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!

Hello everyone, I hope that you had a good weekend. Today's Episode of The Psychology World Podcast is Forensic Psychology to celebrate the release of my new Forensic Psychology Book. More spefifcally we'll be looking mental health and crime. Below are the show notes for today's episode and this is an extract from my Forensic Psychology book. More specifically we'll be looking mental health and crime. CHAPTER 23: MENTAL HEALTH AND CRIME Mental illness and crime is a very interesting topic because if you watch the media or TV programmes then they always mention mental illness is related to crime. But what is the truth? That is the aim of this chapter as we scratch the surface of this modern topic. Overall, there seems to be little doubt that certain types of mental disorders do in fact increase the likelihood of violence. However, it is difficult to say who is at risk and who amongst the mentally ill are likely to be the most violent. We’ll explore the reason why in a moment, but this is because other factors can increase the likelihood of violence as well as the mental illness. What other factors increase the likelihood of violence? Several other factors in addition to the mental illness itself tend to have a greater effect on the mentally ill. Including substance abuse and alcohol. Although, this is because there’s fewer of them. Putting this fact into an easy to understand example, let’s say that 100,000 clinically normal people were tested and 30,000 of them were discovered to be substance abusers. That means that 30% of those people were substance abusers. Subsequently, let’s say that 50,000 mentally ill people were tested; so there are 50,000 LESS people in this group, and the study found that 30,000 people in this group were substance abusers. Meaning that 60% of this fictional mentally ill group were substance abusers. Overall, showing you that merely as a result of there being less mentally ill people in the world. People can make grand claims that certain things affect the mentally ill more than clinically normal people. This highlights the need for good research to prove that these claims are based on facts and not unfair prejudice. What is the relationship between mental illness and crime? In reality, the relationship between crime as well as mental illness is small and the public is more at risk from young men and substance abusers than the much rare schizophrenics. Why is there is link associating mental illness with crime? Personally, I blame the media and television because the media always focuses on the most sensational of crime (as discussed previously) and sometimes these are linked to mental health. Nonetheless, this is a difficult question to answer so let’s explore in this topic further. Firstly, it is too reductionist; where you try to narrow the reason down to one singular cause like stating depression is caused by genetics. Whilst ignoring the cognitive and sociocultural reasons; to say that mental illness causes crime. Please see Abnormal Psychology for more information Especially, when other factors are involved. Such as drugs used to treat the mentally ill can cause an increase in aggression. Leading to a possible increase in violent crime and this wouldn’t be the fault of the mentally ill. As the fault would lie in the drugs as they caused aggression to increase. Furthermore, it could be society’s fault that a link is perceived to exist. As changes in social policy; a governmental policy that affects people; can possibly lead to an increase in these perceived relationships. For example: if there’s a change in social policy that states that community-based rehabilitation is better. Leading to the mentally ill being out of prison. This could increase the risk to the public as there could be more opportunity for the mentally ill to commit crimes. Although, it MUST be noted that society has an amazing ability to generalise the actions of a few to an entire subgroup of individuals. Thus, it is not a strange or unreasonable idea to propose that humanity stereotypes the mentally ill as criminals just because a hand of mentally ill people in the past have committed crimes. This stereotyping; which can be read in more detail in my book Sociocultural Psychology; isn’t new as the following are all examples of where humanity has stereotyped other groups due to the actions of a few: · All Muslims are terrorists due to the actions of a few extremists. · All rapists are homosexual when it’s very few and in fact, more heterosexuals are rapists, as previously discussed. · And there are many more examples. Overall, this shows how stereotyping can be applied to minorities by the dreadful actions of a few misguided souls. Please note rehabilitation in the community is still important in the treatment of offenders. In addition, the risk factors that can predict violent behaviour is becoming increasingly understood. For example, as well as the types of diagnosis, whether the anti-social behaviour started in childhood or later, hallucinations or delusions can all predict violence. Mental Illness and Courts: Now it’s time to enter an interesting topic as I think one of the many reasons why mental