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With this psychology podcast being aimed at psychology students, professionals and others interested in psychology, I think today’s topic is brilliant. Because as current or future psychotherapists, it is rather hard for us to fully understand the sort of concerns and questions that our clients can have in regards to us. Of course whilst some questions are strictly off-limits because they’re inappropriate or too personal. It does beg the question, what if our clients asks us a personal question? Is it professional to answer? That’s the focus of today’s podcast episode. This clinical psychology episode has been sponsored by Psychology of Relationships: The Social Psychology of Friendships, Romantic Relationships and More. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Is it okay for Clients To Ask Psychotherapists Questions? As mentioned before the therapeutic relationship between us and our clients is very naturally imbalanced, because we are the experts and professionals and apparently they are the messed up ones. Of course modern clinical psychology doesn’t see them as messed up and instead sees them as people with maladaptive coping mechanisms, but this doesn’t stop wider society from believing the most outdated and damaging view. Anyway, throughout therapy, a client shares with us their fears, concerns and joys and basically how their mind works. However, all of this is done without us sharing or doing the same. So it’s natural for our clients to wonder about our background, opinion, approach or simply how we’re doing. This is even more important when we consider how we’re social creatures that are built on relationships with other people, as social psychology teaches us. And of course this whole relationship idea is rather hard when our clients don’t know how personal their questions can get. Since as I spoke about in other podcast episodes and Psychology of Relationships, self-disclosure drives liking behaviour. Therefore, the answer to Is it okay for Clients To Ask Psychotherapists Questions is very simple. The answer is simply yes. Of course, if the question is outrageous or inappropriate then that’s a completely different matter, but as long as the questions are valid and likely relevant to the therapeutic process. Then there’s little reason not to. Unless you simply don’t want to. Since in the therapeutic relationship, we don’t have to answer every question asked of it, but we can help explore the significance of it. Personally, I think the idea of this exploring is just fascinating because the question had to important to the person for some person. But why? And now I can sort of understand where the misconception about psychologists analysing everything someone said comes from. In addition, I should also note that this self-disclosure does depend on your therapeutic model too. Since if you specialise in one of the older forms of therapy, like psychodynamic or psychoanalysis. Then these approaches encourage the blank slate idea where the client projects their thoughts and feelings to the therapist without any sort of interference. However, newer forms of psychotherapy encourage a more dynamic relationship between the client and therapist where the therapist is encouraged to some extent to get involved in self-disclosure. Overall, the answer to is it okay for clients to ask psychotherapists questions, is mainly down to your own personality, beliefs and therapeutic model. And remember, if you don’t want to answer a question, you seriously don’t have to. A Common Question Therapists Are Asked: To add a bit more depth to this episode, I want to quickly look at a common question that therapists are asked by their clients and why these questions are so critical. Firstly, lots of clients ask different forms of this question “will you be able to understand me?”. This might sound like a strange question at first because of course most psychotherapists will be able. They have all had extensive levels of education, had plenty of work experience and have had plenty of clients over the years. However, not everyone knows that and as humans we like to believe we’re very, very special and unique. And to be honest we actually are, since we all have different backgrounds, influences and other factors that can impact our mental health difficulties and conditions. As a result, a client who is a single father of two young boys might ask the therapist if they have kids. Or a client who is struggling with depression or an eating disorder, they might ask if the therapist has had any experience with the condition before. Additionally, these questions can cover a wide range of topics of concern to the client as well. For example, clients might ask about politics, sexuality, gender, families, race and relationships and more. Now the list above is very extensive but to different people different things are important, and I want to jump to a point about the lack of diversity within clinical psychology. Since there is a lack of male, non-white, non-middle class and non-heterosexual therapists available. Personally, I think it’s really important to widen the diversity within clinical psychology just so regardless of whoever needs help can find something with similar experiences to themselves. Due to as a man I might feel more comfortable talking about my difficulties with a man rather than a woman. Then a black person might feel more comfortable talking to a black person. All of these are valid questions for the client and it helps them to understand how the therapy will work. In terms of us as the answerers of the questions, there are a lot of different ways to respond to this question. A lot of therapists answer this directly and they will share personal details. For example, if they have kids, if you’re gay or another member of their family is, if they’ve encountered the condition before and more. Other people will not answer this directly but will explore the reason for the question in the first place. For example, they might ask why do you ask? Or are you worried that I won’t understand your struggles? Talk to me about it,” Conclusion: At the end of this clinical psychology post, I want to emphasise that a good therapist will be rather careful with self-disclosure because as I mentioned in my Red Flags post a few weeks ago. Self-disclosure is a tool and you might want to only share what is relevant to the client. If you use self-disclosure too little then you might lose a chance to connect with the client and deepen the therapeutic relationship. Used too much, self-disclosure screams into the red flags as I discussed in that episode. So at the end of this episode, I think the takeaway is rather clear. Answering questions that the client asks you can be a great way to connect and make the client more comfortable with the therapy and it can really help them with their nerves. As well as as a few therapists have said in posts I’ve read and in lectures, it isn’t our client’s job to figure out what’s appropriate with therapy, it is our job as future or current therapists to help them find the boundaries. And answering questions can be great a way to do it. I really hope you have enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Psychology of Relationships: The Social Psychology of Friendships, Romantic Relationships and More. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Buy Me A Coffee Have a great day! Clinical Psychology Reference: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-therapy-center/202201/is-it-ok-ask-therapist-personal-questions I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

As current or future clinical psychologists or people just interested in the area. We are all aware that when a client comes to us, whatever they share is protected by confidentiality. Meaning within set limits, we cannot tell other people what the client has informed us about their mental health, their difficulties and their life. However, there are certain times and situations when a court of law might make us break their confidentiality. And when this happens, it raises the question of what is admissible in court? This episode has been sponsored by Forensic Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Present and Past Mental State: Whilst I haven’t been following the Amber Herd versus Johnny Depp trial because it seriously doesn’t interest me. I am aware that there has been a lot of therapists and forensic psychologist testifying about the mental health states of both of them. And this is where our first area comes in. Since in court proceedings, a person’s current and past mental state can be called into question and asked to be examined. This includes, but really isn’t limited to, does the client have any history of mental health conditions or addiction? As well as all this includes information that was provided to the therapist under continentality. In addition, in order for a court to properly understand the domestic situation. A marriage counsellor, for example, might be called in to give evidence and explain what both parties (or just one if that’s all they helped) told them about the living situation and the events. Also the therapist would have to turn over most private communications, diagnoses and other sensitive information to the spouse’s counsel and/ or the court. As well as either party involved in the proceedings may call the therapist to the stand to testify as an expert witness on their client’s or their opponent’s mental and emotional state. For example, if we look at what’s currently going on in the Amber Heard and Johnny Depp trial. Dr Anderson, who served as the couple’s marriage counsellor, gave the court sworn testimony that there was mutual abuse between the couple. As well as Dr Curry testified that Amber Heard was given a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder. Something that Amber Heard’s psychologist doesn’t agree with and testifies that she suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder due to the trauma from Johnny Depp. However, what we’re interested in is those conversations that the couple probably believed were personal and private are now in the public domain for a lot of people to read. Something that could be very scary for different people for different reasons. But the problem with this example is that the couple is very popular, famous and very, very high-profiled. So what is admissible in court for normal people? What is Admissible In Court? Well, it turns out that the question itself is very flawed because a lot of personal information you would never imagine coming to light because of confidentiality does end up coming out in a court. Regardless of how high-profile you are. Due to it is fairly common for people involved in court proceedings to have a history of mental health challenges, regardless of whether it is both or just one of the parties involved. Or these people have been known to see a therapist or counsellor. Therefore, because