positive results (that is,finding significant effectswhere in fact there is no effect).

For example, theysucceeded in demonstrating thelogically impossible finding that

listening to children’s music canreduce participants’ actual

chronological age. They obtained thatresult in a between-subjects design by:testing for numerous other outlandishdependent variables, any of which couldhave been chosen as the ‘finding’ ifsignificant (including participants’political orientation and how often theyrefer to the past as ‘the good old days’);by increasing the participant pool afterfailing to find a significant result withfewer participants; and by ensuring thatfather’s age was included as a covariate,ostensibly to control for variation inbaseline age across the participants(removing father’s age as a covariaterendered the result non-significant).

Each of these factors adds degrees offreedom to the statistical analyses, thusundermining the notion of a nominalfalse-positive rate of five per cent (i.e. p ≤ .05). However, the reporting rules of many journals wouldn’t require theresearchers to disclose many of thesemanipulations, leading the significant

Questionable research practices rife?

BREAKING NEWSThe Psychological Science survey discussed here wasdetailed in public for the first time by the BritishPsychological Society Research Digest in December. For regular updates and to sign up to the e-mail, visit www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog and follow@researchdigest on Twitter.

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finding to appear credible. Based on their demonstrations,

Simmons and his colleagues call for theauthors of psychology papers to conformto a set of new rules, to be policed byreviewers, including:I Decide the rule for data termination

prior to beginning data collectionand report this rule in the write-up.

I List all dependent variables. I If analysis includes a covariate,

report the results with and withoutthe covariate.

I Report all experimental conditions,including failed manipulations.

These requirements ‘pose minimal costson authors, readers and reviewers,’Simmons’ team conclude. ‘These solutionswill not rid researchers of publicationpressures, but they will limit whatauthors are able to justify as acceptableto others and to themselves. We shouldembrace these disclosure requirementsas if the credibility of our professiondepended on them. Because it does.’ CJ


news

1 IN 12 SELF-HARM The first population-based study to assessthe course of self-harm from adolescence toyoung adulthood has found that around onein 12 young people self-harm, with thebalance skewed towards girls.

Published in The Lancet (seetinyurl.com/cfo52y5), the cohort study wasconducted between August 1992 and January2008 in Victoria, Australia, with participantsaged 14–15 at the outset. The researchers,led by Paula Moran (Institute of Psychiatry),chose this period from adolescence as one‘characterised by major changes in healthand a steep rise in deaths resulting fromself-inflicted injuries’. Risks for self-harmincreased substantially across puberty, ‘aprocess that seems to be independent of age’according to the authors. Self-harm duringadolescence was independently associatedwith the presence of depression and anxiety,antisocial behaviour, high-risk alcohol use,cannabis use, and cigarette smoking. Injuryto the skin through cutting and burning wasthe commonest method of self-harm duringadolescence, although by young adulthood noone form of self-harm predominated.

There is some good news though: 90 percent of people who self-harm as adolescentswill naturally stop in adulthood. ‘Our findingssuggest that most adolescent self-harmingbehaviour resolves spontaneously,’ theauthors said. ‘However, young people whoself-harm often have mental health problemsthat might not resolve without treatment, asevident in the strong relation detectedbetween adolescent anxiety and depressionand an increased risk of self-harm in youngadulthood.’

Commenting on the age-related declinein self-harm in The Lancet(tinyurl.com/cesa42q), Keith Hawton(University of Oxford) and Rory O’Connor(University of Stirling) considered that asyoung people move from adolescence toyoung adulthood, the extent of exposure topeer self-harm might decrease. They alsoreferred to a possibility not addressed byMoran and colleagues: the extent to whichclinical interventions might have contributedto the reduction in self-harm. ‘The results ofMoran and colleagues’ study will offer somereassurance to parents of adolescents whoself-harm and to health and educationalagencies,’ Hawton and O’Connor said.‘Clinicians can offer encouragement to bothyoung people who are self-harming and theirfamilies.’ JS

The public sector strike on 30 November was supported by several major unions,including the Association of Educational Psychologists (64 per cent support forstrike action from a 30 per cent response rate) and UNITE (75 per cent supportfrom a 31 per cent response rate).

Dr Khadj Rouf, Consultant Clinical Psychologist and member of the AppliedPsychologists Occupational Advisory Committee, Unite the Union, told ThePsychologist: ‘We should not be afraid to speak out at a time when patient care isunder threat, and when the rights of the public sector workforce are being eroded.’

How were services affected? Dr Rouf said: ‘As healthcare providers, we careabout our patients and clients. There was crisis cover across health services onthe day of the strike, so it was very similar to cover provided over Christmas. Theaction did not compromise patient care. Cuts to public services will have a farworse impact on services and patient care, and for more than one day.’

A member of the Leadership and Management Faculty of the Society’s Divisionof Clinical Psychology reported: ‘The general feeling was that not that many werestriking and certainly some of the more junior (and often younger) were notalways union members. Five out of 12 consultant clinical psychologists went onstrike. Of the ones who were on strike, a couple said they felt that it was animportant principle whether they would be protected from the changes or not.’

Susan van Scoyoc, Acting Chair of the Society’s Standing Committee forPsychologists in Health and Social Care, said: ‘SCPHSC, along with other parts of the Society, are aware of the changes taking place throughout the NHS and thepublic sector generally. We have expressed opinions on how these changes arelikely to impact upon the users of such services and these can be seen in theSociety responses to various government lead consultations (seewww.bps.org.uk/consult). Individual members have differing views on how torespond to these changes but it is clear we all share one overriding concern –to provide the best quality of care to our clients now and in the future.’I For more comment from Dr Rouf, see p.2.

PUBLIC SECTOR STRIKE ACTION



news

The latest of the ‘Plug in your brain’public lectures at the University ofWestminster came in the form of adelightful neuroscience and music mash-up. Neuropsychologist and life-longmusician Dr Catherine Lovedaycollaborated with husband and guitaristDarren Loveday, pianist Anna Tilbrookand soprano Joanne McGahon. Togetherthey moved and entertained the audiencewith their live performances, as DrLoveday attempted to ‘unravel themystery’ of music’s power.

Music is ‘fundamental, universal andubiquitous’, Loveday explained. We learnto appreciate music naturally, she said,and relics of bone flutes and otherarchaeological evidence show its influencethrough human history. As Tilbrooksoothed sore minds with Chopin’s‘Fantastie’ Impromptu, findings on thehealth benefits of music flowed onscreen,including its ability to: lower bloodpressure; reduce pain in palliative care;improve sleep; alleviate allergies; boostimmune function; and reduce depression.

It’s not just humans that are affectedby music. Dogs are calmed by classical

pieces, Loveday said, and they bark torock songs. Unpublished research suggestsslow music can boost the milk yield ofcows. ‘And my favourite,’ Loveday said:‘rats subjected to 24-hours of stress-inducing rock music take longer to healfrom their wounds.’

But what exactly is music? Essentially,Loveday said, it’s our ear-drums vibrating.It’s organised sound. Tilbrook playedvarious versions of ‘Happy Birthday’ todemonstrate the effects of altering pitch,harmony, tempo, timbre, loudness anddissonance. There needs to be a regularrhythm so that we can predict what comesnext and then ‘Bam!’ – it’s the meaningfulviolations to that pattern that can so moveus. ‘It’s those little changes, those littleviolations of our expectations that makethe heart flutter and cause us to respond,’Loveday said.

A 2004 study documented over 100ways people described the way that musicmade them feel, from ecstatic to spiritual.Underlying these emotional responses tomusic are physical changes to the bodyand brain. Music affects our cortisol levels(a hormone involved in stress), SigA (an

antibody), our endogenousopiates, dopamine (aneurotransmitter implicatedin the anticipation of reward)and oxytocin (nicknamedthe ‘cuddle hormone’because of its role inattachment and bonding).Music can also trigger a chillresponse; sometimes knownas a frisson. ‘The chillresponse is something that I reckon every single personin this room has had,’Loveday said. ‘It’s that shiverdown the spine that you getwhen you listen to aparticular moment in music,so you’re listening to it and itjust moves you.’

The chill response hasbeen studied extensively, notleast because it’s easy tomeasure and observe. It’sassociated with changes inskin conductance (because of sweat),heart rate, temperature, breathing andmost people can describe and identify

The mystery of music

The future of educationalpsychology training inEngland has been secured, atleast for the short term. Aftermonths of uncertainty, theDepartment for Educationhas earmarked £16 millionfor the duration of thecurrent Spending Review,which runs until 2014/15.These funds will covertrainees’ first-year tuitionfees and a bursary towardsliving expenses. Localauthorities and otheremployers will be expectedto fund bursaries and othercosts for years two and threeof the educationalpsychology doctorate.

The announcement cameas the government publishedits review into the training ofeducational psychology inEngland. It discusses

alternative training modelsfor educational psychology,including the idea of a‘Family psychologist’, whichcombines elements ofeducational and clinicalpsychology training, and the‘Fast-track model’, whichwould reduce training to twoyears. However, the preferredoption is for the existingthree-year doctorate model to continue.

The most significantdevelopment is the review’scall for the creation of a newnational steering group tomanage the relationshipbetween training andplacement providers. Thiswill include overseeing anaccreditation process forplacement providers, whichit’s hoped will providequality and consistency for

trainees. The steering groupwould comprise: ‘localauthority employers, theprofession, trainingproviders, placementproviders, the Association of Educational Psychologists,the National Association ofPrincipal EducationalPsychologists, the HealthProfessions Council, theBritish Psychological Societyand the Association of ChildPsychologists in PrivatePractice’. In turn, themanagement of this steeringgroup will be overseen firstby the Children’s WorkforceDevelopment Council(CWDC) and then from April2012 by the Teaching Agency.

The new proposals followa period of grave uncertaintyfor educational psychology,which sees about 120

students enter training eachyear at an annual cost ofabout £10,000 each. Therecent model has been forlocal authorities to makevoluntary contributionstowards the costs of the 12 educational psychologytraining providers. However,the recession and otherfactors has led thesecontributions to all but dryup. The government hasagreed to meet the shortfallfor 2012/13, prior to fundingall year one costs for the2013 trainee cohort.

Another issue raised bythe review is the fact thatthere’s been no systematicevaluation since 1978 of theeducational psychologyworkforce and the demandsplaced on it. ‘We believethere is a strong argument for

Educational psychology training



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undertaking a robustworkforce modellingexercise,’ the review says. To this end it recommendsthat the CWDC and then theTeaching Agency undertakeregular surveys of theeducational psychologyworkforce and the demandsplaced on it.

The Children’s MinisterSarah Teather said thateducational psychologistsfulfil a valuable role in theirwork with children andfamilies in schools, and aspart of early interventionprojects. ‘We want the mostvulnerable children, andthose who would benefit fromextra support, to be able toaccess the expertise andsupport of educationalpsychologists,’ she said. ‘[The£16 million earmarked by the

Department of Education]helps to secure the futuretraining of educationalpsychologists and is part ofthe work we are doing on theSEN green paper.’

Dr Jane Leadbetter, Chairof the Society’s Division ofEducational and ChildPsychology, told us that shewelcomed the findings of thereview, ‘which confirmed that

the current three-year trainingmodel, at doctoral level, is asuccess and is fit for purpose.’She added: ‘It is reassuringthat funds are being providedto sustain training over thenext few years and that aseamless process wherebyuniversity time and timespent in educationalpsychology services will beset up and properly managed.Of concern is the ongoingcuts to local authorityservices around the countrywhich is having a directimpact upon EP posts and thework that can be undertakenat preventative and systemiclevels.’ CJI The review Developing

Sustainable Arrangements forthe Initial Training ofEducational Psychologists is attinyurl.com/bpceg6c

when it’s happened. The chill response haseven been observed in chicks and Lovedaytook her place at the piano to play the

piece that was foundto ruffle theirfeatures: Pink Floyd’s‘Post War Dream’.