illness, as well as crime, is associated together is because of the perceived overuse of the insanity defence. For instance, I once remember that my mother mentioned that mental illness is rubbish because it’s always what criminals try and use to defend themselves. Now, this… misguided opinion can be broken down into a few different components that reveal more about the general human population. Firstly, people believe that the insanity or another mental illness defence is used a lot more than it actually is as it’s only used when there’s probable cause or when certain legal criteria are met. One possible reason for this could be because humans have another great ability to only memory interesting pieces of information. Therefore, people are more likely to remember a murder case involving an insanity defence as that is less often compared to your standard boring murder trial with a clinically normal person. Secondly and this fact I find truly heart-breaking as a person who wants to support the mentally ill now and, in the future, but when a false claim is made about mental illness causing the crime and the offender doesn’t have a mental illness. This casts down on all the real cases were mental illness can legitimately be used as a defence. I know that that was confusing, so I’ll take the same concept and put it in a different context. Let’s use rape as an example. Sadly, some people lie about being raped for various reasons and when the lie is discovered. This ultimately impacts the public’s confidence so when someone who has been raped comes along. The public automatically think ‘have they been rape or are they just trying to get attention like X was?’ Meaning that society is more suspicion and most probably less likely to prosecute or take this real case seriously. As a result of one person’s lies. Overall, I hope that this shows you how lying can impact the Criminal Justice System. The Psychology of Mental Illness and Courts: Diving into the theory behind this new topic mental illness plays a massive role in courts. This is because legal concepts like competence, fitness to stand trial and diminished responsible have been around for centuries. However, the problem with these mental legal concepts is that they are not simple to equate to psychological variables as well as there aren’t the same in different jurisdictions. In other words, it’s difficult to make an internationally recognised definition of these difficult legal concepts as each country has its own definition. For instance: in the UK the considerations involved in fitness to stand trial involves: · Having the ability to understand the evidence · The ability to follow court proceedings · Being able to understand that jurors can be objected and challenged · The ability to instruct lawyers effectively · Being able to understand the implication and meaning of the charges against them. (Grubin, 1996a) Whereas, the US system can be simplified defined as the ability to understand and consult with a lawyer at that moment. On the whole, I hope that you have found this interesting and enlightening. I hope that you've enjoyed this Forensic Psychology post. Please consider signing up for my psychology newsletter to receive your FREE book! Have a great day!

Hello everyone, I hope that you a great week. Today’s blog post is on the cognitive psychology topic of Conscious. What is Conscious? Conscious is our moment by moment awareness of ourselves, environment and thoughts. A method of studying conscious is introspection. Whilst, it has its limits is can still be informative. Introspection is a process where we look inside ourselves to discover our thoughts feelings and beliefs. Whilst, introspection can be useful as a source of evidence and it’s useful in a range of settings. It can be limited for a few reasons. For example: · The introspector doesn’t tell you what they actually think. · You might want to tell the truth, but you simply don’t have the needed vocabulary. Another problem is when introspector finds the right word, but the other person interprets it differently. The Cognitive Unconscious: In addition, introspection is limited because it cannot tell us everything as the unconscious influence us in ways that we don’t know about. Meaning that these unconscious influences can’t be detected through introspection. We use the term cognitive inference to describe certain aspect of human perception. For example, when you turn a corner and ‘know’ what’s going to be there because your unconscious has inferred it. Whereas, the cognitive unconscious is the term given to the mental support processes that exist outside our awareness. This process makes our perception, thinking and memory possible. However, it must be noted that the cognitive unconscious is the term for these support processes and not the unconscious mind as described by Freud. This is because Morden scholars strongly belief /know that the unconscious isn’t an adversary of the conscious mind and the unconscious mind doesn’t have its own desires or identity, like Freud suggested. I hope that you have enjoyed this cognitive psychology blog post and please consider signing up for my newsletter to receive your FREE eBook. Have a great week!