they have a mental health record that needs to be submitted into evidence. As well as it is fairly common to have expert testimony given by mental health professionals. You never know one of us might be expert witnesses one day! Furthermore, when it comes to child custody cases, the parents in this situation tend to waive their right to confidentiality. Due to in custody cases the court must determine what is in the best interest of the child, which means the need for transparency is extremely important as the court must understand if one or both of the parents has health or mental health difficulties. As a result, to better understand the entire situation, a court may order a therapist to turn over their patient’s most private diagnoses, communications and other sensitive information to the court and opposing counsel. I definitely think that custody battles can be rather heart-breaking, but if you’re familiar with the history of children and the law. Then it is great to know that children are valued are individuals who need to be cared for, considered carefully and protected. Also on the topic of custody battles, if both parents go under a mental health evaluation, then the therapist will most probably have to turn over all the notes, medical records amongst other things as well. In some instances, courts have ordered an in-camera review of several years of a person’s mental health records. With this being legal parlance for a process in which a judge privately looks at confidential, private or sensitive information to determine which material is relevant and which may be shared with the opposing counsel. Personally, I’m quite glad that there is a legal mechanism that helps to protect people with mental health conditions. Because you don’t want every little thing about your history to be turned over to the opposing counsel if it isn’t relevant, so it is important that there is a type of protection to prevent this over-giving if you will. For example, there was one such case where a mother’s medical records showed how she had been hospitalised 15 times over a space of ten years because of her mental health conditions. Resulting in the court deciding she would be unable to give the child proper and adequate care. How Do People Prepare For Court? Of course nothing on this podcast is ever official advice but it’s interesting to look at the types of things people (including us psychologists) do to prepare for these court proceedings. For instance, mental health professionals must prepare themselves for handing over all the notes and files that are relevant to the client in question if they are ordered by the court to do so. Additionally, if a parent has been asked to provide this information. Then it is imperative that they ensure their legal team is told everything and all the “issues” that will be revealed. So their legal team can prepare themselves, their questions and any way to possibly get the information thrown out. Mental Health: What is Admissible In Court? Conclusion However, I want to finish up by saying something that reminds us about the true emotion of this time. Whatever step of the process we are involved in, whether we are the psychologists involved or the actual people in the court proceedings. This is a very stressful time for everyone, so please, look after your mental health during this extremely stressful time. I really hope you have enjoyed today’s forensic and clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Forensic Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Buy Me A Coffee Have a great day! Forensic Psychology Reference: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/legal-matters/202205/depp-vs-heard-mental-health-and-what-is-admissible-in-court I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

There are times on the podcast when I come across very interesting and very, very surprising research. Today’s topic definitely came from one of these great finds, and I want to share it with you because it is so fascinating that I’m sure we will all learn a lot today. If you’re interested in clinical psychology then definitely read on! This episode has been sponsored by Formulation In Psychotherapy. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Why Even Look At Bibliotherapy? Before I explain what Bibliotherapy is, I want to mention first why people are getting interested in exploring such an old approach to therapy. And it mainly comes down to when we are looking for mental health interventions we are always looking for approaches that are scalable. This means we need interventions that can be provided effectively to a lot of people at the same time, and ideally at a low cost. There are a lot of reasons why scalability is important. For example, economic reasons are very important, especially when the future of many economies look negative for the foreseeable future which means government cutbacks are inevitable. Other factors are moral. As well as mental health is a global health problem and there are nowhere near enough mental health practitioners to provide individual treatment to everyone who needs it. Additionally, when people tend to think about scalability, the argument tends to turn towards thinking about new technologies. Such as, guided apps or using Artificial Intelligence to provide people with interactions like those given by a therapist. Personally, as a part of my placement year at the time of writing, I looked at the effects and effectiveness of mobile mental health apps. As part of new behavioural interventions and it is interesting, but the paragraph below is very valid from personal experience. However, whilst these technologies are very exciting. There is a very real risk the appeal of their novelty does in fact tend to overshadow the usefulness of older technologies. And that’s where Bibliotherapy comes in. What Is Bibliotherapy? In its most basic form, Bibliotherapy is book therapy where clients are given a specialised workbook to work through their difficulties and improve their mental health. Originally, this was started in 1980 by David Burns who published a book that introduces readers to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for the treatment of depression. Then over the decades there have been other guided books published that produced CBT for a range of conditions, and new types of therapies too. For example, there are books for Dialectical Behavioural Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Resulting in Bibliotherapy being a realistically available treatment option for a lot of people. What Is The Case For Bibliotherapy? Nonetheless, despite the amount of research highlighting the effectiveness of Bibliotherapy, it hasn’t been readily adopted. For instance, there were some very rigorous studies conducted in 1980 where Bibliotherapy was used as a control group compared to more intensive forms of therapy. But there was a massive problem for the researchers, the Bibliotherapy therapy group did just as well as the more intensive group of participants. Now this wasn’t because the intensive therapies were bad. It was because Bibliotherapy was so good. Then other studies have confirmed this in more recent years. Like a meta-analysis from 2004 compared the effects of cognitive Bibliotherapy for depression, and in-person cognitive behavioural therapy. The results showed Bibliotherapy was just as good as the in-person therapy. As well the authors noted that there was no additional benefit to in-person therapy compared to Bibliotherapy. That’s just amazing to me. Because I know from my Police Psychology book, book forms of the cognitive interview can be highly effective, but until now I hadn’t connected book forms to therapy. This just shows the importance of always trying to push the boundaries of what we are currently doing as psychologists. Furthermore, generally speaking, the vast majority of research into Bibliotherapy has highlighted its positive effects, with the only main source of disagreement being the size and source of these effects. Therefore, some researchers have proposed that giving clients with common mental health conditions an appropriate book, with some but not much supervision, can be just as effective as individual psychotherapy. Now before we go on, let’s just imagine what this claim would mean for mental health services. Instead of having a maximum capacity that you cannot go over whatsoever. This has the potential to free you up, because if you’re full up and thirty people come to you with mild depression. Normally you would have to send them away and add them to a waiting list. Resulting in them not being helped and their conditions would get worse. But with Bibliotherapy, you would almost certainly be able to treat them. That’s great! Of course, there will always be some details to work out. Like, what mental health conditions does it apply to? There is thankfully a good case for mild depression, but it wouldn’t be as effective for more serve conditions. Then you could question how precisely close is Bibliotherapy compared to individual therapy in effectiveness? Amongst other questions. However, even with these questions, I think it is safe to say Bibliotherapy could transform mental health services. Another Three Possible Implications: Additionally, Bibliotherapy does have some other implications for mental health. Which I think are very important to talk about now. Firstly, Bibliotherapy could be a great control group or at least an option to compare the evaluation of new technologies. Due to new technologies are often compared to individual therapies because these tend to be more cost-effective and scalable. However, those two comparisons aren’t always the most important comparison points, because books are relatively cheap so it almost destroys the cost-effective argument. Therefore, the most important question for these new technologies aren’t are they better than a therapist? But are they better than a book? It definitely adds a new interruption of the pen is mightier than the sword! Secondly, it could make us slightly more questioning of highly personalised forms of psychotherapy. Since if we want to provide mental health care for a lot of people having it manualised is very helpful as it helps with scalability. Then it is even better if we can just give the clients the manual to the therapy itself. Personally, I was rather shocked when I read this, because if you’re been listening to the podcast for a while, you know I am a massive supporter of formulation. This area focuses on personalised therapies, but I now believe there is room for both. There is a room for manualised therapies for the more mild mental health conditions when that is effective, but personalised therapies are needed for where Bibliotherapy and others fail to be effective. There is room for both in my opinion. Finally, if you’re interested in addressing the global mental health crisis. Then books could be extremely useful because they’re cheap and easy to distribute, and they are very effective. Therefore, this is definitely an option we could look to investigate more and leverage. Conclusion: Of course Bibliotherapy is definitely not a cure-all type of therapy and there are some limitations. Yet Bibliotherapy is supported by a lot of evidence, but of course a lot more is needed if Bibliotherapy is ever going to go into the mainstream. As well as there is still a universality problem that greatly limits Bibliotherapy on the global stage. For Bibliotherapy to work, it needs people who are able to read, and thankfully tons of people around the world can read and write. But the global literacy rate is only around 85%, and in most developing countries (where therapy is needed most) it is closer to 60% to 70%, so that is a lot of people in possible need that cannot use Bibliotherapy in the slightest. So to wrap up today’s episode, I think there is a lot of potential for Bibliotherapy because of the current research and the scalability of it all. Bibliotherapy has the potential to help tons of people who currently don’t receive any treatment. The future could be very bright indeed. Especially if we look to both newer and older forms of technology. I really hope you have enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Formulation In Psychotherapy. