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There are lots of benefits to friendships and being a part of social groups as I talk about in my books. But we’ve never talked about the benefits of prioritising friendships so that’s the focus of today’s great episode. Some of the results are surprising! This episode has been sponsored by Social Psychology: A Guide to Social and Cultural Psychology Third Edition. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback, large print and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. What Are The Benefits of Prioritizing Friendships? Lu Peiqi et al (2021) conducted a great study in 99 countries using 323,000 participants and as this is The Psychology World Podcast, I love global research. So when I saw this research used a lot of different countries that would allow us to imply some possible universal rules of behaviour. I was instantly interested and I knew there would definitely be a podcast episode on it. The researchers got the participants to use a number of rating scales to see how important friends were to them, how happy they were, how healthy they were and more information so the researchers would get a full picture of the participant and their social groups. At first, if you’ve ever done social psychology before then you can probably guess of a few possible advantages. But I still think some of these results are really worth thinking about. Because interestingly, the results showed that participants were rating their friends as more important tended to be healthier, more satisfied with their lives and happier. Which is very important because it shows the importance of social groups to humans and their mental health. Furthermore, the research found there were certain groups of people that were more likely to rate their friends as more important to them. These people were women, people in countries with less inequality, people with higher levels of education as well as people in countries that allowed people to enjoy life more. These are countries that don’t suppress people’s needs for gratification through very strict social norms. However, when we dig into the results even more we see there’s another layer to the data. Due to whilst it’s true people who rated their friends as more important got strong benefits from it, this correlation was stronger for some than others. This raises the question of who gets the most benefit from their friends? On the whole, people from individualistic cultures (cultures that value freedom more), older people, women and people with low levels of education tend to see more benefits from friendships than others. Overall, the study shows very convincing evidence for the importance of friendships and how they affect both mental and physical health. As well as these conclusions have been supported by a variety of other studies, as discussed in Social Psychology. Things To Bear In Mind: As much as I love this study because it’s truly massive and it has results from all over the world. That’s amazing and I would love to have the resources to do my own global research. Anyway there are some problems with the research. Mainly because it’s all correlational and the research was done by averages. So of course, there will be some men who strongly value their friends, some women won’t. There’ll be people who are extremely healthy and happy despite not having many friends. In addition, the results aren’t very strong or the correlations are rather weak despite the results being statistically significant. Meaning the benefits of ratings their friends as important were only slight. Nonetheless, I personally think whilst these were the results, there are still lots of benefits of having friends and close relationships. From your mental health to social support to keeping mental health conditions away, social groups are critical for humans. But the research was still great! I really hope you enjoyed today’s social psychology 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 Third Edition. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback, large print and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Buy Me A Coffee 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. Social Psychology Reference: Lu Peiqi, L, Jeewon, Katelin, L & William, C. (2021) Friendship Importance Around the World: Links to Cultural Factors, Health, and Well-Being, Frontiers in Psychology, 11. DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2020.570839

After receiving an email from a listener how this exact topic last year I wanted to look into this a bit more so when I found a resource, I knew I wanted to look a bit deeper. This is a great episode that is useful for us of us as it can help our own relationships and those of our clients and work friends. This sponsored has been sponsored by Psychology of Relationships: The Social Psychology of Romantic Relationships, Friendships, Prosocial Behaviour 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. Note: as always nothing on the blog or podcast is any sort of professional, official or legal advice. How To Deal With An Angry Partner? When it comes to an angry partner, there are lots of natural ways to deal with it but these tend to be extremely unhelpful. For example, when we deal with an angry person, it’s perfectly natural for us to be defensive and avoid them because they’re surely in the wrong for attacking us. Yet this natural defence mechanism isn’t helpful since it make understanding why the partner is angry impossible. This is especially important to consider because anger stems from a person’s insecurities and vulnerability in relationships. So when we all go on the defensive, we aren’t asking and hearing out our partner about why they’re feeling vulnerable. The Challenging Solution: Whilst this is extremely hard to do and we need to overcome our natural mechanisms, but we need to approach our infuriated partner with an understanding that their anger is valid. This is no different to working with an upset teenager or another client because we need to make sure their feelings feel valid. I’ve spoken about this on the podcast before. When we realise this, we’ll understand this is how they interpret your words and actions as well as how they are. Also you’ll understand how actions from their past leads to them behaving this way towards you. This can be everything about your relationship all the way back to problems from their childhood. In addition, I should also mention that in the moment it seems fair to believe their feelings are nothing more than being hot headed. But don’t try and talk them out of their feelings because this can make them feel very disrespected and disregarded. In some sense, I suppose we can link this to clinical psychology because we wouldn’t disregard a client due to what they’re feeling or experiencing. So why do this to our partner? Additionally, it’s important to note that you can’t deal with your angry partner until you’ve calmed down. This is extremely difficult especially if you’re calling you names and accusing you of doing things, but until you calm down you can’t deal with their angry. Validation Isn’t Agreeing: So how do you deal with an angry partner? Naturally people tend to argue against their partner’s viewpoint straight away and some even go al guns blazing to prove they’re right and the partner is critically wrong. This is natural and we all do it. But it isn’t helpful. Instead you might want to try to validate their viewpoints and this isn’t the same as agreeing with them. since if you validate them and understand their viewpoint, then they’ll probably start to calm down. Meaning you can begin to help them feel understood, listened to and respected. Also something I quite like about their viewpoint is after your partner understands you really care about them and love them. Then they’re extremely likely to return the favour and listen to our viewpoint that’s different to them. Of course, the key here is to make sure you don’t invalidate them and tell them they were flat out wrong. For example, that’s use a classic example and they thought you were getting too friendly with a work or university friend. Then they might tell you about the time they were cheated on before and how much that hurt as well as how insecure they are. When it’s your turn you might say you understand their concerns, explain your side of the situation and tell them at that you love them. Something along those lines perhaps. Leading us to our final section. Vulnerability Can Underline Anger I preluded this in the example above and it’s very simple because anger isn’t a primary emotion, it’s