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

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

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

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

Hi everyone, today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast is on developmental and attachment. This area of psychological area is highly influenced by biological psychology, social psychology and cognitive psychology. Today’s Podcast show notes are taken from my Developmental Psychology book: This has to be one of the most important behaviours in good child development as being attached to someone is important for many reasons. Attachment refers to the emotional bond between the child as well as the caregiver (or another person if you wanted to create a universal definition and not a developmental one) that presents itself as being calm in their presence and distressed when not in their presence. The biological basis for attachment: Harlow (1958) was a researcher who set out to find a biological explanation for attachment. He conducted two experiments. The first experiment found that attachment is driven by the contact comfort and not the satisfaction of basic needs. For example, a child forms attachment because they are comfortable around you and not because you provide their basic needs. Off the top of my head, this explains and is further supported by the reason why a kidnap victim doesn’t always form an attachment to their kidnapper that effectively looks after them. The second experiment is detailed below: Harlow (1958) · Baby monkeys were placed in a room filled with toys to play with. Interacting with a rich environment is important to cognitive development. · In three conditions the monkeys were left in the room alone, with a mother made from wire or a mother made from cloth. · Results showed that the monkeys explored the environment more with the cloth mother as they used it as a secure base. While in the other two conditions they were much more likely to freeze or go into the corner and cry. Critical thinking: The experiment has an effective method for measuring this hypothesis, so this increases the reliability of the results. Although, the reliability of the results could be called into question as it used animals and it’s still hotly debated whether or not the animal and human behaviours are the same. Thus, the results of the experiment could only apply to monkeys as they were used in the experiment or the results could in fact only apply to humans to a certain extent, unless a follow-up experiment is done using human children we cannot say for sure if this hypothesis applies to humans. Attachment in humans: John Bowlby was the first researcher to formulate a theory about why attachment occurs. His theory includes two components: · Attachment behavioural system- referring to the pre-programmed instincts we have that are biologically encoded in us. These instincts are behaviours that occur in response to certain environmental triggers. · Internal Working Model- referring to the psychological aspects of attachment. These include beliefs about the self, the caregiver as well as the relationship with the caregiver. Bowlby believed that the internal working model is formed in early childhood and it influences future relationships. For example: if your caregivers constantly neglect you despite you trying your best to get their attention. This could lead to the development of feelings of worthlessness. Possibly affecting your future relationships as you could always be trying to prove yourself worthy of your friends or partner’s attention, or you could become an attention seeker. Summary: Attachment is an emotional bond between the child and caregiver. Harlow (1958) demonstrated how contact comfort is the driving force of attachment and infants need a sense of security to explore the environment. Bowlby’s theory involves the Attachment behavioural system and the internal working model. I hope that you have enjoyed today’s podcast episode and I hope that you found how biological psychology impacts attachment interesting. If you want more information, then please check out my Developmental Psychology book. Feel free to leave a comment below and sign up for my psychology newsletter for more information! Have a great day everyone!

