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Today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast is on Forensic Psychology and Public and Crime. Also, today’s podcast show notes are taken from my Forensic Psychology book: Victims and fear of crimes: Public and crime are honestly one of my favourite topics in forensic psychology because I love to learn how flawed the public’s knowledge is and the impacts that has on the Criminal Justice System. Hence, why that will be our focus for this chapter. Firstly, the path from committing the crime to punishment is very complex and it must be remembered that crime is a social problem as well. To emphasize the complexity of the process from committing a crime to punishment. Here are the stages of crime. (Ainsworth, 2000) · Will the victim notice crime? · Will the victim report crime? · Will the police record the crime? · Will the offender caught? · Will the offender be prosecuted? · Will the perpetrator be found guilty? · Will the perpetrator be sentenced? As you can see, the path to punishment isn’t straight forward as the case can be dropped or no undetected at any point. Public and crime: In addition to the crime being a social problem, crime is a public issue. Meaning that public opinion affects the justice system. Therefore, public concern needs to understand as it may affect how justice is delivered. However, the public’s perception of rates of crime is often inaccurate. (Ainsworth and Moss, 20002) and it's unrealistic to expect the public to have accurate perceptions. (Howitt, 1992, 1986) The public’s perception of crime is that society is becoming increasingly criminal and risky. (Doherty, 1990) Whereas in reality, crime rates have been decreasing throughout history, but recently certain types of crime are on the rise. Meaning that the public’s perception is wrong. Fear of crime: Let’s face it, the public fear crime and becoming victims of crime. As a result of this fear of crime, politicians and others use this fear in political contexts to gain favour and governments may actively try to influence it. The reason for this influencing and political interest is because if there’s less fear then the government is doing a perceived better job of tackling crime. In other words, this is another example of politicians telling the public half-truths in an effort to gain favour and stay in power. Where does the fear of crime come from? There are many different sources of this fear. Such as Mass media plays a big role as they focus on the most serious of crimes. Meaning that you think that these major crimes are happening more often than they naturally occur. Another example is direct knowledge of crimes were a crime has affected us directly and we have learned from that experience. For example, a crime in our community, a crime against a family member or even a crime against ourselves. Finally, there are aspects of our personality and social characteristics that make us more likely to be fearful of crime. For example, Bazzargan (1994) found that feeling lonely, having a poor education, believing that your neighbours are untrustworthy and having a lack of vigilance increased the likelihood in you becoming fearful of crime. Fear-victimisation paradox (Clark, 2004) That fact shows that being fearful of crime is somewhat unneeded as this paradox shows that there are no relationships between rates of crimes and victimisation. Here’s an example, women are more fearful of crime than men. (Stanko, 1995) but men are actually most at risk of attack by a stranger. Hence, demonstrating how being fearful of crime doesn’t always mean that you will become a victim of crime. Crime phobia (Clark, 2004) Many people who are fearful of crimes say that they have a phobia. I know that this is what some of my older family has said as they can be very fearful at times about crime. Especially, after a terror attack. However, the research suggests that the fear of crime isn’t like a phobia because the fear of crime isn’t dysfunctional or irrational. Media bias: In my opinion, this idea of media bias is one of the most important topics in Forensic Psychology because media bias; as you will see throughout the book; is linked with a lot of public knowledge. As we use the media to learn about crime and other matters. For example, if an individual has limited or very little opportunities to interact with a specific stereotyped group, then the individual will rely on the media’s portrayed of that group in order to learn more. (Sanghana & Wilson, 2006) Furthermore, Media interest regarding crime and in particular sexual offending has grown dramatically (Quinn et al, 2000) However, reported levels of sexual assault have remained constant over the years. This is an example of the public believing that sex offending is increasing but in reality, it isn’t and the media is manipulating the public to believe in such ideas. Finally, the media only likes to report sensational crimes. Thank you for listening or read. If you want to learn more about Forensic Psychology, then please consider checking out my Forensic Psychology book and please consider signing up for my mailing list to receive your FREE psychology book. Have a great day everyone, Connor