secondary. Meaning things need to come before it before people get angry. For example, someone might get angry after being embarrassed, shamed, abandoned, disregarded and so on. Therefore, when it comes to dealing with an angry partner it’s critical to unearth these hidden feelings of vulnerabilities and insecurities so healing can happen, instead of covering them up. Through a process of mutual support and healing. I have a little opinion about confrontation that’s “Through confrontation things progress” Now you only need to look at history to see this in history because without World War Two mobile phones and wireless technology wouldn’t be as developed as it is now. War World One brought planes mainstream and so on. However, in terms of relationships I like to think that people can learn and develop from fights because fights allow you to learn about things that bother people. I can remember lots of examples from my own personal life where there have been disagreements and arguments but after talking about it, we’ve grown and understand each other. Conclusion: I know this was one of my broader psychology podcast episodes but I wanted to share this with you because psychology students and professionals still have relationship problems. We aren’t immune to their effects so I wanted to share this with you in case you ever find yourself in need of a bit of guidance. Of course, it’s all non-official advice but I hope it helps. I really hope you enjoyed today’s social psychology episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Psychology of Relationships: The Social Psychology of Romantic Relationships, Friendships, Prosocial Behaviour and More Third Edition. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback, large print and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Buy Me A Coffee 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. Social Psychology References: Long, J. (2017). What is invalidation? 5 things you shouldn’t say. https://drjamielong.com/validation-5-things-not-to-say/ Seltzer, L. F. (2014, Aug 7). Can you give your spouse as much love as they don’t deserve? https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolution-the-self/201408/can-y… Seltzer, L. F. (2018, Mar 7). Feeling vulnerable: no problem—just get angry. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolution-the-self/201803/feeli… Seltzer, L. F. (2018, Sep 26). The single, most powerful way to resolve couple conflicts. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolution-the-self/201809/the-s… Simon, S. (2020, Dec 23). Validating someone’s anger may help them be more positive, study finds. https://www.verywellhealth.com/validating-anger-more-positivity-study-5… Sorensen, M. S. ( n.d.). How do you validate someone when they’re angry with you? https://michaelssorensen.com/how-do-you-validate-someone-when-theyre-an… Winch, G. (2011, Jun 18). The antidote to anger and frustration. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-squeaky-wheel/201106/the-an…

Taking a step away from mainstream clinical psychology, I still think this is a great episode for psychology students and psychology professionals because depression is a part of life. (Please remember there’s a difference between Major Depression and Depression) And this podcast episode will be great help with when you’re sad and depressed in everyday life. This episode has been sponsored by Clinical 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. 3 Tips To Help You Stop Procrastinating If You’re Depressed or Sad Switch Up Your Priorities When you’re upset or depressed, you don’t feel like doing certain tasks and you don’t always have the energy. So you need to break the cycle of procrastination and one way to do this is by switching up your priorities. For example, I remember a very distinct time after my first driving lesson after the third lockdown here in the UK and it went badly. I hadn’t driven for months upon months and… it just didn’t go well. In fact, I got so annoyed and sad about it I made myself ill. I had a terrible headache and it costed me an evening of my life. Anyway as I was coming ill and was extremely sad with myself, and I was home alone, I knew it needed to do some basic life things. Also I should take this opportunity to remind you that for depressed people even getting out of bed can seem impossible. Furthermore, I knew I was basically depressed and starting to get a headache so I made sure I did some stuff like make myself some dinner. But normally I would want to do some other things first but by making my dinner first, I managed to break the cycle of procrastination. Overall, when you’re feeling depressed and sad (Whether it’s because something happened at university or work), try to break the cycle by changing up with routine and priorities. For example, exercise before you go to work or university or vice versa if that’s part of your routine. Take Another Route To Your Goal I remember when it was towards the end of my first university term and surprise, surprise a group project was going wrong. (I really don’t like group projects) so I was so annoyed and depressed about it because I didn’t want to fail or do bad at my first major project at university. Yet I knew I had try and fix the situation but I was so depressed by it all, I couldn’t face it. Therefore, another tip is to take another route to your goal and what this means is do something else that will break the cycle of procrastination. Then by the time it’s finished you should have the energy and concentration to finish the goal you’ve been avoiding. Whilst I completely forget what I ended up doing for my first project, a few nights ago there was a health related situation (absolutely nothing serious, I promise) and it made me loose all focus and interest in writing fiction that night. So instead of entering a cycle of procrastination because I really wanted to write the story I was planning to, I switched to another task. I wrote some nonfiction instead. So whilst that’s a very specific example to me and my life, the point is whenever you feel down and enter a cycle of procrastination, you can break it by doing something else and returning to the goal later. For a university student, it might be reading a textbook chapter and returning to your essay later. For a psychology professional, you might want to check out Continued Professional Development course then return to typing up your client’s report later on. Self-Compassion A final tip is very simple, be kind to yourself. Sometimes we give ourselves so much grief for no reason or we think we need to make a decision there and then, when we don’t. For example, when I got a bit depressed about my first university project, there was no reason for me to get depressed about it. It wasn’t my fault and I was trying my best with the project. For the driving example, I hadn’t driven for months so of course I was going to be bad. Therefore, whenever you’re faced with a problem that’s getting you down, just be kind to yourself and maybe check out some self-compassion techniques to help you. Since sometimes you just need to tell yourself you aren’t in any danger so you can concentrate on other things and come back to the problem later on. I really hope you enjoyed today’s social psychology episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Clinical Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback, large print and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Buy Me A Coffee Clinical Psychology Reference: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-practice/202106/4-procrastination-tips-when-youre-feeling-down 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 15% of people over the age of 70 experiencing some form of dementia with this increasing to 35% in over 90s, we need to understand how people get dementia and others don’t. Some people over 100 years old don’t experience dementia or any sort of cognitive decline and they’re just as sharp as young people. That’s the focus of this cognitive psychology episode! This episode has been sponsored by Cognitive Psychology: A Guide To Neuroscience, Neuropsychology and Cognitive Psychology 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. How Do 100 Year Olds Keep Their Minds Sharp? After experiencing a personal loss to dementia in earlier 2021 where someone in my family passed away from dementia, I know the damaging effects it can have on a person and a family. It steals not only the person’s life and the lives of the family, especially their other half who ends up caring for them. Therefore, I do an interest in making sure I and others don’t have