Hi everyone, I hope that you had a brilliant week. Today’s post is on the psychology of human branding so this incorporates social psychology and cognitive psychology as human branding draws on the knowledge about how social group and individuals interact with the environmental and other social factors, as well as it draws on cognitive psychology because it involves the way we think about brands and organisations. What is Human Branding? Human branding is where a business or brand makes themselves more human in order to connect with customers as humans connect with humans; hence the social psychology. Additionally, customers can improve their human branding a number of ways. Such as: being human in emails and using voice marketing. For more information, please check out Human Branding for Authors: How to be Human in an AI World? The majority of the information applies to both authors and other businesses. The Social Psychology and Cognitive Psychology of Human Branding: Below is the extract of the psychology of human branding taken from my book and this passage clearly explains the social psychology of human branding. CHAPTER 1: SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY AND OTHER IMPORTANT THINGS TO KNOW In this chapter, I’m going to be briefly telling you about the social psychology of affiliation and the social need to connect, and I’ll mention some other important factors to know about for the rest of this book. Social Psychology: Below is an extract is taken from my Psychology of Human Relationship 2nd Edition book that discusses the importance of affiliation. “Human relationships are very important to humans because human relationships but especially close relationships; such as sexual relationships or relationships with close friends; are the centre of human existence. We cannot thrive without them. I know from personal experience that I prefer to have close relationships and the relationships I have had have been very important in my life and as humans, we have a fundamental need to affiliate (Baurester and Leary, 1995) In other words, humans are a social species, so we need to be with others and humans are constantly thinking about affiliation, relationships and being with others.” The takeaway message from the extract is that your readers want to affiliate and form a friendship with you, so the point of human branding is to let them connect and affiliate with you. Recommended reading: if you’re interested in more about the psychology of human relationships or social psychology. Then I would recommend checking out my psychology books at: www.connorwhiteley.net/books Other information: Now that we've looked at the social psychology behind human relationships and connection. We can have a look at some basic marketing principles that don't just apply to human branding but book marketing as well. Marketing Rebellion: After reading the amazing book Marketing Rebellion by Mark Schaefer; you can find the link in the back of the book; I learnt some very important human truths that I feel like you should be aware of before you continue reading: · Humans want connection and to be loved. · Brands; like your author brand; are people that people can connect with. · People form attachments to brands. Tips from Marketing Week: During the research process of this book, I came across a very good website that gave me two important facts that highlight the importance of building a human brand. “Consumers who perceive your brand as human are 2.1 times more likely to love the brand” “Consumers who perceive your brand as human are 1.6 times more likely to purchase from it and 1.8 times more likely to recommend it” Source: www.marketingweek.com/how-human-is-your-brand/ Therefore, I think that these facts clearly show the benefits of making your author brand more human. Other need to know factors: Know, like, trust: I have briefly mentioned this in the previous chapter but you need to know this concept as it is a fundamental of marketing. This is because people are drawn to people meaning we do business with people we know, people we like and people we trust. And this links back to The Creative Penn example in the introduction. Methods for using the know, like and trust principal will be the basis of this book and it will be shown throughout. The compound effect and this is a component: Firstly, I would definitely recommend the book The Compound Effect by Perseus. The compound effect feeds very well into the ‘this is a component’ idea meaning that all human branding and other marketing activities will add up over time to deliver you results. For example, by doing podcasting, Twitter and other things that we will explore throughout this book. Over time all these activities will add up. However, that statement that you were meant to be doing more than just human Branding is not meant to scare you because you can learn and develop the skills over time as I have. It has taken me over the best part of a year to do what I'm doing now. For more information on book marketing, I highly recommend How to Market A Book by Joanna Penn. Although the message to take away it's if you do a bit of all these methods each day over time you will start to see that it can take weeks months or even years, you will receive results. I hope that you’ve enjoyed today post on the social psychology of human branding. If you want to know more about human branding, then please check out my book: Human Branding for Authors: How to be Human in an AI World? Also, please consider signing up for my newsletter to receive more psychology content. Have a great week everyone. Kind regards Connor.

