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Today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast is on 3 Reasons Why People Get Bored in Relationships and How to Overcome them. So, this episode dips into social psychology and cognitive psychology. Please note: this is NOT relationship advice or any sort of advice. This is just my podcast episode based on psychology research. The Brain Naturally Adjusts to Excitement Over Time: This is the first reason for why people experience boredom in relationship, and this is completely natural. Also, the easiest way to explain this reason is by linking it to addiction- because when we’re in a new exciting, passion filled relationship. Our body releases a boat load of hormones and neurotransmitters into our brain and bloodstream. Causing us to feel the intense emotions that we do. However, overtime our brains begin to build up a tolerance to these neurochemicals, meaning we need more intensity to get the same rush. Resulting, the relationship seeming boring compared to before. The Solution: The easiest solution for the problem is to remember why we’re grateful for this relationship and focus on the other non-sexual parts of the relationship. Lack of Novelty: We all love something new and exciting. I would go into my own personal example of the first time I could class myself as in love, but that’s a whole podcast episode on its own! Anyway, I know it’s not relationship related, but I remember when I first started audiobooks. I thought they were great, exciting, and I loved them. However, overtime as I recorded more audiobooks, and I started this podcast. Audio lost its magic and I still love audio, but it’s no longer magical. The same is true for relationships, we all want to something new and exciting, as well as many people call this ‘keeping things fresh’ Leading to me the solution, in relationships it’s important to keep things interesting and exciting, and you could do anything. Perhaps go out for dinner out of the blue or just decide to go out for a day out without planning for it. (well, that depends on the day trip. I don’t recommend going to another country as a day trip without planning for it) Lack of Intimacy: Now, this isn’t strictly talking about not having enough sex, but I hear that’s very important in relationships. However, this talks about psychological intimacy as well. This is when you tell each other everything, share secret and you have a sense of closeness between you both. I know that this can be difficult, and life can get in the way and work can get too busy. However, it’s important to reconnect and do this thing called talking. Yes, you know the thing were you talk about your day and your feelings. Instead of checking your emails, Facebook and other distractions. Overall, I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s social psychology episode. If you want to learn more, then please check out the following links: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Psychology of Human Relationships 2nd Edition Have a great day everyone! 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 www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal. References: Boven, L. V., & Ashworth, L. (2007). Looking forward, looking back: Anticipation is more evocative than retrospection. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,136(2), 289-300. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.136.2.289 Dutton, D. G., & Aron, A. P. (1974). Some evidence for heightened sexual attraction under conditions of high anxiety. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30(4), 510–517. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0037031 Lyubomirsky, S. (2010). Hedonic Adaptation to Positive and Negative Experiences. Oxford Handbooks Online. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195375343.013.0011

In today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast, we will be looking at the clinical and abnormal psychology topic of Formulation in Psychotherapy. This episode has been sponsored by my book: Formulation in Psychotherapy. What is Formulation and Why Is It Important? Here’s an extract from my Formulation in Psychotherapy Book. However, this raises the massive question of: what is formulation in psychology? If you’ve read my Clinical Psychology book then you may already have some idea but this book will built upon this information in a LOT more depth. So, regardless of whether you have never heard of formulation before, only have a small amount of knowledge about it (like me before writing this book) or you know a lot about formulation. Hopefully, you will get something out of this book. What is Formulation? In essence, formulation can be understood as a hypothesis to be tested because Butler (1998) states that formulation is ‘the tool used by clinicians to relate theory to practice’ Nonetheless, that isn’t the only definition of formulation due to other notable figures in Clinical Psychology have made their own definitions as well. · “A psychotherapy case formulation is essentially a hypothesis about the causes, precipitants and maintaining influences of a persons psychological, interpersonal and behavioural problems” (Eells, 1997, p.4). · “A process of ongoing collaborative sense-making” (Harper and Moss, 2003, p. 8). I must mention that in the topic of Formulation there is one very important figure called: Lucy Johnstone and she is a massive figure and a great author on the topic of formulation. Therefore, her definition needs to be highlighted: “Formulation can be defined as the process of co-constructing a hypothesis or ‘best guess’ about the origins of a person’s difficulties in the context of their relationships, social circumstances, life events, and the sense that they have made of them. It provides a structure for thinking together with the client or service user about how to understand their experiences and how to move forward. Formulation draws on two equally important sources of evidence: the clinician brings knowledge derived from theory, research, and clinical experience, while the service user brings expertise about their own life and the meaning and impact of their relationships and circumstances”. (Johnstone, 2018) I mean you cannot get a better as well as more comprehensive definition as the one above. However, in case you’re like me and you tend to skip massive complex paragraphs. I’ve given you a summarised version below. In short, when a formulation is broken down it summarises the client’s core problems and it shows how the client’s difficulties are related to one another. In addition, it uses psychological theory to explain why and how the client’s difficulties are happening to help plan an intervention. Why is Formulation Important to Know About? In all honesty, if formulation wasn’t important to be aware of then I’m afraid that I wouldn’t have looked into it. Simply, because I love psychology, like you, but there are simply too many areas to investigate. Therefore, if you intend to go into clinical psychology as a profession, you need to know about Formulation as this is a major topic, and it’s very important for various reasons. This you’ll discover throughout the later chapters. Another reason formulation is important is because it’s considered a skill by the Health and Care Professionals Council, as well as according to the Division of Clinical Psychology (2010) formulation can be the defining competency of the profession. In other words, if you want to do clinical psychology as a job then you NEED to know about formulation. If you want to know more information about the subfield then please check out Clinical Psychology for more information. Building Upon this Further: In formulation, there are a lot of different approaches that can be taken to create a formulation. Like: negative thoughts in CBT, narrative therapy and psychodynamic. Over the course of the book, we’ll look at roughly 6 approaches. In addition, a formulation applies the theory to an individual and their own unique difficulties. Interestingly, the term formulation can be used as an event and a process. You’ll see this in more detail in later chapters but you can give a formulation (event) to someone and you can create a formulation with the client. (process) Another example is most definitions like the ones above are formed as if formulation are only concrete events. Like: a letter to written assignment and so on. However, as you’ll see later, this is not always the case. Personally, I prefer to think about formulations as a creative process because ideally you should be working with the client to create a formulation that best fits them. Equally, I do understand why formulations are sometimes events. Anyway, you’ll see this in more detail when we get into the meat of the book. Basic Make Up of a Formulation: In a formulation, there are a range of common elements regardless of the therapeutic model used. For example, each type of formulation makes a hypothesis about a person’s difficulties which draws upon psychological theory. In addition, all formulations summarise the client’s