Today’s guest post is on a great biological psychology topic of the Psychology of Daydreaming, and this psychology guest post was written by the great Sofia Papalouka and I love this topic of biological psychology as it really can be applied to everyday. I hope you enjoy! Have you ever been in class and you started zoning out? Or perhaps, have been walking home and started thinking how you’d rule England? Although sometimes illogical, these thoughts are termed as daydreaming or mind-wandering. This consists of unconscious, unconstrained, spontaneous thoughts, that are not influenced by the external environment. This means that daydreaming can happen at any point and time, without needing a trigger. Daydreaming acts as a default mode, when you are in a condition that requires low cognitive processes. This means that you are more likely to engage in daydreaming when you are waiting or relaxing, than when you are solving math problems. But why do we engage in daydreaming anyways? Some believe that it aids survival and maintains positive relationships. By imagining alternate outcomes of an upcoming event, daydreaming can increase conflict resolution, but also can reduce social anxiety which increases communication. Not only that, but it can also help in achieving goals, by future planning and making future decisions. One of the biggest advantages, however, is the increase of creativity (Poerio & Smallwood, 2016). By fantasizing different scenarios, parts of the brain named pre-frontal cortex and temporal lobe display higher activity when daydreaming, which is where the imagination network is believed to be located (Kaufman, 2013). The stimulation of the imagination network could potentially aid in gaining creative and inspired moods, valuable to artists and musicians. On the negative side, daydreaming can also lead to detrimental effects, such as loss of concentration when driving or lack of attention in an education context affecting performance (Poerio & Smallwood, 2016). Even if there are chances of having negative experiences, however, daydreaming is valuable to social cognitions and emotional stability, since it can act as an escape from reality. So, keep on daydreaming! Thank you so much for that great psychology blog post Sofia! I hope that you’re enjoyed this biological psychology blog post and if you want to learn more about biological psychology- you can get my FREE eBook when you sign up for my newsletter. Have a great day everyone! References: Poerio, G., & Smallwood, J. (2016). Daydreaming to navigate the social world: What we know, what we don't know, and why it matters. Social And Personality Psychology Compass, 10(11), 605-618. doi: 10.1111/spc3.12288 Kaufman. (2013). Retrieved from http://myteamswings.org/Bibliographie/The-Real-Neuroscience-of-Creativity.pdf

Today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast is on Research Biases in Psychology research and How to Minimize Their Impact on Research. Now today’s episode is important regardless of your preferred type of psychology whether it’s abnormal psychology, biological psychology or cognitive psychology, because biases can and will impact your research regardless of the type of psychology you prefer. So this is a very important episode to listen or read. Today’s psychology podcast show notes are taken from my Research in Psychology: There are many biases in research that can impact the findings of experiments, but as this is an introduction, I will focus on three main biases. Demand characteristics: This is when the participants believe that they have managed to work out what the experimenters are looking for and they change their behaviour accordingly. This impacts on research as it can lead to false conclusions to be drawn as the data being analysed shows the opposite of how humans actually behave. To counter this in research you can organise your experiment in such a way that makes it difficult for the participants to work out what you’re looking for. Social desirability bias: This is where you change or give your answer to questions or the experiment to something that puts you in a more acceptable light. People do this intentionally or unintentionally. For example; if a 15-year-old girl was asked if she had ever had sex? And she had, she might say that she hasn’t because it could be socially unacceptable for her to have sex because of her age. Impacting results as it could lead to false data leading to false conclusions. A possible way to avoid this bias is to frame questions in a non-judgemental way. Leading question bias: Where the question is worded in such a way that the question encourages a certain answer. Such as: how fast were the cars going when the smashed into each other? That question should lead to a higher speed being given. This impacts research as it gets people to give a certain answer instead of the true answer of their behaviour. Possibly leading to be false conclusions. To avoid this bias questions should be asked in an open-ended and neutral way. For instance: how fast were the cars going at the time of the incident? I hope you’re enjoyed this episode of The Psychology World Podcast and hopefully the things that you have learned today will help you in your psychology research whether it be studying cognitive psychology, social psychology or any other. Please consider to sign up for my newsletter to receive your FREE book and if you want to learn more about psychology research, please check out my book Research in Psychology. Have a great day everyone, Connor.