Hi everyone, I hope that you had a great weekend. In today's episode of The Psychology World Podcast, I'm talking about health psychology and the social explanations for obesity- so in this episode we draw psychological knowledge from social psychology. The show notes for today's show are taken from my Health Psychology book so please enjoy: I’ve decided to merge these two chapters together as they’re closely linked and you can put risk and protective factors under the umbrella of social explanations for obesity. Social explanations: There are many different social and environmental causes of obesity. However, the main two causes are an inactive lifestyle as well as types of food. Over the past 50 or 100 years, there has been so much development of technology that our lifestyles have become very inactive. For example: before the development of cars and motor vehicles you would need to walk or cycle to work but now that you can drive you don’t need to. This striving acts as a passive rest and can lead to a lack of exercise. Resulting in you not spending as many calories as you intake leading to the build-up of fat and over time can make you obese. A change in the types of foods we eat can lead to an increase in calories as processed foods tend to contain more sugar and fats than more natural foods as well as they tend to be cheaper than other food. Linking back to a person’s socioeconomic status. This leads to an increase in calories, fat and eventually obesity. While the case study below doesn’t focus on obesity, it effectively shows how the environment can impact health behaviours and lead to a negative health problem. Mays et al (2014): · Researchers used a sample of 406 teenagers aged 12-17 years old to investigate the effects of parental smoking. · Interviews were done with the teenagers and their parents. · Following this, the teenagers had a follow-up interview one and five years later. · The parents’ interviews focused on their smoking history, current smoking, and nicotine dependence. · Results showed that teenagers with nicotine dependent parents were more likely to start smoking early in life as well as they were more likely to become earlier experimenters with smoking with each additional year of exposure. · In conclusion, adolescents with nicotine-dependent parents are susceptible to more intense smoking patterns and this risk increases with longer duration of exposure. Critical thinking: The study effectively examines the effects of parental smoking by using this teenager age group. This makes the study effective as this age group typically is the most likely to experiment with smoking and it’s with this age group that sees the impact of parental smoking clearer. Compared with younger children and adults. However, this experiment may be an example of reductionism because this experiment looks only at the effects of parental smoking and the increased likelihood of the children smoking, without considering other factors for the increased likelihood. For example peer pressure, stress or possibly genetic factors. Overall, this could cast doubt the effects of parental smoking as we don’t know how important it is compared to other factors. I hope that you enjoyed today's show and if you want to learn more about Health Psychology then please consider check out my Health Psychology book. Have a great week everyone!

Hi everyone, I hope that you've had a brilliant week. Today's blog post is about the Approaches in psychology. This draws on the knowledge and explains why biological psychology, cognitive psychology, social psychology and more all focus on different aspects of human behaviour. Today's post is taken from my FREE book What is Psychology? Available from amazon, Kobo, Nook and all major ebook stores. In psychology, there are many different approaches that people can take in order to investigate behaviour effectively. The Biological Approach: This approach to psychology and behaviour proposes that all behaviour is a result of biological processes. Furthermore, this approach can be broken down into the following: The physiological approach proposed that all behaviour is linked to internal body parts. Like the brain and neurochemicals. The nativist approach is a belief that all behaviour is inherited and passed from one generation to the next through our genes Finally, the medical model proposes the idea that you can treat mental disorders like you would a physical disease due to the belief that every problem has a physical cause. For example, depression is caused by brain damage. (This is a fictional fact used to the demonstrate the medical model) Biological Assumptions: Additionally the biological approach has three basic assumptions that form the foundations for this approach to behaviour. · Evolutionary inference- this is applying evolutionary theory by Charles Darwin in 1800s to psychology as psychologists use evolutionary Theory to explain how behaviour has changed over millions of years changed over time. Proposing that the human brain has changed because it was needed to adapt and survive. · Localisation- we will explore this topic in more detail with the sample chapter in the next chapter, but localisation states that certain brain areas are associated with certain behaviours. · Neurotransmitters- these are chemicals are that released by the brain in order to have certain effects on the body. For example, dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is responsible for the feeling of romantic love. For more information on Biological Psychology, please check out Biology Psychology. The Cognitive Approach: This approach focuses on mental processes and how they affect behaviour. We will explore Cognitive Psychology or the cognitive approach in Chapter 4. Cognitive psychology has a few interesting assumptions about human behaviour as well. For example, the cognitive approach believes that the human brain is like a computer and the brain is often compared to a computer. One example of this analogy is that long-term memory is like a computer hard drive. Another assumption that cognitive psychology has is they believe that the human mind has internal mental processes that impact our behaviour. Personally, I think