the psychologist march 2013

psychologistthe

march 2013vol 26 no 3

The globalisationof mental illnessRoss White questions recentdevelopments

how power affects the brain 186involuntary autobiographical memories 190the long reach of the gene 194children and technology 200

£5 or free to members of The British Psychological Society

news 170careers 216reviews 226

looking back 234

Incorporating Psychologist Appointments

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Managing Editor Jon SuttonAssistant EditorPeter Dillon-Hooper Production Mike Thompson Staff journalist /Research DigestChristian Jarrett Editorial Assistant Debbie GordonOccupational DigestAlex Fradera

The Psychologist andDigest Policy Committee David Lavallee (Chair),Phil Banyard, NikChmiel, Olivia Craig,Helen Galliard, RowenaHill, Jeremy Horwood,Catherine Loveday, PeterMartin, Victoria Mason,Stephen McGlynn, TonyWainwright, PeterWright, and AssociateEditors

Associate Editors Articles Michael Burnett, Paul Curran, HarrietGross, Marc Jones, Rebecca Knibb, Charlie Lewis,Wendy Morgan, Paul Redford, Mark Wetherell,Monica Whitty, Jill WilkinsonConferences Alana JamesHistory of Psychology Nathalie ChernoffInterviews Gail Kinman, Mark SergeantReviews Lucy MaddoxViewpoints Catherine LovedayInternational panelVaughan Bell, Uta Frith, Alex Haslam, Elizabeth Loftus

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Have you heard of ‘brain fag’? ‘Ghostsickness’? ‘Koro’? All are so-called‘culture bound syndromes’ listed inDSM, the latter referring to aperson’s overwhelming belief thattheir genitals are shrinking and willdisappear.

Why have such syndromesremained largely ‘culture bound’,while Western concepts have creptacross the globe? In 2004 the NewYork Times wrote that ‘the notionthat [your soul] can catch cold(kokoro no kaze) was introduced to Japan by the pharmaceuticalindustry to explain mild depressionto a country that almost neverdiscussed it’. That article (seetinyurl.com/a4jh3ac) went on to conclude that ‘rather thanexpanding options for care for thosewho suffer, the globalization ofpsychopharmacology may ultimatelysow a monocrop of ideas abouthealth and sickness’. In this issue(p.182), Ross White raises a similarpossibility: that globalising notions of psychiatric illness may causemore harm than good.

Elsewhere there’s our usualserving of articles, interviews, news,reviews, and another excellentcontribution from a ‘New voice’.

Dr Jon Sutton

THE ISSUE

How power affects the brainIan H. Robertson on what he has dubbedthe ‘winner effect’

Involuntary autobiographical memoriesRosemary Bradley, Chris Moulin and LiaKvavilashvili with some surprisingfindings and implications

The long reach of the geneGary Lewis and Timothy Bates discussgenetic influence on politics, prejudiceand religiosity

Children and technologyJon Sutton talks to Nicola Yuill from the University of Sussex

letters 162qualitative research and the REF; rape in India; intelligence; diagnosis; newenvironmental ‘Forum’ column; and more

186

194

190

200

careers and appointments 216it’s a social psychology special as wemeet Elizabeth Stokoe and Mick Billig

186

182

pull-out

terrorist’s creed; My Mad Fat Diary; Les Misérables; How to Build a Bionic Man;and apps, radio, and more in our broader section

looking back 234

reviews 226

the work of Frances Hodgson Burnett and its commentary on mind and body inillness, with Anne Stiles

parenting next door to the bogeyman – Suzanne Dash with the latest in our seriesfor budding writers (see www.bps.org.uk/newvoices)

one on one 236…with Shivani Sharma

news and digest 170what should we worry about?; psychosocial support in Algeria; fMRIretrospective; cosmetic surgery; the gorilla on the lung; reports from the Society’s Division of Occupational Psychology Annual Conference; nuggets fromthe Society’s Research Digest; and more

society 204President’s column; Fellowship; NorthWest/North East of England BranchConference; and more new voices 232

The globalisation of mentalillness Ross White considers the issue

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Edge.org, the online soapbox forscientists and other intellectuals, haspublished the answers to its latestannual question – What should we beworried about? As usual, numerouspsychologists were invited to contribute,including many of our home-growncolleagues. Recurring anxieties werecultural homogenisation and the marchof technology, especially the internet(read all the answers athttp://edge.org/annual-question).

At the Institute of CognitiveNeuroscience, University CollegeLondon, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore believeswe should be concerned about the effectof environmental factors on thedevelopment of the adolescent brain,something she says we know little about.She highlighted the possible adverseeffects of excessive gaming and socialnetworking, and the UNICEF estimatethat 40 per cent of teenagers worldwidelack access to secondary education.‘Adolescence represents a time of braindevelopment when teaching and trainingshould be particularly beneficial. I worryabout the lost opportunity of denying theworld’s teenagers access to education,’she said.

For Susan Blackmore, what’sworrying is that we’re losing our manualskills and developing an ever deeperdependent relationship with technology.‘Whether it’s climate change, pandemics,or any of the other disaster scenarios…and we can no longer sustain ourphones, satellites and Internet servers.

What then?’ she asks. ‘Could we turnour key-pressing, screen swiping handsto feeding ourselves? I don’t think so.’

The availability of superficialknowledge at the touch of a button iscreating ‘a drearily level playing field’,according to Nicholas Humphrey at theLSE. We used to have to work hard todiscover and learn things, he said, andthe journey was arguably moreimportant than the ultimate facts. But ‘soon no one will be more or lessknowledgeable than anyone else,’Humphrey warned, ‘…it will beknowledge without shading to it, and,like the universal beauty that comesfrom cosmetic surgery, it will not turnanyone on.’

The loss of death, that’s what KateJeffery, Head of the Department ofCognitive, Perceptual and Brain Sciencesat UCL, thinks we should be worriedabout. Death allows species to improveand flourish, she said, and yet geneticresearch promises to create a world filledwith not just your grandparents’ parents’parents, and their parents, but everyoneelse’s too. ‘Truly would the generationsbe competing with each other: for food,housing, jobs, space.’

Away from the concerns of technicaland medical progress, it’s the persistenceof the gap between C.P. Snow’s twocultures that worries Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism ResearchCentre at Cambridge University. Inparticular, he thinks the gap may havewidened when it comes to the way that

sex differences are understood. ‘[T]hedebate about gender differences stillseems to polarize nature vs. nurture,’ hesaid, ‘with some in the social sciencesand humanities wanting to assert thatbiology plays no role at all, apparentlyunaware of the scientific evidence to thecontrary.’

Meanwhile, Bruce Hood, Director of the Bristol Cognitive DevelopmentCentre at the University of Bristol,argued that we should be worried aboutthe recent trend towards placing somuch value on the societal ‘impact’ ofscience research, especially its economicmerits. ‘I would submit that focusing onimpact is a case of putting the cart beforethe horse or at least not recognizing the

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Worrying on the Edge

SURVEYING OUR VALUESSocial commentators often bemoan the loss of family values and risein selfishness in contemporary Britain. A new survey of the nation’svalues paints a far more positive picture.

Last December, the Barrett Values Centre asked 4000 peopleacross the UK to pick the 10 values or behaviours that most reflectwho they are. The five most commonly chosen values were ‘caring’,‘family’, ‘honesty’ and ‘humour/fun’. Respondents also said theyexperienced values in their local community that largely matchedtheir own values, in terms of family and friendship.

It was a different story at the national level, where there was a striking disconnect between the values people would like to seereflected in the way the UK operates, and the values they perceivedto be operating. The top three desired values were: employmentopportunities, caring for the elderly and caring for the disadvantaged.Yet the top three perceived values at the national level were:bureaucracy, crime and violence, and uncertainty about the future.The UK’s ‘cultural entropy’ score (based on the proportion of negativevalues selected by respondents) was higher than eight of nine other

European nations surveyed, and higher than in the US, Canada andAustralia.

The survey was supported by the Action for Happiness movementand the UK Office for National Statistics. The chief executive of Actionfor Happiness, Dr Mark Williamson, said: ‘At a time when manypeople fear we are losing our moral foundations, this research showsthat what people in the UK actually value most of all is caring forothers.’

Critics may have concerns about the survey methodology. As wellas the reliance on self-report, respondents’ choice of values wasinevitably constrained by the values they were given to choose from.For instance, in the list of 93 national values, people could choose‘animal welfare’ but not ‘mental health’, which wasn’t in the list;‘environmental pollution’ but not ‘green space’ or ‘scientificprogress’; ‘tolerance’ but not ‘uncontrolled immigration’. CJI The United Kingdom Values Survey: Increasing Happiness by

Understanding What People Value is available in PDF form attinyurl.com/bzkqxdj

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news

NEW CENTRE IN BATHA new centre providing specialist treatmentfor anxiety disorders is to open later this yearin Bath. A partnership between the Universityof Bath and Avon & Wiltshire Mental HealthTrust, the new Centre for SpecialistPsychological Treatments of Anxiety andRelated Problems will also conduct cutting-edge research and provide assessment andtraining. BPS Fellow and CharteredPsychologist Professor Paul Salkovskis willbe the Centre’s new clinical director.

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGYREPLICATIONSIn the wake of recent concerns about thereplicability of findings in social psychology, a special issue of the journal SocialPsychology has been announced, dedicatedto replicating important results in socialpsychology. The deadline for full replicationproposals is imminent, closing on 28 Feb(grants of up to $2000 are available);proposals based on aggregating existing data have until 30 March. I tinyurl.com/bh2ctjh

NORMAN KREITMANNorman Kreitman, the psychiatrist andpsychotherapist who coined the term‘parasuicide’, to refer to non-fatal acts ofself-harm, has died aged 85. A pioneer insuicide research, he identified self-harm andprevious attempts at suicide as major riskfactors for a person later taking their ownlife. Kreitman was also a poet. ‘Yet you implyyour history/requires a unique and lovingrepair/I think that where you have comefrom/depends on where you are now’ arelines from ‘Therapist’, published in 1984.

CARE QUALITY CONCERNSConcerns have been raised by the CareQuality Commission (CQC) about thetreatment of people detained or treated inthe community under the Mental Health Act.The number of people subject to the Act hasrisen by 5 per cent, and evidence was foundin some hospitals of a lack of patientautonomy. ‘CQC is concerned that somehospitals have allowed cultures to developwhere control and containment areprioritised over treatment and care,’ said the organisation’s chief executive. CJI Full findings at tinyurl.com/adfjfr8

January saw a British RedCross psychosocial supportteam hurry to Algeria tohelp Britons who had beeninvolved in the four-daysiege and hostage crisis.The team, includingclinical psychologist DrSarah Davidson, travelledto North Africa the dayafter militants overran agas plant facility.

Davidson, DeputyClinical Director on theprofessional doctorate inclinical psychology at theUniversity of East London,said: ‘We went as part ofthe Foreign andCommonwealth Office’srapid deployment team,which is responsible forsupporting Britonsoverseas. We were there toprovide emotional supportand practical help toBritish nationals caught inthe situation, and theirrelatives.’

Part of the team’s rolewas ‘bearing witness’.Davidson said: ‘Welistened to what the peopleaffected wanted to shareand helped them think ofways of understandingtheir traumatic experiencesand how to deal withthem. Those who escapedwere worried for those

they’d left behind and they felt a hugeresponsibility forgetting the bestoutcome possible. Wehelped them focus onwhat they could do, butalso to recognise thelimitations of what theycould do. We alsoworked with them onlooking afterthemselves, for exampletrying not to spend lots

of time imagining whattheir friends were goingthrough, and encouragingthem to seek support fromfriends and partners. Asthey begin to recover itwill be important to notconstantly retell the storybut to plan points to grieve and mark whathappened.’ JSI Davidson wrote about her

work in The Psychologist

in April 2010 (seetinyurl.com/a9j2mev)

value of theoreticalwork,’ he said.

Among theinternational contingentof psychologistcontributors were MihalyCsikszentmihalyi, theman who developed theconcept of ‘flow’, andAlison Gopnik theauthor anddevelopmentalpsychologist. Like manyof his British colleagues,Csikszentmihalyihighlighted his anxietiesabout technology,especially the arrival of

3D immersive role-playinggames. The ‘incessant warfare’

involved in such games is not virtual tothe child, he warned – it’s the child’sreality – and within one or twogenerations Csikszentmihalyi believesour children will grow up unable to tellreality from imagination. ‘Of course

humanity has always had a precarioushold on reality,’ he said, ‘but it looks likewe are headed for a quantum leap intoan abyss of insubstantiality.’