Hello everyone, I hope that you had a great weekend. Today's episode of The Psychology World Podcast is on the Bystander Effect and the Pyschology of Human Relationships. Today's show notes are taken from my Psychology of Human Relationships book 1st Edition. To find the 2nd Edition please click here. Chapter 6: Bystanderism In this chapter, the studies will talk more about Bystanderism than me, but it will be interesting. Bystanderism also known as the Bystander Effect is where someone is less likely to help if there are other people around. The Bystander Effect, I do find interesting because why do people not help when you can clearly see that someone needs help. In everyday life, there are thousands of examples of the Bystander Effect. Here are only a few examples and I bet that all of us would like to think we would help but, in reality, I bet none of us would help, or only the best of us would. · You see a man being chased down the street by a group of three men who look intimidating or threating. The man being chased clearly needs help and is terrified for his life. · You’re stuck in traffic and you see an old lady walking pass with heavy shopping bags, and you know that she’s going to fall. · You’re on a busy train and you see a young girl getting bullied by a group of mean girls. And there are thousands of more examples demonstrating the Bystander Effect. Personally, I find it interesting because as a society we are bred to be helpful and the best we can but when it comes to it. Barely any of us actually are helpful to complete strangers. For the case studies, I’ll do a combined critical thinking section. Darley and Latane (1968): Psychology students took part in a conversation with other students over an intercom system. Round 1 each participant was to present their problems. Round 2 was to comments on what other people had said and round 3 was for free discussion. In reality, all other people heard over the intercom system were recordings. The future victim spoke first in the discussion tell them that it was hard to adjust to the new city and he was prone to seizures under stress. In round 2, he started to have a seizure and asked for help then went quiet. Then the subject was timed to see if they went to find help and after being debriefed, they filled in a series of questionnaires. Results showed that the number of bystanders does increase the response time as when it was the victim and subject 85% responded to the emergency and it took an average of 52 seconds to respond. Whereas only 31% of people responded when it was them, the victim and four other people with it taking them on average of 166 seconds. In conclusion, the subjects were in conflict about whether or not to help because they didn’t want to overreact and destroy the experiment but equally they didn’t want the shame of not helping. This can be explained by diffusion of reasonability as with their being more people there were more people for the responsibility to psychologically disturbed. Latane and Darley (1968) Students were placed into three groups and all were asked to fill out a questionnaire and after a while, the room began to fill with smoke. One group was when the participant was in the room alone. Group two was when the participant was in the room with two other people. These people were asked to act indifferent and ignore the smoke. The last condition was when the participant was in the room with two other participants. Results showed that when alone 75% of the participant reported the smoke. When with two other people only 10% reported the smoke and when in condition 3 only 38% reported the smoke. In interviews, participant thought the smoke was strange but wasn’t sure if it was dangerous. In conclusion, when faced with an ambiguous situation people tend to rely on the reactions of others and are influenced by them. This can lead them to interpret the event as not dangerous and phenomenon known as pluralistic ignorance. Critical thinking: While both studies were effectively controlled as they both had a number of experimental groups so we could see the effects of Bystanderism in different contexts as well as with a number of different numbers. Both studies lacked ecological validity because if we take the intercom study for instance. In a real-world situation, you can see other people’s expressions to a situation and these expressions amongst other things play a role in deciding whether to help or not. Therefore, this could affect the results because this could have led to an increase in the response time or a decrease. Summary: The Bystander Effect is when a witness to an emergency is less likely to help if there are other people around. Latane and Darley (1969) shows us how the diffusion of responsibility plays a role in Bystanderism. Darley and Latane (1968) shows us how pluralistic ignorance affect Bystanderism. I hope that you enjoyed today's podcast episode. Please consider signing up for my newsletter to receive your FREE psychology book and please check out Psychology of Human Relationships for more information. Have a great week everyone!