that this assumption is fairly obvious as thinking is an internal mental process and that impacts on behaviour as we can make right or wrong decisions. Finally, the cognitive approach believes in the idea of schemas. These are mental representations or frameworks in the human mind that influence the ways we encode, store and retrieval information. For more information on cognitive psychology, please check out Cognitive Psychology. The Behaviourist Approach: our next approach focuses on the human mind being a black box so there's an input and there's a behavioural output. For instance, if I was tapped on the shoulder then this information would be sent to my brain (the input) afterwards my brain would tell me to turn around. (the output) Additionally, behaviourists believe that people behave because of life experience and it completely ignores cognitive and biological factors. For example, a person could be rewarded for performances and behaviours or it could be punished. This life experience affects how they will behave in the future. Another example would be that according to this approach depression would be caused by bullying only and it wouldn’t consider genetic factors or cognitive/thinking style. Assumptions: In behaviourism, there are the following assumptions about human behaviour: humans are born like a blank slate meaning that humans learn from their environment. This assumption follows the debate that human behaviour is based on nurture; how you bring up a child; compared to our genetics. In addition, behaviourism has the assumption that humans learn through conditioning. For example, if you are punished after being ‘naughty’ then you have been conditioned (learnt) not to behave in that way again. Finally, the behaviourists believe that humans, as well as animals, learn in similar ways. The main reason for this is probably because behaviourists and psychologists, in general, tend to animals in their experiments. Resulting in animal behaviour being compared to human behaviour often. This can be seen throughout the series. For instance, if Romeo (2014)’s study on oxytocin and social bonding on dogs. Psychodynamic approach: This approach proposes that human behaviour is as a result of the unconscious mind and emotions that are beyond our conscious awareness. For example, childhood memories that could be traumatic will influence our behaviour in the future. Assumptions: Firstly, the psychodynamic approach believes that the events of our childhood have a massive impact on our adult life. Personally, I think this to be true as research has shown that trauma in childhood does affect your adult life. A personal example would be the betrayals that I faced as a child greatly affects my ability to trust others as an adult. Secondly, the psychodynamic approach believes in the unconscious mind. In other words, Freud believed that the mind is like an iceberg because most of the mind’s working are underneath our conscious awareness. In addition, Freud believed that the unconscious is responsible for most of our behaviour because we are driven by unconscious drives. For example, we perform the behaviour of eating because the unconscious drive to survive and we need the energy from food to survive. Lastly, the psychodynamic approach to behaviour proposes that the personality is made up of three parts that develop over time. For example: · The Id develops at birth and this part of the personality is the unconscious mind that seeks to gain pleasurable no matter the cost. · The Ego develops around the age of two years old and this part of the personality is the rational consciousness. This aspect must balance the need for pleasure and getting this pleasure in a socially acceptable way. · The Superego develops around the age of four years old and this part encompasses the child’s sense of right, wrong as well as the ideal self. This develops through identifying with one’s parents or guardians, as well as the superego aims to civilise and perfect our behaviour. Of course, there are issues with this approach to behaviour; like all approaches; but that is what the psychodynamic approach proposes. The positive psychology approach: This next approach believes that psychology should study the positive aspects of human behaviour as well as positive human qualities, so people can live more fulfilled lives. In addition, it's the belief that people want to enhance the experience of play, work and love that this approach is based on. Assumptions: Firstly, the positive approach acknowledges that humans have free will meaning that humans have a choice in their behaviour and how to act. Whilst, this is debated in psychology. The focus of this section is to merely introduce what the approaches propose. Secondly, the positive approach proposes that human goodness and positive emotions are authentic. I know that this wording may seem strange but in psychology, there’s a focus on the negative emotions without acknowledging the positive emotions In other words, this assumption means that psychology needs to acknowledge that happiness and other positive emotions are as important and serve our attention as much as negative emotions. Finally, the positive approach looks at ‘the good life’ which are a set of factors that look at what makes a human life well-lived. The findings by Seligman (2003) show that the following lives are important, and they can flow in order: · The pleasant life- in this life positivity comes from the active purse of positive emotions in relation to the past, present and future. · The good life- positivity is reached by pursuing activities that positively engage with us as well as absorb us. · The meaningful life- this approach to life means that we get enjoy from fulfilling a purpose that is greater than ourselves. Personally, for the meaningful life is writing and being an author because it means that I can write these books and hopefully serve people in their quest to understand human behaviour. I hope that you've enjoyed the blog post and please free feel to leave a comment below and please consider signing up for my newsletter to learn about more psychology contentand to receive your FREE book. Have a great week everyone! Kind regards Connor.