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Buy Me A Coffee Have a great day! Clinical Psychology References: Gregory, R. J., Schwer Canning, S., Lee, T. W., & Wise, J. C. (2004). Cognitive Bibliotherapy for Depression: A Meta-Analysis. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 35(3), 275–280. https://doi.org/10.1037/0735-7028.35.3.275 Cuijpers, P. (1997). Bibliotherapy in unipolar depression: a meta-analysis. Journal of behavior therapy and experimental psychiatry, 28(2), 139-147. "Literacy Statistics Metadata Information Table". UNESCO Institute for Statistics. September 2015. Archived from the original on 2 June 2017. Retrieved 19 November 2015. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/philosophy-and-therapy/202203/the-case-bibliotherapy I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

With the increasing legalisation of Marijuana across the world, it raises a lot of questions that haven’t been answered for mental health professionals and psychologists. Also given the very lax attitude in my experience of university security guards towards Marijuana, it is a very popular choice amongst young people. This only adds to the concern from psychologists and health professionals. So in this clinical psychology episode, we’re going to be investigating the pros and cons of Marijuana use. This episode has been sponsored by Abnormal Psychology: The Causes and Treatments For Depression, Anxiety and More Third Edition. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. What Are The Mental Health Pros and Cons of Marijuana Use? Also I should mention that in addition to Marijuana use being legal in Canada and other places, in the United States Marijuana use for medical reasons is legal in 36 states, and using it for recreational use is legal in 18. However, this does raise an awful amount of questions for psychologists as we all try to find our way through these rapidly changing times through research, informed opinions and policymaking. Yet despite a significant amount of recently conducted research on Marijuana use and its effects, there are still a lot of unanswered questions that we need to solve before we even begin to fully understand how to safely incorporate Marijuana use into our practices, and wider society. What Are The Benefits of Marijuana Use For Mental Health? As much as I love history, especially ancient times (I would hate to live there though), I have never paid much attention to their drug use. But other people have. Therefore, since ancient times, Marijuana has been used widely for its medical and euphoric effects. For example, Marijuana does have very strong anti-inflammatory effects that does help pain relief. In addition, Marijuana can be used to reduce nausea in cancer patients who are undergoing chemotherapy, and there is some evidence to suggest Marijuana could help those suffering from PTSD, multiple sclerosis, glaucoma, HIV/ AIDS and some forms of epilepsy. Then just to make things even more interesting, there is some very early research that was conducted by the neuroscientist Gary Wenk that suggests Marijuana could be used to help prevent memory loss in ageing by reducing inflammation in the brain. Of course, because of the research was done so long ago, it has to be redone with modern methods to test the findings. But it is still very interesting to reconsider. In terms of psychotherapy, some clients use it to treat their insomnia, depression anxiety with varying levels of success. Yet it has to be noted sometimes it completely failed and it made the condition a lot worse. Also Marijuana use in the over 60s has increased by 75% in the last three years with many of these people using Marijuana to help their chronic medical conditions and the anxiety that comes with ageing. As well as with Marijuana’s so-called ability to “expand consciousness”. This leads to smokers and users having a better appreciation for the simple pleasures of life. Like, listening to music, being out in nature and enjoying good food. Overall, in terms of benefits, I think it is very clear that there are some potential of Marijuana use for pain management and alleviating symptoms in other conditions. Yet given how there is not great certainty about it working every time and the negatives below, I’m still not convinced. What Are The Negatives of Marijuana Use For Mental Health? Moving onto the negatives, I do partly wish this would be a much shorter section than the positives. But it won’t be, because the negative effects are vast and they are even worse for adolescents and young adults (like university students). Since a recent study in New Zealand found that people who started using Marijuana in their early teens had long-term memory impairments with a lowering of IQ, poor academic and job performance as well as greater risk of depression later on in adulthood. Additionally, for people who had traumatic backgrounds and adverse childhood experiences, they had a higher risk of developing this pattern of impairments. As well as they are four to seven times more likely to become dependent on Marijuana, alcohol and other drugs. Personally, I think that’s simply tragic and I don’t want people to suffer at all with poor job and academic performance, and get an increased chance of suffering a mental health condition. Moreover, Marijuana use causes an increase in impulsiveness, paranoia, apathy, heightened anxiety and impaired driving skills. This is most probably as a result of the higher strength and potency of THC (the psychoactive component) found in today’s Marijuana compared to the 1960s. With there being a greater risk of Marijuana triggering psychosis, even in people without a genetic predisposition of schizophrenia. But what about adults? Unfortunately, it doesn’t actually get any better for adults because all the negative effects that occur in young adults and adolescents happen in adults too. Sure, there are some particularly effects that are more concerning in adolescents and young adults. For example, the brain still actively develops up until a person’s late 20s, so using Marijuana doesn’t exactly help brain health. Also since 2019, in the United States ER rooms have seen dramatic increases in adolescents coming in for problems when Marijuana was involved. No one is exactly sure why but it is thought to be a combination of the rise of vaping, the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic and the decreased perceived risk of Marijuana use. Finally, there is a good amount of evidence that smoking Marijuana has harmful effects on the lungs. Since it has caused an increase in bronchitis and other chronic lung conditions. A More Reflective Conclusion On Everything Despite the benefits and dangers of Marijuana use discussed in this post, I should note that we do know a lot about Marijuana. We know that it can be effective in treating certain conditions and we know the dosage that is best in some situations amongst other things. However, if we also know we need a lot more research to help stamp out some of the questions and flesh out what we already know. All this research will help us to understand what it is best for people, society and treatment as a whole. Nonetheless, it is a shame that as a society we are moving very quickly towards Marijuana legalisation without knowing all the facts. Also it’s shame that tons of people think Marijuana is a lot less dangerous than alcohol, other drugs and other illegal substances when there is a great amount of evidence suggesting it is just as dangerous. Overall, there is a lot more work that needs to be done, and it will be interesting to see what the future holds for Marijuana use, policymaking and psychotherapy as a whole. I really hope you enjoyed this clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Abnormal Psychology: The Causes and Treatments For Depression, Anxiety and More Third Edition. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Buy Me A Coffee Have a great day! Clinical Psychology References: Bourque J, Afzali MH, Conrod PJ. (2018). Association of Cannibis Use With Adolescent Psychotic Symptoms. JAMA Psychiatry. Wu TC, Tashkin DP, Djaheb B, et al. (1988). Pulmonary hazards of smoking marijuana as compared to tobacco. New England J Med. Boden JM, Dhakal B, Foulds JA, et al. (2019). Life-course trajectories of cannibis use: a latent class analysis of a New Zealand birth cohort. Addiction. Marijuana/National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). (2019). www.drugabuse.gov.marijuana. Cermak TL. (2020). From Bud To Brain: A Psychiatrist's View of Marijuana. Cambridge University Press. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

