PsychBLOG.co.uk

An interesting article over at psychcentral has identified a study looking into the sexual behaviour of adolescents and what variables effect is.
“… A study conducted in August 2006 examined longitudinal data from a survey of 5,401 Scottish teenagers. The researchers led by Daniel Wight of the Medical Research Council, Social and Public Health Sciences Unit [...]

Recently there has been a flurry of articles on addiction, the reasons why we become addicted and why do we continue to abuse these substances; be it alcohol, gambling or even love (there was a very interesting article about being addicted to love by Prof Mark Griffiths in a recent Psychology Review – and on [...]

When teaching psychology and health I have found that a top evaluation issue that students can really get their teeth into and discuss well in part B essays is the issue of correlation and causality (or more accurately lack of causality).
Because of the practical and ethical problems of studying health and illness this tricky little [...]

Pain and suffering aren’t exactly everybody’s cup of tea, but we do study pain as part of the A2 health course. Some of the more interesting topics in pain are surrounding peoples perceptions of pain such as how some people perform extraordinary acts (such as lying on a bed of nails or sitting through one [...]

In the Crime module in psychology of the courtroom we look at what factors influence juries decisions and one of the studies that I use is the Castello et al. study which looks at how the attractiveness of a defendant in relation to that of the plaintiff may be a variable in a guilty verdict [...]

From a recent Guardian article (24/03): “Every child to be screened for risk of turning criminal under Blair criminal justice plan“. Is this the nanny state gone mad – should we soon be expecting double-speak and the ministry of truth?
“A new-style “11-plus” to assess the risk every child in Britain runs of turning to [...]

We’ve all been waiting with baited breath for the last few months to see the new draft specification for teaching from September 2008 and on the 30th (a whole day before the deadline and well before AQA ;) ) they were released to the masses. So, what does this mean for us? Here [...]

In the health module when talking about adherence and positive health behaviour one example that we like to use is breast and testicular self examination. It’s always a great discussion starter about how, why and can we improve peoples behaviour and encourage self-examination. Here are a few videos from around the web which [...]

We look at eye witness testimony in the first year looking at Loftus and Palmer and investigate the reliability of witnesses and what can effect witness recall in the Crime module of the second year. Many studies have investigated the reliability of children as witnesses and this is even a sub-topic in the course; [...]

The massive ethical issues surrounding Milgram’s study of obedience have always made it difficult to replicate it in a psychological setting (although this hasn’t stopped TV companies jumping on the concept). Recently in the UK a group of psychologists at UCL have worked around this problem using virtual reality.
Each of the 23 participants wore [...]