Alison Gopnik is also worried aboutchildren; in particular she’s worried thatmany parents worry about the wrongthings – middle-class concerns like thedirection of push-chair seats or the rightsand wrongs of co-sleeping – but that as asociety we don’t worry enough about thebigger picture, the huge numbers ofchildren who continue to live below thepoverty line and who lack a safe, stableenvironment in which to develop.‘Children, and especially young children,are more likely to live in poverty thanany other age group,’ she said. ‘Thisnumber has actually increasedsubstantially during the past decade.More significantly, these children notonly face poverty but a more cripplingisolation and instability.’ CJI What do you think we should be worried

about? Send your thoughts [email protected]

Rapid deployment

Dr Sarah Davidson inAlgeria

PAU

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Last year marked 20 years since the firstfunctional MRI paper was published, a milestone that’s prompted a series ofretrospectives on the field (see also News,October 2011). The latest appears as aspecial section in the January issue of thejournal Perspectives on PsychologicalScience. The emphasis of the (mostly US)contributors is on ways that functionalMRI has indeed informed and constrainedcognitive psychology theories.

Recalling the advent of the technology,the section editors Mara Mather (USCDavis), John Cacioppo (University ofChicago) and Nancy Kanwisher (MIT)observed in their introduction how ‘fewevents are as thrilling to scientists as thearrival of a novel method that enablesthem to see the previously invisible’. But they also noted the later onset ofscepticism. For instance, Michael Page(University of Hertfordshire) wrote in2006 (see tinyurl.com/b8aemgq) that the explosion of fMRI ‘has not resulted ina corresponding theoretical advancement,at least with respect to cognitivepsychological theory’. Was he right?

Denise Park and Ian McDonough(University of Texas at Dallas) argued for

the major theoretical contribution of fMRIin the field of ageing. Traditional cognitivetheories – such as limited resource theoryand speed of processing theory – tendedto espouse a view of ageing as ‘a passivemodel of decline’, they said. Since then,findings from fMRI, showing, for example,bilateral activation in older brains versusunilateral activation in younger brains (to the same tasks), had fundamentallychanged this view, leading to moredynamic models of adaptation‘characterized by plasticity andreorganization of function in response to neural degradation and cognitivechallenge’.

Examples of fMRI research advancingcognitive theory are rare, admittedMichael Rugg (University of Texas atDallas) and Sharon Thompson-Schill(University of Pennsylvania), butexamples do exist. The pair describedwork comparing brain-activation patternsassociated with colour memory versuscolour perception. Results have shownthat the amount of anatomical overlapdepends on task difficulty and subjectfactors (such as a preference forverbalisation or visualising information).

These findings suggest colour isrepresented at different levels ofabstraction, available for both perceptionand memory – ‘it is arguable that no othermethod possesses the combination ofspatial resolution and coverage necessaryto identify this phenomenon,’ Rugg andThompson-Schill said.

It’s also important to note that therelationship between cognitive theory andfunctional brain imaging isn’t just one way– cognitive theory also influences the waywe interpret fMRI findings, so said JohnWixted and Laura Mickes (University ofCalifornia San Diego). They gave theexample of memory experiments in whichparticipants say whether a stimulus ismerely familiar to them (they ‘know’they’ve seen it before), or if they canactually ‘remember’ encountering it.‘Remember’ responses tend to beassociated with increased hippocampusactivity, but how to interpret this depends

fMRI retrospective

When our attention isconsumed by a challengingtask, it leaves us surprisinglyoblivious to the unexpected.In a dramatic new study, this‘inattentional blindness’ led 20 out of 24 experiencedradiologists to miss thepresence of a surprisematchbox-sized gorilla locatedon five slices of a lung CTscan (a picture is available attinyurl.com/awtbq87). Theradiologists had beensearching through severalsuch scans looking specificallyfor light, circular nodules,which are a sign of lungcancer, although they wouldusually be expected to alsonotice any other aberrantstructures.

Trafton Drew, Melissa Voand Jeremy M. Wolfe (Brigham& Women’s Hospital andHarvard University), who

conducted thestudy, wereinterested in theextent to whichexpertise at aprimarychallenging taskcan offset theeffects ofinattentionalblindness.

As expected,the radiologistsexhibited lessinattentionalblindness than acontrol group of 25 non-medical participants, none of whom spotted the gorilla.The radiologists also spottedmore of the nodules (55 percent vs. 12 per cent).Nonetheless, the degree ofinattentional blindnessexhibited by the radiologistswas striking. Eye-tracking

records showed that 12 of theradiologists who missed thegorilla had in fact looked rightat it for an average of half asecond.

‘It would be a mistake to regard these results as anindictment of radiologists,’Drew and his colleaguesconcluded. ‘As a group, they

are highly skilledpractitioners of avery demandingclass of visualsearch tasks. Themessage of thepresent results is that even thishigh level ofexpertise doesnot immunizeagainst inherentlimitations ofhuman attention

and perception.’The researchers said

that furthering ourunderstanding of theseprocesses will help in thedesign of optimal medical andother search tasks, sominimising the risk ofimportant information beingmissed. CJI The study is in press at

Psychological Science

Spotting the gorilla on the lung



news

on cognitive psychology theory. The dual-process signal-detection model says thismeans the hippocampus supportsrecollection. By contrast, the continuousdual-process (CDP) model says that‘remember’ responses reflect the strengthof the memory signal (regardless ofwhether it’s based on recollection orfamiliarity), and that hippocampusactivity is therefore a mark of memorysignal strength, not recollection per se.

A more sceptical contribution camefrom Max Coltheart (MacquarieUniversity, Sydney). He highlighted a review he published with others lastyear of cognitive neuroimaging articlespublished in leading journals between2007 and 2011. Of the 199 articlesconcerned with cognitive functions, just10 per cent had attempted ‘any kind ofevaluation of cognitive theories.’ Coltheartalso warned against what he called the‘consistency fallacy’ – the tendency forbrain imaging researchers to report waysthat their results are consistent with somecognitive theory without pointing out‘explicitly what pattern(s) ofneuroimaging data that are inconsistentwith the theory could plausibly have beenobtained in the neuroimaging study’.

Wrapping up the special section, MaraMather and her co-editors shared theirview that fMRI can inform cognitivetheory by helping to answer fourquestions: ‘Which (if any) functions canbe localized to specific brain regions? Canmarkers of Mental Process X be foundduring Task Y? How distinct are therepresentations of different stimuli ortasks? And, do two Tasks X and Y engagecommon or distinct processingmechanisms?’ But the editors also listedfMRI’s limitations, including its inabilityto demonstrate the causal role of brainactivity, and the limits of its spatialresolution, with each voxel reflecting the activity of hundreds of thousands ofneurons.

‘The best approach to answeringquestions about cognition’, theyconcluded, ‘therefore is a synergisticcombination of behavioral andneuroimaging methods, richlycomplemented by the wide array of othermethods in cognitive neuroscience.’ CJI All 12 contributions to the special section

are at pps.sagepub.com/content/8/1.toc Please send your verdict on thecontribution of fMRI to cognitive theory [email protected]

Psychological assessment is at the heart of new cosmeticsurgery ‘professional standards’ guidelines published by theRoyal College of Surgeons. The new document states that itshould be standard practice to discuss relevant psychologicalissues with a patient during consultation prior to cosmeticsurgery. ‘It is neither possible nor necessary for every patientto undergo a detailed psychological assessment with aclinical psychologist,’ the document states. ‘However, allpractitioners should consider if they should refer a patient toa clinical psychologist before proceeding with furtherconsultations or treatments and referral pathways should be in place.’

The guideline draws particular attention to patients with a history of psychiatricproblems, especially eating disorders, body dysmorphic disorder or personalitydisorders. Concerns about cosmetic gynaecological surgery are also addressed, and it’sstated that: ‘High levels of anxiety regarding body image where appearance is within thenormal range should trigger psychological referral.’

Among the contributors to the professional standards document were CharteredPsychologist and Associate Fellow Dr Andy Clarke, a Consultant Clinical Psychologistin Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the Royal Free Hospital; and CharteredPsychologist and Associate Fellow Professor Nichola Rumsey, Research Director of theCentre for Appearance Research, University of the West of England. CJI Professional Standards for Cosmetic Practice is at tinyurl.com/axnmeqc

info For more, see www.bps.org.uk/funds

Funding bodies should e-mail news toElizabeth Beech on [email protected] forpossible inclusion

FUNDING NEWSThe Wellcome Trust has launched The Hub atWellcome Collection, an initiative to provideresources and a stimulating space forresearchers and other creative minds tocollaborate on an interdisciplinary projectlinked to the Trust’s vision of improvinghuman and animal health. Up to £1m isavailable for up to two years. Applications canbe made by universities, charitable bodiesand other not-for-profit organisations.Preliminary applications deadline: 3 May 2013.I tinyurl.com/azptrs2

The Worshipful Company of Curriers hashealthcare bursaries available to enableestablished primary healthcare professionalsto undertake research or personal study toenhance the healthcare of families andchildren in inner London who, through socio-economic deprivation or other adverse socialfactors, are at high risk of physical andpsychological illness. Further details areavailable on the website. The closing date forapplications is 31 March 2013. I tinyurl.com/a6q7k6x

The ESPRC has a call to fund Centres forDoctoral Training. The closing date foroutline proposals is 4 April 2013. I tinyurl.com/9wd6fq6

The BBSRC Strategic Longer and LargerGrant scheme is open for the submission of outline proposals. Applications areencouraged in specific strategic areas,including ageing across the life-course.Deadline for outline applications: 18 April 2013.I tinyurl.com/y6v8y2e

The Society for Education, Music andPsychology Research (SEMPRE) has twogrant schemes available: I The Arnold Bentley New Initiatives Fund:

one grant of up to £3000 to support newinterdisciplinary initiatives concerned withthe advancement or promotion of researchin the psychology of music or musiceducation.

I Reg and Molly Buck Award: one grant of upto £2500 to support a postdoctoral researchproject in an area of study that embracesSEMPRE’s aims.

Applications to both schemes can be made atany time. I www.sempre.org.uk/awards

Cosmetic surgeryguidelines


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Silent witnesses: Usingtheatre to combat crimeHow can we reduce the risk ofchildren who witness or experienceviolent crime becoming perpetratorsthemselves? Perhaps some answers willbe gleaned from Silent Witnesses, an18-month long collaboration betweenTheatre Centre and seniordevelopmental psychologists DrEdward Barker and Dr NatashaKirkham from Birkbeck, University ofLondon.

Working with Year Five pupilsacross 10 inner-city primary schoolsfrom Birmingham, Cardiff, Liverpool,London and Manchester, SilentWitnesses will aim to help children deal with violence they may have witnessed in theircommunity, on television or in computer games. The project also seeks to raiseawareness among parents and teachers of the role they can play in improving children’ssafety and well-being. It will culminate with a tour of a new play by Ed Harris in spring2014, commissioned and produced by Theatre Centre.

The project comprises three stages. First, the pupils will participate in a two-dayresidential programme run by playwright Ed Harris and Dr Kirkham. These involvecreative writing workshops and group discussion. Then Harris will draw upon thematerial created in the workshops and the conversations held in schools to create ascript that will be developed and rehearsed by Theatre Centre. The production will thenbe toured to targeted primary schools across the UK. Children, teachers and parents ofchildren at participating schools will complete pre-play and post-play questionnairesevaluating their attitudes to violence and their responses to the play.

By the end of the 18-month long project researchers from Birkbeck will havegathered evidence from over 5000 children, teachers and parents about the role ofcreative expression in changing responses to, and understanding of, violent behaviour.

Dr Barker said: ‘We hope that by including children’s voices in the development ofthe play we will help to engender an atmosphere where children can talk to adultsabout their experiences of witnessing violence, and adults are equipped to supportchildren and help them reduce their potential to react aggressively themselves.’

Emma Penzer, Headteacher at Mandeville Primary School, Hackney, said: ‘Thisproject will be of great benefit to the children and staff at Mandeville Primary School.Gilpin Square and other neighbouring areas experience a high level of crime. Manychildren have witnessed shootings, knife crimes and criminal damage, amongst othercrimes. Very rarely do they talk about them, particularly to school staff.’ JS

HUMAN BRAIN PROJECTA project to create a computer simulation of the human brain has won €1 billion offunding from the European Commission aspart of a Future and Emerging Technologiescompetition. It’s hoped the Human BrainProject will lead to medical benefits,including advances in diagnosis, and thedevelopment of systems with brain-likeintelligence (www.humanbrainproject.eu).

STANDARD GUIDELINES CALLPsychologists at the University of Sussexhave called for standardised globalguidelines on what constitutes safe levels ofalcohol consumption. Richard de Visser andNina Furtwængler looked at governmentguidelines across 57 countries and foundhuge discrepancies, including a 10-folddifference in accepted blood alcohol levels fordrivers. ‘Agreed guidelines would be usefulfor international efforts to reduce alcohol-related harm by increasing people’s capacityto monitor and regulate their alcoholconsumption,’ said de Visser (seetinyurl.com/a9aypum).

ROBOT INTERVIEWSLeading questions are known to provokeinaccurate information from eye-witnesses,but intriguing new research suggests thisisn’t the case when a robot does theinterviewing. The findings by MississippiState University researchers were reportedby New Scientist and are due to be presentedat the Human–Robot Interaction Conferencein Tokyo this month.