Today’s episode is looking at teletherapy under the branch of Abnormal Psychology. Hello, I hope that you’re all well during these difficult times so I wanted to take a break from social psychology in this in-between episode of The Psychology World Podcast and talk about abnormal psychology, but more specifically I wanted to talk about the future of psychotherapy. Which as you know is very important in Clinical and Abnormal psychology. Therefore, teletherapy is simply when psychotherapy is delivered from the telephone, skype or any other over-the-internet form of communication and it can be done over the talk as well. In addition, teletherapy could become the ‘normal’ psychotherapy as it is becoming perfectly normal for therapists to phone, text or video chat with patients as well as teletherapy is becoming increasingly used during the COVID-19 pandemic as people still need therapy during this crisis. Interestingly, teletherapy isn’t new in psychology as it and a number of interesting developments were happening before the pandemic. For example, it’s isn’t uncommon to find therapists on social media to grow their business and social media allowed the therapists to grow their business with a global clientele. Meaning that teletherapy was needed in order to help these international clients. Another interesting development is co-working spaces for mental health professionals and this development I found strange at first as surely you would need to be away from other people to deliver effective therapy. However, in JAMA article in 2012 found that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) delivered in teletherapy was just as effective as in-person CBT. Another benefit of these co-working places includes therapists stay mobile for delivering remote services as well as it gives people a chance to network. This is always useful. However, the problem and main difficulty for teletherapy is that according to the article at the button of the page, these pieces of software like zoom and Skype don’t meet the regulatory requirements. Hence, this creates issues for the therapists. I hope that you’ve enjoyed this abnormal psychology blog post and if you want to learn more about psychology then please sign up for my newsletter to receive your FREE book and if you want to learn more about abnormal psychology then please check out my Abnormal Psychology book. Have a great day everyone! Kind regards Connor. Reference: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/social-instincts/202003/will-covid-19-make-teletherapy-the-rule-not-the-exception

Generalizability and Credibility in psychological research and how to increase it are the topics in today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast. Hello, everyone I hope that you’re having a great week. In addition, to what generalizability and credibility is in psychology research, we will be looking at how to increase generalizability and credibility in research as well. So today’s show notes are taken from my Research in Psychology book: Generalizability refers to the extent to which the findings can be applied to other populations and other settings that weren’t used in the study. For example: applying the results of a drug study on teenagers to adults as well. Credibility refers to the extent to which the findings can be trusted to reflect the reality of the world. The higher the creditable the more trusted they can be to effectively tell the truth. Generalizing the findings: Over this section, we’ll be looking at factors that will increase a study’s ability to generalise their findings. Ecological validity: This means the extent to which the findings can be applied to the real world as a result of the experimental scenario. Studies with low ecological validity tend to use artificial scenarios and ones that don’t match the real world. Therefore, the findings cannot be applied to the real world or other populations. Studies with high ecological validity use real-world scenarios so you can apply the findings to other situations and populations. You can increase the ecological validity in your experiments by making your experiment as lifelike as possible. Population validity: Meaning the extent to which your findings can be generalised from your sample. Studies with low population validity tend to use inappropriate samples or too small sample in relation to their target population for a meaningful conclusion to be drawn. For example: if I was to do a study on teenage drug addiction and I used only 20 12 and 13-year-old then I would have low population validity. As I’m only using a small age group and I’m using 12-year olds that aren’t even teenagers. Plus, I’m only using 20 of them compared to the millions of teenagers in the UK. Whereas, studies with high population validity use a large sample size using an appropriate population to study. Therefore, to improve the example above, I would use 500 13-17 years old. Construct validity: Construct validity is how well does the method for measurement measure what you want to measure. Such as: how well does rating your anger on a scale of 1-5 help you measure anger levels. Studies with low construct validity tend to use inappropriate measurement tools. For example: using a focus group when you want to test people’s shopping habits after being exposed to a drug. Studies with high construct validity use effective measurement tools. +Such as: conducting an experiment at a shopping centre to test shopping’s habits after being exposed to a drug. Credibility: Now that we have looked at what makes a study generalisable, we will now look at what makes a study more credible. Creditability also referred to as internal validity in experiments is the extent to which the experiment or study measured what it intended to. By doing these things in your studies, you will increase your creditability as they will increase the trustworthiness of your findings. Triangulation: There are many different types of triangulation including: · Method triangulation- you use more than one method in your study to give you more data to support your conclusions with. · Researcher triangulation- comparing and combining observations made by different researchers. Increasing credibility as if a number of different people arrive at the same conclusion then it makes it more reliable. · Theory triangulation- you use multiple theories or ideas to analyse the data. Making your findings more reliable as you have considered other theories or things that could explain your results, and this leads to a more holistic conclusion as you haven’t tried to bring the behaviour down to one cause, but you have considered multiple causes. Reflexivity: This is when you take your own biases into account and you consider how they could influence the results. Leading to an increase in credibility as this allows you to consider how you will impact the experiment and adapt how the experiment will be done accordingly. Overall, you will not be influencing the experiment as much so it should be the participant personal behaviour in the results and not their influenced behaviour. Thick descriptions: This means that the observed behaviour should be described in a lot of detail and in context so that it makes perfect sense to an outsider who has never seen the experiment before. Making the study more reliable as it could mean that the study can be accurately repeated to further support the findings if the follow up get similar or the same results. I hope that you’ve enjoyed today’s episode and if you want to know more about Research in Psychology then check out my Research in Psychology book. Available for FREE at your local library and available in eBook and audiobook on all major online stores. Have a great day everyone!