As current or future psychotherapists it is always important to know what definitely not to do in therapy. Since therapy is a delicate process where relatively vulnerable people share their thoughts, feelings and experience with us. Therefore, if we do present certain red flags to them then this can harm the therapy, our clients and our own repetition, this is why learning about what we shouldn’t do is important. And some of these are really, really interesting! This clinical psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Formulation In Psychotherapy. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. 5 Things Therapists Shouldn’t Do In Therapy Of course I should start off by saying that red flags are extremely rare in therapy because all therapists are professionals. As well as we learn what is and what is not good to do during training but it is sometimes good to have reminders, and it is always good to know what not to do in case you want to be a future therapist. Boundary Violations As therapists, there is a relatively not-so-fine line when it comes to boundaries. Since we do need to ask a fair about of semi-personal question about a person so we can understand them. As well as the therapeutic relationship requires us to maintain professionalism and work with the client to help them alleviate their psychological distress and improve their lives. Therefore, this is why boundaries are so important so our clients that feel vulnerable and like they’re exposing their souls know they’re in a safe place. As a result, the most obvious breach of boundaries. Like non-consensual touching is strictly forbidden and your client should basically run away from anyone who does this. To the lesser obvious breaches like asking too many questions about unrelated matters, like if your client wants to help their anxiety and you keep asking them about their sex life. Just don’t do that! And another just flat out creepy boundary violation is if the therapist asks the client where they live, and tries to run into them outside therapy. Not only is that extremely creepy, but it is just inappropriate. Overall, always stay behind the line of professionalism. Ineffective Communication As I’ve mentioned on the podcast a few times, in therapy effective communication is everything because we need to be able to communicate with our clients. Whether this is about what they’re going through, making them feel safe and comfortable or explaining a bit of psychoeducation to them. Communication is critical and bad communication can really harm therapeutic success. In addition, ineffective communication doesn’t just have to poor communication skills like struggling to talk to the client. It can be only using technical terms to explain things to the client so the client cannot understand them. Equally it can a therapist who cannot understand what the client is experiencing even after several attempts. Overall, it is critical to make sure therapists have effective communication skills so they can effectively help the client. As well as if a therapist cannot understand what the client is saying, it is of course important to talk about this problem. Yet if the client cannot get a satisfactory answer then it might be a good idea for them to get a new therapist. Specific Or False Promises: This I really doubt happens on purpose (at least I hope so) but as we know therapy is not an instant fix. As well as in clinical psychology we acknowledge that mental health difficulties are not an illness or disease, they are a part of a person and their maladaptive coping mechanisms to deal with the world. Therefore, whilst therapists will introduce themselves, what’s going to happen and the timeframe of the treatment (in addition to all the other things like explaining confidentiality) at the start of therapy. They must not make promises or guarantees. Like, in ten sessions of cognitive behavioural therapy you’ll be cured. No! Therapy just doesn’t work like that because of all the factors that affects therapeutic success. Including the client’s own capacity to change. Unfair Judgement Whilst we are all human at the end of the day, meaning we do judge other people, have our own personal opinions and like and dislike people. When it comes to our clinical psychology work, we need to leave all those things behind to some extent because a good therapist will ask follow-up questions to understand and clarify what the client is experiencing. That is far from a bad thing as it means we get to really understand what’s going on, and that means we can hopefully make more accurate assessments and interventions. However, a bad therapist will explicitly (and sometimes immediately) past judgement on a client and their decisions, or even make them feel embarrassed and ashamed. Don’t do that! Don’t get me wrong. I know there are some great clinical psychologists who listen to this podcast, and I am certain they could tell all of us some stories. And of course we are going to hear some very unfortunate stories in our careers. However, we do not make people feel worse than they already do. As I mentioned in my Clinical Psychology Reflections Volume 1 that goes completely against the clinical psychology mandate. It is our job not to pass judgement and alleviate psychological distress and improve lives. We don’t make people feel worse. And we still need to remember how much courage, bravery and balls it takes to go to therapy in the first time. Excessive Self-Disclosure This definitely has to be one of the most interesting red flags in therapy since the line is so fine between this being great and awful. Since it depends on your therapeutic orientation how much you use this tool. Due to psychoanalysis prefers not to use self-disclosure as they feel it is better to be a blank slate but other therapeutic approaches prefer self-disclosure used carefully as it can foster the connection. Helping the therapeutic alliance to strengthen and grow. Personally I agree with the latter because from psychology of relationships, we know how self-disclosure can drive liking and friendship-like behaviour. This is arguably important in therapy. Nonetheless, self-disclosure needs to used carefully because this can become a problem if it is used excessively. Resulting in the therapy becoming centred around the therapist, or the therapist saying something that makes the client feel uncomfortable. As well as I completely agree with what Elinor Greenberg, PhD said that this topic. “It should carefully be targeted for the patient’s benefit,” Conclusion: Overall, as I mentioned in the beginning of today’s episode. These red flags are extremely rare, and I’m sure the therapists listening to the podcast can confirm that, so in case we have any future therapists listening today. I want to remind you how little you need to worry about this because your training will certainly cover it. Also we’ve covered a lot of different red flags that can harm the success of the therapy and the chance of alleviating our client’s distress and improving their lives. So of course, never be constantly worried about these flags, but just have them in the back of your mind just in case. I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Formulation In Psychotherapy. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Buy Me A Coffee Have a great day! Clinical Psychology Reference: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-therapy-center/202110/8-red-flags-look-out-in-therapy I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

On the day this podcast episode goes out, there are local elections happening in the UK for local councils and other such things. As there are no local elections when I am, I really know too much about this round of elections, but I still really want to continue with our look at factors that can influence how we decide to vote. So let’s look at our final three factors. This episode has been sponsored by Social Psychology: A Guide To Social And Cultural Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Psychology of Voting: 3 Factors That Affect Our Voting Behaviour Before we dive into these 3 factors I want to mention that like always I do not use these episodes to voice my own politics. As well as I wanted to mention that the scandal section of this podcast episode does help to address a lot of political misconceptions and myths. The Weather Personally when I found out this was a factor that affected how people vote, I was a bit sceptical. Because whilst a lot of political psychology (and psychology as a lot) research is correlational so we CANNOT get cause and effect from these studies. Sometimes I feel like some of these factors are a bit… too out there which is why I’m not mentioning two of the factors that I researched. However, there’s evidence from the USA (Gomez, Hansford and Krause, 2007), Spain (Artes, 2014) and the Netherlands (Eisinga, Grotenhuis and Pelzer, 2012) that suggests the weather really can impact how we vote. For example, those same studies found that for each inch of rainfall there is on election day, the election turnout decreases by 1%. On the other hand, in sunny weather and higher temperatures this leads to election turnout to increase as well as this was found in more places but not Sweden (Persson and Ohrvall, 2014). Now this I can really understand because this is a reason why I always, always do postage voting. Because no one wants to go out when it is raining, and unless you’re a die-hard voter, where you have to vote no matter what, then rain might be the perfect excuse for you not to go out. Personally I think everyone should go and vote, but that’s just my opinion. In addition, if we apply this to real life, that is probably why the vast majority of elections are in the spring or summer because the weather is better and people are much more likely to turn up. Finally, some really interesting results or weather effects can be found in Bassi (2013) who found that when the weather is poor, people are less likely to vote for risky candidates. Therefore, as I mentioned before, yes most of this research is correlational. But it still makes for really interesting reading. Negative Campaigns and Political Adverts: With adverts of any type being a persuasion attempt, there is a lot of research in social psychology on this area. As a result, we know a lot about how to make an effective advert and definitely not what to do, but how do you create an effective political advert for people? This is even more important to consider because political campaigns spend massive amounts of money on TV advertising, and to be honest whilst most of that money is now spent on social media advertising. TV advertising still plays an important role. Since Gerber et al. (2011) found that TV advertising has a strong effect on voting preference for people, but this was short-lived. As well as adverts with moody lightning and music are most effective at engaging and persuading people. However, when it comes to negative campaigns which focuses on attacking the opposition. In theory this sounds like a great tactic because it surely it shows you’re a strong leader that is proving how weak, pathetic and terrible the opposition is. Yet this is far from how it works in reality since Carraro et al. (2010) found that when a politician makes a personal attack on political opponents they always suffer a backlash. Whilst the target of the attack was unaffected. This is only explicitly though. In reality it turns out that in the subconscious attitudes of the voters, the target of the attack did suffer because of the attack as did the attacker. So no one wins in that situation. In addition, in terms of voter turnout, thankfully adverts that support our political beliefs make us more likely to vote, and adverts that don’t support our beliefs have little effect on turn out (Matthes and Marquart, 2013). Scandals: Of course I will not get into politics here, but this is a very interesting point I think. However, scandals can have an impact on political candidates and how we decide to vote. For