MORE NEGATIVE OUTCOMESThe UK Council for Psychotherapy and theBritish Psychoanalytic Council (BPC) havepublished a survey of their members, whichthey argue shows longer-term psychotherapyon the NHS is under threat. Seventy-sevenper cent of the 800 therapists surveyed saidthat they’d observed negative outcomes forclients as a result of cuts to services. GaryFereday (Chief Executive of BPC) said ‘IAPT[improving access to psychological therapies]services are helping many people, but theservice was intended to be a way ofimproving access, and not become the onlyservice available.’

Months after the UK governmentlaunched its new suicide preventionstrategy for England, the latest publishedfigures from the Office National Statisticsshow that suicides rose significantly in theUK in 2011, with 437 more people takingtheir own lives compared with 2010 (a rise of 11.1 to 11.8. deaths per 100,000population).

The latest figures show men remain atparticular risk, with three times the number

of suicides compared with women. Forboth men and women, the rate of suicidewas highest among the middle-aged. A decade prior to 2010, male suicides hadbeen almost consistently in decline. Femalesuicides declined from 2004 to 2007, buthave mostly been rising ever since.

For information on a recentSamaritans report on suicide and thegovernment suicide prevention strategy,see November News. CJ

Suicide rates rising

Dr Edward Barker and Dr Natasha Kirkhamat a workshop in Hackney


214 vol 26 no 3 march 2013

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One personality to rule them all?

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division of occupational psychology conference

The general factor of personality, or GFP,is analogous to g, the intelligence quotientthat predicts to differing degrees themultiple intelligences – verbal, musical,numerical – that sit below it. Thissymposium at the Division ofOccupational Psychology’s AnnualConference reminded us that whereasSpearman posited g in the 1900s, andThurstone the model of multipledifferential intelligences in the 1920s, it took until the 1950s for Phillip Vernon to finally reconcile the models.

Practitioners who use personalityemphasise its differential qualities: manyfacets, no one right profile. But theresearchers who advocate GFPargue that there is indeed sucha thing as having lots ofpersonality, and this globalfactor is meaningful as itpredicts a range of lifeoutcomes. Critics questionwhether the GFP is down tostatistical artefacts, such as anindividual’s desire for socialdesirability influencing all theirquestionnaire responses.

Rob Bailey, of OPP, used hispresentation to question whether a GFPcould truly be useful for practitioners. Hepointed out the global factor is describedas reflecting people who are relaxed,sociable, emotionally intelligent, satisfiedwith life, and altruistic, with a low scoremeaning the opposite of these things. Hechallenged the audience to imagine caseswhere such information could be providedto an individual in any constructivefashion, compared to the conventionalprofiling approach. Bailey then presenteda data set of over 1200 individuals paid tocomplete a 16-factor personalityquestionnaire, the absence of career

implications givingthem littleincentive to ‘fakenice’ and applyspin to theirresults. His analysissuggested thatfolding factorstogether into moreglobal ones lostpower in predicting

variables like job

satisfaction, and that granular measuresmay be a better bet.

Rainer Kurz and Rob McIver of SavilleConsulting also presented, looking moresympathetically at how a GFP-approachmight be useful. McIver’s presentationshowed the farthest extent of their work,which explores focusing less on oneinvariant global factor in favour of aparticular super-score that predictssuccess for a particular job. Hedemonstrated that when a personality testis built item by item to fit with the aspectsof job success that matter in the role, thiscriterion-based approach can let youproduce single personality super-scoresthat are good predictors of success. Thedata suggested that with methodologicalpruning of what traits to value and whichto discount, even tests that aren’tdeveloped this way can be effectivepredictors. This approach is very differentfrom a purely statistics-driven factorextraction of a global factor, and calls forpsychologists to know their psychometricsand understand the target job. But itseems a promising direction to take in thisarea. AF

A BALANCING ACTWho is responsible for work–lifebalance? The individual, theorganisation, or even thelegislative system? That was thequestion posed at the start ofthis symposium, and it becameclear that ‘one size fits all’policies and practices don’texist: we must tailor solutionsaccording to needs and wants.

First up was Dr Ellen ErnstKossek (Purdue University, USA),who identified the importance offeeling in psychological controlof boundaries. Based on threevalidated measures of ‘cross roleinterruption behaviours’,‘boundary control’ and‘work–family identitycentralities’, Kossek outlineddifferent profiles. You’re eitheran ‘integrator’ or a ‘separator’,or you cycle between the two: a ‘volleyer’. Add in considerationof whether your well-being levelis high or low and you end up

with six styles, including the‘fusion lovers’ who are happy tointegrate work and family life,the ‘job warriors’ who volleyaway to their heart’s discontent,and ‘captives’ who are theseparators with low well-being.It’s also important to note thatalthough most measures ofwork–life balance focus on thefamily, it’s an issue for thechildless too.

The image of WinstonChurchill in his pyjamas, as an early remote worker, was a rousing one to begin the talk by Dr Christine Grant andcolleagues from Coventry andWarwick Universities. Grantdescribed her work to outlinecompetencies related to theeffective e-worker, and todevelop an assessment tool.Organisations can providetraining for existing and new e-workers, Dr Grant said, before

leaving us with the thought that‘a good manager is always agood manager; a bad manager is worse as an e-worker’.

It’s one thing taking yourwork home with you when you’rean academic, but anotherentirely when you’ve just beenpulling a family out of somemotorway wreckage. Dr AlmuthMcDowall (University of Surrey)looked at work–life balance self-management strategies in thepolice force, eliciting 134behaviours from interviews.Some were context-specific, forexample in the police it’s actuallyvery important not to take workhome with you, as it isconfidential and often intrusivematerial. McDowall saidcommunication and negotiationover work–life balance is vital,and that there is a separatecompetence for line managingwork–life balance in others.

Finally, Professor GailKinman (University ofBedfordshire) tackled a subjectclose to home for many: work–life conflict in UK academics. Shenoted that academics vary in theextent to which they wish theirroles to be integrated, with manyhighly absorbed in the job roleand most working considerablyover the 48-hour working timedirective. In Kinman’s survey of760 academics in at least 99universities, most academicsweren’t getting the separationthey wanted. Working at homeand ICT use predicted work–lifeconflict. Kinman called forenhanced sensitivity to variationin boundary management stylesand preferences amongstcolleagues and supervisors,citing the example of sending e-mails at the weekend aspotentially role modelling thatbehaviour for the recipient. JS




LIFETIMEACHIEVEMENTThe 2011 Lifetime AchievementAward went to John Toplis, anexpert in top managementselection. Now semi-retired, formany years Toplis was head ofpsychological services at the PostOffice. He was also mentoredearly in his career by DickBuzzard, who founded theDivision of OccupationalPsychology.

Toplis used his talk to share a shopping list of seven concernshe has about the practice ofoccupational psychology todayand in the future: 1. The fact that only very short

training is needed to enableanyone (psychologist or not) touse the best psychometrictests.

2. Licensed test-users arequalified for life, whichdisregards inevitable changesin best practice.

3. How to integrate results fromstaff annual appraisals withthe results obtained whenexisting staff are sent toassessment centres – ‘What ifa sterling member of staffflunked at 24-hourassessment?’

4. The diagnostic skills ofoccupational psychologists arestill in the dark ages, ‘it’s ahuge black hole’, with mosthaving no training in how todiagnose and treatorganisational problems.

5. Are occupational psychologistsaware of recent threats to thescientific freedom of speech?(Toplis mentioned SimonSingh’s troubles with theBritish ChiropracticAssociation).

6. Are we taking sufficient note of advances in devices formeasuring brainwaves, andthe potential these may havefor assessing and developingcognitive abilities?

7. Finally, Toplis made a case forestablishing a new advisorybody, an independentorganisation to ‘assess theimpact of work, workingpractices and legislation atwork.’ CJ

Evidence-basedmanagementMost managers use everythingbut the evidence, lamentedMichael Frese of the NUSBusiness School, Singapore,and Leuphana University,Germany, in his keynote onevidence-based management.They use obsolete knowledge,draw on personal experience,they apply specialised skills togeneral situations, they’re asucker for hype (following thelatest popular book), and theymindlessly mimic top businessperformers.

Part of the problem, Fresebelieves, is with the field’sacademic journals. Hecriticised the Harvard BusinessReview for its plethora ofanecdotes, misguidedassessments of the literature,and for proliferating confusingconcepts like ‘deep smarts’(instead of ‘expertise). ‘Sciencedoes not produce actionableknowledge,’ Frese said,‘managers do not know thelittle evidence that there is,even business journals are notvery good at providingevidence to managers, andconsultants are often negligentin their role to translateevidence into actions.’

Evidence-basedmanagement aims to overcomethese problems by goingbeyond personal experienceand single studies. It usesmeta-analyses and systematicreviews to combine theevidence from multiplestudies, thereby cancelling outthe biases of individual studiesand allowing identification ofmoderating factors.

Medicine has shown ushow to use evidenceprofessionally, Frese said, andevidence-based managementcan translate this approach,using the current bestevidence to inform managerialdecisions. Here Frese struck amore optimistic tone – ‘thecorrelations being produced inmedicine are not that

outrageously differentfrom the correlations weproduce in occupationalpsychology,’ he said.

Take the example ofthe relationships betweenpersonality characteristicsand entrepreneurialsuccess. A meta-analysis of thecomplex literature showed thatthere is a relationship (needfor achievement,innovativeness and proactivityare all important; risk takingnot so much), despite awidespread belief of a lack ofany relationship. Indeed, thecorrelation between thesepersonality characteristics andsuccess was high – ‘equivalentto the effect of Viagra’ inmedical research, Frese said.

How to apply the findings from evidence-basedmanagement? Frese cited a study aboutinternationalisation andsuccess from 2007, whichshowed an internationalapproach was advantageousfor young firms and smallfirms, but that this wasmoderated by country – it wastrue for American firms and,to a lesser extent, Europeanfirms, but not for Japanese.

Frese’s approach wouldn’tbe to fly out to a Japanesecompany and simply tell themnot to bother goinginternational. Rather, he’d say,‘You have to worry more, youhave to be more attentive tohow you internationalisecompared to an Americanfirm.’ The reasons for theJapanese situation may have todo with culture or language –we don’t know – but theimportant message is‘evidence-based management isnot a recipe; you have to thinkabout it, use your knowledgeand expertise, be vigilant andhave a good feedback system’.

To help translate scienceinto actionable science-basedmanagement, Frese has

developed an Action Principlesapproach, incorporating anaction pathway includinggoals, information search,planning, execution andfeedback. He gave an exampleof the success of small firms in Africa, drawing on a meta-analysis that highlighted theimportance to success ofpersonal initiative (made up of the factors self-starting,proactivity and overcomingbarriers). Frese and hiscolleagues conducted arandomly controlled trial,training entrepreneurs inUganda for three days to bemore proactive andanticipatory in their planning.The trained entrepreneursoutperformed controls, and inone striking example, it wasthose entrepreneurs who’dundergone the training whoadapted to a visit by theQueen and turned it to theiradvantage, an outcomemediated by their increasedpersonal initiative.

The small business ownersdidn’t start conductingregression analyses, Freseexplained. Rather, they startedasking more questions, payingattention to feedback, seeingwhat worked and adopting theperspective of the customer –what would a customer seehere, what would bother him?The policy implications arehuge, Frese concluded. If 10per cent of small businessmanagers undertook the sametraining, on average they’deach employ two to three extraemployees, which wouldtranslate into hundreds ofthousands more employedacross the country. CJ

Success of small firms wasconnected to the importance ofpersonal initiative


The complexity of the bankingcrisis was brought home byBinna Kandola of Pearn Kandola(with help from Rose Challengerof Leeds University BusinessSchool) in an interactive sessionthat applied socio-technicalsystems theory to the collapseof the Lehman Brothers bank in2008.

Kandola described how thebank’s demise was caused by asystem-wide failure. There wereissues of leadership (Chairmanand CEO Richard S. Fuld, Jr. andhis deputy Joseph Gregory wereoverconfident, egocentric andfell victim to groupthink); issuesaround goals (e.g. ‘growth at allcosts’, governments wantingmore home-owners, negligentratings agencies); issues ofculture (mergers were allowedin defiance of financialregulations); of processes andprocedures (the bank’s own riskprocedures weren’t followed); oftechnology (even economistsdidn’t understand the newfinancial products); andinfrastructure (which led tosituations such as people in

Hong Kong owning the deeds ofproperty belonging to people inCalifornia).

Regarding the largerfinancial crisis, this was also a system-wide failure, not just a banking failure, Kandola said – and there’s a need to addressthe whole system to stop ithappening again, including thewider political culture. As anexample, Kandola pointed to theknighthood awarded to the CEOof the Royal Bank of Scotland,Fred Goodwin in 2004 (laterannulled in 2012). ‘He didn’t givethat knighthood to himself,’Kandola said.