core problems by drawing on psychological principles and theory that allow you to see how a client’s problems are related. Additionally, they allow the therapist to suggest why these difficulties have developed at this time in this situation. Finally, all formulations are open to revision or reformulating because they need to be ‘accurate’ and ‘corrected’ if something is ‘wrong’ in the formulation. With the entire point being the formulation is used to plan or guide an intervention for the client to help them live a better, happier life. On the other hand, formulation is different from the traditional therapeutic models. In terms of: · The most important factors · Emphasis on reflectivity · Explanatory concepts they draw on. · Emphasis on expert vs collaborative stance · And more Although, a formulation could be described as a double-edged sword as the formulation could reveal no intervention is needed. Or the formulation itself could be therapeutic as it gives the client a greater understanding of their difficulties. (I thought I would include that piece of debate about formulation to start you thinking critically about formulation. But we have an entire section dedicated to the debates about formulation. So, personally, I would focus on enjoying the book and think critically later) Additional Purposes of Formulation: In addition, to the other purposes we’ve discussed in this chapter, according to DCP (2011:8) formulation could serve other purposes as well. For example: · Ensuring a cultural understanding has been incorporated into the intervention. · Strengthening the therapeutic alliance. · Helping the client to feel understood. · Normalising the client’s difficulties. · Increasing sense of agency, hope and meaning. · And more. Best practices: Moving onto the last section of our introductory chapter, like any therapist technique, formulation can be harmful as well as be helpful, of course, depending on how a clinician uses it. Therefore, this was addressed in the DCP guidelines (2011) which includes an event and process checklist which when combined with Bulter (1998) means a formulation needs to meet the following criteria: · It needs to be grounded in an appropriate depth and level of breath. · Culturally sensitive. · Use accessible language so anyone can understand the formulation. · Consider the possible role of trauma and abuse. · Possible that the service could be confounding the problem. · Informed by social/ societal and service/ organisational factors and more. We’ll explore these more throughout the book. Subsequently, the checklist for best practices for formulation as a process are: · Be clear about who the formulation is for. · Who has the problem? · Construct formulation collaboratively. · Provide a rationale for choices. · Reflective about their own assumption and values. So now that you’ve learnt what formulation is, how is formulation used in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy? I really hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If you want to learn more than please check out the links below: FREE 8 Psychology Book Boxset Formulation in Psychotherapy Have a great day, everyone!

Today’s clinical and abnormal psychology episode of The Psychology World Podcast is on Should Psychologists Be Allowed to Prescribe Drugs? Personally, I think it is interesting because in recent months there has been a massive push towards psychologists to develop competencies to allow them to prescribe drugs. As I’ve already said I’m currently against the idea as this could reinforce the Biomedical model when psychology needs and is slowly moving towards the biopsychosocial model. There are other reasons as well. However, in today’s episode we explore the pros and cons of this argument, and I want to learn more about it as well. Background Information: Psychologists being able to prescribe medications is not new. In fact, psychologists are able to give people medication in five states in the US. For example. Louisiana, New Mexico, Illinois, Iowa, and Idaho. Additionally, this isn’t new because these privileges were given to psychologists in New Mexico in 2002 and in Louisiana in 2004. Showing that this idea of psychologists being able to prescribe medications is rather old. Although, it must be noted that psychologists need to complete proper training and have a permit to use prescribe medication in the treatment of mental conditions. What Training is Needed for Psychologists to Prescribe Medication: The required training is very extensive because here are the requirements in different states. In New Mexico, they require psychologists to complete 450 hours of didactic training as well as 400 hours of supervised practice in psychopharmacology. In addition, in Louisiana, psychologists need to first complete a postdoctoral master's degree in clinical psychopharmacology. Then it will only after doing this degree can the psychologist prescribe medications. For Iowa state, psychologists need to complete the extra degree. Like Louisiana but psychologists need to have clinical experience in pathophysiology (these are the physiological processes that occur with a disease or injury) and treatment. Finally, in Illinois- psychologists still need to have specialised training in psychopharmacology. However, they need to complete a supervised clinical rotation that lasts for 14 months as well as it covers a wide range of settings. Such as mental health clinics, prisons and hospitals. This is very similar to how the UK Clinical Psychology Doctorate works. The Arguments For: Moving onto the arguments for psychologists prescribing medication. The first argument for this privilege is, is that it will put less strain on health care services. As a result, the original idea of this For argument was that some states in the US face a shortage of psychiatrists. But as this is The Psychology WORLD Podcast. I want to make it more global. Meaning that it might be good for psychologists to be able to prescribe medication as it could allow doctors to be freed up and the NHS in the UK could be put under less strain. Because of instead of patients going to see doctors and GPs for their treatment. They can go to see a Prescribing Psychologist. In turn, this could make more doctor visits available as some of the Doctor’s workload could be shifted. Secondly, I have to admit that I’m not entirely convinced me this For argument but some people say that allowing psychologists to prescribe medication would increase access to psychological treatment. Now, the article I was looking at doesn’t going into detail, so I’ll give it a shot. So, this could be a great benefit to psychologists because people with mental health difficulties that don’t believe in ‘psycho-magic’ also known as psychotherapy. Probably avoid getting treated currently because of ‘psycho-magic’ is the only option to them. As well as it is taking too long to see psychiatrists. Therefore, if psychologists are able to prescribe ‘proper treatment’ also known as medication and if mental health sufferers can get quicker access to this ‘proper treatment’ by going to a psychologist. Then these people will get the help they need and hopefully they will start to life better, more fulfilled lives. Again, I have my problems with this idea because it reinforces the biomedical model and ignores formulation and the biopsychosocial model. But you get the idea. Arguments Against: I’ve already spoken about my reasons against prescribing in previous episodes, but here are two other negatives. First, a lot of professions agree that simply doing another degree with psychopharmacology is not enough. Especially considering doctors and other medically trained people go to Medical School or university for at least 7 years. (that’s the UK degree length) Meaning this does call into question are psychologists trained enough to be able to deal with medical issues? Personally, I doubt it. It’s no difference to a psychiatrist trying to deal with a mental health problem exclusively using psychology and not psychiatry. As they’re mainly trained in psychiatry whereas psychologists have a better understanding of the mind and human behaviour. As this is, what psychologists have been trained in exclusively. Again, both fields have their limitations. This leads into the second Against Argument, what if a medical condition is overlooked and treated as a mental condition? Now, I must emphasise that no profession, doctors or psychologists, get this right all the type. As sometimes psychologists think a medical condition is a mental condition and vice versa for doctors. Additionally, sometimes a medical condition can be maintaining a mental condition. So, this is not easy. However, this Against Argument might be unfair, but it raises a good question. With psychologists with prescribing Privileges not being as educated in medicine and medical conditions, how can psychologists ensure a medical condition isn’t overlooked? In all fairest, how can doctors and medical professions ensure a mental condition isn’t overlooked? Anyway, it’s a tough one. Conclusion: Now, we’ve spoken a lot about the pros and cons of psychologists being allowed to prescribe medications as treatment. I mentioned my final thoughts in the podcast episode. But I would love to hear your thoughts so you can email me connorwhiteley@connorwhiteley.net tweet on me on twitter @scifiwhiteley and you can leave a comment below. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If you want to learn more about Abnormal Psychology, then please check out Abnormal psychology 2nd Edition. Or pick up your FREE 8 Psychology Book Boxset. Have a great day everyone! Reference: https://www.verywellmind.com/can-psychologists-prescribe-medications- 2795756#:~:text=Supporters%20of%20prescribing%20rights%20for%20psychologists%20include%20the,write%20prescriptions%20for%20a%20number%20of%20different%20reasons 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 www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