What happens inthe brain when we’relistening to music?Virtually every part ofthe brain is affectedfrom the cerebellum,involved inmovement andrhythm, to theamygdala, associatedwith emotionallearning. Musicalenjoyment iscorrelated withactivity in the caudatein the limbic system,which tracks musicalanticipation. Andpeak musical pleasure

is associated withnucleus accumbens activity.

The fact that music and sex triggeractivity in similar parts of the brain showsonce again, Loveday said, that music is a

‘fundamental human activity’.Loveday next discussed why music

has these effects on us. Some of if it is nodoubt learned by association, she said. As Tilbrook demonstrated at the piano,the iconic two-note repeat from the movieJaws still has the power to unnervepeople. There’s also an element of moodcontagion, including responding to theperformer’s own emotion. Some of it is thecognitive effects of expectancy violation,discussed earlier. And finally, some of it isprimal and innate. This was demonstratedwith great power as Joanne McGahontook to the stage to sing ‘Vissi d’arte’ fromPuccini’s Tosca, her surging, soaring voiceseared with grief. The entranced audiencewere moved despite not being able tounderstand a word of the Italian.

‘Laughter, screaming and crying… it’sall basically a form of music and we’reinnately primed by it,’ Loveday said. ‘Sowe’ve got these primal, direct effects, butthen as we learn the language of musicmore, our appreciation deepens, we areable to use sounds in more complex waysand the more complex our emotionalresponse becomes.’ CJ

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Anyone with an interest in the foibles ofhuman reasoning has been spoilt over thelast decade. A succession of popularbooks from David Myers’ Intuition: ItsPowers and Perils (2002) to Jonah Lehrer’sThe Decisive Moment (2009) havedocumented the biases and heuristics thatshape our attitudes and decisions. Everysingle one of these books cites theinfluential work of two psychologists –Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky –for which Kahneman was awarded theNobel Prize for Economics in 2002(Tverksy died in 1996 and was thereforeineligible for the prize).

Now we get to hear from the pioneerhimself: Professor Kahneman of PrincetonUniversity has finally published his ownpopular account of his field: Thinking,Fast and Slow (Allen Lane), described bythe New York Times as ‘a lucid andprofound vision of flawed human reasonin a book full of intellectual surprises andself-help value’.

In November, Kahneman promotedhis book at the LSE, ‘in conversation’ with

Professor Lord Richard Layard, thearchitect of the government’s ImprovingAccess to Psychological Therapiesprogramme. Layard began by asking whatis meant by ‘thinking fast and thinkingslow’. This is a reference to the idea thatwe have two forms of mental process,Kahneman said: System 1 and System 2(these are metaphors, he further explained,rather than literal brain systems).

System 1 operates all the time, andmore often than not we’re guided by it –such as when we’re walking or drivingand we don’t have to think consciouslyabout what we’re doing. System 2monitors and interprets System 1 and itcomes into play when we think effortfullyand consciously about a problem. Askedto solve ‘2 + 2’, System 1 would deal withit, producing the answer automaticallyand without effort. Challenged with ‘22 x17’ and an answer probably won’t come tomind immediately – you have to reflecteffortfully on how to solve the problem.‘My standard example,’ Kahneman said,‘is that if you have to stop doing [a

mental task] when you make a left-turninto traffic, then it’s effortful.’

Kahneman said there’s muchpsychological insight to be gained byinvestigating what System 1 can and can’tdo. ‘It can do wonderful things,’ he said,‘but it has strange limitations.’ As anexample of a useful System 1 skill, he saidhe was able to determine his wife’s moodfrom the first word she utters on thephone. On the other hand, System 1produces mistakes when it doesn’t have askilled answer. Here Kahneman gave theexample of people’s judgements about thelikely university grades of a woman whothey’re told learned to read fluently at agefour. An idea will come to their mindinstantly (thanks to System 1) based onassumptions about the proportion ofpeople who read at age four and how that correlates with later academicachievement. However, these implicitstatistical assumptions are mistaken andneglect many other factors. Consequently,people’s predictions about the woman’sgrades will tend to be far too extreme.

Examples like this show how System1 treats whatever information it has (thewoman’s reading precocity in this case) asif that is all the information that matters.Another more striking example:Kahneman cited research from the 1990sthat asked some people to say how muchthey’d be willing to pay for travelinsurance against death by any means.Their answers were compared against asecond group who were asked how muchthey’d be willing to pay for insurancespecifically against death by terrorism.The terrorism group were willing to paysubstantially more money! ‘This isabsurd,’ Kahneman said. ‘The way System1 deals with this question is that there’ssomething you know immediately – howafraid you are. And that’s it, you translateyour answer from something System 1produced, an evaluation based on fearand emotion.’

These insights beg the question,Layard said: should the government takeour flawed thinking into account in theway that it formulates policy? Kahnemanargued that indeed, the outdatedeconomic idea that humans are perfectlyrational has had some perniciousconsequences for government policy,most of all the idea that people don’t needto be protected against their ownmistakes. ‘People do need protectionagainst their own mistakes,’ Kahnemansaid, ‘because they make highly


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A journey in the fast and slow lanes

KAHNEMAN IN THE HOT-SEATAfter his conversation with Lord Layard, Professor Kahneman took questions from theaudience. Here’s a précis.

Q: You’re pessimistic about the benefit of training against biases. Does CBT offer any hope?DK: Clearly System 1 can be modified – it updates its models. But you can’t stop System 1

constructing stories based on the limited information and skills at its disposal. Q: Are some people better decision makers than others? Can we identify them?DK: There are different domains of decision making, so you can be good at one but not the

other. There isn’t a general decision-making trait. Having high IQ, having access to yourown emotions are part of good decision making. It’s easier to identify bad decisions andbad decision makers than good decisions and decision makers.

Q: Why the pessimism about the policy effects on well-being?DK: Well, a world without commuting would certainly be better. More time with family and

loved ones makes people happier. So yes, government policy that helped with these thingswould improve the world in these fairly basic ways and I’d be supportive of that. But therewill be trade-offs and I don’t know how they will pan out.

Q: Where should the government intervene to protect us?DK: There must be limits to coercion – I don’t think we should ban eating French fries, for

example. Anticipated regret is a possible criterion – preventing people from making thekinds of decisions that they’re likely to regret later on. There are issues about what kind ofsociety you want to live in. Singapore is an interesting example. It interferes with people’slives a lot, but there are costs. They’re not the champions of well-being.

Q: Can you explain the reasoning behind the financial crisis? What about the minds of the decisionmakers in Europe right now?

DK: This question is too hard for me. The contribution of psychology is limited. People who tookout mortgages they couldn’t pay made a mistake. The sellers of those mortgages tookadvantage and this should have been prevented by regulation. As for the bankers – theywere being rewarded for taking very large risks (and still are) and that situation is going tolead to risk taking. That’s not irrational, we should expect that.


predictable mistakes – including insavings and insurance. Furthermore, theyneed protection against predators becausethey will disclose all the relevantinformation only in small print. Rationalagents might read the small print, butpeople don’t.’

What about implications foreducation, Layard asked. Can people betaught to counteract the flaws in humanreasoning? Kahneman confessed that heis a pessimist in this regard, whereas herealises that Layard is an optimist. ‘I don’tthink reading this book will help you,’Kahneman admitted. ‘Writing it certainlyhasn’t helped me!’

So, is there any hope? Kahneman saidthere was a benefit to be had inintroducing a more sophisticatedlanguage of gossip. We’re all far moreconscious of other people’s mistakes thanour own, he explained, and by providinga more informed terminology for talkingabout people’s errors, our judgements andunderstanding will improve. ‘So there’ssome hope,’ he said, ‘but not much.’ Headded that institutions could improvethemselves by avoiding known biases.Layard stepped in to give the example ofinterviews, which research shows are ahighly ineffective selection tool, thanks inlarge part to the misleading power of firstimpressions and other prejudices. He saidthe LSE had done away with studentinterviews, but that an amazing amount

of time continued to be wasted oninterviews at universities like Oxford andCambridge.

Layard moved the discussion ontowell-being – a topic that Kahneman hasfocused on in recent years. In particularhis research has shown how a distinctionneeds to be made between people’s overallsatisfaction with life, and their (hedonic)moment-by-moment experience ofhappiness and misery. The two are notthe same and don’t always correlate.Kahneman said that unlike Layard he was more concerned with reducingmisery than promoting happiness (Layarddemurred, saying this was his prioritytoo) and he described the UK’s plans tomeasure citizens’ well-being as an‘ambitious effort’. But he fears the leversof government policy probably won’tmake much difference.

‘We’re at the beginning of ourunderstanding of well-being,’ Kahnemansaid. ‘There are so many empiricalquestions that we don’t know.’ Forexample, there are no doubt medicalconsequences of well-being, he said, yetwe don’t currently know whether lifesatisfaction or hedonic experience is themore important. ‘Having answers to thesekinds of questions will help philosophers,policy makers… assign relevant weightsto the different dimensions, but we’rereally at the beginning of that journey.’ CJI Listen to the audio at tinyurl.com/cy5k4nf


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Professor Lord Richard Layard (left) and Professor Daniel Kahneman in conversationat the London School of Economics

info For more, see www.bps.org.uk/funds

Funding bodies should e-mail news toElizabeth Beech on [email protected] forpossible inclusion

FUNDING NEWSThe British Educational Research Associationinvites applications for its Meeting of MindsFellowships. The Fellowships supporteducational researchers who areestablishing themselves in their researchcareer but who have yet to become PrincipalInvestigators. Funding provides support formentoring with a more experiencedcolleague, usually from outside theapplicant’s home institutions. Funding ofbetween £300 and £600 is available for traveland subsistence. Closing date – 16 January. I www.bera.ac.uk/awards

The British Academy has launched the firstround of its International Partnership andMobility awards. The awards support thedevelopment of partnerships between the UKand others areas of the world. This round isfocusing on supporting three-year and one-year partnerships between UK scholars andscholars in Africa, Latin America, theCaribbean, Middle East, South Asia and EastAsia. One-year grants are suited to theinitiation of new collaborative partnershipsand three-year awards to supporting moreextensive programmes of collaboration andexchange. Applicants must be ofpostdoctoral or equivalent status. Closingdate for applications is 8 February 2012.I tinyurl.com/c2bl7ha

The Baily Thomas Charitable Fund is invitingapplications for its research grants. The Fundsupports research into severe learningdisability, including autism. Funding isdirected to the initiation of research to thepoint at which there is sufficient data tosupport an application to a major fundingbody. Grants are made to voluntaryorganisations that are registered charities or are associated with a registered charity,rather than to individuals. The next closingdate for applications is 1 March 2012.I tinyurl.com/7c5k8m6

The University of Ghent offers VisitingPostdoctoral Fellowships for foreignresearchers to be junior and seniorpostdoctoral fellows for between three and12 months. Applications must be made viaScientific Research Networks at theUniversity of Ghent and not directly. UGenthas a Faculty of Psychology and EducationalSciences. I tinyurl.com/c8dvmvb


For students, North and SouthWe hear from the Society’s Psychology4Students days in Preston (reported by Catherine Loveday, University of Westminster) and Watford (reported by Jon Sutton, Editor)


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The University of Central Lancashire wasthis year’s enthusiastic host to the Society’s‘Psychology4Students’ North lectures.With 350 students attending, the eventwas once again a sell-out and there was apalpable buzz of excitement in the hall asSociety President Carole Allan introducedMark Wetherell (Northumbria University)to open with his talk on stress and how itaffects us.