After a group discussionabout whether the financialcrisis was due to flaws in thedesign of the system, or to afailure to properly implementthe system, Kandola warned‘this will happen again’. He saidfinancial protections were put inplace back in the 1920s after thelast global financial meltdown,which stopped it happeningagain for a long time. ‘Butgradually people lifted the safetynets…’ CJ

178 vol 26 no 3 march 2013


BANKING CRISIS

In search ofrationalityAccording to keynote speaker Gerard Hodgkinson (Professor of Strategic Management and Behavioural Science at WarwickBusiness School), ‘Descartes’ error is alive and well in theworkplace’. In a bold and wide-ranging address, Hodgkinsonmade the case for why and how occupational psychology needsto connect with the social neurosciences.

Hodgkinson is bringing psychology into the field ofstrategic management, trying to help decision makers becomemore rational. Take how organisations tend to respond to a major threat or opportunity (HMV and Blockbuster come to mind as I write this). Usually there are small, incrementalchanges, and when it becomes apparent this isn’t sufficient,what does the organisation do? Nothing. There is a period of ‘strategic drift’. Then there is a period of ‘flux’, which onHodgkinson’s graphic representation looks rather like atailspin. This is followed by ‘phase 4’, ‘transformationalchange’ or ‘complete demise’.

But to what extent can psychology shed light on thisprocess? Hodgkinson’s 2002 book The Competent Organization

No dearth of thinkingBar a bit of ‘Gangnam style’ inthe speed networking session,my introduction to this year’sDOP conference was RobBriner’s annual iconoclastictalk on becoming more of anevidence-based psychologist.

The University of Bathprofessor was on fine form asever, always on hand with aquote that sounds throwawaybut really gets you thinking:‘experts are not good people to ask about stuff’, and ‘singlestudies in general just don’tmatter’. (That one led todiscussions around a change of practice on the Society’s own Occupational Digest: seetinyurl.com/occdigrob).

Briner challenged theaudience to think about howmuch evidence there actually isfor a lot of psychology’s corefindings, and what proportionof it they are aware of. Are wereally ‘standing on theshoulders of giants’? Or are wecaught up in the narrative of ‘Ithas been demonstrated that…’,

seduced by the confidentlanguage of most journalarticles? ‘I’ve only ever seen theword “dearth” in the context ofliterature reviews,’ Brinermused. ‘Nobody goes to thefridge and says “Oh, there’s adearth of milk”.’

According to Briner,systematic reviews are whereit’s at. The audience werechallenged to work withoccupational psychologycolleagues to develop groupswho conduct and share rapidevidence assessments. Prepareto have cherished beliefs andpreferred techniqueschallenged, become moreefficient at reading journalarticles and consider whatdatabases you have access to.Briner left us with the thoughtthat ‘people who say I don’tknow often know a lot morethan people who don’t say it’:accept and be explicit aboutignorance, and a different andmore rewarding way ofworking lies ahead. JS

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argued the case for the centrality of the psychologicalcontribution to organisational learning and strategicadaptation, yet 11 years on, he said, there was still only apassing consideration of affective and non-conscious cognitiveprocesses. Why do we continue to sidestep it?

Using examples from his practice, Hodgkinsondemonstrated how strategising is both an inherently cognitiveand affective process. Eliciting a cognitive taxonomy fromsenior figures in a UK grocery firm, he found that although themarket conditions had changed dramatically, mental models –individually and collectively – had not. Decision makers wereslaves to their basic psychological processes, for example stillfocusing on the ‘magic number’ of ‘7 plus or minus 2’competitors. Hodgkinson showed how he confronts strategicinertia in top management teams, stimulating individualcognitive processes by scenario analysis. Some organisationsexcel at this: Hodgkinson claims that Shell closed all theirfacilities within 45 minutes of 9/11. While others were stillstruggling to comprehend what was happening, their scenarioplanning had allowed them to take quick and decisive action.

Hodgkinson’s latest research draws on social cognitiveneuroscience and neuroeconomics to develop a series ofcounterintuitive insights. His hope is that these can teachpeople to be more skilled in their control of their emotional,limbic system. True rationality, he concluded, is the product of the analytical and experiential mind. JS



Emotions at work‘Part of being a manager is faking it,’ said PhD student ChiaraAmanti of Edinburgh Napier University. ‘This doesn’t really comeup in the emotional intelligence literature. Yet emotionalregulation is required to get on in life and with people.’

Amanti interviewed eight managers in a university and thenanalysed the transcripts using interpretative phenomenologicalanalysis. All of them agreed that regulating emotions is a highlyimportant part of being a manager. In fact, it grew more importantwith increasing seniority, such that many felt they could never beemotionally spontaneous at work.

The most interesting thing for Amanti was that this alsoapplied to positive emotions, not just to controlling negativeemotions like anger and frustration. For instance, one managerrecalled how she’d ‘gushed’ with wonder and delight at theperformance of a new lecturer during a review, and yet themanager admitted to Amanti ‘I wasn’t really pleased or happy but I felt that was what was needed.’

The interviewees differed in how they felt about the pressureof regulating their emotions. One male manager said there werecertain emotions he simply didn’t feel at work. It’s as if he had fullyinternalised the role and the organisation’s objectives, such that hefelt no contradiction with a ‘true self’. Others made a distinctionbetween their managerial identity and their genuine selves, withboth having value. Another man experienced far more tension,tying himself in knots trying to be genuine at work, which he feltwas important, while also not really showing his true feelings.

Amanti concluded with an impassioned case for the value ofher methodological approach. ‘We want to find simple models, toshow a correlation, the high variance that’s explained – that’s partof what psychology is – but actually when you get talking topeople, their experience is so much more complex, full ofparadoxes and contradictions. If we miss that, the interventionswe develop are poorer as a result.’ CJ

Can occupational psychologyplay a part in saving theworld? Absolutely, insistedProfessor Stuart Carr in hiskeynote presentation. After all,work is deeply woven into theworld, so transforming onecan influence the other. Carrbrought this home throughexamples of the UnitedNation’s 2015 MillennialDevelopment Goals; theseinclude reduction of poverty,which manifests in the wagesthat workers derive; education,which depends on thecapability of teachers andother staff; and genderequality, which can becombated in the workplaceswhere we spend much of ourwaking hours.

This exemplifies ahumanitarian approach towork psychology, ensuringdecent work for all workersand ensuring that the workthey do meets responsibilitiestowards multiple stakeholders,rather than the bottom line.Carr provided some examplesof how he and collaboratorsare making inroads into this,for instance by organising aGlobal Special Issue onPsychology and Povertyreduction that spannedmultiple journals, raisingawareness of how psychologycan point at these issues (seehttp://poverty.massey.ac.nz/#globalissue).

Carr also raised anotherway to use psychology toimprove the world: byapplying it directly to theconditions of those involved in humanitarian work. Theseroles can involve risk and bedemanding, so it would beuseful to investigate thisand take steps to fosterwell-being. And any way to improve the impact ofthe humanitarian workitself would obviously bebeneficial. Carr reported onthe creation of onlinenetworks such asHumanitarian WorkPsychology (seewww.humworkpsy.org)

that connect researchers,students and those on theground, who are commonlyisolated, to allow them toshare knowledge and put it to work on actual problems.

So we can change theworld through ‘humanitarian’work psychology to makeconditions of work decenteverywhere, coupled with‘humanitarian work’psychology that focusesattention on those aspiring to be levers of change in theworld. Further examplesabounded in the presentation,including a global task force to address pay disparities inhumanitarian work: the dualpay levels for foreign andnational staff causingdistancing of the two groupsdue to negative appraisals –the former rationalising thelatter’s low pay as reflectingtheir capability, the latterbecoming demotivated anddistrustful of the attitude ofthe foreigners, causing avicious cycle.

There is much more to do,and the keynote was a call toarms to the profession as awhole. As Carr reminded us,much occupational psychologywork developed in the PeaceCorps in the 1960s andfollowing, and only laterbecame concentrated in focuson the for-profit sector. A shiftis possible and long overdue.Carr likened this to a Koru,the fern frond native to manycountries including his homein New Zealand, whose spiralshape suggests a return tobeginnings, and whose swiftunfurling denotes thepossibility of change. AF

Better for all

MORE REPORTSFor more from the Division ofOccupational Psychology AnnualConference, including the dark sideof behaviour at work, see theSociety’s Occupational Digest atwww.occdigest.org.uk.


180 vol 26 no 3 march 2013

‘Happiness is as a butterfly,which, when pursued, is alwaysbeyond our grasp, but which, ifyou will sit down quietly, mayalight upon you.’ (NathanielHawthorne)

A key question for peoplehoping to improve their well-being is whether it is counter-productive to focus too hard onthe end goal of being happier.Philosophers like John StuartMill have proposed that it is – hewrote that happiness comes tothose who ‘have their mindsfixed on some object other thantheir own happiness’. Apertinent study published in2003 by Jonathan Schooler andhis colleagues supported thisidea: participants who listenedto music with the intention offeeling happier actually endedup feeling less happy thanothers who merely listened tothe music with no happinessgoal.

But now a new study hascome along which purports toshow that trying deliberately tobe happier is beneficial after all.Yuna Ferguson and KennonSheldon criticise the Schoolerstudy on the basis that themusic used – Stravinsky's Riteof Spring – is not conducive tohappiness, and that's why itinterfered with deliberateattempts to feel happier.

Ferguson and Sheldon had167 participants spend 12minutes listening either to Riteof Spring or an upbeat sectionfrom Rodeo by Copland.Crucially, half the participantswere instructed to relax and

Can you will yourselfhappier?

In the Journal of PositivePsychology

Monsieur Leborgne, nicknamed Tan Tan, for that was the only syllable he could utter (save for a swear word or two), died in the care of the neurologist Paul Broca in Paris on 17 April 1861.Arguably the most important case in the history of neuropsychology, Leborgne’s death coincidedwith a debate raging in scholarly circles about the location of language function in the brain. WhenBroca autopsied Leborgne’s brain, he observed a malformation on the left frontal lobe – ‘Broca’sarea’ – and concluded this was the site of speech production, a moment that the historian StanleyFinger has described as a ‘key turning point in the history of the brain sciences’.

Broca was far from being the first person to propose thatspeech function is located in the frontal lobes (seetinyurl.com/abtq2uv), but crucially, the evidence from Leborgnehelped him persuade the academic community. For centuriesexperts had believed mental functions were located in the brain’shollows; that the cortex (Latin for ‘husk’) was little more than a rindof tissue and blood vessels. Today, problems producing languageare still termed Broca's aphasia in recognition of Broca’s landmarkcontribution, although Broca in fact named Leborgne’s problemsaphémie (meaning ‘without speech’). The Greek term ‘aphasia’ (alsomeaning ‘speechlessness’), adopted by medicine, was coined inBroca's day by the physician Armand Trousseau.

In terms of the historical record, Leborgne is like a mirroropposite of Phineas Gage – another of neuropsychology's legendarycases. The story of Gage’s life and infamous accident, in which atamping iron shot through his brain, has been researched in depth,inspiring books, poems, YouTube skits and snowmen makers alongthe way. Yet relatively little is known about the brain damage Gagesuffered because no autopsy was performed when he died and hisbrain was never preserved (that hasn’t stopped scientists fromattempting to simulate the likely damage: tinyurl.com/a6u3ljz).

In contrast, Broca was careful to save Leborgne’s brain forposterity. He decided against a full dissection, performing a surfaceexamination only. Today the preserved organ is housed at theMusée Dupuytren in Paris, where Broca placed it. The brain hasbeen scanned numerous times using modern methods, allowingdetailed analysis of the location and nature of any lesions. We now

know that the frontal lobe damage to Leborgne’s brain was more extensive and deeper than Brocahad realised based on his superficial examinations. But, contra the situation with Gage, while weare well informed about Leborgne’s brain, before now his identity and life story have remainedlargely mysterious. Broca’s medical notes revealed little.

Thankfully, in a new paper, Cezary Domanski at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Polandhas used archive registers in France to uncover hitherto unknown detailed biographicalinformation about Monsieur Leborgne. Born in Moret-sur-Loing – the picturesque town thatinspired Monet and other impressionists – ‘Tan’s’ full name was Louis Victor Leborgne. He was theson of Pierre Christophe Leborgne, a school teacher, and Margueritte Savard. He had three oldersiblings, Lucille, Pierre and Anne, and two younger siblings, Arsene and Louise.

An epileptic since his youth, it was Leborgne’s loss of speech that led to him being hospitalisedat age 30. Unmarried, he ended up spending the remaining 21 years of his life in hospital. Beforethis incapacitation through illness, Domanski tells us Leborgne was a formier in Paris, a kind ofskilled craftsman who made the wooden forms used by shoemakers in their work. Together withthe information on Leborgne’s family, this news corrects at least one historical myth. The oft-toldidea that Leborgne ‘was an uneducated illiterate from the lower social class should once and for allbe deemed erroneous’, writes Domanski.