Hi everyone, I hope that you've had a brilliant weekend. In today's post, we're continuing with our look at Health Psychology and in this post we'll be looking at the biopsychosocial model; that draws on the knowledge of biological psychology, cognitive psychology and social psychology; in order to discover the causes of the developmental of a disorder. Today's show notes are taken from by Health Psychology book: Chapter 2: The Biopsychosocial model of health and well-being I do truly love this approach to treatment because I believe that if you focus on a problem using only one approach; biological, cognitive or sociocultural; then your research could be heavily flawed and futile as you are trying to find one cause of the problem without considering the other causes. In addition, in the real-world things are never as clear cut as we want them to be. For example: later in the book we’ll be looking at the causes of obesity and as I’ll show you there is no one cause of obesity. It’s caused by a mixture of biological, cognitive and sociocultural factors. As a result of this treatment should focus on the interaction of the three approaches as well. The Biopsychosocial (BPS) model focuses on how biological, cognitive and social factors interact to develop into a disease. For example, the BPS model looks at family relationships as a way to explain how a disease could develop as it involves psychological and social factors. You will begin to understand as well as see examples of the BPS model being used through the book. Yet for now, think of it as bringing together biological, cognitive and social factors to produce a holistic view of a health problem. Nguyen et al (2016) · 142 patient took part in a holistic weight loss programme that included: knowledge of insulin and its role in storing fat in the body, cognitive behavioural therapy to reframe thinking about food and behavioural therapy. To break unhealthy eating habits. · In addition, a drug called: Phentermine was prescribed as well as the other two types of therapy. · Then the participants followed an eating schedule for 5 days a week and they were told never to starve themselves, but to avoid sweets as well as artificial sweeteners. · Results, shown that there was an average decrease in weight of 10.8% from the baseline to the end of the 86-day programme, and BMI decreased from 34.6 to 30.1. · In conclusion, this holistic approach to weight loss may be more effective to other weight loss programmes as they only tend to focus on one or two aspects of the BPS model. Critical thinking: While this study uses a large sample size to create more data for them to support their conclusions. Making the study more reliability. The study doesn’t use another diet or weight loss group that only focuses on one or two aspects of the BPS model. This would make the findings more reliability as we could directly compare the holistic approach to obesity and the other types of programmes that only focus on one or two aspects of the model. Overall, allowing us to see which approach is best or how much of a difference this holistic approach makes. Summary: The Biopsychosocial model focuses on the interaction of biological, cognitive and social factors. Nguyen et al (2016) demonstrated that a holistic approach to treatment could be more effective than focusing on only two aspects of the BPS model. I hope that you found that useful and if you want to learn more about health psychology then please check out Health Psychology by Connor Whiteley and sign up for my newsletter to receive more psychology news. Have a great week!

