Psychology @ Manchester Blog

Dr Paul Ibbotson (Honorary Research Fellow, Max Panck Child Study Centre)

Some back-of-the-envelope calculations show that the age-standardised mortality rate in the UK, averaged for the period 1981-2010, is 0.002 per cent per day (ONS, 2010) or a 0.06 per cent mortality rate across all 31 London marathons. Since the London marathon’s inception in 1981 there have been 854,561 finishers and 11 deaths. Clearly, this is 11 too many, however, if London marathon runners showed a comparable mortality rate as the UK population, then this would have resulted in 512 deaths throughout the history of the race. Thus the actual mortality rate we see for the London marathon is over 46 times less than the national average. One could speculate that this might be because of the fitter-than-average people that take part, the lower-than-average age of competitors and accessibility to medical services.

This is important because we know people are likely to overestimate the risk of widely-reported events. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, many people switched from using planes to travelling by car, which was perceived as safer. Researchers estimate that this caused an extra 2300 deaths – almost as many people that died in the twin towers themselves (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00036840601069757). There is a danger then some will avoid running because they think it is too risky. This would be unfortunate given the evidence for the benefits of running and the relatively low mortality rate in the marathon.

Paul

Professor Rachel Calam: Head of School

Just a little message to recognise the achievements of members of the School who have made some significant contributions recently. I’d like to congratulate the group who organised the Ball at the Midland on the 4th of May. It was a very grand affair, and everyone looked very smart. My apologies if I don’t recognise you when you’re not in your ball dresses or dinner jackets!

Also, last Thursday I attended the University’s ceremony for the Social Responsibility and Volunteer of the Year Awards. I was very pleased to see that two students from our School were shortlisted; Ronan McGarrigle was commended, and Jessica Harvey, highly commended, for their volunteer work. Congratulations, both of you. Some of the awards at the ceremony went to people who had volunteered locally, and some, overseas. The range of activities that people had been involved in, from work with children, or the homeless, through to community development activities in low income neighbourhoods worldwide was really impressive. For anyone who’s been thinking about it, but not got round to signing up yet, do consider the possibilities that are open to you. It’s great to see people managing to fit in so much alongside their studies.

With best wishes

Rachel

Was I behaving like an adult at the end of year Psychology Ball?

I woke up on Saturday morning feeling a little bit ‘tired’, shall we say, after the end of year Psychology Ball. It was a great success and the Psychology Society and Peer Mentors should be proud; after a stressful few weeks, they put on a great night. Despite feeling ‘tired’, I couldn’t help reflecting on the fact that, once again, after vowing to behave in a dignified manner, I ended up dancing and ‘whooping’ to some music that I didn’t even recognise. So…..the first years and I have been thinking about what it is to be an adult (1st Year Qualitative lab!) and thus I found myself on Saturday morning, wondering if in fact I do feel like an adult. I can see from the photos that several people have kindly put on Facebook (thanks!) that whilst I look like the other party-goers’ mum (well, not mother to all of them obviously….or any of them in fact) I behaved in the same way I did when I was 20, but just not for as many hours (I left early because I was ‘tired’ and my husband was beginning to dance in an embarrassing manner). I decided that although I behaved in the same way that I did when I was 20, I certainly don’t feel the same. I feel very different….some differences are positive, some negative. I shall bore you no longer with my reflections, apart from to say that it is an interesting question because middle- adulthood, just like other life stages brings psychological challenges and understanding them could have implications for positive mental health throughout the lifespan. I shall be reflecting on this over the summer as I prepare a new course on Lifespan Development with Dimitris Tsivilis.

Another Ball over, the next time I will be changing out of my jeans into something smarter will be at Graduation. There I will definitely behave in a dignified manner and believe me, it is not easy to do when wearing a very silly hat!

Professor Rachel Calam: Head of School

I hope everything is going well. Some of you are busy with exams, and others may be deep in research projects. For some of you, the end of your degree is in sight. To you in particular I wish the very best of luck with the last stages of your studies here at Manchester, and I’ll look forward to trying to get your name right on degree day. Do make sure we know if there is anything I need to know about pronouncing your name. I worked very hard last year on one name which had to be spelt out phonetically and I don’t know who was more pleased when I got it right on the day, the student, who beamed, or me!

Our final year undergraduate Psychology students have been presenting the results of their research projects to peers and staff. I hear that the breadth and variety of research is impressive and the standard of presentation in the most part is incredibly high and most would not be out of place at at professional conferences. It is great to end the academic year on such a high note!