Based on his inquiries, the Polish historian offers an intriguing speculation – given thatLeborgne’s birthplace of Moret was home to several tanneries, Domanski wonders if his repeatedutterance of tan was somehow connected to childhood memories of the pretty town.

‘One thing remains certain,’ Domanski concludes, ‘the memory of the disease and cause ofdeath of “Monsieur Leborgne” proved far more enduring than the story of his life, which wasdeemed irrelevant even when the patient was still alive. It is time for Louis Victor Leborgne toregain his identity …’

In 2009, out of the blue, a photograph was discovered of Phineas Gage (tinyurl.com/a42wram). I wonder if we will ever look upon an image of Leborgne?

In the January issue of Journal ofthe History of the Neurosciences

DIGE

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‘Tan Tan’ regains his identity



digest

Forget shifty eyes or fidgetyfingers, psychology researchhas shown that these supposedsigns of lying are unreliable. A more useful foundation for lie-detection is the simple fact thatlying is more cognitivelydemanding than telling thetruth. False answers usuallytake slightly longer than honestresponses, especially when asuspect is burdened with anextra mental challenge, such as telling their story backwards.

However, a new studysuggests that the cognitivedemands of lying can bereduced with practice. XiaoqingHu and his team presented 48participants with dates, placenames and other informationand asked them to indicate withone of two button presseswhether the information wasself-relevant or not. In real lifethis would be equivalent to asuspect posing as a differentperson. Instructed to lie, theparticipants took longer torespond than when they told thetruth, consistent with the well-established idea that lying iscognitively demanding.

Next, a third of theparticipants were told about thereaction time difference andgiven extensive practice at lyingmore quickly about the self-relevance of information. Therequirement to get faster wasmade explicit because pastresearch found lying practicewithout such an instruction wasineffective. On retesting, thetrained participants no longertook more time to answerdishonestly compared withtelling the truth. ‘Deception ismalleable and… can bevoluntarily controlled to be moreautomatic,’ the authors said.

Another group had notraining but were told about thereaction time differencebetween lying and truth telling,and encouraged to answerfaster when lying. They gotfaster at lying compared with acontrol group, but still they werespeedier when being honest.

The researchers claim thatto be more realistic, lie-detection research basedaround the cognitive demands oflying should incorporate theeffects of practice.

observe their natural reactionsto the music. ‘It is importantthat you do not try toconsciously improve your mood,’they were told. The otherparticipants received theopposite instructions – ‘reallyfocus on improving your mood’.

Afterwards, two measuresof mood were taken – one basedon six words like ‘joyful’; theother a continuous measure ofpositive feelings. Theparticipants who’d listened tothe cheery music, andsimultaneously tried to improvetheir mood, reported feeling in a more positive mood than theparticipants who’d merelylistened to the upbeat music,and the participants who’dlistened to the down-beatmusic, whether they strived tofeel happier or not. This wasdespite the fact that the groupsdid not differ in how muchthey’d enjoyed the activity, orhow ‘pressured’ they'd felt tocomplete it.

A second study was similar,but this time 68 participantsvisited a psych lab five timesover two weeks to spend 15minutes each time listening to music they had chosen from a pre-selected list coveringvarious genres from folk to hip-hop. Again, half the participantswere instructed to focus on themusic and not their ownhappiness (they were told thatdoing so could backfire); theother half were told to think a lot about their happiness andto try to feel happier (they weretold that doing so is beneficial).

At the end of the two weeks,the group who had deliberatelytried to feel happier showed animprovement in their happinesslevels compared with baseline;in contrast, the participants who

had merely focused on themusic did not enjoy this benefit.This was despite both groupsbelieving to the same degreethat the intervention wouldmake them happier, and bothgroups enjoying their music thesame amount.

‘The results suggest thatwithout trying, individuals maynot experience higher positivechanges in their well-being,’Ferguson and Sheldonconcluded. ‘Thus practitionersand individuals interested inhappiness interventions mightconsider the motivationalmindset as an important facet of improving well-being.’

Sceptical readers may notbe so easily persuaded. Becausethere was no attempt tomeasure the participants’thought-processes, it’s difficultto know how they interpretedand acted on the two forms ofinstruction. In the second studyin particular, even though theywere told there was no need,how do we know theparticipants didn’t go to lengthsoutside of the lab to boost theirhappiness? From a statisticalpoint of view, the first studylacks any measure of change inmood.

The second study isalso complicated by themusic-focus group startingout with, and ending upwith, a slightly higheraverage happiness scorethan the happiness-focusgroup (albeit thesedifferences were notstatistically significant). Thisraises the possibility of aceiling effect for the music-focus group – perhaps theywere already too happy forthe intervention to make adifference.

Lying becomes automatic with practiceIn the November issue of Frontiers in Psychology

The material in this section is taken from the Society’sResearch Digest blog at www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog,and is written by its editor Dr Christian Jarrett. Visit the blogfor full coverage including references and links, additionalcurrent reports, an archive, comment and more.

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182 vol 26 no 3 march 2013

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Cohen, A., Patel, V., Thara, R. et al.(2008). Questioning an axiom: Betterprognosis for schizophrenia in thedeveloping world? SchizophreniaBulletin, 34, 229–244.

Crozier, I. (2011). Making up koro:Multiplicity, psychiatry, culture, andpenis-shrinking anxieties. Journal ofthe History of Medicine and Allied

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(2011). Scale up of services formental health in low-income andmiddle-income countries. Lancet.doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(11)60891-X.

Glenmullen, J. (2002). Prozac backlash:Overcoming the dangers of Prozac,Zoloft, Paxil and other antidepressantswith safe, effective alternatives. NewYork: Simon & Schuster.

Hall, G.C. (2001). Psychotherapy researchwith ethnic minorities: Empirical,ethical and conceptual issues.Journal of Consulting and ClinicalPsychology, 69, 502–510.

Harvey, P.D. & Bellack, A.S. (2009).Toward a terminology for functionalrecovery in schizophrenia: Isfunctional remission a viableconcept? Schizophrenia Bulletin, 35,300–306.

The burden (mortality anddisability) caused by mentaldisorders across the globe is on the rise. Psychiatric services fortreating mental health difficultiesare well established in high-incomecountries such as the US and UK;and the World Health Organizationhas supported the setting up ofsimilar services in low- andmiddle-income countries (LMIC).But is the globalising of psychiatricsystems of diagnosis and treatmentthe most appropriate line of action?

This article critically reflects onbiomedical explanations of mentalhealth difficulties; highlightsconcerns about the dearth ofresearch into mental healthdifficulties in LMIC; discusses thelack of emphasis that psychiatryplaces on cultural factors; andraises the possibility thatglobalising notions of psychiatricillness may cause more harm than good.

There are huge inequalities in theavailability of resources to supportmental health needs across the globe;

it is estimated that greater than 90 percent of global mental health resources arelocated in high-income countries (WHO,2005). This is all the more alarming whenwe consider that around 80 per cent ofthe world’s population live in low- andmiddle-income countries (LMIC: Saxenaet al., 2006). In countries in Africa, LatinAmerica, and south/south-east Asia under2 per cent (and often less than 1 per cent)of expenditure on health tends to go toservices for psychiatric conditions(compared to over 10 per cent in theUSA) (Kleinman, 2009). And there is a gathering mental health storm: it isprojected that by 2030, depression will be the second biggest cause of diseaseburden across the globe (Mathers &Loncar, 2006), second only to HIV/AIDS.

When four out of five people in LMICwho need services for mental, neurologicaland/or substance-use disorders do notreceive them (WHO, 2008), we have a clear ‘treatment gap’ – the differencebetween the levels of mental healthservices required by LMIC populations andwhat is actually available on the ground.Prominent clinicians and academics, aswell as international organisations such as the World Health Organization (WHO,2008, 2010), have called for the ‘scaling-up’ of services for mental health in LMIC.Scaling-up involves increasing the numberof people receiving services; increasing therange of services offered; ensuring theseservices are evidence-based, using modelsof service delivery that have been found to

be effective in a similar contexts; andsustaining these services through effectivepolicy, implementation and financing(Eaton et al., 2011). Yet in light of thelimited resources available to supportmental health, it is pertinent to askwhether it makes sense to try to exportsystems of service delivery that have beendeveloped in high-income countries toLMIC. Will this venture be sustainable inthe longer term? More importantly, willthese systems actually deliver added valuefor the increase in budgetary expenditurethat will be required?

The seductive allure ofbiological psychiatryIn high-income countries mental health services tend to gravitate aroundpsychiatry; the branch of medicine that isconcerned with the study and treatmentof mental illness, emotional disturbance,and abnormal behaviour. Biologicalpsychiatry is an approach to psychiatrythat aims to understand mental illness in terms of the biological function of thenervous system.

The rise of biological psychiatrypromised great things. Biologicalexplanations of mental illness permeatedthe public consciousness, and the huntwas on to discover the magical compoundsthat could redress the chemical imbalancesthat were purported to cause mentalillness. Various different medications havebeen developed and the marketed. In thepast 40 years the sales of psychotropicmedications have increased dramatically.Yet despite the exponential rise in sales of these medications, the evidence forbiological causes for mental illnesses suchas depression and schizophrenia remainfairly weak (Nestler et al., 2002; Stahl,2000). The continued absence of definitiveevidence to support biological processesthat are causal in mental illness has led tothe suggestion that biological psychiatry is‘a practice in search of a science’ (Wyatt &Midkiff, 2006). Despite these concerns,biological psychiatry continues to exert astrong influence on the delivery of mental

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Suman, F. (2010). Mental health, race andculture (3rd edn). Basingstoke:Palgrave Macmillan.

http://transculturalpsychiatry.gla.ac.uk

Is the scaling-up of psychiatric servicesin low- and middle-income countriesserving to undermine indigenoussources of support for mental distress?

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The globalisation of mental illnessRoss White asks whether recent developments are a problem or progress

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health services in high-income countriessuch as the UK and America.

The seductive allure of the rationaleunderlying biological psychiatry is plain to see. If mental illnesses were to haveuniversal biological causes, then standardtreatments could be readily applied acrossthe world irrespective of local differencesand associated cultural differences. Ifevidence-based practices lead to positiveoutcomes in high-income countries, thensimilar positive outcomes will be observedin LMIC. Right?

This is where the picture gets a bitmore complicated. Before we can answerthis question we need to be clear on whatwe mean by: (1) ‘evidence-based practices’and (2) ‘positive outcomes’. What isconsidered to be ‘evidence-based practice’can serve powerful economic and politicalinterests (Kirmayer & Minas, 2000). In2007, US citizens alone spent £25 billionon antidepressants and antipsychotics(Whitaker, 2010). All this in spite of thefact that claims about drug effectivenessare at times overstated, and thatpharmaceutical companies have beenfound to employ questionable researchmethodologies (Glenmullen, 2002;Valenstein, 1998; Whitaker, 2010).Professor David Healy (Psychiatrist,University of Cardiff) has stated that a‘large number of clinical trials done are not

reported if the results don’t suit thecompanies’ sponsoring (the) study’(tinyurl.com/dxlh55w). The evidence-base is heavily skewed towards researchconducted in high-income countries. Since producing hard evidence depends on the costly standards of psychiatricepidemiology and randomised clinicaltrials, it can be difficult for clinicians orresearchers in LMIC to contribute to theaccumulation of knowledge (Kirmayer,2006). The lack of mental health relatedresearch being conducted in LMICcountries is evident in the finding that over 90 per cent of papers published in athree-year period in six leading psychiatricjournals came from Euro-Americancountries (Patel & Sumathipala, 2001). An inductive, bottom-up approach toresearch emphasising the importance oflocal conceptualisations of mental healthdifficulties and focusing on local prioritiesin different LMIC is required.

Even if the research capacity in LMICcan be increased, difficulties remain. Theissue of what constitutes ‘positiveoutcomes’ in relation to mental illness hasplagued clinical practice and research formany years. There is currently no acceptedconsensus on what constitutes positiveoutcome for individuals with mentalillness. Traditionally, psychiatry has beenconcerned with eradicating symptoms of

mental illness. However, it isimportant to appreciate that clinicalsymptoms do not improve inparallel with social or functionalaspects of service users’presentation (Liberman et al.,2002). Functional outcome relatesto variables such as cognitiveimpairment, residentialindependence, vocationaloutcomes, and/or social functions(Harvey & Bellack, 2009). In thissense, using symptomatic remissionas an indicator of recovery canyield better rates of good outcomethan using indicators of functionalrecovery (Robinson et al., 2005).

Another importantconsideration relating to outcome

in mental illness relates to the extent towhich particular outcomes are culturallysensitive and inclusive (Vaillant, 2012).Marked disparities have been highlightedbetween ethnic minority groups and whitepeople in outcome, service usage andservice satisfaction (Sashidharan, 2001).The lack of culturally inclusiveunderstandings of positive outcome inmental illness is compounded by theunderrepresentation of black and minorityethnic groups in mental health relatedresearch. This has led to some concludingthat there is a lack of adequate evidencesupporting the use of ‘evidenced-based’psychological therapies with individualsfrom black and minority ethnicpopulations (Hall, 2001). Consideringthese issues, it seems that the jury is in noposition to deliver a verdict on whether‘evidence-based’ practices for mental illnessdeveloped in high-income countriesdeliver positive outcomes in LMIC.