In today's episode of The Psychology World Podcast, we'll be looking at the future of psychology. In terms of clinical and abnormal psychology. I hope you enjoy. Changing Landscapes: 2040 Visions by Connor Whiteley “Turning my head as I sip my coffee, I no longer see the four walls of my office and I no longer have to commute an hour each day merely to get to the nearest NHS trust so I can treat my patients. Instead, I see the young minds for budding psychologists all around me helping to the deliver treatment with other trained professionals all in the same room as myself. The reason for us all being in the same working environment isn’t because of budget cuts, NHS problems nor the rise of people who need mental health treatment or aid. Instead, it is because most NHS psychologists work in co-working spaces now as this allows us to deliver teletherapy, which after the coronavirus pandemic and other problems all those years ago, became more popular and critical in the field of psychotherapy. My friend waves at me as she logins onto her computer to deliver a new type of psychotherapy that was specially adapted for teletherapy, and as the world evolved to need mental health professionals more and more. It was only logical for new psychotherapies to be made for this new online era. Also, she mouthed ‘thank you’ to me because I helped her with a formulation for one of her clients that she was stuck with. This simple act reminded me why I prefer these new co-working spaces when the NHS first emphasized them; of course, I hated them because surely in-person psychotherapy in an NHS hospital was the only place for treatment, but I was wrong. I love these co-working spaces because it gave me the chance to network with other amazing professionals and it wasn’t rare for us to talk shop and bounce ideas off one another, as well as I know the great impact that this has had on my clients. Of course, there is always the need for psychotherapy to be delivered in person and that’s another great benefit to this new co-working way of life as it allows us to mobile so when we need to we can quickly jump in our cars or public transport to deliver treatment to the client in the comfort of their own home. Despite my resistance to this co-working stuff at first, the past 20 years have changed the world and psychology forever, and if I want to continue to deliver treatment and support to people in need then I must change as well…” Abnormal Psychology Evidence: Knowing what a lot of people will be thinking; including myself at one point; I wanted to take this opportunity to tell that teletherapy and co-working spaces aren’t new or this mythical thing that will end the profession as we know it. As a result, there are many examples of co-working spaces designed specifically for mental health professionals currently being used. For example, The Collaborative in Miami, Florida. In addition, there has been research into the effectiveness of teletherapy and one JAMA article in 2012 found that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) delivered through teletherapy is just as effective as traditional CBT, as well as the study, found that the drop-out rate was lower for the patients receiving CBT through teletherapy. Another study that explored the effectiveness of teletherapy was published in the Journal of Affective Disorders in 2014 and it found that teletherapy was just as effective at treating depression, if not better than the more traditional in-person CBT. As you can see teletherapy, as well as co-working spaces, could be the future of psychology as teletherapy in the case of CBT is effective and as the world changes after the COVID-19 pandemic. Teletherapy could rise in popularity as the profession adapts to meet the needs of people. Overall, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you want to learn more then please check out my Cognitive Psychology book and click here to get your FREE 8 Psychology Book Boxset. Reference: Mohr, D. C., Ho, J., Duffecy, J., Reifler, D., Sokol, L., Burns, M. N., ... & Siddique, J. (2012). Effect of telephone-administered vs face-to-face cognitive behavioral therapy on adherence to therapy and depression outcomes among primary care patients: a randomized trial. Jama, 307(21), 2278-2285. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/social-instincts/202003/will-covid-19-make-teletherapy-the-rule-not-the-exception Wagner, B. Maercker, A (2014) Internet-based versus face-to-face cognitive-behavioral intervention for depression: A randomized controlled non-inferiority trial, Journal of Affective Disorders,152–154, 113-121 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 www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

In today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast, we’ll be looking the abnormal psychology topic of What is Clinical Psychology and Why is it Needed? Also, today’s episode is supported by my new Clinical Psychology Book. Below is an Extract from Chapter of Clinical Psychology: What is Clinical Psychology and Why is It Needed? This is a difficult question to answer as I’ll explain in a moment but I love clinical psychology and abnormal psychology. As they both deal with mental conditions and helping people. Also, clinical and abnormal psychology are the same thing so you can use the terms interchangeably. But in case you’re wondering; because you read my Abnormal Psychology 2nd Edition first or you have seen this book; why I use two different names. It’s because my Abnormal Psychology 2nd Edition focuses more on mental conditions and mental health difficulties like depression and anxiety disorders as well as treatment. Whereas this clinical psychology book focuses on the detail of WHAT clinical psychology is and what it involves. What is Clinical Psychology? Clinical Psychology is a subfield of psychology that focuses on mental health and research has shown that clinical psychology can aid recovery and alleviate people’s suffering in relation to many difficulties. For example, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia amongst other conditions. In addition, clinical psychologists apply psychological theory and research so they can understand and alleviate people’s distress. Whilst, focusing on the key concepts of assessment, formulation, treatment and evaluation. (Jones and Hartley (2015) We will focus on each of these critical areas in this book as if you want to learn more about Clinical Psychology then you NEED to know about these areas. The Complexity of Clinical Psychology: As I’ve previously preluded, clinical psychology isn’t an easy area of psychology to define due to the many complex roles that Clinical Psychology involves. This is why when you ask a clinical psychologist- what is it? They tend to give you a vague answer due to the differing and diverse roles that occur in Clinical Psychology, and this is before we consider the wide range of task and settings that people work in! Yet we might as well consider it now and relook at it later in more depth as Clinical Psychologists work in a wide range of settings. For instance: · Children and adolescents · Learning disabilities · Working aged adults · Health · Forensic Furthermore, the intention and, to be honest, the entire point of Clinical Psychology is to empower people to feel better by learning to tolerant, accept or manage their distresses differently or by changing how people see themselves and their situation. The above will be made more clear as we travel through this book. All you need to know for now is that Clinical Psychology seeks to help people and alleviate their distress. Nevertheless, it’s all well and good talking about what Clinical Psychology is, but why it is needed in the first place? Why is clinical psychology needed? As touched upon earlier, Clinical Psychology seeks to help people with their distress. I’ve mentioned it again to emphasize the point because stress is apart of everyday life, and stress can have negative impacts on our daily functioning, and we can need support. Furthermore, in recent years difficulties with mental health have become a growing public health concern with it being estimated that 1 in 6 people in the past week experienced