Students from across the School are off to the Midland Hotel today for the Annual Ball. It’s great to see postgraduate and undergraduate students come together for a good night out. I believe some members of staff are quite stressed about the prospect of squaring up to the sartorial elegance of the students! I’m going to go along for drinks at the start and am mentally going through my wardrobe to see if I have anything suitable!

Many congratulations to Scott Cairney, who passed his PhD viva on 13th April with flying colours. Well done Dr. Cairney!

With best wishes

Rachel

Hi All,

It’s been a little while since the last blog post, it’s a busy time of year for staff and students alike at the moment as the academic year heads towards its close.

I thought that this week I wouldn’t blog on a particular topic, just on a few different things that may be of interest, in no particular order.

Firstly, from talking to various people this week it was made apparent that not everyone is aware of the Eduroam system. If you have a smartphone, tablet or laptop that you use on campus then you may have become annoyed at having to constantly log back in after losing the connection. Well, there is a solution to this, called Eduroam that once installed on your device will automatically connect to the university wi-fi when you are in range, without you having to type in your log-in details. The best bit? It also allows you to connect automatically to the wi-fi system at many other Universities that use the same system. To set it up follow this link, it takes less than a minute to set up: http://www.itservices.manchester.ac.uk/wireless/eduroam/

Are you sick of emailing yourself documents or transferring files from one computer to another, or having to shuffle things around to find space on a memory stick? Well I had so to solve this I’ve become a recent convert to Dropbox, a cloud storage system, which is free (you get a decent amount of storage to start with but can pay to increase it if you wish). Basically once installed on your devices (piece of software for PCs, an app for smartphones and tablets) then you can dump your documents into the dropbox folder and it will upload them to the cloud storage. They will then be available to access from any of your other devices that have dropbox installed, or you can access them from any computer with an internet connection via the dropbox website. I’ve found the best thing about it is that I can dump all the journal articles that I need to catch up on into my dropbox folder and then I can access and read them from any device. It’s reduced the amount of documents that I print out to almost zero.

Lastly, I’ve been lecturing in the Beyer Building this semester for the first time. It’s a grand old theater, similar to how I imagine our Pear Lecture theatre once looked. On my time perception course we had a guest lecture from Prof John Wearden, who used to be a lecturer here (and was here all the way through from student to professor!). John pointed out that there is a (now disused) underground tunnel that runs from Coupland to The Beyer Building. Unfortunately it’s alarmed and sealed up as a fire escape, but interesting all the same. I imagine there must be quite a few ‘secret’ or forgotten places around our old university, we recently discovered a previously unknown passage on the first floor of Zochonis. If you know of anything interesting do drop me an email.

Beyer Theatre

Luke

On the evening of 8th of March in the Alan Turing Building Psychology Undergraduates from all across the years were invited to listen to seven former Psychology students and their new lives in the “real-world” working world.

The event started off with a tasty buffet, catering for all different tastes and likings. After giving the students some time to talk and mingle with each other as well as Christine Rogers and Alison Fisher, the speakers of the evening were introduced.

First up was Sharrie Anderson, marketing assistant and graduate trainee manager at MACE, which is a constructing company. In her role, Sharrie’s is responsible for the UK region, including England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland, and will be moving to London shortly. As part of MACE’s marketing and communication team she handles marketing materials and resources and works as a link between the companies to make sure everything runs smoothly. Another aspect compromises of managing events such as award ceremonies. Having a psychology degree meant for Sharries taking up a marketing course in order to gain the needed qualification. Luckily, MACE paid the expanses of the course, allowing her to completely focus on the task of working full-time as well as doing a part-time course.

Louis Jenkins Bluckert (Mars Graduate Scheme: Management)

Next up was Louis Jenkins Bluckert, who successfully gained a place on the management development graduate program of Mars UK (yes, the one who does chocolate, and yes he was giving away free chocolate after the talks!) This three years course is split into three one year long placements in different areas such as marketing, sales and others. This gave Louis the opportunity to test the waters before making the all important decision.