Diagnosis and cultureDespite the question marks that remainabout the causes of mental illness, theveracity of the evidence base, whatconstitutes good outcome, and howinclusive mental health services are tocultural diversity within the population,the psychiatry-heavy perspective has a powerful say in how mental healthdifficulties are understood in LMIC.Dissenting voices have questioned thewisdom of this approach. One particularsource of dissention relates to the processof psychiatric diagnosis. The internationalclassification systems for diagnosingmental illnesses (such as depression andschizophrenia) have been criticised formaking unwarranted assumptions thatthese diagnostic categories have the samemeaning when carried over to a newcultural context (Kleinman, 1977, 1987).This issue has potentially been obscuredby the fact that the panels that finalisethese diagnostic categories have beencriticised for being unrepresentative of theglobal population. Of the 47 psychiatristswho contributed to the initial draft of the


mental illness and culture

Hopper, K., Harrison, G., Janka, A. &Sartorius, N. (Eds.) (2007). Recoveryfrom schizophrenia: An internationalperspective. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.

Kitanaka J. (2011). Depression in Japan:Psychiatric cures for a society indistress. Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press.

Kirmayer, L.J. (2006). Beyond the ‘newcross-cultural psychiatry’: Cultural

biology, discursive psychology andthe ironies of globalization.Transcultural Psychiatry, 43, 126–144.

Kirmayer, L.J. & Minas, I.H. (2000). Thefuture of cultural psychiatry: Aninternational perspective. CanadianJournal of Psychiatry, 45, 438–446.

Kleinman, A.M. (1977). Depression,somatization and the ‘new cross-cultural psychiatry’. Social Scienceand Medicine, 11, 3–10.

Kleinman, A.M. (1987). Anthropology andpsychiatry: The role of culture incross-cultural research on illness.British Journal of Psychiatry, 151,447–454.

Kleinman A. (2000). Social and culturalanthropology: Salience for psychiatry.In M.G. Gelder, J.J. Lopez-Ibor &N.C. Andreasen (Eds). New Oxfordtextbook of psychiatry. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

Kleinman A. (2009). Global mentalhealth: A failure of humanity. Lancet,374, 603–604.

Liberman, R.P., Kopelowicz, A., Ventura,J. & Gutkind, D. (2002). Operationalcriteria and factors related torecovery from Schizophrenia.International Review of Psychiatry, 14,256–272.

Lopez, S.R. & Guernaccia, P.J. (2000).Cultural psychopathology:

More than 90 per cent of global mental healthresources are located in high-income countries


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most recent World Health Organizationdiagnostic system (ICD-10: WHO, 1992),only two were from Africa, and none ofthe 14 field trial centres were located insub-Saharan Africa. Inevitably this led tothe omission of conditions that had beendescribed for many years in Africa (Patel& Winston, 1994), such as ‘brain fagsyndrome’. (This was initially a term usedalmost exclusively in West Africa,generally manifesting as vague somaticsymptoms, depression and difficultyconcentrating, often in male students.)

ICD-10 does at least acknowledge that there are exceptions to the apparentuniversality of psychiatric diagnoses byincluding what are called culture-specificdisorders. One such example is koro; a formof genital retraction anxiety which presentsin parts of Asia. Prior to ICD-10 symptompresentations such as koro tended to besubsumed into existing diagnoses such asdelusional disorder (Crozier, 2011). Butthe inclusion of culture-specific disordersonly serves to perpetuate a skewed view of the impact of culture on mental health;‘cultural’ explanations seem to be reservedfor non-Western patients/populations thatshow koro(-like) syndromes, and not fordiagnoses that are more prevalent in high-income countries (e.g. anorexia nervosa).Indeed it has been suggested that manypsychiatric conditions described in thesediagnostic manuals (such as anorexianervosa, chronic fatigue syndrome) mightactually be largely culture-bound to Euro-American populations (Kleinman, 2000;Lopez & Guernaccia, 2000). Becausepeople living in ‘Western’ countries tend to see the world through a cultural lensthat has been tinted by psychiatricconceptualisations of mental illness, they are blind to how specific to ‘Western’countries these conceptualisations actually are.

Transcultural psychiatryCulture has been defined as ‘a set ofinstitutional settings, formal and informalpractices, explicit and tacit rules, ways ofmaking sense and presenting one’s

experience in forms that willinfluence others’ (Kirmayer,2006, p.133). Interest in thepotential interplay betweenculture and mental illness firstarose in colonial times aspsychiatrists and anthropologistssurveyed the phenomenologyand prevalence of mentalillnesses in newly colonisedparts of the world. This led tothe development of a newdiscipline called transculturalpsychiatry, a branch ofpsychiatry that is concerned withthe cultural and ethnic context ofmental illness.

In its early incarnation, transculturalpsychiatry was blighted by the racistattitudes that prevailed at that time aboutthe notion of naive ‘native’ minds.However, over time this began to changeas people began to understand thatpsychiatry was itself a cultural construct.In 1977 Arthur Kleinman proposed a ‘newcross-cultural psychiatry’ that promised arevitalised tradition that gave due respectto cultural difference and did not exportpsychiatric theories that were themselvesculture-bound. Transcultural (or cross-cultural) psychiatry is now understood to be concerned with the ways in which a medical symptom, diagnosis or practicereflects social, cultural and moral concerns(Kirmayer, 2006).

Tensions exist in transculturalpsychiatry. Clinicians, who are motivatedto produce good outcomes for serviceusers, may work from the premise thatthere is cross-cultural portability ofpsychiatric or psychological theory andpractice. Although well intended, thisapproach can be met with disapprovalfrom social scientists who are focused on advancing medical anthropology as a scholarly discipline. However, it isbecoming clear that in this era of rapidglobalisation, mental health practitioners,social scientists and anthropologists needto come together and engage inconstructive dialogue aimed at developingcross-cultural understanding about how

best to meet the mental health needs ofpeople across the globe.

The need for interdisciplinary workingin promoting improved understandingabout the interplay between culture andmental illness has been demonstrated by a growing body of evidence indicating thatexporting Western conceptualisations ofmental health difficulties into LMIC canhave a detrimental impact on localpopulations. Ethan Watters’ book CrazyLike Us cites examples from different partsof the world (including China, Japan,Peru, Sri Lanka and Tanzania) where theintroduction of psychiatricconceptualisations of mental illness haspotentially changed how distress ismanifested, or introduced barriers torecovery (e.g. the emergence of expressedemotion in the families of individuals withpsychosis in Tanzania). Watters (2010)cites the work of Gaithri Fernando whohas written extensively about the aftermathof the tsunami that struck Sri Lanka in2006. Fernando claims that ‘Western’conceptualisations of trauma and thediagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stressdisorder (PTSD) were not appropriate for a Sri Lankan context. Fernando found thatSri Lankan people were much more likelyto report physical symptoms followingdistressing events. This was attributed tothe observation that the notion of amind–body disconnect is less pronouncedin Sri Lanka. Sri Lankans were also more

Uncovering the social world ofmental illness. Annual Review ofPsychology, 51, 571–598.

Mathers, C.D. & Loncar, D. (2006).Projections of global mortality andburden of disease from 2002 to 2030.PLoS Med, 3, e442.

Nestler, E.J., Barrot, M., DiLeone, R.J. etal (2002). Neurobiology ofdepression. Neuron, 34, 13–25.

Patel, V. & Prince, M. (2010) Global

mental health – A new global healthfield comes of age. JAMA, 303,1976–1977.

Patel, V. & Sumathipala, A. (2001)International representation inpsychiatric literature: Survey of sixleading journals. British Journal ofPsychiatry, 178, 406–409.

Patel, V. & Winston M. (1994). The‘universality’ of mental disorderrevisited: Assumptions, artifacts and

new directions. British Journal ofPsychiatry, 165, 437–440.

Robinson, D.G., Woerner, M.G., Delman,H.M. & Kane, J.M. (2005).Pharmacological treatments for first-episode schizophrenia. SchizophreniaBulletin, 31, 705–722.

Sashidharan, S.P. (2001). Institutionalracism in British psychiatry.Psychiatric Bulletin, 25, 244–247.

Saxena, S., Paraje, G., Sharan, P. et al.

(2006). The 10/90 divide in mentalhealth research: Trends over a 10-year period. British Journal ofPsychiatry, 188, 81–82.

Stahl, S.M. (2000). Four keyneurotransmitter systems. In S.M.Stahl (Ed.) Psychopharmacology ofantipsychotics (pp.3–13). London:Martin Dunitz.

Summerfield, D. (2008). How scientificallyvalid is the knowledge base of global

‘Western’ narratives about ‘mental illness’ continueto dominate over local understanding

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likely to see the negative consequences ofthe tsunami in terms of the impact it hadon social relationships. Because Sri Lankanpeople tended not to report problematicreactions relating to internal emotionalstates (e.g. fear or anxiety), the rates ofPTSD following the tsunami wereconsiderably lower than had beenanticipated. Fernando concluded thatWestern techniques for conceptualising,assessing and treating the distress thatpeople were experiencing were inadequate.

Watters also explores the way in whichunderstanding about depression haschanged in Japan over the last 20 years.This sobering tale allows Watters toexplore how the interplay between culturalfactors and notions of mental illness can bemanipulated for financial gain. In the1960s Hubert Tellenbach had introducedthe notion of a personality type calledTypus melancholicus. This idea heavilyinfluenced psychiatric thinking in Japan.Typus melancholicus had substantialcongruence with a respected personalitytype in Japan; ‘those who were serious,diligent and thoughtful and expressedgreat concern for the welfare of others…prone to feeling overwhelming sadnesswhen cultural upheaval disordered theirlives and threatened the welfare of others’(Watters, 2010; p.228). Although at theend of the 20th century there had been apsychiatric term in the Japanese languagefor depression (utsubyô), this tended torelate to a rare and very debilitatingcondition. Prior to 2000 there had been noreal market for prescribing antidepressantmedications in Japan. However, shiftingpublic perception about Typusmelancholicus closer toward the Westernconceptualisation of depression wouldhave huge implications for antidepressantprescribing in Japan. Watters (2010)claims that GlaxoSmithKline’s enthusiasmto build a market for its newantidepressant medication in Japandovetailed conveniently with aGlaxoSmithKline sponsored ‘internationalconsensus group’ of experts on culturalpsychiatry discussing cross-culturalvariations in depression (Ballenger et al.,

2001) concluding that depression wasvastly underestimated in Japan. Depressionis now conceptualised in Japan as affectingindividuals (particularly men) who are toohard-working and have over-internalisedthe Japanese ethic of productivity andcorporate loyalty. In the last few years, themarket for antidepressants in Japan hasgrown exponentially. An importantconsequence of this ‘aggressivepharmaceuticalisation’, is thatpsychological and social treatments fordepression are being ditched (Kitanaka,2011).

Globalisation of mental healthThere is a growing willingness to exploreways of addressing inequalities in theprovision made for mental illness acrossthe globe, but translating this willingnessinto effective action is fraught withpotential danger. We must guard againstassumptions that indigenous concepts ofmental health difficulties in LMIC andstrategies used in these contexts to dealwith it are based on ignorance(Summerfield, 2008). Despite theapparent sophistication of laws, policies,services and treatments for mental illnessin high-income countries, outcomes forindividuals with mental health problemsmay not actually be any better than inLMIC. Research has failed to conclusivelyshow that outcome for complex mentalillnesses (such as psychosis) in high-income countries are superior tooutcomes in LMIC (where populationsmay not had access to medication-basedtreatments) (Alem et al., 2009; Cohen etal., 2008; Hopper et al., 2007). The lackof academic and political engagementwith alternative non-Western perspectivesmeans that ‘Western’ narratives about‘mental illness’ continue to dominate overlocal understanding (Timimi, 2010), yetwe in high-income countries have muchto learn about mental health provision;particularly in relation to promotinginclusion of black and ethnic minoritymembers of the population.

To conclude, I would like to come

back to the title. Rather than theglobalisation of mental illness, perhapswhat we should be aiming for is theglobalisation of mental health. This is animmensely more inclusive aspiration. Bypromoting global mental health there isthe potential for clinicians, academics,service users and policy makers fromacross the world to work together with ashared purpose. By exchanging knowledge,LMIC can benefit from hard lessonslearned in high-income countries, andhigh-income countries can look afresh at how mental health difficulties areunderstood and treated. It will beimportant for clinicians and academicsworking in high-income countries tocritically reflect on their own practice and question the accepted wisdom aboutmental health provision.