a common mental health problem, with mixed anxiety and depression being the most common mental condition in Britain with 7.8 % of people meeting the criteria for a diagnosis. In England, 4-10% of will experience depression in their lifetime. Source: www.mentalhealth.org.uk Further support for why Clinical Psychology is needed is from Mind; a mental health charity that aims to refocus perception of mental health; and they found that around 1 in 4 people will experience mental health problems this year. Yet the shame and salience can be as bad as the mental health problem itself. Your attitudes to mental health could impact someone’s life. Note: this is why I rarely use the term mental disorder as I and other people including professionals find the term disorder to be detrimental to the recovery of a person amongst other reasons. Therefore, I use the term condition instead. Source: www.mind.org.uk Impact of mental health difficulties: There are many various impacts that mental health conditions can have on a person, a family and society. Nonetheless, as a brief introduction to the impacts of mental health is that these difficulties can be awful for the family and friends of the person with the condition. As they don’t know how to help the sufferer amongst other reasons. Finally, the poorer, more disadvantaged people in society are disproportionately affected by common mental health problems in their lives. Source: www.mentalhealth.org.uk Overall, I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast. If you want to learn more then please check out Clinical Psychology and please check out my Email Sign Up to get your FREE 8 Psychology Book Boxset. Have a great day everyone! 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 www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

In today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast, we’ll be looking the cognitive psychology topic of what personality types are most resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, today’s episode has been sponsored by my book Health Psychology. Moving onto the topic, there have been a lot of different ideas about the types of people that have been most affected by the pandemic. Some researchers think extroverts have suffered the most as they haven’t been able to meet with people. Other people think it’s conscientious people as their daily routine and structure has been decimated. However, a new study done by NixPlay on the 27th and 28th August 2020 has found the types of personalities that are least affected by the pandemic. The 4 Personalities Least Affected by the Pandemic: Emotional Stability: People with emotional stability are the types of people who handle stress well and they don’t get nervous easily. Therefore, the study found that help with higher emotional stability scores dealt with the pandemic better than people who scored lower on the scale. Future Positive: I fully admit that I’m a future positive because I’m goal oriented and I’m a hard worker. This helps to protect people against the psychological impact of the pandemic because it means they can channel their frustration into a productive endeavour. I can see this in my family because I channel this frustration into writing, podcasting and other creative endeavours. Whereas my dad builds and creates things in the garden. Past Positive: Interestingly, past positive people are people who remember as well as focus on the enjoyable times in the past. For example, a fun family holiday and time with their friends. The idea behind past positive people being resilience in the pandemic is because the enjoyable memories of the past. Provides them with a sort of protective buffer against the distress caused by the pandemic. Extroversion: Personally, I don’t necessarily believe in this finding but I’m going to mention it anyway. According to the study, introverts are less psychological resilience during the pandemic because unlike extroverts they have less happy interactions to remember. In my opinion, this is false as I know a lot of introverts and they are as resilience or better than extroverts. Equally, I can easily see these introverts having other personality traits in these studies to help them with their resilience. For example, the future positive personality. Overall, I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s cognitive psychology episode of The Psychology World Podcast. If you want to learn more then please check out Cognitive Psychology 2nd Edition. Also, please sign up to get your FREE 8 Book Psychology Boxset and your FREE email course. Have a great day everyone! I truly hope that you’re enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an on-going 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 www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal. Reference: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/social-instincts/202009/four-types-people-unfazed-the-coronavirus-pandemic

In today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast, we’re going to be talking about Why Humans Constantly Seek Information and How to Stay Positive During Difficult Times? Therefore, this episode goes into social psychology as well as cognitive psychology. All humans tend to seek out new information, whether it’s the news, the learn more about a hobby or a profession or even if you just want to know what your friends are doing. We all want to seek out new information. Seeking Out Information Has Psychological Functions: In addition, according to a new study, there are three functions or reasons why we seek out information. · Cognitive Utility- this is where we find out information because we believe this information will help us to understand the world better. For example, we watch the news to see what’s happening and we can understand the events of the world, as well as why they’re happening. For example, why Governments are easing or putting in restrictions. · Instrumental utility- we use this cognitive psychology reason to seek out information that’s can potentially help us. For instance, we might check out the news to see what’s happening in the economy or we might talk to our boss to see what they’re doing about the company. This helps us plan for the future as well as this information might help us to protect ourselves. · Affect- when we seek out information, for this reason, we’re looking for information to make us feel a certain away. Such as you might seek information about a new film or TV program, so you feel excited or disappointed that the show or film was axed. Equally, when you encounter disappointment or the information wasn’t what you wanted, you tend to seek out more information or information that’s more positive. This where the optimism bias comes in. In short, humans tend to be ‘hard-wired’ to be optimistic so we tend to believe we aren’t as likely to experience a negative event. It’s more long-winded than that but that’s an extremely short definition. How to Stay Positive in Difficult Times? Whenever we experience difficult times, it’s important to have ways to help us combat these negative experiences. This allows us to maintain our mental health and it keeps us positive. Agency and Anticipation: Not only are these protective factors against negative emotions and bad mental health. These are very helpful in remaining positive because if we are proactive about being positive then we make ourselves positive in return. For example, we can be proactive by starting new projects and taking steps to ensure our mental health stays positive. Leading me to mention anticipation, it’s extremely beneficial to have something to look forward to so you can a goal coming up and something to be happy about. Also, it’s very helpful to take agency as well as anticipation in your life by being proactive and making sure you have something to look forward to. I hope you enjoyed this social psychology and cognitive psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out Cognitive Psychology 2nd Edition or sociocultural Psychology 2nd Edition. And please sign up to my newsletter to get your FREE 8 Psychology Book Boxset and email course. Have a great day, Connor. I truly hope that you’re enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an on-going 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 www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal. References: Sharot, T., & Sunstein, C. R. (2020). How people decide what they want to know. Nature Human Behaviour, 1-6. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/between-cultures/202004/why-we-can-t-stop-watching-the-news