Daniel Costello (Shell Graduate Scheme: Human Resources)

Daniel Costello is currently working as a learning advisor as part of Shell International LNG Supply and Shell Shipping’s graduate scheme. This involves determining whether there is a need for further training and what kind would be beneficial to develop skills, which enables the staff to work with more confidence and improve the working environment overall. Shell’s graduate scheme is similar to Mars, in the sense that is rotational. Daniel is going to move on to a generalist role working on more operational human resources aspects. Shell has a rigorous selecting process, considering mainly graduates from UCL, LSE, Oxbridge and the University of Manchester.
Elinor O’Connor is an occupational Psychologist and is in charge of the MSc Occupational Psychology course run by the Manchester Business School. This high-profile course is one of a few of its kind and well-respected by employers. Elinor has been working for various places all highly practical, including the MoD and RAF, before joining the University of Manchester.

Natalie Walsh is a careers consultant and HR assistant for the Univeristy of Manchester. Probably the most important thing to keep in mind when looking at HR: the same job title can mean completely different things in different companies –so do you research before applying!
And this is the most crucial step towards finding the job of your dreams. Don’t just apply to everything and everyone and hope someone will take you on. It’s your future and you are in charge of it!

Bill Cockerill (Analyst Government Operational Research)

And luckily psychology gives you a great starting point as Bill Cockerill, team leader in Government Operational Research pointed out. A psychology degree gives you not only the skill to work in a rigorous and scientific manner, but by nature of the subject also enables you to be a great communicator. And communication is key in the working world. Our degree equipped us with a well balanced set of skills; we just need to sell it right. Everything we do, from the part-time bartender job, a gap year in Thailand to the research position over summer we got, literally everything matters as long as you learned something from it and used it to improve your skills.

Sarah Tate is now project officer on the co-op graduate scheme, but used to work in various roles including call centres and HR offices. She decided to work for co-op because after working for more than two years in position where the main focus was on earning money she no longer wanted to proceed that way. Co-op feeds all its profits back into the company and is run by the members for the members. It holds up high ethical values, such as being one of the first retailers to introduce fair-trade on bigger scale and tackling climate change, because it was requested by the members. As any other company it needs to make profit, but it not making profit for the sake of it. Her “detour” made is so much easier for Sarah to decide for what sort of company she wants to work for. When Sarah used to work in an HR office, she was responsible for recruitment and this involved reading CVs – a lot of CVs. They read hundreds and hundreds of applications and some companies even run a computer analysis, scanning for specific trigger words before an actual human being is reading your application. It is easy to get lost in that pile and we know that. So we all want out application to be special and try to make it stand out. But first things first: you need to get the basic right. A clear, conscious and genuine application is always winner. Show your interest in the company and again do you research. Show that you engaged with the company’s philosophy. This is highly beneficial to you, as seen in Sarah’s case; it might change your perception of the company and helps you decide if you genuinely want to work for them. Don’t forget that you will be spending a great deal of time with the company and at the end of the day you want to be happy there too. And the biggest no-no when it comes to applications: neglecting grammar and spelling. It is so easily done, but it will weaken your application.

But the most reassuring advice I could take away from the event was: It is okay to feel a bit lost. Don’t be thrown back when you don’t know what you want to do. It is never too late to find the right job for you and any experience along the way will help you to grow as a person. It sometimes feels like, as if everything is falling into place for you friends and you are the only one, who is still clueless. But there is nothing wrong with being clueless, it might even open some unexpected doors and you will find you place eventually as long as you don’t stop looking out for it.

Panel Of Guest Speakers

Have you ever wondered how you can eat sustainably and healthily on campus? Well, it’s not always easy to find products with a good taste and well-sourced ingredients in the rush between lectures. My usual compromise is to grab a vegetarian Hummus sandwich, but it’s not really satisfying in the long run.

To help you to find a lunch that makes both you and your environment happy, we have visited some places on campus and asked them about their menu – whether they use organic ingredients, get their food from local farmers, have a range of vegetarian options and change their menu dependent on the seasons (please check http://kindling.org.uk/ for really interesting information about sustainability). Here are a few places that left a good impression – try it out for yourself!

The Eighth Day Café offers a great range of vegetarian and vegan lunch options; it’s all organic, tasty and affordable! If you are in a rush, they will put your take-away in containers made out of biodegradable corn starch (or you can bring your own for a 10% discount). If you like the food (and you will!) then you can buy the ingredients from the shop upstairs. They have also hot food that you can buy at the upstairs counter – try the fabulous chilli wrap to go!

Herbivores (aka The Veggie Café) is perfect for a library break. The soups are very famous amongst students, but the mains are also worth a try. The owner, who is there most of the time, can tell you where every single ingredient comes from because it is all sourced from local suppliers.