To assist with this knowledgeexchange, a new MSc Global MentalHealth programme has been launched atthe University of Glasgow. Global mentalhealth has been defined as the ‘area ofstudy, research and practice that places apriority on improving mental health andachieving equity in mental health for allpeople worldwide’ (Patel & Prince, 2010).The programme seeks to develop leadersin mental health who can design,implement and evaluate sustainableservices, policies and treatments topromote mental health in culturallyappropriate ways across the globe. Globalmental health is an emergent area of study.Momentum is building. Although thechallenges are both numerous andcomplex, the prize is a worthy one. Thecost of not acting can be counted in theever-increasing number of people whoselives are being affected by mental healthproblems across the globe.

Ross Whiteis in the Institute of Healthand Wellbeing at theUniversity of [email protected]

mental health? British MedicalJournal, 336, 992–994.

Timimi, S. (2010). The McDonaldization ofchildhood: Children’s mental healthin neo-liberal market cultures.Transcultural Psychiatry, 47, 686–706.

Vaillant, G.E. (2012). Positive mentalhealth: Is there a cross-culturaldefinition? World Psychiatry, 11,93–99.

Valenstein, E.S. (1998). Blaming the brain:

The truth about drugs and mentalhealth. New York: Free Press.

Watters, E. (2010). Crazy like us: Theglobalization of the American psyche.New York: Free Press.

Whitaker, R. (2010). Anatomy of anepidemic. New York: Crown.

World Health Organization (1992).International statistical classification ofdiseases and related health problems(ICD-10). Geneva: WHO.

World Health Organization (2005). Mentalhealth atlas 2005. Geneva: WHO.

World Health Organization. (2008). Mentalhealth Gap Action Programme(mhGAP): Scaling up care for mental,neurological and substance abusedisorders. Geneva: WHO.

World Health Organization (2010). mhGAPintervention guide for mental,neurological and substance usedisorders in non-specialized health

settings: Mental health Gap ActionProgramme (mhGAP). Geneva: WHO.

Wyatt, W.J. & Midkiff, D.M. (2006).Biological psychiatry: A practice insearch of a science. Behaviour andSocial Issues, 15, 132–151.


BIG

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When artist Jon Adams, who has Asperger syndrome,met psychologist Professor Simon Baron-Cohen onstage at the Cheltenham Science Festival, acollaboration was born. ‘I’m still learning how Jonthinks,’ Baron-Cohen says, ‘but I am impressed at howhe takes a way of thinking in one domain (e.g.geological time) and then translates it to another one(e.g. a walk through time). It may be that that willactually give us a new way of looking at things.’

‘228 is part of my project for the CulturalOlympiad,’ says Adams. ‘For two years I’ve written amap of everything I’ve done each day, and collectedobjects, photographs and sounds snatches. I was sitting in theprint room at the University and there were a load of bits ofprint waste on the floor so I took some close-up photographs. I also found some interesting rust patterns on the deck of a shipso I took photographs of those too. 228 is a mix of both. It’s like,if you go to a geological locality, you not only measure what isthere, you also take samples away to cut up, polish down andput under a microscope. That’s what I do.’

Baron-Cohen comments: ‘What comes across in thispicture’ is Jon's attention to small details and his unusual wayof seeing the world. He loves patterns and sees themeverywhere. As he has explained to me, sometimes patternshelp him do science (like understanding why particular stonesare where they are, or why a particular hill is where it is);

sometimes patterns help him make music (like deciding to takea particular sound, run it through a computer program in a verysystematic way, to see what the output is), and sometimespatterns help him make pictures (like seeing how an ordinaryprocess such as rust on metal can nevertheless result inexquisite shapes, colours and textures, as in this image).Imagine a mind that can’t help spotting patterns – that's Jon'smind. Now imagine what you do with such a mind. You couldeither be overwhelmed (which he sometimes is), or you coulddecide to use that talent to explain to the world: “I amdifferent”. I'm delighted Jon is choosing this educational path.’

Adams is one of the artists in the ‘Affecting Perception: Art& Neuroscience’ exhibition, at the O3 Gallery, Oxford Castle,Oxford, 2–31 March. See www.axnscollective.org.

‘A mind that can’t helpspotting patterns’Image by Jon Adams, with comment from Simon Baron-Cohen. E-mail ideas for ‘Big picture’ to [email protected].

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Are terrorists conservative?It is hard for psychologists to reconcile the apparently irrational and ideologicallydriven violence with what they claim to know about humanity generally. Terrorists arerepeatedly found sane, so psychopathological expertise is not particularly helpful forunderstanding the behaviour. Massacre-suicides (such as the recent killing of 26persons by Adam Lanza in Newtown, Connecticut) are rather more explicable (if notpredicted or controlled) by what we know about forensic mental health. When trying tounderstand ideologically driven violence, we have to go beyond cognitive black boxes,

neuroscientific over-simplification, and generic personalitytraits into a context far more challenging and threateningto contemporary psychologists: the humanities.

Roger Griffin’s admirably brief book provides acompelling historical and political overview of ideologicallydriven terrorist violence. He argues terrorists areessentially idealist conservatives reacting violently to theirway of life (and/or ideology) being threatened by the forcesof modernisation. Rather than adapting (most peopleembrace positive change, seek to make the best of theinevitable, and avoid conflict), proto-terrorists rejectcompromise, and zealously defend their cultural milieufrom the influences of the enemy.

Critically, terrorists see people voluntarily adapting to social change as treacherous, which makes themlegitimate targets of violence. The terrorist uses violence to discourage open acceptance and adaptation to modernistdevelopments, or to destroy symbols of modernism. Thus itis that well-intentioned relief, health and educationalworkers are murdered in tribal north-western Pakistan bypersons claiming to represent Al-Qaeda; Boku Haramattack schools in northern Nigeria; and, common to allterrorist movements, bombs are placed in shopping streetsor target commuters who show complicity with the enemyby not supporting the terrorist’s struggle.

Griffin notes the conceptual continuity betweenreligious and political zealotry; his earlier work on modern European fascistmovements with their conflating of nationalism and idealised collectiveauthoritarianism is put to good use when considering Anders Breivik’s rationalisedviolence, which epitomises making war on one’s peers when they reject your ideology.He emphasises you don't have to base your world-view on supernatural entities topolarise the world into Manichean good or bad. Finding a potential apocalypsestrangely exciting as a way of enabling humanity (the right sort of humanity to you, that is) to have a fresh start also appeals to idealists of all extremes; both views can be seen in the Guardian’s ‘Comment if Free’ blog as much as in the Daily Telegraph’s

equivalent. The frequency of extremist views at both ends of the political spectrum suggests

a potential for violence-supported ideology in many who will never plant a bomb or firea gun. Griffin recognises this, and it leads to his conclusion that we need to understandthe deeper causes of such views. He suggests our efforts to understand terrorism are,paradoxically, hindered by Western intellectual values; we seek to secularise andrationalise religious (and quasi-religious) beliefs; we assume persons wish to eschewstrongly orthodox forms of religion, that they want democracy, that they want moderation,and that they want to move from collectivist to individualistic cultures with Westerndegrees of liberty. We deny the literal violence of the major belief systems, preferringto see them as metaphors rather than the statement of literal power and certainty theyrepresent. Secular-humanist preconceptions held by Western liberal intellectualsabout the world preclude understanding the visceral basis of terrorism, just as theysometimes fail to comprehend the rise of popular far-right nationalism in Europe. Any psychologist interested in terrorism and violence should read Griffin’s book.

I Palgrave Macmillan; 2012; Hb £25.00Reviewed by Dr Vincent Egan who is Senior Lecturer in Forensic Psychology at theUniversity of Leicester

Terrorist’s Creed:Fanatical Violenceand the HumanNeed for MeaningRoger Griffin

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The blunt reality of ateenage lifeMy Mad Fat Diarye4

My Mad Fat Diary explores the real-lifediaries of Rae Earl. Recently dischargedfrom a psychiatric ward 16-year-old Raewelcomes the audience to ‘the social trainwreck that is my life’. The series takes youon her rollercoaster journey of self-discovery and pursuit of normality. Fromquestioning the direction of a friendship todiscovering her femininity, and battling withthe exposure of her mental healthdifficulties, Rae does not hold back in givingyou the blunt reality; and sometimes slightlycringe-worthy details of her life.

What captures you as a watcher is thesheer rawness in which the content of theseries is shown, the real-life elementmakes some of the events very relatable to everyone and therefore entices the viewerto continue following Rae’s narrative. Forexample, I’m sure we have all had thosemoments of vulnerability or embarrassmentwhere you wish the ground would swallowyou up.

Although the series has humorousconnotations, which contributes to itsentertainment value, it does respectfullyand sensitively, yet subtly, educate thewatcher on mental health issues and healthimplications such as obesity. Seeing suchdifficulties in a real-life experience mayhelp to normalise mental health for thewatcher and hopefully encourage someonewith similar difficulties to seek advice.

I e4; 10pm Mondays. My Mad Fat Diaries byRae Earl (published by Hodder) is available inpaperback and eBook. Reviewed by Kimberley Keane who is anassistant psychologist

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reviews

The underlying message withinthis book is that fear and anxietyhave formed an integral andhealthy component of our abilityto survive for millennia. Theauthors draw on a variety ofdisciplines to critically reviewthe seemingly ever-increasingprevalence of anxiety disordersand the inadequacy of currentdiagnostic methods todistinguish between normal andpathological anxiety.

The authors also provide an

extensive critiqueof past methodsused to distinguishanxiety disorders,alongsidepotential futurealterationssuggested for thehotly anticipatedarrival of theDSM-5 in May.While slightly repetitive inplaces, this book provides awealth of interesting insights

into the most prevalentanxiety disorders,including specific andsocial phobia,generalised anxietydisorder, OCD and post-traumatic stressdisorder. It alsoprovides a rich overviewinto the history ofanxiety disorders, their

prevalence amongst differentpopulations and howpharmaceutical companies have

modified how we view anxietyand what constitutes ‘normal’.

This book poses a numberof challenging conceptual andpractical questions forpsychiatry and will be of interestto clinicians and researchersalike.

I Oxford University Press; 2012;Hb £18.99Reviewed by Jack Cotter whois a Research Assistant at theUniversity of Sheffield

Turn off the music!

More or LessWord of MouthBBC Radio 4

Psychologists are often divided into thosewho ‘do numbers’ (quantitative oriented)or those who ‘do words’ (qualitativeoriented). Again, as mentioned in aprevious Psychologist, Radio 4 wins theday for content and coverage in terms ofradio relevant to psychologists. But itisn’t just All in the Mind that should belistened to by psychologists. Twoprogrammes that should appeal to bothof these sides are More or Less and Wordof Mouth.

More or Less (seewww.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qshd)focuses on the use of numbers andstatistics in general (as opposed to justof psychological interest), yet I find eachepisode usually contains manyreferences to the psychological use ofnumbers (or words as numbers) andalways improves my understanding ofthe use of statistics. When it comes towords, Word of Mouth(www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qtnz),presented by the ever lovely MichaelRosen, always expands my mind in termsof the changing nature of discourse andword usage in everyday life.

Both of these enhance mypsychological understanding of the worldaround me and as such I think should beregular listens (or podcasts in my case).Go on, turn off the music and turn on thewords and numbers – it’s good for you,and you will feel better because of it.

I Reviewed by Paul Redford, UWE Bristol

The descent into obsessive compulsive disorder

The War InsideNational Film Board of Canada

My eldest son is about to turn nine. So watching this film (www.nfb.ca/film/ocd_war_inside),including the sudden and rapid descent into obsessive compulsive disorder of a nine-year-oldboy, I feel it in the pit of my stomach. I expect you will too, whatever your situation. As aninsight into how scary OCD can be for the sufferer and their families, this is excellent andeducational fare.

It’s not a promising start… all whizzing in through the eye to buzzing neurons and scaryimages. But the testimony from those afflicted with the disorder is simple and effective. To beperfectly honest, of all disorders I have always found it hardest to understand and empathisewith OCD. In the excellent Channel 4 series The Undateables, I struggled to root for the OCDsufferer. Yet in this film, there are so many individuals so obviously traumatised and baffled by their own actions that the viewer inevitably gets a new insight into the condition.

Again, being honest, I couldn’t watch more than half of it. It's 70 minutes long and I wasfinding it thoroughly depressing. But if you or your students are studying OCD and could dowith a really clear insight into ‘the war inside’, you could do a lot worse.

The site in general is a useful resource, with other psychology-related films includingBorderline, a 1956 tale of emotional adjustment in adolescence, and the splendidly titled TheHasty Man Drinks His Tea with a Fork, about people caught up in the turmoil of the modernworld.

I Reviewed by Jon Sutton who is Managing Editor of The Psychologist

Feeling anxious? It’s probably normal

All We Have To Fear: Psychiatry’s Transformation of Natural Anxieties into Mental DisordersAllan V. Horwitz & Jerome C. Wakefield

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Entertaining andeducational

Asylum BoundStuart Townsend

This book tells the true story of the author’s personal journey throughpsychiatric nursing training during the lateseventies. Falling into nursing by chancerather than desire, Townsend provides anenlightening insight into the realities ofworking within a mental institution,culminating in the personal realisation

that this is the career for him. In great detail and with disturbing

honesty he describes the history ofasylums, the medications and treatmentsused within them, and the sometimes-comical antics of both staff and patients.Overall, the book is entertaining andeducational; for anyone with an interest inpsychiatry, this is a must-read.