‘I want you to think about a timewhen you’ve experienced an acutelystressful event,’ said Wetherell. ‘How doyou feel?’ A steady flow of responses cameflooding back, illustrating the brain’s fastadrenalin-mediated stress mechanism. A similar question about longer-termperiods of stress enabled Wetherell toexplain the slower, cortisol-activated stressresponse, which switches off the long-term processes so that resources can bedirected to deal with immediate threat.However, if those stresses don’t go away,he explained, the long-term processesremain switched off, leading to a wholehost of negative consequences includingill-health, insomnia and fertility problems.

Wetherell went on to give a very clearexplanation of the dynamics of cortisoland showed data from a range of hisexperiments, including some work withEcstasy users that showed how regularchronic use of the drug causes majordisruption to cortisol regulation and stressresponses. The ecstasy studies certainlyintrigued the students but, judging by thereaction of the crowd, Wetherell’s trumpcard was showing photos of his young sonon each of the first six days of his life,alongside graphs of Wetherell’s owncortisol profiles. ‘What a geek!’ he said ofhimself, ‘but what a perfect illustrationthat having a baby messes with malehormones too!’

Next up was Charlie Frowd (Universityof Central Lancashire) to talk about hisaward-winning work with the police force,developing a new system for constructingthe face of a criminal. He asked the crowdto try and guess the identity of a range ofwell-known faces, constructed using oldphoto-fits and the more modern E-FITsystem. Frowd’s experiments show thatrecognition of faces from theseconstructed images is shockingly poorthough, under 20 per cent.

In an attempt to improve on theseapproaches, Frowd and his colleagues

have developed a new system, based onthe principle that face recognition is farbetter than recall. His new ‘Evo-FIT’system provides an array of faces fromwhich the witness selects the face mostlike the one they remember seeing. Thisselection is used to produce a new arrayand through an iterative process a bestlikeness is produced. Frowd concludedwith impressive statistics that the newsystem has so far had an arrest ratearound 40 per cent and helped to catchsome very notorious local criminals.

The morning session was brought toan end by my own lecture, ‘Lost in Music’(see p.12), stepping in as a last-minutereplacement.

The afternoon started with DeborahRiby (Newcastle University) providinginsight into the way in which childrenwith autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) and Williams syndrome (WS) look at and process faces. Children with ASD areknown to have significant difficulties withsocial communication, Riby explained,whereas children with WS are known tobe very socially driven and highlyempathic.

Riby and her colleagues have beenable to show that these two groups ofchildren process faces very differently.Those with ASD have a greatly reducedface gaze compared to typical children,whereas children with WS spend farlonger fixated on the face, in particularthe eyes, and fail to look at other non-facial clues or to look away whenthinking, as typical children do. This maybe why WS children, despite being verysociable, still have significant problemswith peer relations. This research,explained Riby, provides huge insight intothe exciting and growing field of socialneuroscience.

The day ended with another muchappreciated replacement, Dave Shaw fromLancaster University, reprising last year’stalk (see February 2011) on theimportance of psychology in sport.

Opening the ‘Psychology4Students’ Southevent in Watford was Paul Gardner(University of St Andrews), with a rousingrendition of Lonestar’s ‘Amazed’. Quotingthe author Tom Sharpe – ‘mother naturehas the propensity to make men

Peter Lovatt presented research on how dance affects our thinking, health and hormones


temporarily insane simply in order topropagate the species’ – Gardnerpondered whether love is just aphysiological state that leads us to passon our genes.

Citing evidence from Israelikibbutzim and Chinese sim pua marriagein support of Westermarck’s hypothesis ofincest avoidance, along with the classicDutton and Aron ‘wobbly bridge’ study ofarousal and attraction, Gardner made aconvincing case that imprinted rules andbiology are what passes as ‘love’. We ‘read’immunocompetence from hormone-dependent features such as strongcheekbones (testosterone) and full lips(oestrogen). Using computer software to‘masculinise’ a face enhancesattractiveness, but only when women areovulating: at other times, such faces arerated as colder, less cooperative andworse parents. Such visual and evenolfactory cues are all subconsciouslydriving us towards a devoted spouse andquality children.

Gardner, a former coal-miner who leftschool at 16, did admit that biology mightnot have all the answers to the ‘problemof qualia’ – why do people sacrificethemselves for their loved one, or marryan infertile person? But he ended withsome biologically based advice on gettinga girl for the assembled students – takeher skydiving, don’t wash, and practicelooking symmetrical.

Next up Alison Lee (Bath SpaUniversity) repeated her talk from last year’s Nottingham lectures (seeJanuary 2011) on the value of a casestudy approach. Lee works withpeople who are experiencingproblems with vision as an effect ofParkinson’s disease, including a 72-year-old man sent to her with anunconscious 14° lean to the right,which nearly had him toppling over!Lee’s work on visuospatial neglect and(in particular) left-side onsetParkinson’s helped to get him walkingupright again, and the insights arebeing used in physiotherapy to helpsuch patients stop falling.

Illustrating another major strandin psychology, the comparativeapproach, Katie Slocombe (Universityof York) made chimpanzeecommunication thoroughlyentertaining with an impressiverepertoire of ‘pant hoots’ and ‘roughgrunts’. Humans are the only oneswith full-blown language, but whatabout the various elements you needto make up language? How far up theevolutionary tree do they go?

Describing her research in Edinburgh Zooand the Budongo forest of Uganda (see

tinyurl.com/cl5djcu), Slocombedemonstrated the first evidence ofreferential communication in great apespecies, suggesting it evolved a long timeago. Her new study aims to tease out theintention behind chimp communicationby using a fake snake with chimps eitheralone, at the front or at the back of agroup. If a ‘snake!’ call is an emotionaloutcry, it should occur in all threesituations; if it’s to recruit assistance, theyshould call when at the back or front of a group; if they’re doing it to inform andwarn others, they should call only whenin front.

The afternoon saw a change of tackwith business psychologist Rob Yeungaddressing what makes some individualssoar while others struggle? Yeungrecounted how a major breakthroughcame at around the time of the SecondWorld War, when psychologist JohnFlanagan started to ask people to describea time they were successful, rather thanasking them why they think they aresuccessful. Using this ‘critical incidenttechnique’, Yeung has been interviewingbusiness people and entrepreneurs to tryto understand what helps some people tobecome wealthy in business. He talkedabout two ‘capabilities’ – ‘Awe’ and‘Cherishing’ – that seem to be important.Presenting evidence that people who hadlived and worked abroad for six monthsare more successful and creative, headvised the audience that ‘creativitycomes from a sense of awe about theworld’.

Ending on an almost indescribablehigh was Peter Lovatt from the Universityof Hertfordshire. ‘Dr Dance’ said he didn’tlearn to read until he was 22, anddiscovered dancing as another form oflanguage. Aspects of dancing helpedunblock his thought processes andovercome literacy, and after a spell ofprofessional dancing he ended upstudying the psychology of theperforming arts. Lovatt presented researchon how dance affects our thinking, healthand hormones. Did you know, forexample, that structured dancing leads toimproved convergent problem solving(where there’s a single answer, such as 5 x13), and improvised dancing is better fordivergent thinking? Or that women intheir fertile stage isolate their hips morewhen they dance? Interesting stuff, but itwas the mass dance-along that Lovatt –and the day – will be remembered for.‘Any questions?’, Lovatt asked theexhausted audience at the end. ‘Can wedo it again?’ asked one, leading hundredsof students to invade the stage and tweetrapturous appreciation. ‘Best day ever!’said one.


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CHRISTMAS LECTURES The Royal Institution Christmas Lecturesreturn to BBC Four once again thisChristmas with experimental psychologistProfessor Bruce Hood delivering ademonstration packed three-part seriescalled Meet Your Brain. Writing on Twitter,@profbrucehood commented: ‘The RiChristmas Lectures this year will be reallyambitious if only coz human volunteers arenot as predictable as materials.’

The series will be broadcast on BBC Fourat 8pm on 27, 28 and 29 December.I For a ‘One on one’ with Professor Hood,

see p.92.

HELP INSPIRE YOUNGPEOPLEA volunteering service Inspiring the Futurehas opened for registrations from employersand employees in all sectors and professions.It is a free matching service for volunteerswilling to do short informal ‘career insight’talks to help young people understand theworld of work and about training routes, joband careers options.

Employees (from CEOs to apprentices)visit a local school or college for half an hoursimply to talk about the job they do and theroute they took. No CRB check is needed asteachers will always be present.

Inspiring the Future is run by theindependent charity Education andEmployers Taskforce. The government andeducation and employer representativebodies are supporting the initiative; and thecivil service has registered to enable its staffaround England to volunteer in schools. PDHI For more information or to register to take

part, go to www.inspiringthefuture.org

STUDENT WRITING UK final-year undergraduates studying anysubject have until midnight on 12 January2012 to write 800 words on ‘Does the futureof Britain lie with the right-hand side of thebrain?’ for the inaugural London LibraryStudent Prize.

The author of the winning entry will enjoya prize of £5000, a year’s membership of theLondon Library, a year’s subscription to TheTimes, see their work published in The Timesand The London Library Magazine, andexperience a mini-internship with Timesjournalists. Three runners-up will also win£1000 each and the membership andsubscription prizes.

The prize shortlist will be announced inApril 2012 and the winner in June. CJI See www.londonlibrarystudentprize.com

for more information



It’s easy for us to slip into all-or-nothing mindsets. Anexample would be: a person hassome psychological problemsso their life must be miserable.But that’s a mistakenassumption.

So argue a team of Dutchpositive psychologists, who’vestudied more than 7000 peopleover a three-year period. Yes,those participants with apsychological disorder wereless happy than those without,but the majority (68.4 per cent)of the mentally troubled saidthey ‘often felt happy’ during thepreceding four weeks (thiscompares with 89.1 per cent ofthose without a psychologicalproblem). ‘The possibility ofcoexisting happiness andmental disorders is of clinicalrelevance,’ write Ad Bergsmaand his team, based at ErasmusUniversity and the NetherlandsInstitute of Mental Health andAddiction. ‘A narrow focus onwhat goes wrong in the lives ofthe client and forgetting whatgoes well, may limit therapeuticresults.’

The researchers recruitedtheir sample, representative ofthe general population, fromacross the country. Trainedinterviewers questionedvolunteers in person or over thetelephone to establish signs ofpsychological disorder in thepast month, with 16.5 per centof the sample being judged tohave a disorder based onpsychiatric diagnostic criteria.Happiness was measured with asingle question about frequencyof happy moods over thepreceding four weeks, on ascale from ‘never’ to ‘always’.

‘Most people with a mental disorIn the Journal of Positive Psychology

Like information in a book, unfolding events are stored in human memory in successive chapters or episodes. One consequence is that information in the current episode is easier to recall thaninformation in a previous episode. An obvious question then is how the mind divides experience upinto these discrete episodes? A new study led by Gabriel Radvansky shows that the simple act ofwalking through a doorway creates a new memory episode, thereby making it more difficult to recallinformation pertaining to an experience in the room that’s just been left behind.