dementia. Especially, as I want to be writing, living and maybe podcasting until I die. And that all relies on my mind so I don’t want to lose it. Which is where this new study comes in. Beker, Ganz et al (2021) These researchers from the Netherlands wanted to examine what some 100 year olds were doing to keep their minds sharp. Therefore, they examined over 330 100 years olds who their carers confirmed were mentally sharp. Following this the participants went under extensive testing that tested a lot of different cognitive abilities. For example, verbal, reasoning, processing speed, attention and much more. Afterwards the researchers collected the participant’s health, sight, hearing and more physical data points. Then they followed the participants until they died or were no longer able to participant in the study. The results showed some amazing results because none of the participants experienced any major loss in their cognitive abilities. Except from some slight losses in the short term memory but everything else was intact. What’s even more interesting is after they died 44 participants had autopsies and they measured the typical signs of Alzheimer’s. For example, the amount of plaques in their brains. The results showed despite their being signs of Alzheimer’s in their brains, none of the participants showed any signs or symptoms of Alzheimer’s in their behaviour or cognition. The same goes for people with increased risk of developing the condition due to genetic factors. Cognitive Psychology Conclusions and Real World Implications Whilst the researchers weren’t able to draw any firm conclusions from the study, there were a number of tips they could draw out that contributed to these people’s “cognitive resilience” that allowed them to resist the effects of the condition. The first factor was most of them required a high level of education with most of them going to university and getting a degree, over half of these people lived independently. So I think this just goes to show the importance of learning throughout life and enjoy learning. You’re probably getting a lot of benefits from reading books, listening to this podcast, watch documentaries and so on. Another factor was most of the participants had good vision and hearing abilities. Which is important because when people lose these abilities then they lose social connections and by extension they cannot process as much information. (Because it’s not there) Leading to cognitive decline. Finally, the participants were physically fit with over 75% of the participants being able to walk independently at the beginning of the study. Overall, whilst there are no firm conclusions that are 100% going to work were found during the study. These amazing 100 year olds were able to help us find possible leads for future research and possible ideas about how to make sure we don’t suffer cognitive decline in old age. Personally, I’m going to keep exercising and learning throughout my life to increase the chances of me being okay in later life. I really hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Cognitive Psychology: A Guide To Neuroscience, Neuropsychology and Cognitive Psychology 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! 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. Cognitive Psychology Reference: Beker N, Ganz A, Hulsman M, et al. Association of Cognitive Function Trajectories in Centenarians With Postmortem Neuropathology, Physical Health, and Other Risk Factors for Cognitive Decline. JAMA Netw Open. 2021;4(1):e2031654. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.31654

Within clinical psychology, the topic of effective therapy is difficult to answer because what’s effective for one person, might not be effective for another. Therefore, whilst this topic touches on topics like Formulation, it turns out there are globally agreed markers for whether or not a course of psychotherapy has been effective or not. That’s today’s clinical psychology focus. This episode has been sponsored by Clinical 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. 4 Factors of Effective Therapy According to a new study (links in the reference section), there are four factors or pillars that are globally recognised as what makes for effective therapy. Personally, think this is extremely useful considering how difficult therapy can be to judged because as I mentioned earlier, a particular psychotherapy might work for one person, but not another. Or it could work well in one area for one person and terribly for another person. Therefore, the entire point of today’s podcast episode is to increase all of our awareness about what makes “good” therapy so we can potentially use this in the future. Self-Knowledge There are lots of examples in psychotherapy of giving our client an increase of self-knowledge. For example, getting them to understand their behaviour is maladaptive, getting them to realise their behaviour might need to change as well as getting them to realise some of the damaging relationships they have in their life. As a result, self-knowledge is about getting our clients to understand themselves better and have a clear view of themselves and their life. As well as they’re aware of different perspectives and feelings and they understand their own emotions. That last thing is critical in therapy because the maladaptive behaviour of “lashing out” tends to be a maladaptive response to a situation and/or emotion they don’t know how to handle. Overall, self-knowledge and expanding a client’s accurate self-awareness as well as self-acceptance is a great sign of effective therapy. Self-Acceptance: If you’re done or read Social Psychology, then you know that the self is made up of different components and selves. Which can sometimes lead to decreases in mental health if people don’t accept certain parts of them, or it can lead to a vicious cycle. Such as if we take depression, when a person gets depression then the depression could arguably be a part of the self. Then if a person doesn’t accept the depression as part of the self and they believe they’re messed up and they’re diseased. This leads to them not accepting themselves and this can lead to further decreases in mental health because they feel guilty about being messed up. Of course they aren’t but that’s why self-acceptance is so important. Another example is if the client is gay or a part of the LGBT+ community and they live in a conservative or non-accepting family. Then they might not be able to accept themselves and you don’t need to do too much internet reading to discovering the horrific mental health side effects this can have. Overall, when therapy has been effective, our client’s ability to accept all of themselves increase. Consideration Of Others The description in the study is technical so I’m going to make it more understandable. Therefore, consideration of others involves our client’s feelings of empathy and their ability to understand and consider others. In terms of their viewpoints, perspectives and feelings, of course the client doesn’t have to agree with them so it’s important for them to show mutual respect to others. Some people may be more familiar with this as “Intersubjectivity”, where people do this together and make room for each other with mutual respect and understanding. Relationship Quality: This is probably the easiest mark of effective therapy because this is clearly seen in most therapies. For example, systemic therapy is based on improving relationships in the family system. Therefore, effective therapy can be seen as an improvement in our client’s relationships and they can get greater satisfaction within them. This links to other topics because without consideration of others and empathy this can’t happen amongst others. Conclusion: Whilst every therapy should ideally be individualised for each client (Formulation in Psychotherapy), I hope these 4 factors can help you judge if a particular therapy was successful so you can learn from experience and help more people in the future. 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 Clinical Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback, large print and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Buy Me A Coffee Clinical Psychology Reference: Chui, H., Chong, E. S. K., Atzil-Slonim, D., Sahin, Z., Solomonov, N., Minges, M. V., Kuprian, N., & Barber, J. P. (2020). Beyond symptom reduction: Development and validation of the Complementary Measure of Psychotherapy Outcome (COMPO). Journal of Counseling Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000536 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.