What is psychology? So now that you know a bit more about me, we're going to be moving on to what the episodes are actually about. The first of all what is that psychology? There are so many definitions out there and it does get ridiculously complicated. However for the purpose of the podcast, I simply put psychology as the scientific study of human behaviour, and I know that people have a lot of different opinions about psychology as a science. I've experienced quite a lot of prejudice about doing a psychology degree. But everything we proposed in psychology is supported by data and if it's not then I frown upon those people because we can't just make these Grand sweeping gestures about behaviour and a say that this is responsible for that without evidence because that is wrong. Yes, and as you'll see this throughout these podcast episodes, but I will be supporting these concepts with studies and yes, all of these studies might not be the greatest because some of them are bad however at the times and they were done they were revolutionary and it's still provides us with some evidence. This is a topic. I'll address in the critical thinking sections. All that you need to remember is that psychology is the study of human behaviour. In psychology there are many sub-fields which I find fascinating because there are so many different aspects of the human mind I think because if you take biology, for example while biological psychology looks a how our biology affects our behaviour, for example, our genetics how some behaviours have evolved over ten of millions of generations and biological psychology. I find really interesting. But it's also the closest we can get to the hard Sciences which my means that we can say that this definitely causes this even though it's closed. We still can't hundred per cent say that X causes y however in a few episodes time. I'm going to be focusing on biological psychology and this on the share more with you then. However, what this episode and the next two are going to be about is cognitive psychology. Now cognitive psychology is again a subfield of psychology. Focusing on how mental processes impact our behaviour. For example, you have biases in our thinking which I'm going to do next episode. Cognition in a digital world: But I'll bring up an interest in that topic because for years ever since technology has come out ever since the TV became mainstream don't quote me on this, but I think of something like the 1980s is everyone's been debating about will it be good? Would it be the end of humanity? What are the consequences of being exposed is a constant bombardment of that technology? We cannot avoid it even now you’re listening to my digital voice on a podcast on your phone. Even now as I'm recording this being exposed to my phone and earlier because I had to print these notes. I was exposed to my laptop. So technology is all around us. However, how does it affect us? If I wrote everything I knew about this topic. Then this podcast could easily last for about 2 hours because there are so many studies that say good things. So many studies about bad things about technology. However, I'm going to simplify it and I'm just going to mention two. Yes. One thing that technology is good then one saying that it's bad. But let’s get into some theoretical content. So we will know that technology must have some effect on us. However, why must it? how do we know that these Technologies actually have an effect compared to this just being hearsay and people just guessing some of the ways how we know what this is again through experiments have a bit more for theoretical content is that our brains are shaped through your daily interactions, processes and lots of complicated stuff for basically. Being exposed to new technologies new experiences causes our brain to react because as I'm going to look here look at in episode 4 is this concept of neuroplasticity and what that is, is that it stays the operating this can change in response to environmental demands. For example, certain areas of all our brains can grow in response to environmental demands. However more on that in episode 4. However, is being exposed to new technologies or even older ones cause our brains to change and that's how technology has an effect. Yes now that we know the theory behind the technology and how it can affect our behaviour. We can dive into some studies. Ferry and Ponsperre (2001) So the first study we’ll look at is Ferry and Ponsperre (2001) and it is very interesting because it does show how technology can be very beneficial to people. So let's dive into the study. So what they did was that they have studied 62 right-handed people with no golfing experience. And then what the researchers did was that they split into three groups and control group and learning group and an entertaining group now with the learning group; people who were wanted to improve their putting skills. Then the entertaining group just wanted to have fun and they won't really bothered about improving. Then they practised in the real world and using a golf stimulation. And the results showed that Putting improved in the learning and the Entertainment Group, however, the interesting thing though that the putting most improved in at the learning group leading the researchers to conclude that's for a digital simulation to be useful. The technology needed to be reliable by showing a realistic demonstration and there has to be motivated to improve. I'm reading my notes. I've just realized that that is actually quite a technical definition that appears not simple. So this led the researchers to conclude that for a technology simulation to be helpful and to help people learn is the simulation has to be realistic and you need to have motivation to improve. In conclusion, the study shows that technology can be helpful to people as it clearly demonstrates that technology can be used to help people learn new skills. Whilst, this study is very good because it has high internal validity, which means that the study accurately measures what it was able to measure what it wanted as it demonstrated how technology can impact our behaviour. However, this study while is good I feel like it could be a bit better because this study has something called quite low ecological validity now ecological validity means that it doesn't necessarily represent the real world because of how many people do you actually know who would who wants to improve golfing skills? Personally, I know nobody who wants to improve their skills. Meaning, it doesn't mean you have any real-world applications. So what could have been more useful is that if they used a driving example because millions of people pretty much everyone wants to know how to drive or they already do for example, pretty much everyone. I know wants to learn how to drive over and that's a story for another time. If a study has low ecological validity then as a researcher you do have a lot of problems about trying to link your findings to the real world because there’s no data to support your idea that your findings link to the real world so the study could be improved upon to make the results more valid. Sparrow et al (2001)- theory So moving on to our next study which shows that technology can have a bad effect is Sparrow et al 2001 before I go into the actual study. I need to you a bit of context. So as I'll mention in a future episode of there are many different types of memory and one of the types of memory is called transactional memory. Now, this type of memory is, in essence, is lazy memory because we all do it. For example, do you know when all the birthdays up in your family or do you rely on someone else to be able to tell you? If I can suggest like I'm guilty of and that is a called transactional memory because you yourself don't store the information to yourself. Don't remember the information instead you choose to transfer that information to somebody else. Therefore you don't have to remember. So the simplest definition of transactional memory is when you don't bother to remember it because you believe you can go somewhere else to get that information. Now the reason why we do this, out of the many reasons but one of them is that we believe that our long-term memory capacity is limited. There’s some debate about whether it is or isn't however that's topic for a future episode. Sparrow et al (2001)- study Sparrow et al (2001). The researchers got participants to type 40 attribute trivial facts into a computer some facts were new And others were more common knowledge and this research study was an example of a 2 x 2 independent measurement design now believe me that's a lot taken in essence what it means there were two conditions. condition 1 and another condition to all that this condition means is that there were two groups. Okay. Now the other two comes in with each of these groups were half. Okay, so you effectively have four groups within this experiment. So the four conditions were the same in terms of typing in the information. However, then it started to change. So what happened was that the first two groups were told that the information will be saved. However, then half of them were told to remember the information then that the second group was told that the information would be erased afterwards so they could not come back to this information. And then what happened was that that half of these are were asked to remember the information. Overall, you have four different groups two of them told that the information will be saved and half of them was asked to remember the information and