Dozens of participants used computer keys to navigate through a virtual-reality environmentpresented on a TV screen. The virtual world contained 55 rooms, some large, some small. Smallrooms contained one table; large rooms contained two at each end. When participants firstencountered a table, there was an object on it that they picked up (once carried, objects could no

longer be seen). At the next table, they deposited the objectthey were carrying at one end and picked up a new object at theother. And on the participants went. Frequent tests of memorycame either on entering a new room through an open doorway,or after crossing halfway through a large room. An object wasnamed onscreen and the participants had to recall whether itwas either the object they were currently carrying or the onethey’d just set down.

The key finding is that memory performance was poorerafter travelling through an open doorway, compared withcovering the same distance within the same room. ‘Walkingthrough doorways serves as an event boundary, therebyinitiating the updating of one’s event model [i.e. the creation of a new episode in memory],’ the researchers said.

But what if this result was only found because of thesimplistic virtual-reality environment? In a second study,Radvansky and his collaborators created a real-life network ofrooms with tables and objects. Participants passed through thisreal environment picking up and depositing objects as theywent, and again their memory was tested occasionally for whatthey were carrying (hidden from view in a box) or had most

recently deposited. The effect of doorways was replicated.Participants were more likely to make memory errors afterthey’d passed through a doorway than after they’d travelled thesame distance in a single room.

Another interpretation of the findings is that they havenothing to do with the boundary effect of a doorway, but more todo with the memory enhancing effect of context (the basic ideabeing that we find it easier to recall memories in the context thatwe first stored them). By this account, memory is superior when

participants remain in the same room because that room is the same place that their memory for theobjects was first encoded.

Radvansky and his team tested this possibility with a virtual reality study in which memory wasprobed after passing through a doorway into a second room, passing through two doorways into athird unfamiliar room, or through two doorways back to the original room – the one where they’d firstencountered the relevant objects. Performance was no better when back in the original roomcompared with being tested in the second room, thus undermining the idea that this is all aboutcontext effects on memory. Performance was worst of all when in the third, unfamiliar room,supporting the account based on new memory episodes being created on entering each new area.

These findings show how a physical feature of the environment can trigger a new memoryepisode. They concur with a study published earlier this year which focused on episode markers inmemories for stories. Presented with a passage of narrative text, participants later found it moredifficult to remember which sentence followed a target sentence, if the two were separated by animplied temporal boundary, such as ‘a while later…’. It’s as if information within a temporal episodewas somehow bound together, whereas a memory divide was placed between information spanningtwo episodes.

In the Quarterly Journal of ExperimentalPsychology

DIGE

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How walking through a doorwayincreases forgetting



digest

choices were judged largely as‘OK’. There were no differenceswith age.

Asked to justify theirjudgements aboutenvironmental harm, 74 percent of the explanations givenreferred to ‘biocentric’ reasons(e.g. ‘A tree is a living thing and,it’s like, breaking off your arm –someone else’s arm orsomething’); 26 per cent invokedanthropocentric reasons (e.g.‘Because without trees wewouldn’t have oxygen’). The ratioof these categories ofexplanation didn’t vary by age,but did vary by gender, with girlsmore likely to offer biocentricreasons. This fits with a wider,but still inconclusive, literaturesuggesting that women tend tobase their moral judgements onissues of care, whereas mentend to base their moraljudgements on issues of justice.

Hussar and Horvath said itwas revealing that environmentalharms were placed midwaybetween harms against other

people and bad manners. ‘Thisenvironmental domain [of moralharm] implies a sophisticatedcomprehension by youngchildren such that considerationis afforded to environmental lifeover social order, but, at thesame time, consideration isafforded to human life overenvironmental life.’

In contrast with the presentfindings, research conducted inthe 90s found that youngchildren tended to offeranthropocentric reasons for theimmorality of environmentalharm, only invoking biocentricreasons more frequently in latechildhood or adolescence.

‘The participants in thecurrent study are constructingmorally-based views aboutnature and humans’ place withinit from a very young age,’ theresearchers said. ‘This moralstance was succinctlyarticulated by one of ourparticipants: “Even if there’s norules you should respect…(and)be good to the environment.”.’

Relying on people’s reports oftheir own happiness, using thisone question, is an obviousweakness of the study.

Not surprisingly, amongthose with a psychologicalproblem, happiness was lowestin those with anxiety anddepression (although still asignificant minority of thesepeople reported frequent happymoods). By contrast, happinesswas highest in those with analcohol abuse disorder, beingnearly as frequent as in thehealthy participants. Thereweren’t enough cases of eatingdisorders and psychosis toexamine these conditionsseparately.

By following up theirsample over time, theresearchers established thatmore happiness at the studystart was associated with betteroutcomes later on, in terms ofrecovery from mental disorder.Further analysis suggested thiswas because higher happinesswas a proxy for having fewermental disorders, being younger,and having better ‘emotionalrole functioning’ (as indicated by managing to spend time onwork and other activities). Thefact that happiness wasassociated with later outcomesprovides some support for thevalidity of the way thathappiness was measured.

‘Our knowledge of mentaldisorders is incomplete if weonly look at the negative side ofthe spectrum,’ the researcherssaid. ‘This study aims tobroaden the view on positivefunctioning and humanstrengths in the context ofmental disorders.’

Young children in northeasternUSA see harms against theenvironment as morally worsethan bad manners. And asked to explain this judgement, manyof them referred to the moralstanding of nature itself –displaying so-called ‘biocentric’reasoning. This precocity marksa change from similar researchconducted in the 1990s, leadingthe authors of the new study,Karen Hussar and JaredHorvath, to speculate about ‘thepossible effects of the increasedfocus on environmentalinitiatives during the last decade… Although typically thought toemerge in later adolescence, a willingness to grant naturerespect based on its own uniqueright-to-existence was presentin our young participants.’

Hussar and Horvathpresented 61 children (aged 6 to 10 years) with 12 story cards:three portrayed a moraltransgression against anotherperson (e.g. stealing moneyfrom a classmate); threeportrayed bad manners (e.g.eating salad with one’s fingers);three portrayed a mundanepersonal choice (e.g. colouring a drawing with purple crayon);and three portrayed anenvironmentally harmful action(e.g. failing to recycle; damaginga tree). For each card, thechildren were asked to say if theact was OK, a little bad or verybad, and to explain theirreasoning.

The children rated moraltransgressions against otherpeople as the worst of all,followed by harms against theenvironment, and then badmanners. Mundane personal

Children’s moral judgments about environmental harmIn the December issue of the Journal of Environmental Psychology

disorder are happy’

The material in this section is taken from theSociety’s Research Digest blog atwww.researchdigest.org.uk/blog, and is writtenby its editor Dr Christian Jarrett. Visit the blogfor full coverage including references and links,additional current reports, an archive, commentand more.

Subscribe by RSS or e-mail at www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog

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cont

ribu

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MED

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The Media page iscoordinated by the Society’sMedia and PressCommittee, with the aim of

promoting and discussingpsychology in the media. Ifyou would like to contribute,please contact the ‘Media’

page coordinating editor,Ceri Parsons (Chair, Mediaand Press Committee), [email protected]

transsexuals in the documentary, revealsthe psychological problems that can occurwhen psychological gender does notmatch a person’s biological sex. She hasrecently begun her transition to living asa woman, and talks about her episodes ofdepression and how she has self-harmedto deal with painful emotions linked torejection. We learn of the terror all sevenindividuals felt when they disclosed trueidentity to family and friends and howrejection, isolation, and depression arecommon consequences.

The programme gives space for thefeatured individuals to express theirthoughts about gender identity, and in sodoing, gives space for the viewer tochallenge convention that it’s about beingbiologically male or female. We learn thatgender identity, like many psychologicalconstructs, exists on a continuum. Maleand female sit at either end withvariations of the two existing in-between.

By getting up close and personal, theprogramme encourages us to let go of ourattachment to separating gender into twoconstructs and to consider transgender asan identity that sits on the gender identitycontinuum. Perhaps psychologicalsupport could start with helpingindividuals to accept where they are onthe continuum and supporting any choicefor surgery.

In terms of surgery, the series does anexcellent job of covering what’s involvedand its controversial components. Genderreassignment surgery costs the NHSapproximately £40,000. With cutbacks tohealth care, even more people arecriticising the decision to fund these so-called ‘cosmetic’ procedures out of a grantthat must also pay for other life-savingprocedures. But the surgeon interviewedin the documentary makes it clear: notonly are there significant improvementsto psychological well-being afterreassignment surgery, but theimprovements in quality of life can lastfor 40 years or more, much longer thanwhat we would see following surgery forcancer or other illnesses, he says.

Finding foot on the gender identitycontinuum is certainly a long journeywhen there’s a mismatch betweenbiological and psychological sex. Channel4 has done an excellent job in revealingthe struggles that dominate when there’s a poor fit, what’s involved medically onthe journey to make a better fit, andimportantly, the need to see gender asspanning a continuum rather than adichotomy. Only in seeing this, will wehave a chance to transform the stigma,misunderstanding, and mockery thattransgender individuals face when theytake steps to be who they really are.

For most of us, waking up in themorning is linked to thoughts about

what to eat for breakfast or how topostpone getting up. Few of us open oureyes then question how to dramaticallychange our body so it more closelyreflects our sense ofgender.

ThroughoutNovember, Channel 4brought us a fascinatingfive-part documentaryseries about transgenderidentity: that sense ofbeing more similar thandifferent to the oppositesex. The documentaryfeatures seven peoplewhose gender identity is a mismatch to theirbiological sex. Every fewweeks, they spend aweekend together toshare their experiences ofliving life as their preferred gender.

My Transsexual Summer gives an in-depth and excellent perspective on thedifficulties and rewards that arise when

people who struggle with their biologicalgender transform it through surgery,hormones, clothing style or acombination of all three. But questionsstill remain. Whilst the viewer learnsabout the psychological struggles

transgender peopleface, the programmepresents only medical procedures as a means ofintervention. We haveyet to hear about thepsychological supportthat’s available andhow it may work tohelp people accepttheir biologicalgender or theirdecision to change it.

Thousands ofpeople in the UKexperiencetransgenderism, and

Charing Cross Hospital performs fourgender reassignment surgeries per week.But is surgery the solution for people whostruggle with their gender identity?

Donna and Drew, two male-to-femaletranssexuals featured in the programme,are content with looking and dressing likewomen, taking hormones to support theirlooks, but wish to keep the parts of theirbodies that make them male. Donna saysabout being transgender, ‘It’s more about a journey to find yourself than it is to finda good surgeon.’

The programme reveals the extent to which our psychological well-being islinked to accepting our gender identity,and how for most people, the matchbetween our biological sex and ourpsychological gender is a good fit. We accept our gender identity withoutawareness or question: we take it forgranted.

Sarah, one of the male-to-female

Settling into gender Francine Béar and Jennifer Wild on My Transsexual Summer

MEDIA PRIME CUTSThe nocebo effect: Wellcome Trust science

writing prize essay http://t.co/HcKceYKqLetter from Scott Lilienfeld on the trend for

renaming psychology departments as‘Department of Psychological and BrainSciences’ http://t.co/2n0c2AWD

What makes musical memories special?http://t.co/T9RSyZa3

The Science of Sarcasm? Yeah, Righthttp://t.co/UbGpADOk

Cognitive enhancers, with Barbara Sahakiancomment http://t.co/qmHRv8UN

Gender – spanning a continuumrather than a dichotomy



media

Has psychology become ‘addicted tosurprising, counterintuitive findings thatcatch the news media’s eye’? That’s thecharge levelled by Eric-Jan Wagenmakers,an associate professor of psychology at theUniversity of Amsterdam, who claims thatthe trend is warping the field.Wagenmakers was quoted in a piece by Christopher Shea, writing for TheChronicle of Higher Education(http://t.co/10CNgTph) on thefraud case surrounding Dutchresearcher Diederik A. Stapel.