example, Eggers and Fisher (2011) conducted an analysis of the 2010 UK General Election found that voters decided to punish the political candidates that had been involved in scandals. But what actually makes this interesting is the size of this effect was only modest and it was a lot smaller than researchers had been expecting. To find out why this effect was unexpected, we can look to a study by Perez et al. (2012) on Spanish politics since they found that voters punished candidates exposed in corruption scandals. Yet the size of the effect was determined by the amount of media coverage those candidates got and whether charges were bought forward or not. And there is another very important factor that helps us to understand why voters’ reactions to scandals are so varied. It is because our reactions tend to be very, very partisan. Meaning we are lenient when the transgressing politician is from a party we support, and we are not lenient when it is from a party we do not support. Without going into politics too much here, this definitely can be seen with the political scandals going on at the moment. Since I’ve spoken to people on both sides of the political spectrum and this is exactly what I found. The people who supported the non-transgressing were furious about the corruption and scandal, but the other people who supported the transgressing parties didn’t care. I just found both of those reactions so interesting. What About When A Scandal Breaks? We have all heard the saying that timing is everything and that couldn’t be more true for political scandals. Since Mitchell (2013) found if a scandal breaks later in a political campaign then this can do less damage than if it was released earlier. Simply because by a late stage of an election, people have already gathered a lot of policy information (whether they realise it or not) so they can make a decision. As well as if a political scandal drags on for months and starts a drip-drip-drip effect then this can really be damaging. Sounds familiar? Does A Political Scandal Really Distract Us From The Real Issues? If you live in the UK right now (and probably anywhere else in the world), you constantly hear people saying that this scandal is distracting people from the real issues of the world. And as much as I want to comment on what is a “real issue” I won’t, but it turns out there is evidence that this is not the case. In fact according to The British Psychology Society Research Digested, national, or any type of, scandals for that matter actually improves our memory of the transgressing party’s policies. Which is consistent with an associative memory account in which the importance of the scandal boosts our memory for information related to the politician. Therefore, if you ever hear a politician or someone saying that the scandal is pointless and it focuses attention away from “real issues”. I hate (not) to say that they are almost certainly wrong. Conclusion: At the end of these two posts on voting psychology and why we vote. I really have enjoyed them because I had aims (I now realise) when it came to them. I really wanted to find out why people behave as they do when it comes to voting, and I think we can all admit some of these findings have been fascinating. Others were just whacky. Yet I also wanted to disprove some myths about politics. Since that is one of the reasons why I love forensic psychology so much, because that area of psychology has allowed me to understand what is actually going on when it comes to treatment, imprisonment and criminal behaviour instead of what the media and politicians report on (which is not always true). So I wanted to try and improve my understanding of this when it comes to politics. I really enjoy this, and I hope you did too! If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Social Psychology: A Guide To Social And Cultural Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Buy Me A Coffee Have a great day! I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal. Political Psychology References: https://digest.bps.org.uk/2015/04/14/the-psychology-of-voting-digested/ Gerber, A. S., Gimpel, J. G., Green, D. P., & Shaw, D. R. (2011). How large and long-lasting are the persuasive effects of televised campaign ads? Results from a randomized field experiment. American Political Science Review, 105(1), 135-150. Carraro, L., Gawronski, B., & Castelli, L. (2010). Losing on all fronts: The effects of negative versus positive person‐based campaigns on implicit and explicit evaluations of political candidates. British Journal of Social Psychology, 49(3), 453-470. Matthes, J., & Marquart, F. (2015). A New Look at Campaign Advertising and Political Engagement: Exploring the Effects of Opinion-Congruent and -Incongruent Political Advertisements. Communication Research, 42(1), 134–155. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650213514600 Gomez, B. T., Hansford, T. G., & Krause, G. A. (2007). The Republicans should pray for rain: Weather, turnout, and voting in US presidential elections. The Journal of Politics, 69(3), 649- 663. Artés, J. (2014). The rain in Spain: Turnout and partisan voting in Spanish elections. European Journal of Political Economy, 34, 126-141. Eisinga, R., Te Grotenhuis, M., & Pelzer, B. (2012). Weather conditions and voter turnout in Dutch national parliament elections, 1971–2010. International journal of biometeorology, 56(4), 783-786. Persson, M., Sundell, A., & Öhrvall, R. (2014). Does Election Day weather affect voter turnout? Evidence from Swedish elections. Electoral Studies, 33, 335-342. Bassi, A. (2013). Weather, mood, and voting: an experimental analysis of the effect of weather beyond turnout. Available at SSRN 2273189. Eggers, A. C., & Fisher, A. C. (2011). Electoral accountability and the UK parliamentary expenses scandal: Did voters punish corrupt MPs?. Available at SSRN 1931868. Costas-Pérez, E., Solé-Ollé, A., & Sorribas-Navarro, P. (2012). Corruption scandals, voter information, and accountability. European journal of political economy, 28(4), 469-484. Mitchell, D. G. (2014). Here today, gone tomorrow? Assessing how timing and repetition of scandal information affects candidate evaluations. Political Psychology, 35(5), 679-701.

As I write this, the UK has some upcoming local elections so I thought it would be fun to see why people vote as they do. Of course, we all tend to believe that we vote because of our sound logic. We might vote in our own or family’s self-interest, the good of the country amongst a few other so-called logical reasons. But it turns out when it comes to voting, humans are far, far from logical and that’s going to be the focus of this 2 part political psychology podcast episode. Note: whilst this is a political psychology podcast episode, besides from the information shared here. This episode will contain no references to politics, like my own preferences. This episode has been sponsored by Social Psychology: A Guide To Social And Cultural Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. The Psychology of Voting: 4 Factors Affecting How We Vote The Polling Station: I thought it would be great to start off this episode with a very strange factor that affects our voting behaviour. Well, this is strange to me because I do postal voting, I really don’t have the time to go down to a polling station. Anyway, it turns out there is a growing amount of evidence that suggests that the very places where people go to vote affects their voting. As supported by Berger, Meredith and Wheeler (2008) found when a person voted in a school, they were more likely to back a candidate that wanted to fund education. Equally, Rutchick (2010) found when a polling station was in a church then people were more likely to vote for a conservative candidate. Personally, I just think that it is amazing how these polling station locations can act as a primer for specific behaviours. That’s just clever. However, sometimes these priming effects aren’t always so predictive since Pryor, Mendez and Herrick (2014) found that even though people were voting in a church (and this was regardless of the religious symbols around them) these voters were still expressing support for same-sex marriage, regardless of the religious arguments made against it. And of course sometimes in psychology you do just get some weird results. For example, Oppenheimer and Trail (2010) found that if people were leaning to the left, because of a missing wheel on a wheelchair for example, then these people were more likely to vote and sympathise with left-wing politics, and vice-versa for people leaning to the right. I can really see about some of these results are just correlational and that’s what most of these factors are. So we cannot get causation from most of these studies. However, you have to admit they do make for really interesting reading, regardless of how weird they sound. Candidate’s Appearance For this next factor I thought we would come back down to earth for a moment, because candidate appearance is a clear factor that would impact voting behaviour. You only need to read Psychology of Relationships and Social Psychology to see the interesting and rather bizarre effects beauty can have on people. In addition, lots of people are swayed to vote based on a person’s looks. Since a 2009 study asked Swiss students to rate two unfamiliar French political candidates to see who they believed was more competent, and the results found the students found the candidate with the most real-life success as most competent. Leading the researchers to suggest that the voters in real-life had also been swayed by their good looks. Also it has been that voters are more likely to prefer male and female candidates with deeper voices (Tigue and Feiberg, 2012). As well as whilst obesity is a disadvantage for women, it can actually help male candidates get voted in (Miller and Lundgren, 2012). Finally, people who are ignorant of politics are much more swayed by a politician’s appearance compared to those who are more informed about politics. This is even more true if the politician has had plenty of TV exposure. Candidate Personality Interestingly enough personality can be a massive factor that affects how we vote, and I understand this because we want our leaders to have a “good” personality with desirable traits. Since our personality traits do affect how we behave, and it is ultimately how our politicians behave that affects our lives. Therefore, it is strange that the media and journalists often get attacked for focusing too much on a candidate’s personality and not the “big issues” of the time. Nonetheless, there is a good amount of evidence to suggest that a candidate’s perceived personality traits are relevant and do play an active role in the way we vote. For example, several studies including Vecchione, Castro and Caprara (2011) found people are more likely to vote for a candidate who has a similar personality to themselves. As well as Koppensteiner and Stephan (2014) found students