15th May 2017
We’ve all heard about or seen the studies that claim that having a pet is good for a child; whether it be companionship, social skills or reducing the likelihood of developing allergies or asthma. Until now however, the science as to how exactly having a pet advantages children socially and emotionally has not been widely More…
9th February 2017
Personality has long thought to be a fairly stable construct. Sure, people might change slightly over the course of their life due to circumstance, major life events and the natural process of ageing and maturing but all in all people tend to stay the same. A new piece of research in Psychology and Ageing has found More…
5th September 2016
A Swedish car home put their nurses on a 6 hour work day for about a year in order to see if it increases productivity. The results were somewhat surprising. It was found that compared to another sample in a similar facility those nurses who worked 6 hours a day (on an 8 hour salary) More…
22nd June 2016
With the EU referendum now less than a day away most of us will have made up our minds which way we are voting. We like to think we’ve made this decision based on sound reasoning and evidence based on the facts, however research has suggested that we may not be as in control of More…
15th April 2015
“We were told it didn’t matter how high we lifted our arms, but it mattered to me! Because I felt the whole point of the exercise was to lift our arms.” (Participant in mindfulness group for stroke patients) It seems the ultimate paradox that mindfulness practice is making the well-trodden path in the British media More…
24th February 2015
Everyone knows rugby can be a pretty brutal full-contact sport where players routinely pick up injuries of varying severity, but what about the risks to children who play the sport? A recent editorial in the BMJ written by Consultant Paediatric Neurosurgeon, Michael Carter warns of the dangers of full-contact rugby for children. In the article More…
1st December 2014
With daily news reports on terror attacks or ongoing fights against militants abroad it can be easy to think of terrorists as strange and scary ‘others’. However, with more and more reports of British Muslims apparently becoming ‘radicalised’ and leaving to fight overseas it seems more important than ever to attempt to understand what draws people More…
13th November 2014
I am sure we have all at one point or another made the familiar habit of referring to the necessity of having to go to work as a somewhat inconvenience at times, especially when we would rather be lying in, going on holiday or simply anywhere else except our place of work. This narrative More…
5th November 2014
The BPS Research Digest recently posted an article detailing the ‘10 Most Controversial Psychology Studies Ever Published’. Included in the list are some studies that you will be familiar with regardless of whether you have ever studied psychology for example, the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram ‘Shock’ Experiments. The Prison Experiment was published in More…
15th August 2014
Baroness Greenfield is a senior research fellow in pharmacology at the University of Oxford. In this recent article Baroness Greenfield alludes to an ever dominant and developing era of digital technology which she argues may contain both good and bad qualities when assessing its impact on the functioning of human beings. Furthermore, she raises considerations for More…