‘The field of socialpsychology has become verycompetitive,’ Wagenmakerssaid, ‘and high-impactpublications are only possiblefor results that are reallysurprising. Unfortunately, mostsurprising hypotheses arewrong.’ Shea asks the question,‘Is a desire to get picked up bythe Freakonomics blog, or thedozens of similar outlets forfunky findings, really drivingwork in psychology labs?’

The journal editors Shea spoke to aresceptical. ‘Eliot R. Smith, new editor ofthe Journal of Personality and SocialPsychology, says the talk aboutpsychologists pursuing “sexy” findings isway overblown. “Go through five issues ofmainstream psychological journals,” saysMr Smith, a social psychologist at IndianaUniversity at Bloomington. “You’ll seemaybe five articles out of 50 that are bigcounterintuitive findings that yourgrandmother would be interestedin.”‘

Robert V. Kail, editorof Psychological Science, told Sheahe’s never heard of the likelihoodof press attention being used as areason to publish a researcher’swork. Rather, he says, he asks his reviewers: ‘If you are apsychologist in a specialty area, is this the kind of result that is sostimulating or controversial orthought-provoking that you’d wantto run down the hall and tell yourcolleagues in another subfield,“This is what people in my fieldare doing, and it’s really cool”? ‘Tome that’s not “sexy”. It’s the mostinteresting science that we’redoing.’

Psychology got a rough time of it elsewhere on the web inNovember. Leeds-basedpsychologists Andrew Wilson and

Sabrina Golonka, tweeting and blogging as @psychscientists (seehttp://t.co/iNwVCIk9), argued that‘psychology has gotten lazy; when youcan’t come up with a simple solution toyour complex problem, you suggest acomplex solution that fills all those peskygaps, and never notice the gaps were a bitweird to begin with’. Psychologists’aversion to ruling things out means

‘psychology becomes a mere collection ofempirical results, withnothing tying themtogether’. According toWilson and Golonka, ‘This fragmentation meanspsychology is doingnothing but running inempirical circles: there’snothing resemblingprogress. All you get areindividuals with their owncollection of hunchesrunning their ownexperiments on their own little experimental

phenomena. Psychology needs to pick a side, suck it up and get on withsome normal science for a change.’

Other media (e.g. The National Post:see http://t.co/QsnuMrIi) picked up on an article on ‘false positive psychology’ in Psychological Science by Joseph P.Simmons and colleagues (see p.10), to argue that ‘modern academicpsychologists have so much flexibility


Lazy pursuit of the sexy?

Daniel Kahneman’s promotionof his new book, Thinking, Fastand Slow, led to a rash ofeffusive coverage in November.It is well worth checking outThe Guardian interview with him(http://t.co/WRjWqp1t),particularly for his recollectionof collaborating with Tversky.‘Psychologists really aim to bescientists, white-coat stuff,with elaborate statistics,running experiments,’Kahneman says. ‘The idea thatyou can ask one question and itmakes the point… well, thatwasn’t how psychology wasdone at the time.’

The Guardian also hosted a video (http://t.co/NTJM4UEC)and an editorial ‘in praise of’Kahneman. ‘Appealingly,’ theeditorial concluded, ‘the pairtended to base theirexploration of human foibles on their own errors: their faultymemories and dodgy mentalshortcuts. Fallibility oftenbegins at home – a lessonmore economists might learn.’

There’s also a Google talkat http://ow.ly/7I9DL. It was alla bit much for some, with theHuffington Post (seehttp://t.co/qVK6piBj) asking ‘Is Daniel Kahneman really the

world’s greatest livingpsychologist?’ ‘No psychologistor neuroscientist alive todaywould argue that Kahneman’swork isn’t elegant, fascinatingand important,’ wrote MargaretHeffernan, ‘But the truth is thatwe have the good fortune tolive at a time when many of thegiants of psychology (of whichKahneman certainly is one) arealive and productive, doingelegant and thoughtful workwith immediate and lastingrelevance to how we live ourlives. That body of thought goeswell beyond marveling at ourown stupidity.’ JS

WORLD’S GREATEST LIVING PSYCHOLOGIST?

MEDIA CURIOSITYFrom the Sacramento Bee(http://t.co/dOrnvhGG)‘Sacramento State professor George Parrottwalked out of his Psychology 101 lab classThursday morning because his studentsdidn’t bring any snacks… The professor saidstudents are told of the requirement tobring snacks on the first day of class… Thehandout offers suggestions and pictures ofwhich snacks are preferred.

The professor said the snack obligationis his way of encouraging students to workcollectively. Parrott doesn’t regret hisdecision to walk out. “I can understand theimmediate frustration,” he said. “I’msympathetic, but I’m absolutely comfortablewith the conclusion. The ethos I’m trying topromote is incredibly important. It may notbe appreciated, and that’s even moreunfortunate. It speaks to their lack ofunderstanding of higher education.”‘ For theoutcome, see tinyurl.com/cwueeqg JS

with numbers that they can literally proveanything’. Turning the weapons ofstatistical analysis against their own side,Simmons’ team managed to provesomething demonstrably false. ‘Our goalas scientists is not to publish as manyarticles as we can, but to discover anddisseminate truth,’ they write. ‘We shouldembrace these [proposed rules aboutdisclosing research methods] as if thecredibility of our profession depended onthem. Because it does.’ JS

Professor Eliot R.Smith


Derogation of competitorsOnce I attended a large party with a date.We separated and each began talking todifferent people. I was introduced to astunningly attractive woman, and it wasinstant sexual chemistry. As we continuedour animated conversation, an olderwoman approached, looked at the two of us, and said, ‘You are such a perfectlymatched couple.’ I insisted that were not a couple at all, and in fact had just met.She refused to believe me. I saw my dateapproaching just in time to overhear theolder woman’s comments.

My date said that she was ready toleave the party. As we left, she casuallymentioned, ‘Did you notice that herthighs were heavy?’ Well, I hadn’t. But

I was in the midst of writing up a publication on ‘derogation ofcompetitors’, the ways in which peopleuse verbal tactics to denigrate same-sexrivals to make them less desirable. Theresearch gave me insight into the tacticalarsenal people use to compete for mates –not just tactics of attraction, but alsodisparagement of rivals.

Men worldwide place a premium onphysical appearance in mates. And myresearch showed that women, far morethan men, are especially observant aboutthe most minor physical imperfections inother women, and in mate competitionpoint them out in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

What is strange is why verbal input

would have any influence at all on a man’s perceptions of a woman’sattractiveness. A woman’s attractivenessshould be something that men can gaugeperfectly well with their own eyes. But infact verbal input matters. The next time I ran into the attractive woman, I foundmyself looking at her thighs. And indeed,they were a tad heavy. She still lookedgood, but my perceptions of herattractiveness lowered a bit.

I think there are two reasons for this.One is that pointed-out imperfectionsamplify their perceptual salience in men’sminds, making them loom larger. Thesecond is that men have evolved to desireattractive women not merely because cuesto attractiveness signal fertility. Men alsowant attractive mates because they raisetheir social status. So other people’sperceptions of a mate’s attractiveness areimportant.

Perhaps none of this puts men andwomen in an admirable light in themating arena. Derogation reveals one ofthe dark sides of mate competition, andmen may seem superficial for puttingsuch importance on attractiveness. Butarmed with research findings onderogation of competitors, I was able tounderstand more deeply the psychologyof mate competition that goes on all

around us.

I David M. Buss is Professorof Psychology at the

University of Texas


When psychology came to my rescueTo mark the 200th e-mail issue of the Society’s Research Digest service, its editorChristian Jarrett invited leading psychologists to share their stories

FEAT

URE

Coping with demented parentsWhen my mother began a vendetta against next door’s dustbins and conceived a hatred of seagulls,we thought it was just Mum at her worst and even found it quite funny, but when she began getting

lost and demanding to move to a cottage in the middleof a field, we realised she had no idea she neededlooking after. A few awful years later and she washurling abuse, and furniture, at my poor dear father,who had no idea what day it was, let alone why shewas attacking him. Stories from Paul Broks and OliverSacks came to mind, and the psychology of illusionsand the mystery of consciousness. Above all, knowingabout the brain came to my rescue. With every step oftheir awful journey I was reminded that we are all nomore and no less than brains functioning in bodies in a world full of other such creatures. No one is a spiritor soul. The self is not some entity; some inner sparkof selfhood that gets born and lives a life until death. A self is just one of the brain’s many constructions –ephemeral and fleeting, here for a while, then gone,ever springing up again in a slightly new guise. And in the case of dementia ever less coherently.

I learned about myself as I learned to let them go.

I Sue Blackmore is a psychologist and writerresearching consciousness, memes, and anomalous

experiences, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Plymouth

psy 01_12 p24_29 psychotorescuem_Layout 1 13/12/2011 12:58 Page 24

My inner CBT therapistImagine you are about to givethe ‘best-(wo)man’s’ speech atyour friend's wedding: vastaudience, huge hall,microphone, lights, wine,flowers, expectant faces... but words fail you. Worsethan that, I was consumedwith an overwhelming feelingof nausea. I’d just found out I was pregnant and not toldthe world yet. I could seemyself about to vomit at thephotographer and over thebridal couple… loomingpanic. ‘I’ve given hundreds ofspeeches, it’ll be fine.’ Butreassuring words alone didn'thelp. More nausea. ‘OK! Stopthe internal focus’ – my innerCBT therapist suddenlykicked in. ‘This isn’t real – thisis just an image of vomiting.’The inspirational CBT workon mental imagery and socialanxiety (David Clark, AnnHackmann, Colette Hirschand others) zoomed in. ‘Focus outwards! Look at theaudience.’ OK, deploy‘cognitive science’ – ‘externalperception will compete forresources with internal images. Focus on the flowers.’ Oh, and a bit of imagerestructuring – ‘Mentally photoshop that

image of myself, I’m not looking nauseousat all, just moved by emotion at the happycouple.’ Here we go… External reality

started to win. I was smiling anddinner was staying down. ‘Goodevening everyone…’

I Emily Holmes is Professor inClinical Psychology and

Wellcome Trust Clinical Fellow atthe Department of Psychiatry,

University of Oxford

Seeing what we want tobelieveI sometimes find myselfinvestigating ostensibly paranormalphenomena in the role of ‘rent-a-sceptic’. I was recently invited toinvestigate apparently ghostlygoings-on in a house in Leicesterfor ITV’s This Morning. Don, aparanormal investigator, claimedthat he could communicate withthe spirits involved. The Sunnewspaper had posted on itswebsite a recording of Donapparently coaxing spirits intolowering the room temperature.

As Don politely asked the spirits to

lower the temperature, the digital displayof his handheld thermometer appeared toshow that the spirits were obliging. Armedwith my knowledge of unconsciousmuscular activity and a tip-off from an ex-ghost-hunter, I was able to quickly solvethis apparent mystery. The tip-off was thatthe investigator was misusing hisequipment. He thought he was measuringambient temperature but he was actuallymeasuring the temperature of whatever thehandheld device was pointing at – in thiscase, the wall. Heat rises, so the top of thewall was warmer than the bottom, as I wasable to personally confirm. By unwittinglychanging the angle of the device, thanks to unconscious muscular activity, Don wasunintentionally producing the evidence of ‘paranormal activity’ that he was so keento find!