then that the other two groups. Finally, the two groups were tested to see how much the information they could remember. For more information on the results please look at my book Cognitive Psychology. For the people that were asked to remember the information, but they also asked hold of that be information will be saved. They remember 19 per cent of the information. However for the same group of where they were told is that mean formation will be saved. They weren't asked to remember. They remember that 22% Therefore there's not actually a lot of a different so being asked to remember the information doesn't really matter. In conclusion, when people believed they could go back and retrieve that information didn't put as much effort into remembering the information. This supports the idea that technology could be bad as this study shows that when information is at our fingertips then we don't bother to remember information as much. Now there is a massive problem with this study as we cannot measure the effort levels that the participants put into this task and we don't know why this difference exists and because of that we cannot say that the Google effect, which is another word for transactional memory to put it simply is responsible for this as other factors could be responsible for this different. So this study is not hundred per cent saying that technology causes this Google Effect but it does support the idea that technology could be bad because it makes us lazy in terms of remembering. However, if I was to do this I study again, what I would do at the end of the experiment is I would include semi-structured interviews, where you have some questions that you give everyone. However, you will leave it open to some extent just so that you can have a bit more freedom and there is the possibility that you'll find out information that you wouldn't get if it if I only ask that you'll set questions and I believe that this would be a good idea simply because you could investigate the effort each of these people put in and then we can ask them directly. Why didn't you remember the information and I just think it'd be a bit easier in terms of helping us to narrow down if The Google effect was to be responsible for this. However, that's just my opinion. Although, a positive of this study is that it does clearly show that technology must have some sort of effect on memory. Because if technology has no effect whatsoever. Surely all of these groups that should have the exact same result. There's a clear difference between people who believe if you go back to the information and people who believe that the information would be erased. I definitely think there's something there. Yes, and that brings us to the end of our studies. So let's bring everything that we've learnt together. So we know that there are different pros and cons of technology and the reason why technology impacts our behaviour, is that because it because in essence these new experiences when we exposed to technology causes changes in our brains because of neuroplasticity. And again, I will look at neuroplasticity a lot more in a future episode. In conclusion, Ferry and Ponsperre 2001 shows that technology can help people to learn new skills and then again sparrow et al 2001 demonstrated that technology can that be bad as because in essence technology can make us lazy. So that's it in a small nutshell. So I hope that you've learned something today and I hope that you'll continue to listen to the podcast. I hope that you enjoyed that podcast epidose please sign up to my newsletter to get your free book! Have a great week!

Hello, everyone. I hope that you all had a great weekend. Today’s post will be on, what is Forensic Psychology and what are forensic psychology’s real-world implications? But first I have some interesting news to share with all of you in the writing update. Personal update: The last week was very busy because last week I gave myself a lot of projects to do in addition to psychology lectures and psychology reading that I had to for university, but I love being extremely busy and productive. But on Friday I had a extremely interesting lecture on the psychology of sexual offending that I was hoping to do a blog post on today but some of the content I believe could be upsetting to people so I think that I will save the topic of sexual offending for my Forensic Psychology book that I’m hoping to release in January/ February time. However, when I thought about it, I realised that all I would have to do is created Christmas themed stories with the themes of faith, light, hope and family. Meaning that I will not have to create light-hearted stories. Writing update: So I had a crazy thought last week after finishing Garro: Heresy and I decided to try and write a new fiction book for Christmas- Garro: Christmas Short Stories. Originally, I was horrified with myself because whilst I love Christmas. I never thought that I would want to butcher my Garro universe with light-hearted jolly Christmas stories. However, when I thought about it, I realised that all I would have to do is created Christmas themed stories with the themes of faith, light, hope and family. Meaning that I will not have to create lighthearted stories. In fact, some of them so far have quite dark moments but following the theme of Christmas. After that I was more convinced about the idea of a Christmas short story book so I contacted my author network wanting to get an idea if everyone would be interested in helping me promote it; as the idea is to write the book in a way that’s perfect for building upon the other Garro books for my current readers but to entice and introduce new readers to the Garro universe as well. And the response was very positive a lot of authors wanted to help me promote as I offered them a chance to include a link to their book in the backmatter so that everyone wins. As a result of so much interest in the promotion, I decided that I had to write, edit proofread and publish the stories this week so hopefully, the sci-fi fantasy book will be available for pre-order by Sunday at the latest. Currently, I’ve written 15 of the 25 short stories in the past two days so I’m hopeful. As the idea was to have a story for each day of Christmas but I’m going to have 25 short stories, so you have one short story for each day counting down to Christmas. Make sure you sign up to the newsletter to make sure you don’t miss out on this great book! Plus, I have a new author twitter account. Just search at @whiteleyscifi on twitter. What is forensic psychology? Forensic psychology is the activities of all psychologists whose work is related or contributes to the criminal justice system. Now, this is a very broad definition of forensic psychology but there is a lot of overlap between forensic psychology and other areas of psychology as in the quest to explain criminal behaviour you need to draw upon the knowledge of other subfields of psychology. These other psychological areas that are related to forensic psychology include but are not limited to: · Social psychology as it’s important to know the social processes involved in criminal behaviour. · Clinical psychology as it’s important to understand the possible effects of mental health on criminal behaviour and the Criminal Justice System. · Cognitive psychology because it’s important to find out what mental processes are involved in deciding to commit illegal actions. · Developmental psychology due to it’s to important note if developmental disorders can increase the likelihood of people committing crimes. Overall, forensic psychology is an amalgamation of psychology work and practices. In addition, forensic psychology is a fast-evolving field and you can be a researcher and a practitioner. This fact is very important for research and the great good of the field of forensic psychology as this allows researchers to gain first-hand experience with real offenders and real people. Which this interaction can be used to fuel practical treatment research than is useful to practitioners treating these offenders. As in other fields of psychology, there is sometimes conflict or disagreements between researchers and practitioners about the usefulness of research in the practical sense and real-world applications. Within forensic psychology, there are many possible research areas including: · Gang research · Sexual aggression · Firesetting · Violence · Child abuse · Terrorism What are the real-world impacts of forensic psychology? Forensic psychology has a lot of real-world impacts as it helps to progress the justice system by: Improving eyewitness testimony Informing police procedure Being able to tell us what is involved in crime Informing treatment. Overall, forensic psychology has a lot of interesting and important real-world implications. I hope you found today’s post useful. Please sign up for my newsletter to get your FREE book and tweet me at @Whiteleyscifi on twitter. Have a great week. Kind regards Connor. Source: Howitt, D. (2018). Introduction to forensic and criminal psychology. Essex, UK: Pearson. 6th edition.