Personality psychology is quickly become one of my favourite areas of psychology because it’s amazing. I cannot recommend this amazing area of psychology enough! So in today’s episode we’re going to be learning what is personality psychology? Enjoy! This psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Personality Psychology and Individual Differences. 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. Extract From The Book: Introduction To Personality Whenever people think about personality, they always tend to think they have a particular type of personality. For example, they have a hard working personality or a creative personality. This thinking is right and wrong but mostly wrong. Since we don’t have a particular type of personality as we’re a combination of different personality traits. We’ll return to the above thinking later on but people differ in their ways of thinking, behaving and feeling and their culturally different too. For example, you and me, we would have different opinions and beliefs around certain topics. Definitions of Personality: Since personality is such an abstract concept, defining personality is very complex and difficult. But we’ll try it anyway. One rather contemporary definition is from Ashton (2013, p 27) who defined personality as the following: “A set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that refer to differences among individuals in a typical tendency to behave, think, or feel in some conceptually related ways, across a variety of relevant situations, and across some fairly long period of time.” This idea I quite like because it explains personality in an easy-to-understand way, and it refers to personality as the individual differences. In turn, this makes personality a lot easier to understand. Although, a definition of what personality is, is only meaningful to the extent that it gives us, directly or indirectly, a comparison with other people. Since this is what modern personality research looks at. How does person A’s and person B’s personalities cause them to be so different? And this in itself can make personality rather difficult to study and define because the psychological features that differentiate people from one another aren’t always visible when you look at them. However, people do have a predisposition to show their behaviours, thoughts, feelings and these all refer to all the different aspects of a person. You could regard these different aspects of a person as personality traits. In addition, in some conceptual way, these aspects are related across a wide range of situations and over a fairly long period of time. Like, we’ll see in the chapter later on stability of personality over time. Nonetheless, all this talk of aspects, individual differences and definitions, does raise a lot of questions. For example, Personality raises a lot of questions like, what are the major personality factors? What’s the role of Individual factors in personality? What are the real-world consequences of these differences? What determines personality? And all of these questions, we will look at by the end of the book. What Does Personality Psychology Look At? Interestingly enough, personality psychology doesn’t only look at personality traits. That is a large part of what personality psychology does, but it isn’t everything. Due to this area of psychology looks at people’s styles of thinking, feeling and behaving as well. With the overall aim of personality psychology being to understand how and why people differ as well as how to predict similarities and differences between people in different settings. Using personality psychology, you can investigate a lot of things. For instance, you can do what’s called ideographic research. This is where you research one person in extreme detail. You typically use this research type when you want to study someone’s very unique personality characteristics. Another approach to research you could do is the nomothetic approach. This is the more typical type of research where you study large groups to find individual differences amongst other variables. On the whole, all personality psychology research is largely correlational with a few exceptions since you can only say there is a relationship between personality trait A and behaviour B. As well as you can’t get personality from one situation, so you need to test many different situations. I really hope you enjoyed today’s personality psychology episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Personality Psychology and Individual Differences. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback, large print and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Buy Me A Coffee Personality Psychology Reference: Whiteley, C. (2021) Personality Psychology and Individual Differences, CGD Publishing 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.

Emotion is an amazing topic within cognitive psychology, how does our emotion affect our mental processes? That’s the topic of today’s great episode, if you love cognitive psychology you don’t want to miss it! This episode has been sponsored by Cognitive Psychology: A Guide To Neuroscience, Neuropsychology and Cognitive Psychology 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. Extract From Cognitive Psychology Third Edition By Connor Whiteley. Emotion and Cognition In the last chapter, we looked at what causes emotion and we really focused on that area but now, I want to talk about the relationship between emotion and cognition. Since these do go hand in hand because you've read Abnormal Psychology then you'll see that in depression our cognitive influences our emotions and vice versa. Therefore, let's recap from definitions because our cognition are mental processes. Like, our memory, attention, perception and language. Whereas our emotions are less easy to define as we saw in the last chapter, and these are different from the affective processes that are the feeling of the emotions. In addition, we all know the feelings of emotions but what are they again? To summarise the James-Lange theory proposed emotions are people's interpretations of physiological states like arousal, but some people thought emotions were related to our motivations, which in itself is related to rewards and punishment. Meaning these signals from a situation or stimuli have a negative or positive value to organisms, who should avoid or approach. The last two theories about emotions are from Lazarus who prosed emotions are the results of our conscious or unconscious evaluation of events. Also, Darwin and Ekman believed different emotions are basic evolutionary ‘modules’ for different types of adaptive behaviour. Additionally, to build upon the last chapter in terms of what comes first emotion or cognition, there are brain structures that are linked to emotion and these brain areas tend to be subcortical, automatic and they're consistent with Darwin's idea of emotions have evolutionarily “primitive” functions. This is different to our cognitive functions because these are often linked to cortical regions of the brain. However, the problem is for discrete categories of emotion is that several emotions have no strong association with unique brain regions whereas other emotions have a set of brain regions that are consistently activated at the same time these emotions are. (Lindquist et al., 2012). Dimensions of Emotion As a result of this problem other cognitive psychologists are focusing on how emotions can occur along a continuum (Feldmann Barrett & Russell, 1998) and our emotional reactions can be characterized