I Chris French is Professor ofPsychology and Head of the Anomalistic

Psychology Research Unit atGoldsmiths, University of London

(Anti)complementarityIt was a gray fall day in Duluth, and icywind whipped off of Lake Michigan,funneling down the road my fiancée and


when psychology came to my rescue

My confessionHere’s a confession. I’ve been a professional psychologistfor 30 years, clinician and academic, but I can’t think of a single instance when I’ve made personal use of mypsychological expertise. Even in the darkest times,especially in the darkest times, I never turn to scientificpsychology for illumination. I write these words within a few days of the first anniversary of my wife’s death, sothere have been some very dark days of late. All through,my knowledge of clinical psychology has seemedirrelevant, or if not irrelevant then certainly peripheral tomy deepest needs and concerns. This, I know, will soundsmug, or disingenuous, or wilfully contrarian. But it’s true.I am by natural inclination a Stoic. I don’t mean in theloose sense of ‘grimly determined’ or ‘long-suffering‘, and especially not ‘stiff upper-lipped’. I mean Stoic in the tradition of that broad church of Greek and Romanphilosophers – Epictetus and Seneca among them – forwhom the question ‘How best to live?’ was the mostimportant of all. Their collective wisdom boils down to this:negative emotions are a bad thing; banish them throughthought and deed. These are the roots of CBT, of course,the difference being that the Stoics offer an overarchingphilosophy of life, not just a bag of psychological tricks.There’s a world of difference.

I Paul Broks is a neuropsychologist based atPlymouth University

Forming asynergistic teamFor many years I have hired researchassistants. In the past, without realising it, I always was looking for someone like me, withthe same strengths, mode of communicationand the like. This tendency continued even afterI arrived at my theory of multiple intelligences.But about 15 years ago, I realised that it waspointless to try to duplicate myself – one of me sufficed. Now, drawing on the practicalimplications of ‘multiple intelligences theory’ I think much more about individuals' differentstrengths and profiles and how to put togetheran effective and synergistic team. That said, I still depend on complete trustworthiness andsense of responsibility – those remain non-negotiable.

I Howard Gardner is Hobbs Professor ofCognition and Education at Harvard University


I trundled along. Ahead on the sidewalk, alarge dark figure appeared, angrily stalkingtowards us. Thoughts of escape evaporatedas the absence of side streets or other exitsbecame apparent. I recall the loominglocal’s intensifying scowl and the smell ofalcohol on his breath just before herammed into my shoulder, knocking meback several steps. For a split-second,instinctual questions hung in the air –should we fight or flee?

Then, I did something unexpected.Stepping forward expansively, I smiledand boomed ‘How’s it going? – it’s been along time!’ The would-be assailant rockedback on one foot, his face registeringconfusion (or even the hint of a grin?).He paused – long enough for me to spotan open pharmacy two doors down onthe left. Edging past, I grabbed mypartner and hustled towards the lightedstore. ‘Wish there was time to talk, butwe’ve got to go!’ Once inside, we heaved a sigh of relief.

Only upon reflection could Iconsciously piece together what hadhappened. Before taking the mantle ofcountercultural psychedelic guru, TimLeary actually did research. Based onhours of recordings of group therapy, he came up with the notion of aninterpersonal circle defined byindependent dimensions of affiliation anddominance. His successors showed thatpeople prefer interactions that aredimensionally complementary: whereasaffiliation similarly begets affiliation,

dominance complementarily begetssubmission. By corollary, people areconfused by anticomplementaryresponses. In my case, responding in anoutgoing way to a hostile opening wasanticomplementary (i.e. a dominantaffiliative response to dominantnonaffiliation). My assailant lacked an obvious script for dealing with thisanticomplementarity, and I benefited from his momentary confusion. On that freezing day in Duluth,anticomplementarity literally saved my hide.

I Brian Knutson is an associateprofessor of Psychology and

Neuroscience at Stanford University

Prestige-enhancing memorydistortionsI’m a psychologist and I do experiments.Well, actually, these days I help designexperiments with graduate students, andthe actual experimentation is carried outby a mini-army of student researchers.Typically, if a publication results from theseefforts, the graduate student most involvedin the project becomes first author, and Itypically occupy the last spot in the authorline. Others whose contributions warrant itare given intermediate spots. A near-crisisemerged some years back when twograduate students (I’ll call them Mary andJim) were each insisting that they deserved

to be first author. They both had worthyreasons (albeit different ones, of course)for why they were deserving of the covetedfirst position. I was wracked withindecision about how to resolve thisdilemma. Someone was going to beunhappy and stew over the injustice of my decision. I could see no good way outof this dilemma.

Over the next few days I spoke toMary and Jim privately. One thing I toldthem about was the psychologicalresearch on prestige-enhancing memorydistortions. People remember their gradesas better than they were. Peopleremember that they voted in electionsthat they did not vote in. Peopleremember that their children walked andtalked at an earlier age than they reallydid. These are some prime examples ofhow we distort our memories in waysthat allow us to feel better aboutourselves, and perhaps allow us to live a happier life. But another finding is that people overestimate their personalcontribution to a joint effort. If you askpeople who have contributed to jointeffort to provide a percentage that is theircontribution, the total might add to l50per cent. Recognising this humantendency allows one to adjust theestimate of one’s own contribution andfeel less frustrated with our partners(whether these are life partnerscontributing to the housework, or workpartners contributing to a research effort,or any collection of two or more whowork for a common goal). I talked withMary and Jim, individually, about thisphenomenon.

Within a few days, I heard back fromthe students. Mary came in to my officefirst and said that she had decided thatJim could be first author. I felt somerelief. Then, the next day, Jim came inand said that he had decided that Marycould be first author. At this point, Iactually started to cry. It brought to mindthe O. Henry sentimental story about amarried couple enduring severe economicdifficulties that made it hard for them tobuy Christmas gifts for one another. Shesold her beautiful hair to by a chain forhis prized watch. Not knowing this, hesold his watch to by combs for her lovelyhair. These mutually sacrificial gifts werecompared to the Magi of biblical times –wonderfully wise men who brought giftsto a new-born King. Mary and Jim weremy Magi.

I Elizabeth F. Loftus is DistinguishedProfessor of Social Ecology, and

Professor of Law, and Cognitive Scienceat University of California, Irvine



Nerdy but niceI was a high-school nerd. Worse yet, a girl nerd. I did learn quickly to hide my A grades and nottalk too much in class. At the high-schoolreunion, my classmates thought it was obvious I would become a professor (they could havesaved me much agony, had they only told mesooner!). As a student at Harvard, I learned to tellstrangers that I went to school ‘outside Boston’.Then I had a respite from having to hide myacademic self, as my first jobs did not excitemuch public envy. Moving to Princeton changedall that (now I work ‘outside New York’), somaybe it’s not surprising that I came to work onhow status divides us. Now, our lab’s researchbrings home the idea that status/competence isonly one of two universal social dimensions, butthat interdependence/ warmth is the other. It’sOK to be respected or even enviable for status (in an aspirational, you-can-do-it-too way), if youalso communicate that you also appreciate the cooperative side of the relationship. If I am onyour side, and we are in this together, then my success is good for our tribe.

I Susan T. Fiske is Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology at Princeton

Susan Fiske as high school senior


An insurance policyThe truth is that I don’t know yet whetherpsychology has come to my rescue, or atleast to what extent, but I think I havebeen encouraged by my experiences totake out something of an insurance policy.On a train journey home a few monthsago, after a conversation with a particularlywonderful memory patient, I was reflectingon the massive impact that amnesia has. Iknow that I am a psychologist, a musician,a mother, etc., but what I had come toappreciate is that it is not enough to justknow this; all the personal specificmemories of becoming and being thesethings are absolutely central to my sense of who I am. Similarly, the relationships I have with my family, friends andcolleagues depend crucially on mymemories of shared time with thosepeople.

It’s tough to watch the struggle peopleface when these memories are torn fromthem, but through my research I havelearned that even in the most severe casesof memory loss it is often possible totrigger some episodic remembering.Experience and a growing body ofevidence, suggests that this is most likelywhen an individual is cued by somethingthat has been recorded in some way bythemselves: a personal diary entry, aphoto that they took, even a trivial pieceof memorabilia. Even when these thingsare not powerful enough to provoke amemory, the fact that they were recorded

by that individual means that they are farmore valuable to them as a record of thepast than anything anyone else could tellthem.

So I have begun in my own way to

preserve significant moments in my life. I don’t have time to keep a regular diarybut I have a book in which I make ad-hocentries and I also archive little bits ofcorrespondence. I have a little scrapbookfor tickets or programmes from concertsand events, a box to put little bits ofmemorabilia in and of course the usualselection of photos and videos. This is alldone on a fairly modest scale and maybemany other people already do this but I certainly didn’t and I have begun to feela sense of security knowing that onwhatever scale my memory might oneday fail me, I will still have the means totry and piece together an autobiographythat comes from me and belongs to me.

I Catherine Loveday is a PrincipalLecturer in Cognitive Neuroscience at

the University of Westminster

Understanding loveI have always solved my problems throughpsychology, but usually by creating myown theories rather than by using otherpeople's theories. I was at a point in my lifeonce in which I was in an intimaterelationship that seemed not to be workingas I once had hoped it would; but I couldnot quite figure out why. I did somereading on the psychology of love but the



StorytellingOver the past five years, I have spent an increasingamount of my time talking to the general public. Indoing so, I have learned to change the way Icommunicate by relying much more on thepresentation of ideas, the audience reaction, timingand context. Content is vital but it is the way that yousay things that makes all the difference. As a socialanimal, we are highly attuned to each other and I findaudiences respond better when you think beyond thecontent of what you are saying and think about it astelling a story. The human brain is always seekingstructure and meaning. Psychology reminds us thatit is the ultimate storyteller. Professional speakershave known this for years and the best ones arenaturally and often intuitively skilled. Whether theyare aware of exactly what they are doing or not, thebest practices tap into well-established principles of social psychology that I nowrecognise when I get up and talk to a room full of strangers. People want to like you.People want to believe what you are saying. People want that emotional experience.Even when you have read the book or know the story well, audiences still want to hearit said. That’s why there will always be the live performance and public lecture.

I Bruce Hood is Director of the Bristol Cognitive Development Centre in the ExperimentalPsychology Department at the University of Bristol. See p.92 for a ‘One on one’.

Combating ageismAmong other things, I’ve researched and written about ageing for the past 30 years.My belief is that much of what we attribute to the ageing process can be prevented orreversed and that a major culprit in unsuccessful ageing is our condescending attitudetoward older adults.

Of course we mean no harm – especially when we're dealing with beloved familymembers – but harm we do. They are probably the ones we hurt the most, in fact.Ageism is so deeply ingrained in our beliefs that we think we are simply responding to real, age-related incompetence. Instead, we are letting our mindless expectationscreate the very incompetence we perceive.

At age 89 my father’s memory was fragile – he was showing his years. One day wewere playing cards and I began to think that I should let him win. I soon realised that,if I saw someone else behaving that way, I’d tell her to stop being so condescending. I might even explain how negative prophecies come to be fulfilled, and I’d go on toexplain that much of what we take to be memory loss has other explanations. Forinstance, as our values change with age, we often don’t care about certain things tothe degree we used to, and we therefore don't pay much attention to them any more.The ‘memory problems’ of the elderly are often simply due to the fact that they haven’tnoted something that they find rather uninteresting. And then, while I was weighingwhether to treat him as a child because part of me still felt that he would enjoywinning, he put his cards down and declared that he had gin.

I Ellen Langer is a Professor of Psychology at Harvard

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We need to get some really

good communicators out

there doing our field justice.