Hello, everyone. I hope you’ve had a great weekend. Today’s blog post will be on developmental psychology. Focusing on the effects of poverty on child development. Personal update: Wow, this past week has been very busy as I’ve been home from University for the past week and I’ve been doing a lot of creative projects as well as seeing family. But as the busy week is mainly as a result of writing, let’s move into the writing update. Writing update: When it came to study week, I had 3 main focuses besides seeing family and they were finishing Garro: Heresy, record the podcast episodes and record A Guide to Mental Health and Treatment around the World. (I may edit that title in the future. Especially, as in my head I always call the book Global Mental Health. Comment down below your thoughts on the title) Basically, the main focuses sort of got done but a lot more happened as well. So, the podcast recordings went very well, and I’ll be releasing the first episode in two-week times so I’m excited! And it turns out that I love podcasting because I can express myself in the audio format and I don’t know… it feels good to be able to connect with readers easily. I managed to write 7 chapters of Garro: Heresy and I have another 8 to do which I will do this week. However, something that I love about writing is it can evolve and change as you’re writing. I’ll brief hint at two such occurrences while writing this book. The first is that I knew something was going to happen to Maura and make her character a mystery between Garro book 3 and book 4. But I didn’t know what and when I got to writing it. I created a very interesting and a much more complex storyline than I originally intended. (Don’t worry it’s still a very engaging storyline) then the other occurrence is to do with the God Magi which if you read or listen to the Garro: Short Stories. You’ll probably love the concept of her. Anyway, it turns out that I’ve managed to engineer a very shocking twist in the tale of the God Magi and given her a physical form of one of the main characters from the last series. You won’t be able to guess who the God Magi is though. Anyway, the whole point is that I love the ability to be able to evolve and develop my stories as I write because some authors don’t allow this evolution in their stories which I think is a shame. In addition, I have an idea for another Garro series which I’m still developing but I just wanted to let you all know that Garro books 7-9 could be created and published in 2021- so it’s something to look forward to. I know I’m talking for quite a while now, so I’ll summarise the rest: · In roughly March/April 2020 I’m going to be looking at merchandise. Like: mugs, art prints and more because I found a print on demand service for merchandise called: Cafepress.com which I’m interested in as it means that I can create potentially 100s of merchandise products without having to order, store or dispatch them myself. COMMENT DOWN BELOW IF YOU HAVE ANY SPECIFIC THINGS YOU WOULD WANT TO SEE IN MY MERCHANDISE IDEAS. · I’ve recorded A Guide to Mental Health and Treatment Around the World, so I’ll edit and publish it this week and then I’ll email my subscribers about when that’s available on Amazon as it takes a few weeks. But you should be able to find it on Kobo, your local library and other major stores (not amazon, audible or iTunes) by Sunday. · Finally, I’m going to write some business books for the purpose of writing for the market (writing for the purpose of making money) compared to writing the psychology and sci-fi fantasy books which I write for pleasure mostly. This I will keep separate from this website and this main business but if any of you are interested in business books. I’m going to releasing them in November/ early December so just contact me if you’re interested in knowing more. The business books before Christmas will be on Business Skills, Leadership, Personal Finance and Time Management. Wow, that was a lot of information- onto the developmental psychology blog! Developmental Psychology- Effects of poverty on child development: As previously mentioned last week was my study week at university and as I don’t have any new content that could easily form a blog post. I decided to show you an extract from my book Developmental Psychology. (You can get an extra £1 off this book if you buy before the 4th November 2019) Extract from Developmental Psychology: Chapter 8 Poverty is the state of having no or little means to fulfil basic needs and as a result of that, a number of outcomes can arise that inhibit development. Brooks and Dunn (1997) summarised that poverty has a number of key outcomes: · Physical health as poverty leads to stunted growth, malnourish and low birth weight. · Lower cognitive ability · Poorer school achievement · Emotional as well as behavioural outcomes such as showing more aggression or fighting behaviour while feeling depressed or anxious on the inside. The researchers suggested a number of pathways as well. These pathways are other factors that affect development in addition to family income. · Availability of nutrition · The physical condition of the home · Amount of time parents spent with children · Parenting style · Punishment practices · Parent’s mental health · Neighbour conditions · And many more… Models of poverty: There are two main models or theories that try to explain and predict the deciding factors in the argument of what factors affect development the most. · The family stress theory states that the main variables that affect development are family-related. Like: parenting styles and communication strategies. · The investment model states that the most important pathways that affect development are associated with real goods. Such as nutrition, opportunities to learn and enriched environments. Personally, if you combine the two theories, I believe that you would be spot on and both are very true explanations to the factors that affect poverty the most. Pollitt (1995) · Researchers carried out a study on four very poor villages in Central Guatemala for the course of 8 years. · The participants were made up of over 2000 children and mothers. · As protein was the main nutrient missing from the villager’s diet. The villagers were given a nutrient supplement. · Participant from two villages received a high protein supplement whereas the two other control villages got a supplement that contained far less protein. · Results showed that a significant drop in infant mortality in both sets of villages, but with a 69% decrease in villages taking the high protein supplement compared to only a 24% decrease in the other two villages. Children on the lower protein supplement suffered a slower rate of growth and a slower rate of recovery from infection. They also learned to crawl and walk slightly later on average. Because these undernourished children remained small for their age, adults may have treated them as if they were younger than their actual age. · In conclusion, this shows how poverty can affect psychological development. Critical thinking: A positive of this study is that it has high ecological validity as the experiment uses a natural, real-world setting. In turn, this increases the generalizability of the findings, so we apply the results of the experiment to different situations. However, as a result of this high ecological validity where other factors that could influence cognitive development aren’t controlled. We cannot say with unshakable certainty that protein was the only factor that could have given us these results. As factors could have potentially played a role. Like: illness, genetic factors and other missing nutrients from their diet. Summary: Poverty can have a number of impacts on development. There are a number of factors that impact development as well as family income. The two main theories or models in relation to the effects of poverty on development are: · The family stress theory · The investment model Pollitt (1995) demonstrated how important protein is in cognitive development. I hope that you found that psychology post interesting and if you want to learn more about developmental Psychology then please check out my book: Developmental Psychology and if you buy before the 4th November 2019 then you can save yourself £1. Have a good week. Kind regards Connor.