by two different factors. The first factor is valence, which refers to how negative and unpleasant or how pleasant and positive the emotion is. Then the second factor is arousal and this is the intensity of the emotional response. To test this we can use the Internal Affective Picture System which is a test where you basically show participants a series of pictures and you measure their behavioural responses. By using a 9-point scale to measure valence and you measure arousal to get a more detailed assessment. On the whole, this allows us to test how behaviour and a person's brain activity correlate with affect and emotional arousal. Interestingly, results from this test show the older adults tend to have less negative affective experiences than younger adults. As well as Mather et al. (2004) showed participants negative, positive and neutral pictures from the test. Their results show for young adults, their Amygdala activity was enhanced by arousing negative images, but this relationship didn't happen for 'old' adults. Showing how a sensitive measure of arousal and affect can reveal the biological mechanisms underpinning emotional differences in ageing. But the results also shown overlapping neural networks that perform different functions for adaptive behaviours. Emotion and The Constructive, Predictive Brain On a small side note, Lisa Feldman-Barrett in a 2018 TED Talk made some very interesting points about emotions because she talked about emotions are not categorical, but we perceive them as categories because the brain extracts a range of similarities from them because of our learned experiences. And she linked this to the “predictive brain framework” which is considered a paradigm shift in psychology (Hutchinson & Barrett, 2019) where our conscious experiences, like our cognition, perception and emotions, reflect our brain's constructed predictions that are confirmed or corrected by sensory evidence. In other words, our brain takes in our learnt experiences and it makes predictions about situations and other experiences. Leading the brain to create our conscious experiences that we use daily. Like our emotional reactions are based on our past experiences with a particular situation or stimuli. Quick Summary To summarise all this information quickly, there are a lot of different theories on how cognition and emotion relate to one another and the nature of our emotions. And this debate will continue on for a long time. Also, findings about emotions and cognition effects from cognitive psychology can still be useful despite some unclear conceptual issues. As well as people tend to focus on the functional roles of our emotional states rather than the “feelings” (Adolphs & Andler, 2018) Overall, I really hope you enjoyed today’s psychology episode and if you want to know more about cognitive psychology then I cannot recommend my new book enough. It goes into so much easy to understand depth about a wide range of cognitive psychology topics. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Cognitive Psychology: A Guide To Neuroscience, Neuropsychology and Cognitive Psychology Third Edition. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback, large print and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Buy Me A Coffee Cognitive Psychology References: Whiteley, C. (2021) Cognitive Psychology: A Guide To Neuroscience, Neuropsychology and Cognitive Psychology Third Edition, CGD Publishing. 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.

I know don’t need to tell psychology students and psychology professionals about the difference because we sort of just know them. However, if you work in clinical psychology or mental health then there may be times when 1) people challenge your work because they see therapy as pointless and people only need to talk to their friends and parents. 2) you might get a client that needs this to be explained to them. So this episode should be useful to you regardless. 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. How Is Therapy Different From Talking With Parents and Friends? Most of the time when we experience a difficulty, talking to our parents and friends is all we need because they know us, they know how we think and they know our friendship groups so they are bound to know us very well. Because of this, parents and friends are likely to do some helpful things: · Take sides · Add their opinions · Comfort us · Say comforting things to us. Like, everything will be okay and there are plenty more fish in the sea. · Change the conversation to take our minds off our “troubles” · Compare our story to others. Such as if you’re telling them about a break up, they might recall someone else telling them about theirs and compare the two. Overall, this can be great for our mental health because sometimes all we need is to talk to someone and vent. Then the other person may just tell us their opinions, offer some lay advice and comfort us. I think we can all think of various times when this is all we’ve needed. For me, this has been after traumatic events (but I would still unofficially recommend therapy for really traumatic events) as well as after bad results at universities. However, this is all well and good but this isn’t enough sometimes and sometimes we need the extremely skilled touch of a therapist to help us. Why Is Talking To A Therapist Different Than Parents and Friends? Furthermore, if we build upon the last section, a therapist is very different than talking to parents and friends because they have different priorities and they have training your parents and friends don’t. Granted as this podcast is mainly aimed at psychology people, our friends are likely to have trained. Ha! Anyway, when a client talks to a therapist, a therapist can help the client to learn more about themselves, their difficulties and how to improve and they can provide more in-depth support than a friend or family member couldn’t. Then depending on the therapeutic model the therapist uses, a number of things could happen afterwards. For example, if you have a Cognitive Therapist then they can help the client to change their faulty thinking patterns and improve their lives and mental health that way. Whereas a systemic therapist would focus on the family system. Conclusion: Overall, the difference lies in parents and family members are mainly for comforting and tell you everything will be okay. Whereas therapists have two “simple” jobs, they’re there to alleviate psychological distress and improve lives. With therapists mainly doing by the therapeutic alliance and using their psychological expertise in conjunction with the client. Of course depending on the model in question. I love this area of clinical psychology and that’s why I cannot recommend Formulation in Psychotherapy enough. I want to finish this episode by saying that both friends and family and the therapists are needed by our clients. Since they need us (the psychology professionals) to apply our psychological expertise to their difficulties and themselves. Yet they still need the social support of their family and friends so what we do has long term benefits. 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 Formulation In Psychotherapy. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback, large print and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Buy Me A Coffee Clinical Psychology Reference: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/demystifying-therapy/202103/how-is-therapy-different-talking-mom-or-dad 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.