Hi everyone, I hope that you’ve had a good week. Today’s post is a quick introduction to clinical psychology, also known as Abnormal Psychology. What is clinical psychology? Personally, I define clinical psychology as the area of psychology that studies and treats mental health issues as well as research has shown that clinical psychology has the ability to aid recovery and alleviate suffering in relation to many difficulties. In other words, clinical psychology has been proved to help people with their mental health. In addition, clinical psychologists apply psychological theory and research to understand and alleviate human distress. For example, they take theories from biological psychology and cognitive psychology and use these theories to help people- as well as clinical psychologists focus on the following key concepts in order to help people assessment, formulation, treatment and evaluation. (Jones and Hartley (2015) However, defining exactly what clinical psychology is, is difficult because clinical psychologists work in a number of complex roles and this is a vague answer due to the differing as well as diverse roles that clinical psychologists work in. In other words, clinical psychology is an area of the discipline that can be hard to explain due to the wide range of task and settings that people work in . Clinical psychology works in a range of varied settings. Like: · Children and adolescents · Learning disabilities · Working aged adults · Forensic · And more… The overall aim of clinical psychology is to empower people to make themselves better as well as this is achieved by learning to tolerant, accept or manage distress differently or by changing how they react and think in a certain situation. Why is clinical psychology needed? Sadly, stress is part of life but this stress can have very negative impacts on our daily functioning and we can need support to deal with this stress, as well as difficulties with mental health are seen as a growing public health concern with estimates of 1 in 6 people in the past week experiencing a common mental health problem. Additionally, mixed anxiety and depression being the most common mental disorder 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: mentalhealth.org.uk Lastly, Mind is a mental health charity that aims to refocus perception of mental health, as well as around 1 in 4 people will experience mental 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. Source: mind.org.uk I hope that you’ve enjoyed today’s blog post. Please feel free to leave a comment below and please sign up for my newsletter to receive your free book. Have a great week! Kind regards Connor.

Hello everyone, I hope that you had a great weekend. Today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast is on Health Psychology. This is an area of psychology that draws influence and knowledge from biological psychology, cognitive psychology and social psychology. More specifically, we’ll be looking more at the Health Psychology of the biological explanations for obesity. The show notes from today’s episode are taken from my Health Psychology Book: Biology of addiction: Personally, this is an interesting one because before I read this one section of health psychology about two years ago. I never really thought of fats as drugs, but you should be able to see the link after this section. Addiction leading to obesity is done in the following way: · When you eat fats and sugary foods your brain secretes dopamine as a reward for you. This makes you feel amazing. · Then you continue to eat this type of food so you can continue to get this rush. Similar to drugs. · Then over time your brain and body builds up a tolerance to these foods and stops producing dopamine. · Therefore, you eat more and more of these foods to get the same rush. · In the end, as a result of you having to eat so much in order to get this rush. You built up fat quickly as you’re eating possibly thousands of more calories than you’re burning off. Leading to obesity. Genetic factors: Haworth et al (2008) · Using over 2000 twins aged 7 and over 3500 aged 10, the researchers conducted a twin study to test the inheritability of BMI and obesity. · The parents of the twins filled in a questionnaire with their children’s measures and weight so their BMI could be calculated. · Based on their BMI the children were categorized into normal weight, overweight and obese. · Then the BMIs were correlated between identical and fraternal twins. · Results showed that for both types of twins’ genes played a major role in the development of obesity. Their role was about 60%-74%. · In conclusion, BMI and obesity are largely determined by genetics. That’s the study in its simplest form. Critical thinking: This study has high construct validity as the method used to measure BMI and obesity is very effective. As questionnaires were a quick and simple way to get the information on the children and other factors. Instead of an interview as this can be very time consuming and expensive. Therefore, this effective method allows the researchers to measure what they want so they can draw reliable conclusions from their data. However, as this is a twin study, it is open to population fallacy; where your sample group doesn’t actually represent your target population.; because most of the population aren’t twins. Thus, it could turn out in reality that the percentage of inheritance is much higher or lower in non-twins. Summary: The hormone Leptin is involved in the energy consumption of people. Fat and sugary food can lead to addiction as when you eat it the neurotransmitter dopamine gets released. Haworth et al (2008) demonstrated that obesity can be inherited. I hope that you joined today’s podcast episode and if you want to learn more about Health Psychology then please consider checking out my Health Psychology book. Available on Amazon, Kobo, Apple Books and many more bookstores in Print, Large Print, Ebook and Audiobook. Please consider signing up for my newsletter to get your free Psychology book and learn more about psychology. Have a great week everyone!