Hello, I hope that you had a good week. Today's post is on What is Psychology and in this blog post we will be drawing ideas from social psychology, abnormal psychology and many type areas of psychology. Note: at the time of writing I was writing a new permafree psychology book and this chapter is taken from this new book. Please enjoy and share! Chapter 1: What is Psychology? Approaches and Perspectives Personally, I think this is an odd question because when you answer this question to people they tend to think that psychology is only profiling on crime programs. However, I hate to tell you that this is not the case, and to give you a bit of interesting context psychology comes from two Greek words. ‘Psyche’ meaning mind and soul as well as ‘logos’ meaning study. Therefore, psychology literally means study of the mind. Nonetheless, as psychology has evolved over the past century and a bit the definition of psychology has changed. For example, the current definition of psychology according to the Oxford English Dictionary is: ‘The Scientific study of the human mind and its function, especially in a given content’ In addition, I would love to stress that psychology is a science as everything in psychology is supported by data and findings from experiments and studies. Whilst, I will fully admit that some psychology studies are better than other studies. All psychological facts are supported by data and subjected to psychological peers that review the study to see if the findings are good. What do psychologists do? Everyone has their own reasons for reading about psychology. Like: I read psychology books because I’m interested, I’m doing a degree in psychology and I wish to become a Clinical Psychologist one day. Even if you do not want to study psychology it’s fine, you can keep reading, and psychology is good to know in any situation. Although, if you do complete a degree and the other requirements then you can become a: · Clinical Psychologist · Educational Psychologist · Forensic Psychologist · Sport Psychologist · Social Psychologist · Occupational Psychology · And many more… How does Psychology Apply to you? Throughout this book and this series we will be looking at psychological facts and research as well as psychology can affect us in a great number of ways. Such as: · What factors increase the chance of us committing a crime? · What causes relationships to form? · How do hormones impact our behaviour? In addition, there is a lot of psychological research out there in the world, meaning that you might want to go and investigate certain topics in more depth… I hope that you've enjoyed. Please leave a comment below and please check signing for up newsletter to receive your FREE psychology ebook. Have a great week!

Hello everyone, I hope that you've had a good weekend. Today's episode of The Psychology World Podcast is on the Cognitive Explanations for the Formation of Human Relationships as we start to look at the Psychology Human Relationships. This is an area of psychology that draws upon other areas of psychology to explain relationships. For example, cognitive psychology and social psychology. In addition, The Psychology of Human Relationships 2nd edition is now available. Also, Forensic Psychology is available as well. Show Notes (Extract from Psychology of Human Relationships 1st Edition) Now that we understand how our biology can cause us to feel attraction for someone. We can now start to look at the psychological or mental reasons why we find people attractive. In the cognitive realm of relationships, there are two main theories for relationships. The first theory that we’ll look at is the similarity-relationships hypothesis. This states that people form a relationship because they are similar. For example, think about your friend and you’ll probably find that you’re friends with them because you have things in common with them. Such as music preference, common interest and TV interests. A study that supports this hypothesis is: Byrne (1961): Subjects were asked to rate a number of issues on their importance. Ranging from western films to premarital sex to music. Then two weeks later they were shown a fake questionnaire. It was fake so one of four results could happen. Same on the important issues, same on the unimportant issues, opposite to the subject completely and the same as the subject on all issues. Then they were asked to rate the attractiveness of the stranger based on their answers. Results showed that more positive ratings were associated with a similar attitude as well as associated with similarity in important issues. Critical thinking: The study has strong internal validity; they measured what they intended to measure; because the study effectively showed that attraction to the stranger was because they had more in common with them. This supports the hypothesis. However, this study has low ecological validity; can you apply the findings to the real world; because in the real world nobody meets people and rates them on the basis of a questionnaire. Even people on dating websites tend to be shown pictures and other information that impacts on their rating of attractiveness. Consequently, to improve the experiment another research method could be used to support the findings and add creditability to the study. For example, interviews to see if their ratings were down to similarities or another reason. Matching hypothesis: The next major cognitive theory for the formation of personal relationships is the matching hypothesis. This hypothesis states that we are more likely to be attracted to someone who is equally socially desirable. One way to think about it is is that your