One thing I get out of Twitter

I am utterly fascinated by

Twitter and believe that it is a

very powerful mechanism. It’s

mostly concerned with gossip

and trivia, but then the

human brain is a gossiping

brain. Twitter gives the

impression of intimacy with

celebrities that one would not

normally have the chance to

meet, and also creates an

inflated sense of self-

importance when other

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types of distortion: increasing

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Bruce HoodBru

ONE

ON

…with Bruce Hood

Professor in the School of Experimental Psychology at the University of Bristol

and Director of the Bristol Cognitive Development Centre


reading I did somehow did not adequatelyaddress the problems I was having. It wasat this point that I started to think aboutthe psychology of love. Exactly what islove and what are the elements that lead tosuccess or failure? The result of mydeliberations, building on work of otherssuch as Ellen Berscheid, Elaine Hatfield,Zick Rubin, and George Levinger, was thetriangular theory of love. According to thistheory, love has three components –intimacy, passion and commitment – anddifferent combinations of the componentsyield different kinds of love. Intimacyalone is liking; passion alone is infatuatedlove; commitment alone is empty love;intimacy plus passion is romantic love;intimacy plus commitment iscompanionate love; passion pluscommitment is fatuous love; and intimacy,passion, and commitment togetherconstitute consummate or complete love.My colleagues and I later created scales tomeasure the components of love andpublished data showing the constructvalidity of the measurements. The theory,addressed to my own relationship, left mewith a clear sense of what was notworking. The relationship eventuallyended. At this point in my life, I amfortunate to have the best marriage (toKarin Sternberg) one could possibly hopefor, and after a long search, have found theconsummate love I long sought.

I Robert J. Sternberg is Provost andSenior Vice President and Professor of

Psychology at Oklahoma State University



The Zeigarnik effectThe Zeigarnik effect recently came to my rescue when my family and I weremoving into a new house. After several weeks of packing nearly identical boxes,we realised we packed several important items and needed to find them prior tothe moving company arriving. Surprisingly, we were able to identify all the boxeswith relative ease and find the items without a detailed inventory. BlumaZeigarnik was a Russian psychologist who first identified the tendency toremember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed oruninterrupted ones in the late 1920s. Zeigarnik made her discovery after herdoctoral supervisor, Gestalt psychologist Kurt Lewin, noticed that waiters andwaitresses at a local café remembered orders only as long as the order was in theprocess of being served. The custom at the café was that orders were not writtendown but rather waiters and waitresses kept them in their head and addedadditional items to them as they were ordered until the bill was paid. The

researchers’ subsequent experimentalwork showed the phenomenon haswidespread validity, and it becameknown as the Zeigarnik effect. TheZeigarnik effect has applications inadvertising, teaching, software designand media production (e.g. long-runningsoap operas, cliffhanging dramas).

I David Lavallee recently moved toScotland to become Professor and Head

of the School of Sport at the University of Stirling

A ‘good enough’child-rearingenvironmentIn today’s world, young parents, likemyself, are constantly bombarded withinformation about the ‘right way’ to enrichour children’s lives. Books and TVprogrammes marketing the latest, typicallyentirely unproven ‘right way’ have highvisibility and prey on people’s anxietiesabout providing the best for their children.This is where good psychology researchhas come to my rescue. I have beenconfidently uncompelled to buy variousDVDs and books claiming to enhance mychild’s abilities and development. On theother hand, psychology research hasfurnished me with good evidence that in a ‘good enough’ environment (looselyconsisting of ‘love, feed, clothe, be reasonably consistent and provide opportunities’;i.e. common sense backed up by data), my children are likely to thrive according totheir individual abilities and characteristics.

I Essi Viding is Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at UCL

For more contributions, includingfrom Simon Baron-Cohen, VaughanBell, Scott Lilienfield, David Myers,Tom Stafford, and Psychologist editorJon Sutton, see the Digest blog attinyurl.com/psychtorescue. You canalso follow the Research Digest onTwitter (@researchdigest) andFacebook (www.facebook.com/researchdigest). If you’re not alreadysigned up to the free fortnightly e-mail, why not take the opportunityto do that too? Who knows when theknowledge you gain will come inhandy…

To share your own ‘Psychology tothe rescue’ story, [email protected] for inclusionin our ‘Letters’ pages.



The British Psychological Society’s free Research Digest service:

blog, email, Twitter and Facebook

‘An amazingly useful and interesting resource’

Ben Goldacre, The Guardian

www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog

Blogging on brain and

behaviour Winner!Awards 2010

WiW nner!inner!wardsA 20 010



The dilemmaYou are working with a client,Marina, who has heard aboutDignitas, the Swiss assisted dyingorganisation, via a BBC programme(The Report: tinyurl.com/cnr8exs).Marina is in her late 40s and hasbeen diagnosed with early onsetAlzheimer’s disease. She has along-standing anxiety abouttravelling and would like help fromyou in managing this so that shecan travel to Switzerland and endher life. Marina retains fullcapacity, and as far as you can tell is not suffering from anydiagnosable mental illness apartfrom anxiety and moderatedepression. She insists that you donot disclose any of this to her GP,family or other service workers.

Interest in ethical challenges hasbecome rather fashionable in recenttimes. November saw live coverage of

the Levenson Inquiry into the ethics ofthe press, and of the trial of MichaelJackson’s doctor Conrad Murray. BBC4has run a series of programmes withProfessor Michael Sandel on moralphilosopy, and BBC radio shows such asThe Moral Maze and Inside the EthicsCommittee also draw good audiences.

For practising psychologists the changein the regulatory landscape, with theintroduction of the Health ProfessionsCouncil, developing effective skills inethical reasoning and action has becomeincreasingly necessary. As some peoplehave found to their cost, speaking outabout unethical practice can be a troublingexperience (see www.medicalharm.org),but it is a professional responsibility whichwe cannot and should not duck.

This new occasional section of The Psychologist will present an ethicaldilemma alongside invitedcommentaries. The aim is to providesome talking points about the issue,which are primarily informed bypsychological research. Rather thansimply referring readers to the Code of Ethics and Conduct, we hope thecommentaries will pick up on the waypsychology can help understand whysuch dilemmas are hard to deal with.

Our first dilemma is fictional, butdrawn from a number of different clinicalexperiences. We hope that futuredilemmas will represent and unite allcorners of the discipline: do get in touch if you have an idea for a scenario. Wewelcome feedback on this idea as we lookto develop it further, including making useof The Psychologist website to present andencourage a wider range of views.

Tony Wainwright Chair of the BPS Ethics Committee

Ethically and legallyappropriate?The dilemma in this case is whether it is ethically or legally appropriate for youto give this woman treatment that willfacilitate her travelling to Dignitas to seek

assisted suicide. Looking first at the legalposition in the UK, committing suicide isno longer unlawful, but under the SuicideAct of 1961 encouraging or assistingsuicide is a serious criminal offence,punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

In 2009 Debbie Purdy succeeded inher House of Lords appeal, forcing theDirector of Public Prosecutions to clarifywhether someone who assists suicide, forexample, by accompanying a loved one to Switzerland, is committing an offenceunder UK law. The DPP’s guidance (seetinyurl.com/y7jvl3d) sets out factors forand against prosecution. Whereas theguidance provides some comfort forrelatives supporting a loved one seekingassisted suicide, it specifically states aprosecution is more likely to be required if a person is acting in their capacity as a medical doctor or other healthprofessional. Thus, providing the patientwith this support in your professionalcapacity is highly risky. You might arguethat you are merely treating the patient foranxiety regarding travel, which might beconsidered minimal in terms of assistance,but is this disingenuous, given that she hasconfided in you why she wants toovercome her fear of travelling.

An additional factor tending in favourof prosecution is where the patient lackscapacity under the Mental Capacity Act2008. Although we are told that the patientretains capacity, the combination of earlyonset Alzheimer’s, together with her

anxiety anddepression, at thevery least raisesconcerns as toher capacity,which might addto a decision to

prosecute.Ethically, your

involvement in this case is likely to beinfluenced by your own personal viewsabout the morality of assisted death. Youmay feel that assisted suicide is theultimate beneficent act which respects apatient’s autonomy. Alternatively, you mayfeel that assisting suicide constitutes theultimate harming of a patient. Mostprobably, you may have considerablesympathy for your patient’s plight, whilstrightly having professional and personalmoral concerns about doing what she asksof you.

As a reflective practitioner, you willconsider all the factors for and againstcomplying with her request, in order toarrive at the most ethically acceptablecourse of action (which might, in thecircumstances, be the ‘least worst’ option).You will also be mindful to take intoaccount the BPS’s Code of Ethics

reso

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sco

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ent

www.bps.org.uk/ethicsBBC Radio 4’s Moral Maze:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qk11BBC Radio 4’s Inside the Ethics

Committee:www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007xbtd

Director of Public Prosecution’s policy forprosecutors on encouraging orassisting suicide: tinyurl.com/y7jvl3d

Have your say on this dilemma bysending your letter for publication [email protected] or discussing itat www.psychforum.org.uk.

ETHI

CS

‘Can you help me get to Dignitas?’The first of a new series inviting discussion and debate on an ethical dilemma

“psychology can helpunderstand whysuch dilemmas arehard to deal with”

psy 01_12 p52_55 ethics_Layout 1 13/12/2011 13:26 Page 52


ethics

(www.bps.org.uk/ethics). As a responsibleclinician, you would doubtless want tobenefit your patient, although this does notmean acceding to any and every patientrequest, particularly where the requestclashes with your own values, or therequest is to do something unlawful. Youmay wish to consider other ways that couldbenefit your patient in the difficultsituation she finds herself in, for exampleby treating the depression (which may ormay not be related to her diagnosis) or bysignposting her to avenues of support.

There is an additional ethical concernaround the patient’s insistence that you donot disclose her request to herGP, family or other serviceworkers. Ordinarily, youshould not breach theconfidences of an apparentlycompetent adult patient.However, given that hermental capacity is in question,and she is evincing a desire to self-harm, you may feeljustified in seeking to persuadeher to share her plans withothers, or, ultimately, inbreaching her confidentiality if you feel this to be requiredin her best interests. It wouldcertainly be harder to respecther wish for you to keep thisinformation from her GP andother health professionals ifyou were providing therapy inprimary care and working aspart of a multidisciplinaryteam.

Ultimately, you must takeresponsibility for weighing up these variousfactors to arrive at a justifiable course ofaction. But for the reasons I have set out,acceding to this patient’s request wouldexpose you professionally and legally, andyou would be well advised to seek advicefrom your professional body andprofessional indemnity insurers and to lookfor other ways to benefit this patient.

Julie StoneAssociate Lecturer

Peninsula Medical School

A bit of a tightropeAs in any situation, the key here is tobegin with developing a good therapeuticrapport and establishing a goodassessment. An initial session might talkabout the role of a psychologist and whenone does or doesn’t reveal information toothers, and, in setting the scene, to talkabout the unhelpfulness of having secrets.As part of the discussion one would haveto highlight the role of both clinical andmanagerial supervision and one’s

responsibilities both to the client, oneself,the profession and the organisation forwhich one works. A clear message at thispoint would need to be that the legalposition is clear – as a psychologist one isnot allowed to aid and abet (assisted)suicide. To my mind however, that doesnot exclude taking time with someone tohelp them work through the informationthey might need to make a clear decisionabout their future – however unwise.

I would want to gather enoughinformation about the person, herchildhood and upbringing, her healthbeliefs and her beliefs about mortality,

spirituality, self-efficacy and agency. It would also be useful to explore familybelief re illness, mental illness andmortality. The referral does not say whetherthis person is working, financially stable orwhether she has a partner and children torelate to.

