Psychology

So, you’ve got through Xmas, spent ages revising (well, did some…), completed your Unit 3/AS Mock and can now relax.

WRONG!  WRONG!  WRONG!

In case you haven’t realised it, there are only about 11 teaching weeks left before you go out on study leave - that’s not many hours of input left. There is some really interesting psychological research around study habits. It has been found that students, particularly male ones:-

a) underestimate the task that needsto be done;

b) overestimate their own abilities to do it;

and

c) have poor concepts of time.

This doesn’t sound like a good recipe for success, does it? The result of this combination of phenomena is too little work input now; too much work tocomplete, stress, and all night revision sessions.

So – Hint of the Week – sort out your strategy for the summer now!

Decide NOW what grade you want in the Summer and start making everything count towards it.

If you’re in Yr 13, you will need to revise everything you did at AS level. You need to pace this revision through the next 12 weeks, on top of the new content you need for Unit 4, so work out now how you’re going to do this. I’d recommend you collect similar types of syllabus material together, eg, put all the methodology notes together, collect all the key issues together, etc.

If you are in Yr 12, you need to take note of what you could improve on from the mock exam and put them right. However, the single most important thing is to learn the work really well.  This sounds obvious, but evidence suggests that many students don’t do enough active learning. You need to know the material so well, that you can just write it in a test situation without thinking too hard about it.

So, start using the Cognitive Psychology you learned about and how your memory works – deeper processing; lots of rehearsal…..

pics from Phillip James and David Stokes,both on flicker creative commons

More on the subject of the influence of the moon on our behaviour (or not).  Here’s a link to a published paper on “The Disease of the Moon” – well worth a read!

If you are in Yr 13, you could approach this as a gentle introduction to Clinical Psychology – look out for ‘expectancy’ effects, types of evidence, and cultural differences (in this case through time) with respect to mental health issues, and changing practices with regards to ‘diagnosis’.

If you’re in Yr 12, just enjoy it – but it gives you a flavour of what you might be doing this time next year.

(Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/3561662932/)

I’ve found this really great Psychology blog, which is well worth looking at – lots of information about many areas of Psychology.

• Topically – the most recent post is a bit more about expectations, and how they are better for you than fantasies – take a look!!
• The previous post is about the meaning of dreams - great for Yr 12s looking at dream analysis
• There’s a great collection of descriptions of Social Psychology studies - some of which you’ve heard of, others you haven’t – if you want to stretch your knowledge sideways, you could do worse than spend half an hour looking at this

Enjoy!!

So – if you looked here yesterday, did you find yourself doing anything unusual?

If you did, and even if you didn’t, you will have given yourself an example of ‘expectancy effects’. These affect us all everyday, and account for or influence a large proportion of our behaviour. They are relevant to almost all areas of Psychology that you have/will be studying, from your reactions to what you’ve learned, to what actually happened in many of the research studies you have looked at. I’m hoping you’ve realised that if you are ‘self-monitoring’, it’s quite likely you will change your behaviour anyway. If you were expecting unusual behaviour, it is likely you spotted some; if you thought the idea was ridiculous, you probably didn’t bother to self-monitor, or found nothing unusual – either way, whatever you were expecting probably happened!! (so you could consider the ethics of the previous post…!!)

If you are Yr 13 and revising Unit 3, this is an illustration of a phenomenon you need to know in detail for this exam – so a quick revision test:-

a) Identify the phenomenon

b) What research would you use to support this?  - findings (results/conclusions) from at least 3 studies.

c) Evaluate this as an explanation of criminal/anti-social behaviour.

If you are Yr 12, we have just started introducing Psychoanalytic ideas, particularly the idea of symbolism, eg in dreams or in artwork. So put your evaluative heads on – now we’re expecting to see hidden meanings – how likely is it that we’ll see them??

(and if any of you DID end up howling or shape-shifting (and can prove it!!), please let us know…..  )

[picture from http//terrorpixels.com]

Today is a full moon. There is a theory that people’s behaviour changes at full moon (particularly students, who tend to be awake all night anyway!) Monitor your behaviour over the next 24 hours. Is it different to usual?

Come back to this site tomorrow and report anything you notice.

(pic from ‘I am Marion’ Flickr creative commons (and that’s not me!))