20th February 2020 blog post: Hello everyone, I hope that your week is going well. Today’s post will be on cognitive psychology and an introduction to memory as well as my Cognitive Psychology book goes into memory in more depth. There are three main stages of memory as information travels through the memory in three stages. Firstly, the information goes through an acquisition stage and this is the process of obtaining information as well as placing it into memory. Subsequently, you have storage. This is where the information is an enduring form in the mind- also known as a memory. Finally, when the information is needed once more the memory or information goes through retrieval. This is where we draw information to use in such a manner. To put these stages into a practical example, let’s say that you need to buy eggs after works. Therefore, you acquire the information about what you need to buy then you store the information throughout the day then after work you retrieve the information, so you know what you need to buy. However, if this was true and if memory was as simple as these three stages imply then humans would never forget, and we would surely have a complete understand about how dementia and other terrible diseases affect memory. Hence, why we use models of memory in psychology in order to describe how memory works. Although, even these models aren’t perfect. Below is an extract taken from my Cognitive Psychology book: The Multi-store memory model (MSM model): This model was made up by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) It’s made up of three parts: · The sensory memory- this is where information comes into the memory through our senses. Such as taste, touch, hearing, smell and sight. The amount of information that can be stored here (memory capacity) is unlimited, but this is probably because the information lasts here for a second. · The short-term memory (STM)- if the information is deemed important and you pay attention to it then it goes into the STM. Here the memory capacity is limited to about 6-8 pieces of information, but the information can stay here for a few minutes. · Long term memory (LTM)- the MSM model believes that if the information is rehearsed enough and if enough attention is paid to it then it can end up here in the LTM. Here the memory capacity is unlimited, and it'sproposed that the information can last a lifetime. However, at each of these stages, the information is open to memory decay or displacement. Meaning that the information; in essences; is forgotten and doesn’t get remembered. In fact, when we say that we’re forgotten information. Like: when one of our parents tells us to do someone and we ‘forget’ what’s actually more likely is that the information never got encoded in the first place. In other words, it never entered our memory.[1] Critically thinking: Before we move onto the studies supporting the model. Let’s think about the model itself. One good thing about the model is that it does explain memory well in a simple and easy to follow way. Do you agree? On the other hand, I believe that its simplicity is its downfall because if the memorywas that simple. We would all be memory experts. But one of its other main faults is that it’s built on the assumption that you need to rehearse/ repeat information for it to be stored in the LTM. However, how many times have we all read something once and be able to recall it. A few hours later without needing to reread or repeat it? I have and chances are we all have. Maybe not the reading example but probably something else. Like: what happens in a funny video or a conversation at work. Working memory model: Now that we’ve seen one way of how memory works, we’re going to look at another model that goes into memory in more depth. The Working Memory Model (WMM) was formulated by Baddeley and Hitch (1974) and it’s made up of several sections. Central Executive: This first section controls the memory and it allocates information to the subsections, as well as it deals with the task. Like: mental arithmetic and problem-solving. Then you have the three subsections of the STM. Visuospatial Sketchpad This stores as well as processes information in a visual or spatial form. Phonological Loop: This section deals with spoken and written material and it’s made up of two parts: · Phonological/acoustic Store– this store is linked to speech and perception and it holds information in a speech-based form for a few seconds. · Articulatory control process- this section is used to repeat and store verbal information from the phonological store. Episodic buffer: The last section is the episodic buffer this connects the Visuospatial sketchpad with the phonological loop. Following being stored in the STM information can then be stored in the LTM if it doesn’t get displaced or decay Critically thinking: The model has great explanatory power as it allows us to explain a range of phenomena that can’t be explained using the MSM model. For examplethe word length effect. This is a phenomenon wherethe capacity of the STM depends on the length of the word. An example of this is trying to remember: Describe, discussing, catering, evaluating and Decomposing. Compared to cat, dog, mat, gate and cook. Which is easier to remember? The list of short words should be. However, as a result of the model’s complexity, it’s difficult to test scientifically. Especially, if you wanted to test all of the subsections in the model in the same experiment. Saying that- let’s look at some studies that have managed to overcome that problem to some extent. I hope that you’re found this post useful and please consider signing up for my newsletter to receive your FREE book. Have a great week everyone!