Today’s episode is on creatives things to do during lockdown and COVID-19 using social psychology. Hello everyone, I hope that you’re having a great day. Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash So, during lockdown we are all looking for things to do and we all want to maintain or improve our mental health during the process, so this is where social psychology and doing creatives things during the lockdown comes in. Note: despite there being a lot of social psychology research out there. I won’t be backing up what I’m saying in this article as this is meant to help people using my own experiences and what I’ve heard from news or psychological sources. Therefore, here are five things to do during lockdown: Reflective writing: There has been a lot of research into the great benefits that writing has on mental health so writing whether creatively or otherwise is great for mental health. So, my suggestion would be to do some writing soon because it can make you feel better and if you choose to write something creatively then it can be great for escaping the COVID- 19 chaos. In addition, I recommend that you do some reflective writing on your phone or on some paper (what’s paper? Isn’t that stone age technology?) and just write about your feelings and how you’re doing during the lockdown. I know from personal experience that this is helpful to do even when you aren’t in lockdown also, I have found a few surprising things about myself during this reflective writing. Note: this tends to happen when you’re writing freely and not controlling what you’re saying. So go on just write! Reading and TV and movies: Personally, as a writer I love reading so I can testify to the power of books in print, eBook or audio format to escape this chaos and enter another type of world through reading. Also, a lot of authors are doing discounts during COVID-19 so please have a look and read. If you want to look at some of my books, then please go to: Psychology books- www.connorwhiteley.net/books sci-fi fantasy- www.connorwhiteley.net/scififantasy P.S- TV and Movies have the same effect! Arts and crafts: Similarly, to reading and reflective writing, doing arts and crafts and creating something new while the virus is destroying the world around us can provide you with some great escape. So, you can similarly type into google ‘arts and crafts activities’ and you should find a lot of great activities to do. In addition, if you have kids at home with you then doing arts and crafts are a great way to keep them entertained. Exercise: There has also been a lot of research into the great effects that exercise has on improving our mental health and experts on Sky News have constantly been talking about the need to exercise to keep up and maintain our mental health during this difficult time. Personally, I have a mini- exercise bike at home so I spend at least 30 mins a day on it exercising. So please maintain your mental health and exercise! I know that this is a very difficult time and I hope that you have found this psychology blog post with reference to social psychology useful. Please stay safe and stay sane! Have a great day everyone! kind regards, Connor.

Today’s psychology podcast episode is on research in psychology, research types in psychology and how psychology research is done? Hi everyone, I hope that you’re having a great day. In today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast, I talk about research in psychology. Below are the show notes taken from my Research in Psychology book: In psychological research, there are two types of research. Quantitative: The aim of this research is to make universal rules of behaviour. That can be applied to a large group of people. The focus is on how behaviour is created and shows itself with a strong emphasis on scientific number-based data. Furthermore, it’s an objective type of research meaning that the researcher is removed from the research context and doesn’t influence the results as much. Some examples of this type of research include: · Experiments · Natural experiments · Correlational studies Overall, think of this type of research as the hardcore type of science that is supported by hard facts and numerical data. Qualitative research: The aim of this type is to develop a deep understanding of a particular event or case. As a result of this focus on one event, this type of research doesn’t produce universal rules of behaviour. Qualitative research focuses on human experiences, interpretation and meaning with rich detailed texts for data. However, this type is less objective as the researcher is part of the research method and could possibly influence the results. Some qualitative methods include: · Case studies · Observations · Focus groups · Interviews Overall, think as this type of research as focusing one event and trying to find out everything about the event. In order to write a very, very detailed report of why the event happened. I hope that you’ve enjoyed today’s psychology blog post on research in psychology and if you want to know more about psychological research then please consider checking out my book: Research in Psychology. Have a great day! Kind regards Connor.