So the reason why I wanted to do today's episode was because I read this great article in the "Psychologist Magazine" by the British Psychological Society. And it was this wonderful clinical psychologist talking about how psychology was still not classed as a facilitating subject. And I really wanted to build on this because the entire point of the article was to sort of say, wait, wake up, everyone, psychology is a great topic and it isn't this fake made-up pseudoscience everyone thinks it is. Psychology is a science. And now, I want to do my sort of own take on it, but I wanna recap on the article first. So, in this article she was saying that even Oxford University does not classify psychology as a facilitation subject. And I think she's all like I forget that not everyone would know what I mean, but what it basically means is that it's a sort of critical thinking subject that's really good. And basically, psychology is not on par with biology, chemistry, and physics, which people always think are the proper sciences. And that makes me so annoyed because psychology, we studied the scientific method, we have very, very strong ethical guidelines. And to be honest, we have probably some of the most stringent methodologies, or some of the most stringent procedures in place, simply because we know every single bit of research has to be good because psychology is so criticized, and so disliked in the wider section, especially, when it comes to academia. Because if you walk into a room and say you are a psychology student, people will very much not understand what you're talking about, and they will sort of go, "Oh, psychology. Oh, so you're not really a proper scientist, you don't actually do science, do you? You just make up stuff. You just do predictions." And this is something else that I hate about profiling. Because people... and because of the media, books, and TV programs people think that profiling is what psychology does. And as I talk about it in my Criminal Profiling Book, because of what FBI profiling is not scientific in the slightest, and it's actually, absolute rubbish, people think that psychology is also rubbish. And they have no idea that we apply the scientific method to everything. Like we have our methods, we have our scientific methods. We know how to write up a report, we know how to manipulate their reports, we know how to do all of this scientific stuff, and we do it, we do it well. Psychology would not have lasted 100 years. To be honest, as I mentioned in my Biological Psychology book, psychology has been about in one or two carnations since 500 BC with Aristotle. So, psychology would not have lasted this long if there was not at least some interest in it, and some science. And something else I talk about in my Biological Psychology book, because I go into the history of psychology is that there were a few different incarnations of different aspects of psychology. For example, phrenology, I probably butcher the pronunciation, which was the so-called scientific study of different shapes of the brain, and different lumps and bumps of the skull pertained to different abilities that people had. That did not last long because it was not scientific, but psychology is. And that is why psychology has lasted long. So, that's what I sort of think about that aspect. But another aspect is that, so, you've got biology, you've got the proper sciences, which are so amazing and so wonderful. Some biologists, they find out that smoking causes cancer. That is perfectly fine, it's very true, okay. What do you do? What do you do to stop people smoking? You can't use biology unless you can invent some sort of hormone or some sort of drug that affects a person on a biological level to stop smoking, okay. So what do you do? You use psychology. You use what we know about human behavior because that is what psychology is. Psychology is the study of human behavior, and we are experts on it. We know what affects behavior, we know how to get people to behave in certain ways to some extent. So, you get psychologists to come up with a way to help people stop smoking. And they we draw on different areas, we draw on the social aspects, we draw on cognition, we draw on how people think about, and how to make people stop. Without psychology, you cannot do any of this public health stuff. And speaking of public health, one of the biggest things that has annoyed me during the pandemic is the way how you stop a virus is you modify people's behavior. Of course, like in addition to the biological aspects, like the vaccines and everything. So, you get people to socially distance, you get people to wear masks, you get people to wash their hands and do other behaviors that protects themselves and others. So, logic would dictate that you get psychologists to help. And yes, I know of at least one psychologist that is in SAGE, which is the advisory group to the government when it comes to emergencies. But when it comes to the news, and when you are like trying to explain stuff to normal people, who don't go to university and don't study psychology. Why, why do you get medical doctors talking about human behavior? I don't understand that. I if I become a doctor, I would not talk about medical problems, I would not talk about cancer because that is not what I know. So, why are these medical doctors, who are amazing experts on cancer, the cold, diseases, viruses talking about human behavior? I don't understand it. And the only answer I have is that psychology is seen as fake, and people don't wanna hear what psychologists have to say on the subject. And that just breaks my heart because I know psychology is amazing. I know psychology can help so many amazing people improve their lives. And I just, oh, I don't know how to put what I'm feeling into words. I love psychology. I know how great it is. I know how well it can help people. If I did not know that psychology was this great, I would not be doing this podcast for as long as I have. I would not be writing as many books as I have on psychology, but I want to share this with people. I want people to know that psychology is fun, amazing, really interesting. And people can learn so much. But again, because of how the media spins it, and how the older people, and the older doctors, the people in charge, the people who make decisions, they don't believe in psychology, so others don't. Psychology does not get the trust and favor that it deserves. For example, if you look at governments, if you look at the people in charge of hospitals, and who make decisions about mental health care in mental health departments, most of them are old white middle-class men who, I'm very sad to say, don't believe in mental health. Some of them do. Tons of people are amazing, but lots of people, not just men, not just white middle-class people, tons of people don't believe in mental health. And this just is so terrible because then the money is not put where it's needed, and the services aren't changed and reorganized in a way that makes mental health a lot easier. Because mental health works with physical health. I've spoken about this in my Health Psychology book, and in my Formulation In Psychotherapy book. There are tons of chapters on it. I've quoted research, I've quoted places that actually, are doing it. And how much better the patients feel, and how much better mental health is actually getting treated there. But again, unless people care about mental health and until they trust in psychology, this is never gonna happen, and people are never gonna get the help they need. So, yes, I just think this is such a shame. And what I'm trying to say is that if you feel like this, if you feel like people are disrespecting you when it comes to psychology, you aren't alone. There are so many people who are facing the exact same challenge as you. And I've also said on the podcast before that because I do psychology, because I love mental health and I believe in it, and I want to help people, I have been judged so harshly, sometimes by certain members of my own family. Because they think I'm wasting my time. I'm doing this weird little fantasy degree that isn't gonna help people, that I'm not gonna get paid in, that I'm not going to do anything with my life in. And that has sort of been like, what? And it's just like, "Why would you say that? You don't know what you're talking about." Psychology is not profiling: And I can make a difference. People in psychology can make a difference whether it's clinical psychology, cognitive psychology, business psychology. Psychology can be applied to every single little aspect of life because it's human behavior, and everything comes down to behavior. So, to be honest, psychology should be on par with biological, physics, and chemistry because it's so important, it touches everything. Physics might cover everything in the universe, biology might cover everything to do with living things, and chemistry might do everything chemical-related. I think I've just covered them really broadly but anyway, though. But psychology covers everything to do with our behavior. Whenever humans do something, that is down to us. The realm of psychology, I absolutely love because it allows us to cover everything. Anything that is even remotely related to human behavior, we can research, we can do something about other social sciences can't necessarily do it. And that is what I love about psychology. Not only can it help so many amazing people improve their lives, but we can explore anything we want because psychology is so broad. Is it a challenge? Yes. Is it this silly little thing that, you know, that is only a fantasy? No. Psychology is not a fantasy. Psychology is not made up. Psychology is not fake. It's not this little pseudoscience, profiling is. And yes, psychology has had a checkered past because of like ethical procedures, the Milgram study, and everything that is so hyped up by the media and other people. Is that what psychology really is? How caring psychology is? How much psychologists love people and want to help them? That is what gets over missed. So, what I want to leave you for today's episode is just that you are not alone. Just because you do psychology, does not make you this weird little person, who is just trying to live out their little fantasy, and do this little made-up degree, and do nothing with your life, you aren't that. You are an amazing person who wants to help people, who wants to learn. And that I want to say, well done. You are amazing, I cannot stress that enough. So, to be honest, download this, save this for whenever you experience these hard times because I feel like you're gonna need it, I am. And I feel so much better for doing this episode. So, thank you for listening. You are amazing. And have a great day. And I'll see you next time. I really hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If you want to support the podcast, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET My Books. Available at 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 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.