are more likely to vote for candidates who are more open-minded, friendly and emotionally stable. And what I find really interesting about this particular study was the politician’s extraversion and conscientiousness traits weren’t not related to the students’ voting intentions. Meaning that all are personality traits are created not when it comes to voting. Overall, personality can definitely impact our behaviour because different topics from social psychology, like group and relationship, supports the idea that we prefer people that are similar to us. So it makes sense that this also applies to politics and our own voting behaviour. Voter Emotions As evidence from cognitive psychology shows our thinking processes are affected by our own emotions, and this most certainly applies to politics too. Since when we are happy, we tend to vote for the ruling party. In addition, Liberini, Redoano and Proto (2017), Parker and Isbell (2010) and Valentino, Hutchings, Banks and Davis (2008) showed that when people are happy people still tend to vote for the ruling party and we don’t tend to focus on the details of the candidates. But when we’re fearful, people focus more on the details of the individual candidate and scrutinise them a lot more. For example, research from Israel has showed that living in fear of rocket attacks increases support for right wing parties. But on the flip side, there’s evidence that terrorist attacks in Madrid led to an increase in the country’s left-wing opposition parties in the election that came just days late (Montalvo, 2011). Therefore, I think this is another powerful reminder that we mustn’t forget the power of our emotions to affect how we think, behave and make decisions. Since clearly making a decision on how to vote is not as singular or unitary of a decision as people believed. There are tons of factors that affect it. Conclusion As we can see from this episode, people don’t just make their political decisions based on sound logic. There are so many different factors that can make someone vote in a certain way, and even though some of this does sound… concerning at the very least. It is that potential concern that makes it so interesting to study, look at and talk about. There are three more factors that we’ll look at in the next political psychology episode, and that I am really looking forward to. And I have to admit it is really nice to actually change a bit of political discussion from what’s going on to why it’s going on in the first place. So personally I feel like this is a little bit of fresh air compared to the politics that the media reports so. Do you agree? I really hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Social Psychology: A Guide To Social And Cultural Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Buy Me A Coffee Have a great day! I truly hope that you’re enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal. Political Psychology References: Berger, J., Meredith, M., & Wheeler, S. C. (2008). Contextual priming: Where people vote affects how they vote. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(26), 8846-8849. Rutchick, A. M. (2010). Deus ex machina: The influence of polling place on voting behavior. Political Psychology, 31(2), 209-225. Pryor, B., Mendez, J. M., & Herrick, R. (2014). Let’s be fair: Do polling locations prime votes. Journal of Political Sciences & Public Affairs, 2(126), 2332-0761. Oppenheimer, D. M., & Trail, T. E. (2010). Why leaning to the left makes you lean to the left: Effect of spatial orientation on political attitudes. Social Cognition, 28(5), 651-661. Tigue, C. C., Borak, D. J., O'Connor, J. J., Schandl, C., & Feinberg, D. R. (2012). Voice pitch influences voting behavior. Evolution and Human Behavior, 33(3), 210-216. Miller, B. J., & Lundgren, J. D. (2010). An experimental study of the role of weight bias in candidate evaluation. Obesity, 18(4), 712-718. Vecchione, M., González Castro, J. L., & Caprara, G. V. (2011). Voters and leaders in the mirror of politics: Similarity in personality and voting choice in Italy and Spain. International Journal of Psychology, 46(4), 259-270. Koppensteiner, M., & Stephan, P. (2014). Voting for a personality: Do first impressions and self-evaluations affect voting decisions?. Journal of research in personality, 51, 62-68. Liberini, F., Redoano, M., & Proto, E. (2017). Happy voters. Journal of Public Economics, 146, 41-57. Parker, M. T., & Isbell, L. M. (2010). How I vote depends on how I feel: The differential impact of anger and fear on political information processing. Psychological Science, 21(4), 548-550. Valentino, N. A., Hutchings, V. L., Banks, A. J., & Davis, A. K. (2008). Is a worried citizen a good citizen? Emotions, political information seeking, and learning via the internet. Political Psychology, 29(2), 247-273. Montalvo, J. G. (2011). Voting after the bombings: A natural experiment on the effect of terrorist attacks on democratic elections. Review of Economics and Statistics, 93(4), 1146-1154.

For today I wanted to change up the podcast a little bit instead of focusing on the slightly “darker” areas of human nature and psychology. Instead I wanted to know how psychology can improve our lives with a subtle message about why learning psychology is amazing for all of us. This episode has been sponsored by Social Psychology: A Guide To Social and Cultural Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. 5 Ways Psychology Can Change Your Life Helps Us To Understand Ourselves and Others There are two major reasons why I utterly love learning about psychology, and this is one of them. Since learning about social, cognitive and all the other subfields of psychology, it helps us to understand why people behave as they do. As well as why there are persist problems in society that are caused by human behaviour. For example, because of social psychology, we can understand how groups impact our behaviour, cause us to do things we might never do alone and how groups can benefit us and our lives. Without psychology absolutely none of that would be possible to know, and even if we don’t realise it. There will or have been times in our lives when we’ve been grateful for that knowledge. Additionally, it helps us to understand ourselves and why we do what we do. I definitely think is an area we need to understand more about. Since as social psychology teaches us, our self-knowledge is basically rubbish, but there are plenty of things we can understand and learn about ourselves for the better. Understand Goal-setting and Motivation This is a lot more of a social psychology topic but I remember reading an entire lecture on the topic. Was it interesting at the time? Of course not. However, that’s probably because I’m a very goal-orientated person and if I want to do something. Then I do it. Yet learning about goal-setting and motivation behaviours are still very useful. It allows us to see how these behaviours actually work, instead some Goal-setting and motivational guru just telling people how they think it works. In exchange for money of course. So this is why I never understand people who talk psychology has no real-world uses, because even in this very simple example. A person can use psychology research to improve themselves by setting goals and increase their motivation. Becoming A Better Parent Now when someone mentioned this was a great reason for psychology, I was a bit sceptical. Mainly because developmental psychology is not my favourite area. Therefore, I really don’t try to remember too much about the field unless I have to for an exam or book. Nonetheless, I went back to my developmental psychology book and I do agree. There is plenty of tips and tricks people can find in the developmental psychology literature. As well as I must confess myself, even though I don’t look into that field too much, I still use the information from time to time. I still remember about Attachment Theory, children using adults as a secure base and when you get your own children, nephews and more. You really can start to see everything you’ve learnt come out into practice. Even now I’m really pleasantly surprised by that! Develops Critical Thinking Skills I definitely think this is such an underrated skill you develop in psychology, but this is a brilliant benefit of psychology. Since psychology is a science, and as scientists we need to critically evaluate sources, research and methodologies so the field of psychology can always be improving and moving forward. However, developing critical thinking skills is amazing for you personally. Because as I wrote in Cult Psychology, it actually protects you from being influenced by a cult. As well as being able to critically think means you can evaluate things that actively try to influence you in your everyday life. From politics to social media and friends and family. Critically thinking about things means you can actually get past all the persuasive techniques and understand what’s really going on. And this is where bias comes in. Protecting Ourselves and Overcoming Bias This is honestly THE reason why I love psychology so much, because it really can help you in everyday life. Especially with as we know as social psychology, outgroups discrimination, prejudice and in-group favouritism amongst other topics are all major problems in the world that are caused by human behaviour. Therefore, psychology allows us to become aware of these things, and sure it does not make us immune to this. But it helps us to become more likely to catch ourselves, challenge this prejudice and discrimination and it helps us to make the world a better place. In addition, my personal favourite that psychology has helped me to understand is the Media Bias. That amazing little area of forensic psychology that has helped me to understand how and why the media reports certain stories in certain ways just because it helps them to get more viewers. Of course I am not talking about fake news here. But I’m talking about the stories that the news just has to report more because they’re the most sensational stories. And thankfully by learning psychology, I have understood how to overcome that bias and not necessarily fall for that bias. Conclusion: I will always love psychology and what it can allow us to learn, understand and overcome in our world. And I really hope that you appreciate how psychology has benefited you too. In fact, I would love to know how psychology can improve your life. Please let me hear whether it’s here, in an email or on social media. I really hope you enjoyed today’s psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Social Psychology: A Guide To Social and Cultural Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Buy Me A Coffee Have a great day! Psychology Reference: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/201612/7-ways-psychology-can-change-your-life I truly hope that you’re enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

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.