Today’s blog post is on how to combat loneliness during COVID-19 and this blog post is largely inspired by social psychology. Firstly, I must say that I truly feel for everyone during these difficult times and being isolated from people is difficult and it does put a strain on our mental health. For many reasons including loneliness. However, this is why psychology and, in this case, social psychology is so important as social psychology can teach us how to maintain our mental health and reduce loneliness. Therefore, in this blog post I’ll be telling you about always to combat loneliness during COVID-19 but everyday life as well. But firstly I want to tell you that there are three types of loneliness that people can experience and they are: · Social loneliness · Emotional loneliness · Existential loneliness So to combat social loneliness; as this is the main type of loneliness that people will be experience during COVID-19- we can do a number of things. Such as: Start a new activity or social group Now I know that is sounds stupid because the world is basically on lockdown at the moment, but social loneliness is all about not feeling connected to anyone or part of a social group. Therefore, in order to feel less lonely, we need to be apart of a new social group- and thanks to modern technology we can be. So, my recommendation for you is to go onto social media or something to try and find a new group to belong to. Like: an online book club or arts and crafts. For example, I know that a lot of gyms are now doing online classes so you can still get fit and connect with people at home. So, that’s another tip as well. Check out any local classes for your hobbies or interests and see if they’re online. · My third tip is to take advantage of modern technology because whilst the news may be all doom and gloom modern technology can still be great! As a result of we can use technologies such as zoom, skype, facetime and WhatsApp to connect, see and talk with people. Ultimately, that is how you prevent social loneliness. You need to interact, connect and talk to people so you don’t feel so alone. · Finally, Netflix parties! Now, I haven’t used or done a Netflix party but some of my friends have and they love them. as Netflix allows you to watch a flim with your friends while you all chat and hangout. Meaning you can still be together and socialise without breaking the lockdown rules. Isn’t that great! It’s still Tuff Now I know that it’s still tuff and this is a very difficult time, but we will get through it together and if you follow some of the advice in this post then it should help. So please call a friend and let’s get talking and let’s be social! I hope that you’ve joined today’s social psychology blog post and in case you ever thought that social psychology could never be applied to the real world. Then hopefully I’ve proved that social psychology can be useful in the real world. Also, if you want to something to read to take your mind off these troubling times then please consider checking out my psychology books and my sci-fi fantasy books. Please stay safe and stay sane! Have a great day! Kind regards Connor.

Today's episode of The Psychology World Podcast is on Development Psychology and how poverty impacts child development. Focusing on the negative effects poverty can have on cognitive psychology and biological psychology. Below are the show notes taken from my Development Psychology book: Poverty is the state of having no or little means to fulfil basic needs and as a result of that, a number of outcomes can arise that inhibit development. Brooks and Dunn (1997) summarised that poverty has a number of key outcomes: · Physical health as poverty leads to stunted growth, malnourish and low birth weight. · Lower cognitive ability · Poorer school achievement · Emotional as well as behavioural outcomes such as showing more aggression or fighting behaviour while feeling depressed or anxious on the inside. The researchers suggested a number of pathways as well. These pathways are other factors that affect development in addition to the family income. · Availability of nutrition · The physical condition of the home · Amount of time parents spent with children · Parenting style · Punishment practices · Parent’s mental health · Neighbour conditions · And many more… Models of poverty: There are two main models or theories that try to explain and predict the deciding factors in the argument of what factors affect development the most. · The family stress theory states that the main variables that affect development are family related. Like: parenting styles and communication strategies. · The investment model states that the most important pathways that affect development are associated with real goods. Such as nutrition, opportunities to learn and enriched environments. Personally, if you combine the two theories, I believe that you would be spot on and both are very true explanations to the factors that affect poverty the most. Pollitt (1995) · Researchers carried out a study on four very poor villages in Central Guatemala for the course of 8 years. · The participants were made up of over 2000 children and mothers. · As protein was the main nutrient missing from the villager’s diet. The villagers were given a nutrient supplement. · Participant from two villages received a high protein supplement whereas the two other control villages got a supplement that contained far less protein. · Results showed that a significant drop in infant mortality in both sets of villages, but with a 69% decrease in villages taking the high protein supplement compared to only a 24% decrease in the other two villages. Children on the lower protein supplement suffered a slower rate of growth and a slower rate of recovery from infection. They also learned to crawl and walk slightly later on average. Because these undernourished children remained small for their age, adults may have treated them as if they were younger than their actual age. · In conclusion, this shows how poverty can affect psychological development. Critical thinking: A positive of this study is that it has high ecological validity as the experiment uses a natural, real-world setting. In turn, this increases the generalizability of the findings, so we apply the results of the experiment to different situations. However, as a result of this high ecological validity where other factors that could influence cognitive development aren’t controlled. We cannot say with unshakable certainty that protein was the only factor that could have given us these results. As factors could have potentially played a role. Like: illness, genetic factors and other missing nutrients from their diet. Summary: Poverty can have a number of impacts on development. There are a number of factors that impact development as well as family income. The two main theories or models in relation to the effects of poverty on development are: · The family stress theory · The investment model Pollitt (1995) demonstrated how important protein is in cognitive development. I hope that you’ve enjoyed today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast and if you want to learn more about more social psychology, cognitive psychology and biological psychology can impact child development. Then please check out my book Developmental Psychology for more information. Please consider signing up for my newsletter to receive your FREE book as well as more psychology news. Have a great day everyone!