As university psychology students and psychology professionals, we know there are a lot of myths about depression and mental health conditions. All of these myths and misconceptions are extremely damaging and awful towards our clients. So in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’re going to learn about some of these myths and what the truth is. Because it’s only when we become aware of these myths can be deal with them. This psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Abnormal Psychology: The Causes and Treatments of Depression, Anxiety and More Third Edition. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can buy the paperback, large and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore or local library, if you request it. 3 Myths About Depression Depression Is Something You Can Pull Yourself Out Of To anyone who has read my book or done clinical psychology, this myth has probably shocked you and applause you. Because we know depression is not a choice and no one would want to choose to have the symptoms associated with depression. Since depression takes away a meaningful life and it has a lot of negative effects on the person, friends and family too. So it isn’t a choice. Therefore, the idea of depression is something so easy and simple a person can simply pull themselves out of it is silly. It’s also extremely dangerous because it underestimates and undervalues what the person with depression is experiencing. Possibly resulting in them not seeking the professional help they need as well as this can be a massive barrier to therapeutic success. Due to the client could constantly be blaming themselves for not being able to pull themselves out of it. Thus, as psychology professions we need to be aware of this myth and be prepared to tackle it in psychotherapy if needed. You Must Have A Reason For Your Depression This is something I’ve spoken about on the podcast before but lots of people seem to think depressed people have a reason to be depressed and something is wrong with them. Then they (mostly well-intentioned) that the client shouldn’t be depressed because there is nothing to be depressed about, they have everything. Now, this is a problematic myth for two reasons. The first reason is because depressed people feel guilty about being depressed and having something “wrong” with them. So by saying silly things like this people are only making the mental health condition worse. Secondly, this links back to the first myth because it undervalues what the depressed person is experiencing. So what if they have everything, happiness isn’t actually measured in things and the things that truly make people happy aren’t tangible or asset based most of the time. I’ll talk more about this in a future podcast episode. Overall, when it comes to this myth, we need to make the client and those around them aware that depression doesn’t need a reason to exist. It’s just something that happens but it can be supported and the impact lessened. Saying that whilst depression doesn’t need a reason to occur, sometimes there’s a reason why the depression manifests itself at a given time. For example in the Diathesis Stress Model, it is the stress of an event that activates the genetic factors of a condition that causes the mental health condition to manifest. As well as in Formulation in Psychotherapy, I talk about what’s known as a CBT Formulation where you talk about precipitating factors. These are factors that caused the maladaptive behaviours. But still depression itself does NOT need a reason to occur within a person, it is the combination of genetic and environmental factors that cause depression. And that isn’t a reason for it. Only The Weak Get Depression If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while then you might have laughed a little because you know I HATE these sort of silly societal myths. These are so outdated and old fashioned that I really don’t have any time for people who believe in those myths. Anyway. So some people believe that mental health and mental health conditions are made up and only weak, pathetic people get them. This is absolutely rubbish because depression and other conditions are nothing to do with weakness or how strong you are. It is all to do with a set of genetic and environmental factors that interact with each other. There is nothing to do with weakness or the type of person you are. And it should never, ever be used as a justification for discrimination. For example, women get depressed so it shows how weak they are. This is outrageous. And I could go into the reasons why governments will never take mental health as seriously as they need to because of this single myth and misconception. But I won’t. Overall, as psychology students and professionals, we need to be aware that this is a massive and very common myth in society. We will face it too, lots of people think psychologists are fakes. Making up problems where they aren’t any. But we will continue to fight these myths and continue to provide the best care we can for our clients. It’s our job to help alleviate psychological distress and improve lives. I really hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode and I hope you've learnt something. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Abnormal Psychology: The Causes and Treatments of Depression, Anxiety and More Third Edition. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can buy the paperback, large and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore or 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. Clinical Psychology Reference: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/nurturing-self-compassion/201802/5-depression-myths-people-need-stop-believing

When you consider all the millions of pieces of information your brain gets each second from the nervous system, our sensory organs and all the millions upon millions of rays of light that enter our eyes. All these pieces of information are combined into our perception of the world around us. But how does our brain do this? And what stops it from being overloaded? That’s the focus of this biological psychology podcast episode. This episode has been sponsored by Biological Psychology Third Edition. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback, hardback and large prints copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. 