I P&B Publishing; 2012; Pb £7.99Reviewed by Victoria R. Kroll who is apostgraduate researcher at NottinghamTrent University

An arresting read

A Psychologist’s Casebookof Crime: From Arson toVoyeurismBelinda Winder & PhilipBanyard (Eds.)

So the dust has settled, and the crimereport is in. But why did it happen, and whatcan we do about it? Winder and Banyard’stext examines the causes and effects of, andresponses to, various types of crime. Theirwork presents the offences in astraightforward A-to-Z format (or rather A-to-V, with a few skipped in the middle, as it’s actually quite difficult to think of anoffence for every letter of the alphabet). Foreach entry some background is given aboutthe offence and how it is dealt with, followedby typical offender and victimcharacteristicsand a discussionof thepsychologicalissues.

I was slightlyconcerned that,given the subjectmatter, the textwould takeeither a dry andaustere tone ora populist andlightweight one. I am, though, pleased tosay that none of those characteristics applyto this book. It is a serious attempt to injectan evidence base into debates about crime,with each chapter providing a thoughtfuland well-informed discussion about thefeatured offence. Yet, it manages to do thisin a way that remains engaging andaccessible. I particularly like the way inwhich it integrates research insights withthe practicalities of dealing with crime.

The editors have done a sterling job inpulling together contributions from amultidisciplinary pool of authors andarranging their work in a consistent style.One point that I would raise though is that,because the chapters are organisedaccording to specific offences, some effortis required on the reader’s part to cross-reference the psychological topics thatappear throughout the book.

A Psychologist’s Casebook of Crime isaimed primarily at forensic psychologystudents who require a comprehensiveintroductory text. However, I would alsorecommend it to anyone else who isinvolved in criminal justice work.

I Palgrave Macmillan; 2012; Pb £26.99Reviewed by Denham Phipps who is aResearch Fellow at the University ofManchester

Les Misérables is a staged musical with a long run and a long show. The recent filmicreworking kept absolutely faithful to songs and storyline, editing hardly anything. As a result,Les Misérables is also a long film, but an emotionally engaging one. Many shots were filmedin extreme close up, and actors sang their lines ‘live’ rather than dubbing over, perhaps to try to capture some of the rawness which comes across in the stage production. When I went to see it there was audible crying in the audience.

The story of Les Misérables contains many themes that are familiar fodder forpsychological exploration and therapy. Most striking to me was the theme of love and loss,from multiple perspectives: parental, romantic, unrequited and brotherly love were allrepresented and loss explored in different ways, most often through death but sometimesalso through abandonment.

The lyrics that illustrated this theme best were those in a song about the youths whodied in the barricades, but which could be about any grief or loss. The image used is that ofan empty chair and table – that idea of the place set for a lost loved one, or as used in somegrief therapies, the empty chair symbolising the person who is no longer present: ‘There's agrief that can't be spoken/There’s a pain goes on and on/Empty chairs at empty tables/Nowmy friends are dead and gone.’ Later in the song the idea of survivor’s guilt crops up: ‘That I live and you are gone/There's a grief that can't be spoken/There's a pain goes on and on.’Maybe one of the reasons for this show’s longevity and current cinematic revival is theenduring nature of the theme of loss for humankind.

It is also perhaps no coincidence that this story is being reworked at this particular time.Not only is the universal theme of love and loss there, but also the theme of social injustice.We may not be facing a social uprising, but in the current economic and political climate weare experiencing growing figures of youth unemployment and ongoing yet under-reportedcuts to public services. Watching the scenes of deprivation on Parisian streets made methink of the people who even in our privileged society today have to struggle to afford foodand clothing and who in some cases remain miserable and unsupported.

Overall I thought that the film was well-done. The singing was admirable, the acting wasgood and the use of close-up mixed with street tableaux was beautiful. A cinematicspectacle which is likely to resonate at some level, whether or not you are a die-hard ‘LesMis’ fan.

I Reviewed by Lucy Maddox who is a clinical psychologist in the NHS and Associate Editor for ‘Reviews’

Love and lossLes MisérablesTom Hooper (Director)

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On 4 February BBC One's Panorama focused on ‘The Great AbortionDivide’. Abortion was legalised in the UK 46 years ago, and last year200,000 women had one – one of Western Europe’s highest rates.Across their lifetimes, one in three women will have an abortion, andover a third of women terminating a pregnancy have done so at leastonce before.

The programme tackled allegations that doctors in England andWales are signing off terminations on questionable mental healthgrounds, with 98 per cent of abortions approved after two doctorssign a document that says the woman could face mental health risksif she continues with the pregnancy. This is despite the Royal Collegeof Psychiatrists review from 2011, which concluded that women withan unwanted pregnancy faced the same mental health risks whetherthey had an abortion or not. Inevitably, Dr Peter Saunders from theChristian Medical Fellowship didn’t agree: ‘When a doctor knowinglyand willingly puts his or her signature to a document sayingsomething for which there isn’t actually any medical evidence base,then I believe that is not only immoral, it’s also illegal, it’s a form ofperjury.’

If a woman says she doesn’t want to be pregnant, that is usually

taken as a risk to her mental health.Dr Clare Gerada (Royal College of General Practitioners) said:

‘I think it’s a realistic interpretation of the legislation. There isn’t a blood test to predict whether the woman is going to get mentalhealth problems, what we have is what the woman tells us.’ I wouldhave liked to have seen more consideration of whether, in theabsence of a blood test, there are at least psychological tests thattrained professionals could deploy to get a more valid idea of theindividual risks involved.

It’s clearly an area full of disparities, with the programmefocusing on the Northern Ireland situation, where women anddoctors risk prison over abortion. And despite the fact that just 1 per cent of abortions in the UK are carried out over 20 weeks ofpregnancy, Nadine Dorries MP certainly has a point when she says it doesn’t seem sustainable to have two rooms in a hospital, one witha ‘baby born at 20 weeks, prematurely, with the NHS throwingeverything at it to save its life; in the other, a baby at 24 weeks beingaborted’.

I Reviewed by Jon Sutton, Managing Editor


reviews

Applyingpsychologyk2n Safety ZoneKay Toon

This app, written by CharteredPsychologist Kay Toon, is for ‘peoplewho are functioning well in their livesbut sometimes feel out of control oftheir own emotions and behaviours’.

A range of techniques formanaging anxiety and lifting mood arepresented, alongside quotes andexamples from real people whoattended the Wakefield Psychology Service. These can be ‘favourited’and added to a personal ‘safety zone’ for ease of access.

There’s quite a lot of reading – about the app, cautions andprecautions etc. – before you get into the meat of what’s on offer,and in general the app feels quite text heavy. But there areintegrated audio and video demonstrations of various techniques,and Kay tells me that ‘the great thing about digital is that you cankeep updating it – I already have a list of improvements!’

She adds: ‘Developing the Safety Zone app has been exciting,and quite daunting. The biggest problems were finding a good appdeveloper, and adapting to writing in a concise form for smallscreens. There has been great interest from therapists who thinkthe app will be useful for their clients. Hopefully it will soon beaccessed by the general public as well.’

It’s good to see psychologists taking advantage of the immediacyand popularity of the app format. I am sure offerings will continue togrow in sophistication as brave pioneers like Kay Toon grapple withwhat the technology has to offer!

I iTunes £2.49Reviewed by Jon Sutton, Managing Editor

Beneficial research impact

Research for the Public Good: Applying theMethods of Translational Research to ImproveHuman Health and Well-being Elaine Wethington & Rachel E. Dunifon (Eds.)

As researchers, we are constantly asking ourselves ‘Will myresearch have any impact on current policy and practice?’

This book gives a comprehensive overview of how we can ensurethat the findings from our work are being applied in the real world.It also situates itself in the current debates of whether we can adopt

a medical sciences model or whetherwe need to think of different ways oftranslating evidence in the socialsciences. Recommendations includeestablishing two-way relationships withpolicy makers and thinking about thepossible levels of research impact.

Here you will find many examplesof successful case studies oftranslational research from maternitycare through to developmentalpsychology. These examples comefrom small as well as large qualitativeand quantitative studies, mainly fromthe American context, but the authors

also draw on some recent developments in the UK.Within the current funding climate this book feels very relevant

and contributes to the debate surrounding different pathways ofresearch impact. A recommended read for anyone who is seriouslyconsidering the practical implications of research.

I American Psychological Association; 2012; Hb £59.50Reviewed by Marta Wanat who is a PhD Researcher at OxfordBrookes University

‘There isn’t a blood test to predict whether the woman is going to get mental health problems’

The Great Abortion DividePanorama, BBC One


The Swiss occupational psychologist Bertolt Meyer was ideallyplaced to present this documentary. Born with a missing hand andwrist, he sports a hi-tech bionic replacement that cost £30,000 twoyears ago. It’s a massive improvement on the hooks and plasticsubstitutes he grew up with, but when Meyer travelled to JohnsHopkins University to see the very latest prosthetic model, he wasleft speechless. That was the two-fold strength of this documentary.To see the remarkable technological progress – the new life-like,self-learning model was capable of 26 of the human hand’s 27degrees of motion. And to witness the emotional impact of thetechnology on the people who can benefit from it.

Other inspirational cases included a man whose life was savedby a plastic, pneumatically driven pump inserted in place of hisheart; a blind woman whose sight was partially restored by a retinalimplant; and a nimble prosthetics researcher, specialising in ankles,who lifted his trouser legs to reveal two robotic legs of his own (helost his bone and tissue versions in a climbing accident). As Meyerobserved, the technology is awesome, and at times it felt likewatching a documentary from the future.

There were also moments of psychological and philosophicalreflection. The researcher with robot legs said he’d rather keep hisprostheses than go back to his biological limbs. An ethicistwondered about a future in which people ask for their limbs to beremoved so that they can be replaced by superior bionic substitutes.Meyer himself expressed unease when a replica of his own bionicarm was attached to a robot – ‘how can I not feel connected to it?’ heasked.

Which leads us on to the documentary’s fatal flaw. That ‘robot’,featuring Meyer’s hand, was the eponymous ‘bionic man’, and itsconstruction served as a Frankentstein-themed narrative device.

Each body part dealt with in the programme, from the heart to theretinal implant, was gradually botched together to create an entiresynthetic version of Meyer, complete with a mask of his face.

Given the incredible technology featured in the programme, theembarrassing anti-climax was to see the utter uselessness of thisdoddering $1 million scrap-yard monster as it joined Meyer andothers for a celebratory pint, which it duly dropped. Recalling theearlier revulsion that Meyer expressed at the sight of this daftcreature, one can only wonder if this is because it sported his faceand arm, or because it had spoiled his once-promising documentary.

I Reviewed by Christian Jarrett, journalist for The Psychologist andeditor of the Society’s Research Digest(www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog)

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Scrap-yard monster trashes programme

How to Build a Bionic ManChannel 4

Lovingcartwheels

Ned the NeuroniPad app £1.99

For psychologists wishing toindoctrinate their kids inneurobiology nice and early,there’s an ideal app for you. Nedthe Neuron is a lively, colourfulcoming of age story about amotor cortex neuron with a loveof cartwheels.

Written and produced byneuroscientist Erica Warp, theengaging narration can be turnedoff if preferred. For older childrenand undergrads, the app alsofeatures clickable definitions ofbasic anatomy terms, plus a fewgames, including brain anatomysnap.I Reviewed by Christian Jarrett

cont

ribu

te Sample book titles just in:The Social Neuroscience of Education Louis CozolinoPursuing the Good Life: 100 Reflections on Positive Psychology Christopher PetersonThe Social Psychology of Aggression Barbara KrahéThe Oxford Handbook of Leadership Michael G. Rumsey (Ed.)The Sexualization of Girls and Girlhood: Causes, Consequences, and Resistance

Eileen L. Zurbriggen and Tomi-Ann Roberts (Eds.)Working Memory: The Connected Intelligence Tracy Packiam Alloway and

Ross G. Alloway (Eds.)The Oxford Handbook of Retirement Mo WangBetween Mind and Nature: A History of Psychology Roger SmithLittle Box of Big Questions: Philosophical Conversations with Children and Young People

Irvine Gersch and Anna Lipscomb

For a full list of books available for review and information on reviewing for ThePsychologist, see www.bps.org.uk/books

Send books for potential review to The Psychologist, 48 Princess Road East, Leicester,LE1 7DR

Remember, ‘Reviews’ now covers psychology in any form: books, films, apps, plays, web, TV, radio, newspapers, etc. To contribute, e-mail [email protected] or tweet yoursuggestions to @psychmag.

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