Psychopaths are fascinating types of people because of their twisted, strange and terrifying nature. Therefore, when I came across this piece of research I just had to do a podcast episode on it because of how scary the implications of this are. If you’re interested in psychopaths and clinical psychology, you really are in for a treat! This episode has been sponsored by Criminal Profiling. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. How Beauty Amplifies A Psychopath’s Natural Advantage? The real selling point for me on this topic was the horrific finding that now that the psychopath Ted Bundy is dead. Lots of people have become devotees to him and lots of young women have commented on his attractiveness, looks and how much of a shame it was they couldn’t meet or date him. Personally, I was just shocked when I heard that. Because my brain doesn’t compute how people could be that interested in a psychopath who raped a corpse, strangled a young girl and removed heads. Now I did omit the age for the sake of the podcast. Because I just don’t feel comfortable saying how young she was. In addition, as we know from a previous podcast episode, psychopaths have a lot of advantages in their easy ability to charm, manipulate and deceive others without any shred of remorse for the harm they inevitably cause. As well as their awful narcissistic and grandiose core belief system driving them to seek whatever they want. However, those apparently blessed with physical attractiveness can get even further than these manipulative people normally would. And this is especially true for female psychopaths. A Case Example of Beauty and Psychopathy Furthermore, this example will support this point very strongly. Then I’ll quickly explain at the end how this really connects to beauty and hammer the point home. Since the psychopath called Sheila LaBarre and the strange thing about her case was that former FBI Profiler (yes I know I don’t support FBI profiling in the slightest) and an acting investigative consultant Mark Safarik pointed out. She sexually assaulted and tortured male victims, which is more commonly seen in male sadists than female psychopaths. Then it all started with Shelia Jennings (her name before she married) seeing a personalised ad for Wilfred LaBarre, who owned a massive estate, because he was lonely after his wife died. So Shelia saw it and saw an opportunity for her to get a lot of money. leading her to use her beauty as a former beauty contestant and poise to made it impossible for LaBarre not to invite her into his home. Then as you can imagine, she moved in, didn’t get married but still took his name. However, the interesting part is she scared him and he was unable to get rid of her. Leading the police to break up tons of domestic disputes. With the police officers having to use a two-officer response after a while because Shelia was overly flirty and sexual with them. probably making it very hard for them to do their job, see how dangerous she was and get her removed. Consequently, when Wilfred died in 2000 from a heart failure, Shelia got the estate to the utter shock from his family and they suspected she forged his signature on a fake will. Yet if we consider how great at manipulation psychopaths are I don’t think it’s unlikely he really did give her everything, after a series of manipulations. But again that’s all just theory from everyone. Now I wouldn’t blame you for just thinking it would stop there. Because surely, Shelia has everything? She has a two million dollar estate, so what else could she want? However, it turned out she wanted a lot more than just LaBarre in the first place. Since even whilst living with him she got involved with other men, who she later tormented and murdered. And in a brilliant (not!) attempt to manipulate officers even further, when she was under arrest she claimed she had killed and buried them in her garden because she was an angel on a mission to kill paedophiles. Thankfully, this manipulation outright failed due to the 12 hour long interview conducted by a forensic psychologist that proved Shelia did not believe in her lies. Since she showed other behaviour instead, like deception, lack of empathy and paranoia. Additionally, it case you doubt she was really a psychopath. Remember the amount of manipulation this all took, and according to prosecutors she also preyed on homeless men. As well as Shelia had a need to control, isolate and torment her victims. Suggesting she got great pleasure from her sadistic acts. Then she killed two of her victims. But given how there were three human toes found on her property that did not belong to the two victims, there is a very real possibility that a third victim exists. How Does Beauty Amplify A Psychopath’s Advantage? Conclusion As we can see from the example above, psychopaths are great manipulators that can achieve a lot sadly. Through their constant lies, deceptions and more. Personally I doubt a non-psychopath would make Wilfred Labarre open his doors so easily in addition to all the other male victims she found. But her beauty helped. Without her beauty adding to her already powerful advantages, I think it’s clear she might have had to work harder to get into Wilfred’s life. As well as make all those homeless men and other victims fall for her. And there is another very dangerous benefit of beauty for psychopaths. Despite all the news and other sources of information out there on how to spot and protect yourself against a psychopath. A very beautiful psychopath can make even the more vigilant person fall prey to them, because beauty really can make us think they aren’t dangerous. Something interesting to think about today! I really hope you hoped today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Criminal Profiling. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Buy Me A Coffee Have a great day! Clinical Psychology and Psychopath References: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/shadow-boxing/201907/the-striking-psychopath https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201906/why-female-psychopaths-are-different-breed I truly hope that you’re enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

With psychology being the scientific study of behaviour, it only makes sense that we want to understand people abuse each other. So in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn five reasons why people emotionally abuse others. If you’re interested in clinical psychology then this is a must read for you! This episode has been sponsored by Abnormal Psychology: The Causes and Treatments For Depression, Anxiety and More. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. What Is Emotional Abuse? I fully believe that emotional abuse and any sort of abuse, is one of those things that people talk about. But we don’t really have a firm understanding of what it actually involves, because until this episode I knew what emotional abuse was, but if you asked me to define it, I would be next to useless. (I hope I’m not the only one!) Therefore, just so everyone is on the same page, emotional abuse is when people use behaviours and words to frighten someone and/ or cause them emotional distress or pain. Leading to the victim to develop a siege mentality over time that makes it difficult for them to trust others and form close relationships. How Does Emotional Abuse Manifest Itself? In addition, there are four main ways that emotional abuse reveals it. These are: 1. Verbal Abuse- where the abuser uses words or other vocalisations to hurt you emotionally or frighten you. As well as this includes yelling, threatening, name-calling and intimidating. 2. Social Isolation- where the abuser prevents you from socialising with others and this makes you feel lonely and depressed. 3. Passive Aggression- with these types of abusers using indirect methods to communicate their negative attitudes towards you. For instance, if you were meant to be going out with a friend for dinner and you forgot, and then the friend calls you, reminds you and you rush out the door to get to the restaurant. Naturally you would apologise, but your friend might say they’re okay with it but act all quiet and grumpy for the rest of the night. 4. Gaslighting Now I have seen a lot of content and research on this area in the past few months and I think I will do some episodes on it in the future. But gaslighting just seemed like a word I was meant to know, but now we can all find out what gaslighting actually is. Gaslighting is a convert type of abuse that denies what the victim feels they know with certainty. Leading them to question their senses, sanity and judgement. For example, your partner throws away a book that they knew you were going to read and love. But then they deny they ever saw it. Hence making you question whether you’re imagining things or not. Another example is your partner cracks your phone screen when you aren’t looking and then insists they saw you drop it on the floor. Again making you question are you forgetting things or not. Personally I will definitely do episodes on this in the future because why the hell would someone do this to their partner. This is absolutely outrageous and outright evil. I’m actually speechless about this! Why Do People Emotionally Abuse Others? To answer the question above slightly, let’s look into five motives for why people want to emotionally abuse each other, and yes some of these are just shocking. An Abuser “Gets Off” On Controlling Others Or Seeing People Suffer Whilst this might not be surprising it is still “good” to have the research confirm that the feeling of in control and being powerful can give some people immense pleasure. Therefore, these people abuse others because they enjoy the feeling of controlling others and watching them suffer too. This is why according to Brogaard (2020) psychopaths, sadists and narcissists might be drawn to emotional abuse because the pleasure these types of people will take in having power over others and seeing them suffer. Revenge: As with most revenge-related behaviours, it is very interesting because it’s extremely subjected. For example, you might not believe you did anything wrong and sometimes that will be true. In these cases, it is about a person perceiving you wronged them, so they go out to get revenge. Whatever the case, if someone wants revenge against you emotional abuse can get a very attractive option because it can do a lot of damage. As well as the legal system isn’t really set up too well to handle emotional abuse (in case that’s a barrier for them). However, unlike sadists, abusers who are seeking revenge don’t necessarily take pleasure from seeing others in pain per se. Since their pleasure comes from their own retribution and the act of getting revenge itself. Abusers Stand To Gain From Incapacitating You: Now this is a really interesting motive because sometimes abusers emotionally abuse others because there are major benefits from having you incapacitated. Since frequent emotional abuse leads to an impaired ability to function and it causes mental distress. Leading people to lack the drive, energy and/ or clarity of mind to fulfil normal duties. And in some of the most extreme cases, sometimes the victim agrees with the abuser that the best place for them is a mental hospital. This is flat out horrifying. Because this motive can work so well that “evil” or “bad” people can effectively use it to get custody of children, a job promotion (or to get you fired) and get access to all your money. Wants To Rise In The Ranks: Leading on from the last point, some rather awful people use emotional