Today’s psychology blog post is on Forensic Psychology and it focuses on the fear of crime and why people are scared of becoming victims of crime. Hi everyone, I hope that you’re having a great day. Personally, I love this area of forensic psychology because I find it very finding. Below is an extract from my Forensic Psychology book and over the next few weeks I’ll be posting some in-between psychology podcast episodes focusing on helping you during COVID-19. Victims and fear of crimes: Public and crime are honestly one of my favourite topics in forensic psychology because I love to learn how flawed the public’s knowledge is and the impacts that has on the Criminal Justice System. Hence, why that will be our focus for this chapter. Firstly, the path from committing the crime to punishment is very complex and it must be remembered that crime is a social problem as well. To emphasize the complexity of the process from committing a crime to punishment. Here are the stages of crime. (Ainsworth, 2000) · Will the victim notice crime? · Will the victim report crime? · Will the police record the crime? · Will the offender caught? · Will the offender be prosecuted? · Will the perpetrator be found guilty? · Will the perpetrator be sentenced? As you can see, the path to punishment isn’t straight forward as the case can be dropped or no undetected at any point. Public and crime: In addition to the crime being a social problem, crime is a public issue. Meaning that public opinion affects the justice system. Therefore, public concern needs to understand as it may affect how justice is delivered. However, the public’s perception of rates of crime is often inaccurate. (Ainsworth and Moss, 20002) and it's unrealistic to expect the public to have accurate perceptions. (Howitt, 1992, 1986) The public’s perception of crime is that society is becoming increasingly criminal and risky. (Doherty, 1990) Whereas in reality, crime rates have been decreasing throughout history, but recently certain types of crime are on the rise. Meaning that the public’s perception is wrong. Fear of crime: Let’s face it, the public fear crime and becoming victims of crime. As a result of this fear of crime, politicians and others use this fear in political contexts to gain favour and governments may actively try to influence it. The reason for this influencing and political interest is because if there’s less fear then the government is doing a perceived better job of tackling crime. In other words, this is another example of politicians telling the public half-truths in an effort to gain favour and stay in power. Where does the fear of crime come from? There are many different sources of this fear. Such as Mass media plays a big role as they focus on the most serious of crimes. Meaning that you think that these major crimes are happening more often than they naturally occur. Another example is direct knowledge of crimes were a crime has affected us directly and we have learned from that experience. For example, a crime in our community, a crime against a family member or even a crime against ourselves. Finally, there are aspects of our personality and social characteristics that make us more likely to be fearful of crime. For example, Bazzargan (1994) found that feeling lonely, having a poor education, believing that your neighbours are untrustworthy and having a lack of vigilance increased the likelihood in you becoming fearful of crime. Fear-victimisation paradox (Clark, 2004) That fact shows that being fearful of crime is somewhat unneeded as this paradox shows that there are no relationships between rates of crimes and victimisation. Here’s an example, women are more fearful of crime than men. (Stanko, 1995) but men are actually most at risk of attack by a stranger. Hence, demonstrating how being fearful of crime doesn’t always mean that you will become a victim of crime. Crime phobia (Clark, 2004) Many people who are fearful of crimes say that they have a phobia. I know that this is what some of my older family has said as they can be very fearful at times about crime. Especially, after a terror attack. However, the research suggests that the fear of crime isn’t like a phobia because the fear of crime isn’t dysfunctional or irrational. Media bias: In my opinion, this idea of media bias is one of the most important topics in Forensic Psychology because media bias; as you will see throughout the book; is linked with a lot of public knowledge. As we use the media to learn about crime and other matters. For example, if an individual has limited or very little opportunities to interact with a specific stereotyped group, then the individual will rely on the media’s portrayed of that group in order to learn more. (Sanghana & Wilson, 2006) Furthermore, Media interest regarding crime and in particular sexual offending has grown dramatically (Quinn et al, 2000) However, reported levels of sexual assault have remained constant over the years. This is an example of the public believing that sex offending is increasing but in reality, it isn’t and the media is manipulating the public to believe in such ideas. Finally, the media only likes to report sensational crimes. Public opinion and Experts: We will build upon this topic more in our next chapter but ideally, public opinion and experts need to appreciate each other and co-exist. However, with the government choosing to do ‘top of the head’ polls instead of deliberation polls for political gain then the government only gets a skewed version of public opinion. That they use for political gain and not the benefit of the people. I hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and for more information on forensic psychology and criminal psychology, please check out my book Forensic Psychology for more information. Please consider signing up for my newsletter to receive your FREE book. Have a great day everyone!