3 Ways Your Brain Perceives The World: When we consider how much information our brains have to deal with, it’s understandably that our brain faces certain problems in our perception and this affects how we experience the world. To solve these problems our brain uses 3 great solutions to overcome this. Your Brain Misses a Lot: This is actually one of the best solutions for our brains because we only perceive a tiny amount of the energy and information around us. For example, even as I write this I know there’s a poster behind my laptop and there’s a cup of mint tea next to me. But can I see it? Sort of. I can make out the white shape of the mug but I can’t tell you the colour of the drink even though the mug is clearly within my visual field. As for the poster, I can only see green swirls of the Aurora Borealis. Taking another step back, humans are terrible for receiving different types of information because unlike other animals. Humans can’t perceive infrared light, ultraviolet light, ultrasonic frequencies. Our brain misses a lot of information to help us. However, this is only a partial solution because as I talk about in Biological Psychology, information travels to our brain through our neurons and some brains have more of these interconnected cells that allow them to process more information. The downside is this increase in neurons and processing larger amounts is these brains are larger, heavier and they require more energy. Resulting in these people having larger appetites Although, I must add I think it’s in my Personality Psychology and Individual Differences book because I discuss intelligence in there. I don’t think there’s a strong correlation between brain size and intelligence. Then again, we’re talking about processing larger amounts of information here and not intelligence. Your Brain has Maps: Another rather interesting way our brain helps us is by compacting information about the world around us into layers upon layers of maps. With our costly neuron connections being made as short as possible. Due to each feature of the world is divided up into its own map and this allows our brains to have five senses instead of two. For example, the light coming into our eyes, the smell of the air, the temperature, the taste of food and so on all have their own maps. Nonetheless, because these maps still provide the brain with too much information, our maps cannot reliably nor perfectly represent the world to us. Your Perceptions and Maps Are Changed For the final grand solution, our brain changes our perceptions and maps for us. By saving and protecting our details but not seeing others. The ins and outs of this I talk about a lot more in Biological Psychology and Cognitive Psychology. The reason for this is very simple, it’s because the space in our brain is too precious and finite to waste on unnecessary information and neurons. The easiest way to think about this is your sight. Our sight has a focus point on the middle of our visual field and the corner of our sight is blurry. Ideally all of our vision would be perfectly clear but that would require a LOT more neurons so much so that our visual processing would take up all of our brains. It just won’t work. Making our brain need to change our maps and perceptions to make the limited room inside our heads as effective as possible. Resulting in the brain developing sweet spots or focal points. Like the fingertips for touch and the centre of our vision for sight. Conclusion: Overall, our brains are amazing organs that have developed and changed so much to try and help us survive and become the best we possibly can. I think these three solutions are quite amazing and interesting considering our brain operates on its own in a way. I really hope you enjoyed this biological psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Biological Psychology Third Edition. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback, hardback and large prints copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Cognitive Psychology Buy Me A Coffee Have a great day! Biological Psychology Reference Schwarzlose, R (2021). Brainscapes: The Warped, Wondrous Maps Written In Your Brain--and How They Guide You. Boston, MA: Mariner Books. 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.

Rumination is when the exact same thought keeps going around and around in your mind. In clinical psychology, this can be negative because it can affect people’s mental health and as a psychology profession can be helpful to give our clients tips about how to stop ruminating when it happens. That’s the aim of today’s episode, and even if you’re not a clinical psychologist you should still learn something! This psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Cognitive Psychology: A Guide to Neuroscience, Neuropsychology and Cognition Third Edition. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore or local library if you request it. Why is Ruminating Negative? Before we dive into how to stop rumination, I want to mention that the reason why rumination and keep thinking about a negative event is bad for you, is because the rumination will get you down and it will interfere with your problem-solving abilities. This is negative because in psychotherapy we need our clients to have their problem-solving abilities. So they can work with us on improving their lives and alleviate their psychological distress. As always, clinical psychology and psychotherapy is about a working relationship between the therapist and the client. How To Stop Rumination? With the entire point of this psychology podcast episode being to give clinical psychologists tips for what to suggest to their clients to stop them ruminating. Here’s a very interesting idea. Therefore, rumination is a cycle where the client has a thought (be it a memory of an angry conversation or a negative event or something else entirely) and the thought doesn’t stop. Meaning it goes round and round and round in their mind without it ever stopping. Leading to extended rumination which harms their mental health. As a result, a great way to stop rumination is by using techniques known as “Cognitive Absorbing” tasks. Meaning tasks that are new to the client so they have to focus on them and become cognitive absorbed into them. Leading to a break in the cycle because the client is so focused on the new task. There isn’t room in their mind to continue ruminating. That’s the general idea. Personally, I quite like this idea because it’s a little strange but it makes sense. And if it can help people then that’s even better. As well as another reason why I like it is because it’s easy to do. Making it perfect for people outside of the therapy room since you can easily do this and improve your mental health without any specialised knowledge or equipment. Examples of Cognitive Absorbing Tasks Basically, one of these types of tasks is anything new to the client and would require them to focus on it. For example: · Make a model · Draw characters from a book · (Write a book- that’s a personal one) · Follow a tutorial on Origami · Build Lego · And much more! How To Stop Rumination: Conclusion As a final point, I want to mention that whether or not you find the idea of one of these activities fun or not isn’t the point. The entire point of these activities is to break the cycle of rumination and then after you’ve broken the cycle you do something more fun, maybe productive. Because you or your client don’t break the cycle then nothing might feel achievable. I really hope you enjoyed today’s episode and that you’ve learnt something. If you want to learn more and support the podcast, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Cognitive Psychology: A Guide to Neuroscience, Neuropsychology and Cognition Third Edition. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore or local library if you request it. Buy Me A Coffee Have a great day! Clinical Psychology Reference https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-practice/202107/10-simple-ways-break-free-rumination 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.