abuse to rise up in the ranks of an organisation. They do this by emotionally abusing others in the workplace by bullying others. As well as this abuse can be designed in a way that tilts the balance of power in their direction between their co-workers because they’re envious of their victim’s success or they want the promotion that the victim is likely to get. Therefore, by bullying and abusing others, the abuser can gain power over the victim that makes the abuser induce fear or distress in the victim. Meaning the abuser can exploit that power to make themselves look successful whilst the victim looks like nothing more than an absolute failure. I really hope none of this ever happens to any of you! Attention and Sympathy: This is definitely a reason I never would have thought of myself because some abusers use emotional abuse to make people give them affirmation, sympathy and attention. Since this is what makes a “martyr” tick because some people decide to play a martyr to engage in self-sacrifice in order to solicit affirmation, sympathy and evoke guilt in other people. For instance, if your brother is moving into a new home with his partner and you offered to help him but he denied. Then he would do all the moving himself in an act of self-sacrifice and expect you to feel sorry for him afterwards. Yet if you don’t feel sorry, he would start to guilt-trip you (there’s the emotional abuse). Conclusion: There are plenty of other reason why people abuse others, both emotionally and physically, and it does make for interesting reading. But I think we can all agree that is it awful, unneeded and people shouldn’t do it in the slightest because of the amount of damage it can do to a person. So please my unofficial tip would be if you think you’re being emotionally abused, be aware of it and try and deal with it. Maybe cut that friend or family member out of your life, report the abuser to your boss or your boss’ boss (if your boss is the abuser) or do something else entirely. There is no place for emotional abuse in the world. I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Abnormal Psychology: The Causes and Treatments For Depression, Anxiety and More. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Buy Me A Coffee Emotional Abuse and Clinical Psychology References: Biçer, C. (2019). Fight Fire with Fire? Workplace Aggression and How to Reduce Its Negative Effects. Karamanoglu Mehmetbey University Journal of Social and Economic Research, 21(37), pp. 37-46. Brogaard, B. (2020). Hatred: Understanding Our Most Dangerous Emotion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Knapp, D. R. Fanning the Flames: Gaslighting as a Tactic of Psychological Abuse and Criminal Prosecution. 83 Alb. L. Rev. 313 (2019-2020). Leve, A. (2016). An Abbreviated Life. New York: HarperCollins. Rees, C. A. (2010). Understanding Emotional Abuse. Archives of Disease in Childhood, 95(1), http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/adc.2008.143156 I truly hope that you’re enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

In our last propaganda psychology episode, we looked at how propaganda can be used to gather support for a regime. Then we looked at the social and cognitive psychology behind that. In this episode, we need to look at how propaganda can be used to disunities and confuse the opposition to a regime or creator of propaganda. This is a great political psychology episode you don’t want to miss! This episode has been sponsored by Social Psychology: A Guide To Social and Cultural Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. How Does Propaganda Work Against The Opposition? In addition to gathering support for a regime, propaganda is very effective at incapacitating opposition, both within and outside a country. All because of a very key insight about collective action. Such as people protesting in the street against a regime and in other countries people protesting against them too. However, this all requires a critical component. This all requires successful coordination. As well as this is one of the reasons why during the Arab Spring Tunisia was the only country that become a democracy afterwards. And during the past few months (as I write this) we have all thought, asked or heard “why don’t Russians protest or revolt?” Whilst we answered these questions to some extent in the last episode, there are other reasons too. Due to the intuition seems compelling enough. If your government is doing war crimes, bombing maternity hospitals and children, then you protest and try to stop them. After all if you had thousands of people protesting, it is very hard to stop them or crackdown on them. Even though modern states try to. However, as Westerners it is very easy for us to say “why don’t they protest” because we live in liberal, free countries where even though our governments occasionally make massive mistakes. We can protest with minimal risk, but people who live under authoritarian regimes don’t have that luxury. Since if these people protest they could be arrested, beaten, tortured and probably disappear for good. Therefore, whilst massive protests can be effective, smaller protests can be extremely costly for individuals. Leading to opponents facing a coordination problem because if a person is confident that others will protest, then they believe they should protest. If they aren’t confident, then they may decide protesting is too risky. Overall, within a country, propaganda can be used to cause a coordination problem. Since if the propaganda makes people believe others aren’t protesting. Then people may decide that protesting is too risky, leading them not to protest. How Does Propaganda Work Against International Opposition? In addition, international opposition needs to coordinate too. Due to sanctions need coordination and they’re very costly to different countries. For example, in the UK, we’re already starting to fill the cost of the Russian sanctions as they’re a factor in the increased cost of living crisis according to Sky News and Government sources. And this is before we consider all the dirty Russian money in the UK and more specifically London. Also countries like Germany and Italy rely heavily on Russian gas and oil more than other countries. So many sanctions made against Russian imports would hit them harder than other countries. As a result, sanctions require a very high level of consensus to be effective either because they’re decided collectively (like at EU level) or because they need a lot of countries to participate for them to be effective. For example, if you’re going to sanction Russian Oligarchs. Then you need to make sure a number of countries sanction them so they simply can’t move their money from one western country to another. The more countries that sanction them, the less options they have to move their money around. Hence making life a lot harder for them. As well as with countries facing different costs for implementing these sanctions, they have different criteria for deciding whether to join in the enforcing or not. Therefore, because opponents of a regime need to coordinate their needs, propaganda can be used to make their coordination more difficult. With propaganda’s aim always being to confuse, divide and incapacitate all possible opponents. How Does Propaganda Cause Confusion? With propaganda creating lots of fake narratives, it can help a regime to reduce the certainty of an opposition’s public opinion within the country and others about the truth. All because it is hard to be angry and want to take action if people aren’t sure whether something is actually happening or not. Furthermore, the World War 2 war criminal, Hannah Arendt famously said that the ideal citizen of a totalitarian regime is someone for whom the barrier between truth and false no longer exists. Within a country where a regime controls public communications, this confusion works at an even more subtle level since even if you don’t believe in the propaganda. You may fear that others may believe it. Resulting in you opting not to protest because you fear not enough other people would. In the bitter end, even if large numbers of people wanted to protest against a regime, very few might choose to. All because the propaganda convinced them other people wouldn’t protest. In a way, propaganda helps to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. How Does propaganda Cause Division? Propaganda doesn’t only confuse people but it divides them. Due to whether it is a group of protesters within a country or a group of countries considering sanctions, there will always be various levels of disagreement. So the propaganda uses this to stunning effect since these opponents can be facilitated by propaganda to engage in motivated reasoning in favour of the regime. Which allows the regime to peel away subgroups from an otherwise cohesive whole. For example, if the UK, Germany or Italy believed sanctioning Russian oil and gas imports would be too costly. Then propaganda could deepen their divides and make these governments believes these sanctions would be a lot more costly than they actually would do. So they abandon plans to sanction these imports. Overall, this is why international unity is so critical. How Does propaganda Incapacitate Opposition? As I preluded to in the section above, when opposition is confused and divided, there is only one outcome. The opposition becomes incapacitated. Be it thousands of people decide not to protest within a country, or the international community decides not to sanction a regime due to the leaders and public opinion are too divided and making it too risky to move against a country. This is probably why before (and even now) the reason Russian ambassadors are appearing on all Western TV channels and even at the United Nations trying to spread their lies. All they’re trying to do is confuse the west, the public and leaders into being incapitated. Finally, this is why false-flag operations are so effective because they blame the victims of the attack as the aggressors, so the domestic and international opposition becomes confused and cannot understand what’s actually going on. Hence, they become confused and this greatly limits their ability to take a clear stance. Conclusion: Personally, I’ve really enjoyed these past two to political psychology episodes on propaganda. It’s a great topic that is so critical to understand in these troubling times. So to wrap up, it is a great shame that propaganda can be very effective at both weakening opposition by making the line between truth and lies so blurry. And gathering support for a regime because the people want to believe it. However, there is great hope because the thing that makes propaganda so effective and predictable is also what makes it fail. When people stop thinking the regime is good for them, propaganda progressively falls on deaf ears and then it stops working. And what’s currently happening in Ukraine is no exception. At some point the propaganda will fail and then what happens next will be interesting. I really hope you enjoyed today’s political psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Social Psychology: A Guide To Social and Cultural Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Buy Me A Coffee Have a great day! Political Psychology and Social Psychology Reference: Mercier, H., 2020. Not born yesterday. Princeton University Press. Epley, N. and Gilovich, T., 2016. The mechanics of motivated reasoning. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 30(3), pp.133-40. I truly hope that you’re enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.