Today’s episode is on developmental psychology and we draw on the knowledge from social psychology as we discuss the role of peers and play in psychological development. Hi everyone, I hope that you had a great weekend. In the introduction of this developmental psychology/ social psychology episode, I talk about the unfortunate COVID-19 situation and that if you use the coupon STAYSAFE at the checkout on www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley then you can get 50% all of my ebooks. Here are the show notes taken from my Developmental Psychology book: Play and interaction with peers are undeniable for helping children develop, but how exactly does it help development? Play develops as the child grows and gets older. For example: at ages 1-2 years old the type of play is object manipulation when the child is only interested in the object itself as well as its properties. Like colours, shape and texture. At ages 3-5 years old, the type of play changes to pretend play when the child uses objects as symbols to act out a pretend social role. Like a family dinner. Enabling children to understand the meaning of objects. At 6-7 years old, the type of play changes for the last time to become play with rules as the child doesn’t focus on the object nor the social role it could be used for, instead they focus on rules. This is because rules regulate the social world and complex sequences of social interactions, so they require complex cognitive structures that form at about this age. Influence of peers and play on cognitive development: Linking back to our cognitive development theories, Paiget believed that development in peer interaction is driven by the process of perspective talking, so being in a group of equal peers that find each other relatable would be helpful for development. Damon and Killen (1982) supports this idea as they found that when children talk in groups this promotes moral reasoning more effectively than talking with adults. Whereas, Vygotsky believed that cognitive development is driven by being around knowledgable others. This can be parents or peers. Nedospavosa (1985) supports Vygotsky as they found that 5-7-year-old children overcome egocentrism easier when an adult is present, and they provide just enough help for the child to understand and complete the task. Supporting the idea of knowledge others is important for cognitive development. The influence of peers and play on social development: Interactions with peers and play in childhood create the vital foundation social skills so the child can develop and adjust to social situations in later life. Hollos and Cowan (1973) · Children from isolated farms and children from towns in Norway did a number of tasks to measure logical skills; like a conservation task with water; and social skills. · To see social development in children from isolated farms as these children tend to have no same-aged peers on the farm. · Results showed while there was no difference in the development of logical skills then there was a clear difference in the development of social skills from children from the isolated farms. Compared to children from the town. · In conclusion, growing up in an isolated environment with no same age peers has a negative impact on the development of vital social skills. Critical thinking: A positive of this study is that it has high ecological validity as the experiment uses a natural, real-world setting. In turn, this increases the generalizability of the findings, so we apply the results of the experiment to different situations. Whilst, the above is true, a negative of the study is that it only used one area and one culture. Therefore, we cannot say that this is part of a universal behavioural trend with supporting data as the study didn’t include other cultures or other geographical areas. As a result of this, it’s possible that this is a one-off occurrence or something unique to this area. Summary: Play develops in the following stages: · Object manipulation · Pretend play · Play with rules Piaget believed that development is driven by perspective talking. Vygotsky believed that development is driven by being around knowledgeable others. Play and interacting with peers creates the foundations for social skills that are key in later life. I hope that you’ve enjoyed today’s episode and if you want to learn more about how social psychology influences developmental psychology then please check out Development Psychology for more information. Also, please check out my store on www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley and use the coupon STAYSAFE at the checkout to receive 50% off all my ebooks. Have a great week everyone!

Hi everyone, I hope you're having a great day. Today's post is on Forensic Psychology and the theories of offending. In this Forensic Psychology blog post, we'll look at a few theories but you can find a lot ore in my book: Forensic Psychology. Extract from Forensic Psychology: chapter 1: development of offending: theories and prespectives Why do criminals offend? That will be our focus in this chapter. There are many theories about why people offend. Resulting in these theories being put into categories. For example: · Individual- these theories focus on the reasons for offending at an individual level. · Group- these theories focus on the offending at the social group level. · Community influence- these focus on different areas that provide people with different opportunities to commit crimes. · Societal and macro levels- these theories state that society is constructed in a way that creates crime. Then these categories can be further broken down into different perspective despite these categories being perspectives in themselves. · Individual · Genetic · History · Deviant · Focuses on individual · Groups and socialisation theories All perspectives are useful but hard to part them together to form one holistic theory of offending. Theories of offending: Now that we’ve covered the different perspectives that a researcher can take in order to investigate why offending occurs. We can begin to look at some theories. Social Learning Theory: This theory states that we learn by observing others and their consequences in its simplest form. For more information, please check out Sociocultural Psychology by Connor Whiteley. As a part of Social Learning Theory, Bandura, Ross and Ross (1963) state that having a model is important to learn behaviour from. For example, we learn directly from family and friends. In addition, reinforcers work well with this theory as reinforcers can be used to show that the watched behaviour is good. Examples