Hello, everyone. I hoped that you had a great weekend. Today’s post will be on the social psychology of persuasion. Personal and writing update: This week has been a very busy one. In terms of university, I had a lot of interesting psychology lectures and I have a lot of ideas for new books as well as various other projects. For example: I can definitely see a Forensic Psychology book forming in my mind as compared to other lectures. My Forensic Psychology lectures are very linear and clear cut. Meaning that there’s one main topic and only that psychological topic. Compared to my social psychology lectures which I think are a lot more mess in terms of book creation as you have the main topic like: Persuasion. Then you have all the sub-topics that make writing a book more challenging as you have so much information and you need to keep it interesting. For instance, in persuasion you have what is persuasion, the various models and theories about how persuasion works, persuasive techniques and when persuasion does and does not work so there’s a lot of information and I’ll find it interesting to see the result. However, there’s exciting news! I’ve started to record my podcast episodes and to be honest I do love podcasting because the problem with recording audiobooks is that when recording audiobooks you need to read without emotion and emphasis and you need to be a narrator, not a person. Although, what I like about podcasting is that I can talk about my topics as well as what I love whilst being me and a genuine person. I will fully admit that I’m still new and raw as a podcaster but I’m learning and on the 11th November 2019. I’ll release the podcast. Social psychology of Persuasion: Persuasion is when you try to change someone’s behaviour, in its simplest form. The process of persuasion tends to have one of four outcomes: · Opinion change · Perception change · Emotion change · Action change Nevertheless, persuasions need four steps as supported by Howland, Janis and Kelley (1953) · You need to pay attention · You need to comprehend the message · You need to accept the message · You need to retain the message Without those four steps, the target of the persuasion attempt will not be persuaded by you. There are many things that will increase the likelihood of the attempt being successful, but this is a brief overview: The source (the persuaders) ideally needs to be: · Attractive- Eagly and Chaiken (1975) found that attractive people are more persuasion. · Be familiar to the target as we tend to like familiar or similar people more. The message needs to be: · Strong as long and strong messages are more effective than long and weak messages. · Repeated- Tellis (1987) shows that 2-3 times a week is best. Finally, some reasons why persuasion attempts fail include: · Reactance- when the persuader annoys the target and they end up disliking you, in its simplest form. · Avoidance- they simply avoid you as the persuader or they avoid people who would try and get them to change their behaviours. For example: smokers might try and avoid medical professionals. · Forewarning- if people have prior knowledge that someone is going to try and persuasive them then this gives them time to prepare and come up with counter arguments. · Counterarguments · And many more… This is a quick overview of the social psychology of persuasion and I’ll explore this topic is greater depth in my new social psychology book next year. Sign up for my newsletter today to make sure that you don’t miss out on new releases and other interesting psychological content. Have a great week! Reference: Sutton, R.M., & Douglas, K.M. (2013). Social psychology. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave MacMillan

Hello, everyone. I hope that you all had a great weekend. Today’s post is a quick look at the social psychology behind attitudes. Personal update: Wow, this last week’s been busy because as I mentioned last week it’s the university’s employability Festival and me being me decided to sign up for tons of relevant and irrelevant talks and trying to fit everything else in has been… interesting. For example: I’ve been for a month now and my weekends are typically free to you on you; my wonderful readers; but I’m sorry to say that the only piece of interesting work that I did was start Garro: Hersey and that was only 3 chapters compared to the 6 I wanted to get done. However, a more comical piece of personal news is that I started my Italian course last Tuesday which I was really looking forward to but when I got there and we started to the course. It reminded me of how bad I am at languages. As in the UK when you’re in High school or 12-16 education we must do a language; well I did, and I did French, but as much as I loved the concept of learning another language and culture. I was just awful at it. Mainly because of my pronunciation. Which actually brings me back to a point that I often think about or say and that it’s a massive failure of the English education system that we don’t take other languages seriously and we need to start teaching children other languages when they’re a lot younger as other countries do. As most countries start to teach their children English at about 5 or 6 (It’s a rough guess) and it’s because of that learning at such a young age that they’re so good at English. Basically, if we start to teach other languages earlier than our children will better at them and appreciate them more. (May that’s a new book idea) I quite enjoyed that section. Moving on the writing update. Writing update: Honestly, it’s been a very hit and miss week for writing as I’ve wanted to get a lot done but I’ve had to prioritized what I’ve wanted to get done. Such as: over the weekend I had to do 4 hours of reading for university. Mainly, as a result of me wanting to get all my reading done so, I can I enjoy, relax and focus on writing activities during my reading week (a week off from university) Although, I have managed to achieve some things with my writing this week. Including: · I’ve written the first 3 chapters of Garro: Hersey which I’m excited about because of the plot and pace that it’s progressing and its interesting see Garro without Kortana and his team. · I’ve joined an author network called: The Dreamteam Network. This is an author network that focuses on joining up to promote everyone’s books and grow each author’s readership. Personally, I like it because in the first week I’ve already joined a few promos and after writing this blog post. I’m going to post in the Facebook group to see who would be interested in doing a multi-author boxset. A very exciting week indeed. Finally, that last I had a brilliant email from a reader that asked me to do more Garro and it felt great to know that someone loved my books so THANK YOU to that reader for reassuring me that I'm not wasting my time. The social psychology of Attitudes: So, on Wednesday I was sitting in my Social Psychology lecture and I was really interested in this topic because I knew that I needed a topic for today’s post and this topic seemed perfect. (As always this blog post is just a very brief introduction to the topic that I’ll explore more in future books) Therefore, attitudes are preferences in their simplest form and these attitudes can be positive, negative or both. In addition, we have two types of attitudes. We have explicit attitudes which are easy to measure in social psychology because you can merely ask people to have them. For example: What do you think about smoking? Then we have implicit attitudes. These attitudes are harder to measure because as humans we aren’t fully aware of our own attitudes, as well as these attitudes are hard to change and are very quick to activate. Functions of attitudes: Interestingly, Katz (1960) suggested that there are four functions of attitudes: · Knowledge function- we have attitudes so it feels like we understand a complex social world. · A utilitarian function- attitudes help us get rewarded and avoid punishments. For example, parents may reward you for having a similar attitude to them on Brexit. · Value expressive function- attitudes allow people to express their deep-seated values on different topics. · Ego defensive function- having attitudes protect us from psychological harm. Personally, I find all these different functions to be very logical and interesting because I would say that they’re all true and correct as I can think of ways of how personal attitudes can fulfil each function. I’ll examine this in more depth in next year’s book. Formation of attitudes: The last topic that I’ll mention at attitudes; the rest I’ll mention in next year’s book; is how attitudes can be formed. They can be formed several ways including: · Mere exposure- the more we’re exposed to a particular stimulus; for example, Chinese food; the more we tend to like it. (To a certain point. I’ll explore the concept of over-familiarisation in the future) · Conditioning- in short when you’re rewarded for having a certain attitude. · Genetics- as supported by various twin studies. It’s suggested that political conservatism and other attitudes are partly genetics. (Bouchard et al 2000) · Social processes- our interactions with our cultural and social groups can impact our attitudes. · Echo chambers and confirmation bias- we seek people who support our world views and thus strengthen our beliefs in them. I hope you found this post interesting. Please check out my other books for more information on psychology topics and sign up for my newsletter and receive a free book to receive news about my books. Have a great week! Kind regards Connor. Reference: Sutton, R.M., & Douglas, K.M. (2013). Social psychology. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave MacMillan