current or past partner according to the hypothesis is about the same in terms of how socially desirable they are. For example, a popular person would date a popular person. An unattractive person would date an equally unattractive person. And so on… A study that supports this is: Berscheid et al (1971): · Subjects were split into High Probability of rejection and low POR · High POR got to meet their dates before the dance to either reject or accept them. · Low POR was told that their dates agreed to go with whoever was chosen for them by the computer programme. · Results showed that attractive subjects choose equally popular and attractive dates compared to High POR who choose more unattractive dates. · As this was not different in the two groups increasing fear of rejection doesn’t affect the choosing stagey. · In conclusion, the matching principle may be a determinant of initial contact but not of maintaining already established relationships. Critical thinking: A positive of this study is that it can be reproduced therefore future studies can repeat the experiment to test the results. This is positive because it adds creditability to the study if the results are the same or similar. On the other hand, this study has low temporal validity; how time affects the results; because in this modern age of online dating and the crazy world of dating. It’s possible that the results would be different as the computer programmes that had chosen the dates for the two groups could be more reliable or choose different dates for the two groups. Using more modern programmes to calculate the best match for the person. Summary: In conclusion, the two major cognitive explanations are: · Similarity attraction hypothesis that states that people are attracted to those you have something in common with, as supported by Byrne (1981) · The matching hypothesis that states people are attracted to those who are equally socially desirable. I hope that you've enjoyed today's psychology blog post. Please consider signing up for my newsletter to receive your free book. Have a great week everyone.

Hello everyone, I hope that you're week is going well. Today's post is on social psychology and sociocultural psychology methods. This is an extract from my new book Sociocultural Psychology: (It should be available for pre-order in the next week or two) In this chapter, we’ll be investigating how social psychology is researched. In social psychology, you can take two approaches to research. Firstly, you can take the root of observations. This is where you observe behaviour in order to learn about it. Secondly, you can take the empirical approach. This is where you take scientific methods can use them to examine behaviour. Research process: The first step to any good piece of social psychological research is to have a good research process. The research process goes in the following way: · You create your question. Like: what causes conformity? · You develop a theory or refer to past theories to answer your question · You develop an experiment and then you test your theory. · If your theory isn’t supported then this leads to reduced confidence in theory so you can reject the theory or modify the theory taking you back to the develop experiment phrase. · If your theory is supported then your confidence in the theory increases. Overall, the stages of the research process are one big circular cycle as you try to answer your research question. Tools of social psychology: In social psychology, there is a wide range of research tools that social psychologists can use to study behaviour. Qualitative: In short, qualitative research is when you create thick rich descriptions of text as your data instead of hard numbers. Please see Research in Psychology for more information. Some examples of qualitative research methods in social psychology include: · Thematic analysis- you analyse the themes of a situation to find something. · Conversational analysis- you analyse the conservation to find something. · Narrative analysis- one way of doing this type of analysis is by analysing the patient’s narratives to discover the patient’s emotional state, unconscious thoughts and as a type of therapy. · Discourse analysis- you analyse any discourse; written, spoken and more; to find something. · Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) Quantitative: The opposite of Qualitative research is quantitative research, where you use hard factual numbers in your research data. Some examples of this type of research include: · Surveys and questionnaires · Experiments · Field experiments · Archival experiments · Observations · Case study Issues in social psychology: In this last section, we’ll be looking at the many problems that social psychology has faced. Firstly, social psychology and pretty much all social science fields are prone to sample bias because most psychology participants are from the western world and undergraduate psychology students. Meaning that you potentially cannot say the behaviour showed with these studies are universal as psychology undergraduate are a very small percentage of the human population. In addition, in reason years social psychology has faced The Crisis where multiple famous research papers that have revolutionised the field and the world were found out to be falsified by the researchers. Overall, these are only a small number of problems that social psychology faces but it must be remembered that it is only a very select few researchers that falsified data. I hope that you've found this useful and please consider signing up for my mailing list to receive for FREE book and get more psychology news. Have a great week everyone!