The Gallery Café (Whitworth Art Gallery) follows a sustainable philosophy and offers a range of organic fruit juices and homemade cakes. There is always a vegetarian or vegan lunch option.

Small World Café (International Society) is another great venue; they have a different hot vegetarian meal every day for about £4.50, and also 2 meat/chicken menus. Other vegetarian options include large salads, jacket potatoes and soup.

Aardvark Café (at St. Peter’s House/chaplaincy): Probably the only good thing about having lectures in a chaplaincy is that the Aardvark Café is just on your doorstep. They prove that sustainable food doesn’t have to be boring. With a great range of homemade, vegetarian and locally sourced products they have something for every taste –whether it’s a creative salad composition, paninis or organic sausage rolls.

Christie’s Bistro (in the old University building): Being surrounded by old books and stone busts in a neo-gothic building can be quite inspiring. Enjoy ethically sourced drinks and food there, with vegetarian options and a salad bar. Don’t be surprised if you meet your lecturers in there, some of them enjoy the locally sourced, sometimes organic food in the adjacent restaurant.

Student Union’s bar: It might not sound like the most environmental friendly place on campus, but the bar manager has confirmed that they are working hard on becoming more sustainable. You can find typical vegetarian pub food there, but also vegan wraps. After the Easter holidays they want to surprise us with a new concept, where sustainable, fresh and locally sourced food should be available.

Café Muse (Manchester Museum): You don’t have to go to the museum to pay them a visit. Lots of people go there for their sustainably caught fish, fair-trade, organic drinks and vegan and vegetarian lunch options. They change their menu 4 times a year, dependent on the seasons.

The Greenhouse (Western Street, Rusholme) is the perfect place to celebrate your excellent exam results, have dinner with friends or get new ideas for creative cooking! It serves vegetarian and vegan food since 1983 and has great offers for students (e.g. 2 meals, cheapest one is free etc.). The large menu with over 50 mains will impress you!

Anna Maehr

Hi all,

I hope you are enjoying the semester. I wanted to write and share the news on the results of the Student Barometer survey for the School of Psychological Sciences, which I just received this week.

The results were distributed in sealed envelopes to Heads of School at the University’s Annual Planning Conference, so it was an exciting moment. I can now reveal (drum roll, please) that our overall satisfaction score for undergraduates and postgraduates combined is 92.45% (thought I’d leave that all important .45 in), which is great news, with 265 respondents. The headline scores for aspects of the experience are 88% for learning overall, 90% for living overall, 92% for support overall, 90% for arrival overall. Things get even better when we look at the scores for undergraduates only; 94.65%, with 187 respondents. This is really good news.

To provide some highlights, looking across both sets of scores for learning satisfaction, we have particularly high scores (and by this I mean ahead of the average for the University) for having good teachers and expert lecturers, quality lectures, virtual learning, managing research, employability, and performance feedback, to name a few. We come out noticeably lower than average on work experience, and on laboratories and learning spaces. There are two important things going on which will help with these last two. Firstly, the University has just revealed plans to create three new large lecture theatres coming into commission in the Simon Building, next door to Zochonis, early in the new academic year, so that should really help with the problem that there’s been accommodating large groups of students. Secondly, we have continuing support from Faculty for our plans to create a hub for the School on the ground floor of Zochonis, with a common room/coffee break area, with WiFi and informal social and mingling space, and an adjacent student administrative hub for PSS staff. These things take time, but I think it will be a great improvement when you can sit down and have a coffee between lectures, catch up on the emails, and on the gossip, of course.

One more thing to highlight on the student barometer; on living satisfaction, we had a galloping 97-98% for eco-friendly attitude. That’s brilliant!

I’m giving you the headlines, but we will look in detail at all the feedback that came in through the survey. Thank you so much to all of you who filled it in. It’s really great when we hear about the things that you appreciate. We will continue to work hard on the areas that you tell us need improvement.

With best wishes

Rachel

Hi there,

You might know that I’m the School’s sustainability representative. The official title for my role is a ‘Sustainability Enthusiast’. In this capacity I try to do everything I can to make SPS more environmentally friendly. You may have noticed –

· Recycling facilities in our buildings (a small victory, that in some cases required that staff give up their own office bin and had to actually get up from their chair to throw out that banana peel)

· That our water coolers are no longer fed by bottles that have travelled a long distance, but are plugged to the mains. We donate to Wateraid to help those without such fantastic water (I should hasten to emphasize that ordinary tap water in Manchester is of fantastic quality, and that we had a long debate about whether to keep these coolers at all!).