More detailed information about whohad provided the Alzheimer’s diseasediagnosis, where and how would be helpfulto explore with her. It would also behelpful to explore the onset and durationof the anxiety and depression and what hadbeen tried to this point. Furtherinformation would be required about thehistory of the travel phobia.

The initial ethical questions for mewould be around:I whether you would get yourself into

a therapeutic bind by agreeing to keepa secret;

I whether you would encourage bythought, word or deed someone toactively take their own life when theremight be other possible outcomes;

I whether you would be able to stand

aside from your own wishes andspiritual beliefs about your own end of life; and

I whether age was an issue here.

Helpful literature might include that on attachment, loss and bereavement,oncology, dementia and palliative caremodels in both. It would also be helpfulto stand back and think about socialconstruct theory and social learningtheory.

If one was able to ‘hold’ the client tocome back for further sessions, I wouldwant to explore their thoughts and feelings

about the Dignitas programmeand why it felt the right thingfor them at that point. I mightpoint out that Dignitas says thatmany people say they wouldlike to use them and some visitinitially for the assessment buta relatively small proportioncarry things through to assisteddeath. I would want to explorewhere they were in the‘adjustment to diagnosis’position and ask whether theyhad made a will, had enactedpower of attorney, had anadvanced directive – and whatthat would contain. That mightenable a discussion about theirfears and anxieties over havinga progressive illness and death.Some factual information aboutthe course of the disease andpossible causes of death (which

might not be Alzheimer’s disease,as stroke, coronary heart disease and

cancer are the three main causes of death).I would take time to explain the steps

involved in a psychological intervention fortravel phobia and the collaboration andtimescale required. By this point one mightbe in a position to make a tentativeformulation.

In the meantime, both in and out ofsession there would be work to do on‘holding’ one’s own anxiety and that ofothers, once one had shared informationwith the referrer, the team or one’ssupervisor, to enable the creation of a safetherapy plan.

Continued work in session might use‘empty chair’ techniques to work throughpotential conversations with GP, partner,parents, siblings, children, friends to clarifythe decision in the client’s mind – and totake that further to discuss who else ideallymight be involved in contributing to thedecision – both in the session and outsideof it.

In the interests of the therapeuticrelationship it might be important to voicethe fact that you and the client might be



ethics

coming into sessions with differing aims.Her stated aim – to become confidentenough to travel to Dignitas – might bedifferent from her underlying aim. Therapport-building and information-gathering approach I have suggested mightbe a way as therapist one would try toestablish and voice the underlying aim,whilst encouraging the client to have amore open debate with those around herabout her stated aim.

In a similar clinical situation with anolder adult client with a progressiveneurological condition, her ‘secret’ was notin fact secret. Family and medical staff hadsensed, inferred, or been told her wishes:the issue was to encourage her to voiceand share them, before developing a robustcare plan to make her fears about the laterstages of care explicit. From a clinicalpoint of view, as a relatively experiencedpractitioner, I felt able to ‘hold’ the issues(with multi-disciplinary team, GP andsupervisor support) in a way a more juniorcolleague might not. The GP initiallyconsulted their professional body but thenhelped to discuss advanced directives and

was very supportive of the client’s needs.It was, however, a bit of a tightrope.

In addressing this dilemma, you mayfind it helpful to draw on James Rest’s1982 four-component model (seetinyurl.com/chmshgx), which refers toethical sensitivity, ethical reasoning, ethicalmotivation and ethical implementation.The ethical sensitivity here is not to shrinkfrom facing difficult issues with the clientand helping them explore them fully. The

ethical reasoning is to maintaindetachment from one’s own thoughts andbeliefs about ‘right and wrong’, or one’sown preferences in a non-judgemental waywhilst the possibilities are explored in asafe environment. The ethical motivation is to enable someone to make a good deathin a planned, reasoned way, not based onfear of the unknown. The ethicalimplementation may be to work within thelaw and one’s professional code of practice,but to create a space to rehearse thearguments, look at the implications for theclient and their significant others, beforefinally deciding whether in fact the referralwas about travel phobia at all.

Cath BurleyChartered Psychologist and

Chair of Psychology Specialists Working with Older People

Values and beliefsThe first issue here is simply a moral oneabout the way in which you view life andwho that life belongs to. For somemembers of some religions life is actually

God’s, and so interfering with that iswrong. Some psychologists maytherefore have to say as matter ofpersonal conscience that they cannotassist the individual to commitsuicide, no matter how removed orhow medicalised.One would hopethat the BPS andHPC wouldunderstand thatposition (providedonward referral andcontinuity of care,and so on, wereaddressed). Conversely one mightargue that psychologists should benon-judgemental and so work withpeople whose views they disagreewith, or even find personallyabhorrent, in the ‘cab rank’ principlethat lawyers mention. Against that,one might argue that as it is the

person of the psychologist that makesthe intervention effective (e.g. therapeuticalliance) a less than fully committedpsychologist would not be effective. Butthat is another debate.

The next – and seemingly lesscomplex – issue is that of competence. Isthe psychologist competent to undertakethe work? If this person does haveagoraphobia does the psychologist knowwhat to do? Do you have a duty to workwith your client to examine all angles andestablish whether they have thoughtthrough all possibilities and consequences,or by doing this are you putting obstaclesin their way, not respecting their wishes,

and delaying their planned death to a point(potentially) where they are no longerjudged competent?

What is the relationship between yourimplicit values and your overt behaviour?Your primary duty is to the person sittingin front of you and to their view of theirworld. Presumably you would wish themto have a happier, more fulfilled or moreeffective life. But you also have duties torange of other entities; for example tosociety as a whole and to your profession.Would you be acting in such a way tobring the profession into disrepute? Wouldyou be acting beyond the ‘communitysanction’ that society grants psychologiststo allow their profession to practise withina particular domain? Might this action callinto question the role of psychologists?And, further, on the societal level is whatyou are doing actually illegal? Are youprepared to face complaints to the BPS and HPC, with all that they entail? Are you prepared to go on trial and perhaps be gaoled because of your involvement? In comparison with a death these mayseem slight matters but they are important.

On the other hand, you may feel thatthe person’s life is their own to do with asthey wish. They are not harming anyone(physically) by their action, and you as a psychologist may be in a position to helpthem make peace with loved ones before

their death to start toaddress psychologicalissues. You may arguethat the culmination of agood life is a good death,and that if someone dyingof cancer decided to

refuse treatment andaccepted only pain relief then

that might be a ‘good’ outcome for them,and that this is an analogous case (withsome differences in agency). Against thatyou might consider that agency is actuallycrucial here – by acting you are making animplicit judgement about the world, andthe world changes as a result of youraction. By what right do you change theworld?

In this case, codes of ethics andconduct can only help so far. It is a matterof professional and personal judgement, of considering whether this would be a good act and whether you could do it. It would involve looking at all the angles,of discussion and coming to a decision. It would crucially depend on your valuesand beliefs and the relationship with yourclient. It will be difficult. As the BPS codestates, ‘thinking is not optional’.

Richard Kwiatkowski Senior Lecturer in Organizational

PsychologyCranfield University

“By acting you are makingan implicit judgementabout the world”

Final destination? One of the properties inSwitzerland used by Dignitas

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‘big picture’ pull-out www.thepsychologist.org.uk i

www.bps.org.uk/ac2012

Early-birdregistration rates

available until29 FebruaryBook online!

Our full programmetimetable can be viewed online

Networking and social opportunities

for all delegatesWine ReceptionAwards Dinner

London Bus Tour…and lots

more!

18–20 AprilGrand Connaught RoomsLondon

psy 01_12 pi_iv bigpic_Layout 1 13/12/2011 12:51 Page i


shift is towards more appliedwork. Psychology andespecially theoretical workseems to be falling in betweenthe cracks.

One regretNever acquiring a secondlanguage. I always feelincredibly inadequate when Ihear colleagues conversing inanother language. I have triedbut, regrettably, I think mywindow of plasticity has shutdown firmly in that domain.

One reason we believe theunbelievableBecause it is an inevitable by-

product of a brain thattries to make sense ofthe world around it.

One nugget of advicefor aspiringpsychologistsWrite every day. Keepwriting and you willget better at it. It is justlike any other skill andwriting is the key tocommunication. Itforces you to be morecoherent and relevant.

One culturalrecommendationA much under-rated2006 film, The Prestigewith Hugh Jackman

and Christian Bale whoplay two rival Victorian

magicians. The reason I love it is because it addresses thephilosophical problem ofidentity and duplication.

One psychologicalsuperpowerMindreading of course! Butthere again, maybe it is betternot to know.

More answers online atwww.thepsychologist.org.uk

One inspirationI had the privilege to knowRichard Gregory well. I usedto drop by his office everyThursday afternoon for a cupof coffee, discussion and hisincorrigible punning. Richardwas very supportive of myactivities and helped me totake immense joy at being a scientist. He knew all thegreats and always hadwonderful anecdotes. He wasmy direct link to a bygone eraof romantic science.

One book that you think allpsychologists should readI think The Selfish Gene byRichard Dawkins wasprobably the most influentialbook I read as a student thatreally shaped my thinking as a psychologist and a human.

One thing that you wouldchange about psychologyMany people considerpsychology to be a soft sciencepartly because the media oftenportrays it as common sense.This really annoys me.Understanding the complexity

of humans makes scientificinquiries into how we ticksome of the most difficultproblems to solve. Justbecause our psychologicalprocesses seem effortless, weshould not underestimate thecomplexity of what’s going on.We need to get some reallygood communicators outthere doing our field justice.

One thing I get out of TwitterI am utterly fascinated byTwitter and believe that it is a very powerful mechanism.It’s mostly concerned withgossip and trivia, but then thehuman brain is a gossipingbrain. Twitter gives theimpression of intimacy withcelebrities that one would notnormally have the chance tomeet, and also creates aninflated sense of self-importance when otherstrangers respond to yourtweets. This can create twotypes of distortion: increasingpolarisation of opinions whengroups coalesce around atopic, and contagiousemotions.

One hope for the future More psychologists inpositions of power in theboardroom to temper theirrationality of decision

makers who can sometimeslead the rest of us into ruin.

One challenge you thinkpsychology facesPsychological research used to straddle topics of interestcovered by the differentresearch councils but asbudgets have been cut, the

Think you can do better? Want to see yourarea of psychology represented more? See the inside front cover for how you cancontribute and reach 48,000 colleagues into the bargain, or just e-mail yoursuggestions to [email protected]

Articles on willpower, language, face recognition, the psychology of birth, and much more... I Send your comments about The Psychologist to the editor, Dr Jon Sutton, on

[email protected], +44 116 252 9573 or to the Leicester office addressI To advertise Display: [email protected], +44 (0)20 7880 6244

Jobs and www.psychapp.co.uk: [email protected], +44 (0)20 7880 7556

Bruce [email protected]

com

ing

soon

cont

ribu

te

The 2011 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, on BBC Four on 27, 28, 29 December (and iPlayer). ‘The three lectures cover “What’sinside your head?”, “Who is in control?” and “Are you thinking what I am thinking?” My book, The Self Illusion, follows in the spring.’re

sour

ceON

E ON

ON

E

…with Bruce Hood Professor in the School of Experimental Psychology at the University of Bristoland Director of the Bristol Cognitive Development Centre

psy 01_12 p92 one hood_Layout 1 13/12/2011 13:05 Page 92

The Psychologist January 2012

Documents

Transcript of The Psychologist January 2012