of reinforcers include: · Sex · Social acceptance · Money · Social approvals Linking to offending: Social Learning Theory can be used to explain offending because the theory states if a child; for instance; watches their brothers or sisters commit crimes without receiving negative consequences. Then the child will learn that this is acceptable and wish to copy it. This desire to copy the behaviour is even stronger when a reinforcer is involved. Such as: if the parents were giving the brothers and sisters money for stealing, or even something as simple as love. Evaluation of Social Learning Theory as an offending theory: Whilst, social learning is useful as it explains the processes of learning complex behaviour and how it links to offending as well as there is no need to assume the offender has a pathology. The theory doesn’t explain what conditions are needed for people to learn criminality. In case, you’re confused about the negative of Social learning as I’ll use an example. The example I’ve used is for all intents and purposes made up where I have just applied what social learning theory states and I’ve applied it to offended. Nowhere in the original study or theory does it outline criminality. Cognitive theories of crimes: Throughout this series, I hope that I have shown you the power of mental processes also known as cognition as it applies to memory, mental disorders, health and more. For that reason, it wouldn’t be right if I didn’t include cognitive psychology in this book. Intelligence: Whenever people see a criminal many of them think that the criminal has low intelligence and that’s the reason why they committed the crime. Yet I will ask you the following questions… Do white-collar criminals have low intelligence? Do world leaders who commit crimes have low intelligence? Does a doctor who is a criminal have low intelligence? Overall, I hope that those questions begin to help you to understand that criminals don’t always have low levels of intelligence. In fact, most of the time criminals have average or high levels of intelligence. However, the general theory of intelligence is that having a lower IQ means that you have poorer marketable skills leading to an increased risk of unemployment. Leading to a poor ability to avoid risks as you need money to survive so you get caught easier as you don’t have the intelligence to avoid getting caught. Overall, this theory is a controversial hypothesis with weak support and a weak correlation with crime. Self-regulation and risk behaviour: Another cognitive theory of offending is that a lack of self-regulation and an increase in risky behaviour leads to offending. Self-regulation is the ability to control your own behaviour and some research links low self-regulation with aggression as well as self-regulation is a limited resource. Therefore, the theory states that if you use up your self-regulation and have a decreased amount of it then you may be more likely to commit inappropriate or criminal behaviour. Though, whether self-regulation is a limited resource is still being debated. Biological theories of crime: Our biology can influence many factors that relate to human behaviour as explained in my Biological Psychology book. As a result, some crimes could be biology-related. Although, it must be noted all behaviours and crimes have biological and environmental causes. One example of this is aggression-based crimes as testosterone can impact aggression levels. Furthermore, Forsman and Langstorm (2012) suggested that genetics could play a role in adult violence across generations. Thus, when combined with the fact that the inheritability of aggression is about 50%. It makes a good case for a biological cause for aggression. On the other hand, servals genes are involved in aggression probably through the production of neurotransmitters and hormones, so testosterone isn’t the only factor in aggression. Overall, the theory suggests that testosterone causes offending because the testosterone causes aggression levels to increase. Making a person more likely to become aggressive and commit a violent crime. For more information on aggression please check out Sociocultural Psychology by Connor Whiteley. Biosocial theory of crime: Personally, I love this theory as it’s holistic, so it doesn’t reduce the cause of a behaviour down to one singular cause. However, as this theory is very long and detailed. We won’t go into too much depth. This theory was proposed by Eysenck as well as it combines both biological causes and environmental causes to produce a criminal act. In more detail, the theory states that biological factors have a big impact, but that impact depends on external factors to various degrees. Evaluation of the Biosocial Theory: Whilst, the theory has good scope. It’s far too broad and it cannot explain many aspects of crimes. Theories of Violent offending: When it comes to violent offending, biological theories get a lot of criticism as most violence is instrumental. Basically, we learn violence by observing others. Equally, when we try to categorise types of violent offenders, we encounter problems as typologies assume that people stick to one type. When offenders could show characteristics of many types. Do violent video games increase aggression? The idea behind violent video games increasing aggression is that the player practices and repeats the violent behaviour. Leading to the reinforcement of the behaviour because it makes you feel good and the repetition leads to you developing a mental script of the behaviour. Meaning that you know how you’re meant to act in a certain context. In this case, the context is violence. Moreover, you become more desensitised to violence and aggression as the video game exposures you to violence more. Overall, you repeat the violence, develop a mental script so you know how to be violent and you become desensitised so in the real world you are less inhibited and you know exactly what to do. For instance: you know how to beat someone to death, and you know how to shoot up a school. Due to you have learned how to shoot guns in games. Reality check: However, this effect seems to be small. Equally, the effect may be small but think about the millions that play violent video games, even if this effect is small. It will still affect thousands of people. Ultimately, it is probably a combination of things that leads to an increase in violence and not only video games. I hope you've enjoyed today's blog post and if you want to find out more about Forensic Psychology and why people commit crimes then please check out my book: Forensic Psychology. Have a great day everyone!