· We now use paper from sustainable resources for printing and photocopying, and wherever possible we try to use paper with the highest recycled content.

· Some of you have taken part in modules that were examined electronically – one of the reasons for the switch to electronic exams is to reduce the environmental impact of examinations.

These are some examples for small actions that took a lot of time and effort to implement and would hopefully reduce our carbon footprint.

SPS is now competing for an environmental award within the ‘green impact’ scheme (http://www.green-impact.org.uk/). As a result of this, we have quite a few projects on the go. My favourite has to do with switching light fixtures in our buildings the kind that is sensitive to the environmental conditions (turn themselves off when the day is bright) and to motion.

Although I’m quite passionate about environmental matters, I am probably missing a whole number of opportunities to improve things even more. You, our students, see things from a very different angle than that of the staff members I usually consult on these matters. For one thing, you use the buildings in a very different way. So I thought I’d write you with a plea: please help us win the Green Impact award!

When you next come to campus, would you have a look around – and think of practical suggestions for how SPS can reduce its carbon footprint, reduce waste and energy use, and become greener and more environmentally friendly? If you think of anything please drop me an email with your suggestion (Deborah.talmi@manchester.ac.uk).

Thanks for your help, Deborah

We have 5 years left before our damage to nature becomes irreversible, say scientists. Now you probably have the desire to just close the page, escape the moralistic speech of an environmentalist and cook yourself some 19p Lidl noodles. But don’t do it. I am not trying to convince you of anything, I would just like hear your opinion. Well, it is not totally true, deep inside I would prefer you not to eat those noodles, and I tell you later why. But more importantly, take the chance to change something about the SPS.

I heard from one of our lecturers (Dr Deborah Talmi) that the SPS is trying to become more environmental friendly. There are some enthusiastic staff involved already, but actually us students are the ones who spend most time in the SPS buildings and on campus, so we should know quite well what could be changed. Why don’t we contribute our thoughts and who knows, we might even win the Green Impact Award! (http://www.sustainability.manchester.ac.uk/enthusiasts/greenimpact)

When I pass by the big recycling containers on campus I wonder: Is this something to relieve the Uni from “green guilt”, or are they doing more for our planet than just good old recycling? They will probably say yes. But do we notice the green intentions?

A lot of people only associate living environmentally friendly with recycling. But the biggest impact is actually our consumption behaviour. What makes our planet warm up immensely is burning fossil fuels (e.g. Magic Buses, planes, fruits flown from exotic countries to the UK), deforestation (e.g. buying non-recycled, bleached toilet paper) and livestock farming (your good-old burger). Any ideas how we could influence our impact on nature? Please comment below and share your ideas!

Maybe you are wondering why I want something to be done. You might as well do some psychoanalysis or explain my enthusiasm through some attribution theory or personality traits. The truth is I have read enough about global warming to understand that we have to act now. Actually, I have not only read it, I have also seen it.

A “bleeding” tree with an exhausted me and two porters in the background. They were so slender, but carried more than 25kgs during 10 hours trips – mostly barefoot! (Surprised about the socks over trousers? – it’s a leech protection. They still managed to drink lots of my blood)

This is where we get to the instant noodles again. Last year, I had the unique opportunity to visit the Penan, an endangered tribe in the rainforest of Borneo, Malaysia. Being the first white woman to reach the village Pajavi, I could see what it means for a tribe to suddenly lose its entire livelihood: the rain forest. Heavy machinery chops down enormous trees to convert them into disposable tableware, toothpicks or picture frames.

Logging for money: The industry booms, the Penan and the planet suffer. To get an idea of how the rainforest has been shrinking, see here: http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/extent-of-deforestation-in-borneo-1950-2005-and-projection-towards-2020

Once the land is stubbed, big industries plant oil palms and the Penan can’t do anything against it. Western countries love the palm oil extracted from it – it is cheap, durable and hardens at room temperature: Perfect for instant noodles!

I think you have now seen that sustainable thinking is an important issue for us all and if the university does something about it, we should definitely take the chance and bring in some good thoughts. Please comment below and see how we will turn into an environment-conscious university!

Impressive hunting: With his blow pipe and the hand mixed herbal poison he reaches animals from a distance of up to 20 metres!