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| Watford Colloseum - where the magic happened |
The day consisted of:
1) Paul Gardner, the Principal Fellow at St Andrews' School of Psychology.
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~plg/index.html
He spoke of proximial explanations of love such as neuroscience and social psychology and ultimate explanations which are evolutionary and anthrolopical.
Attraction is built on proximity, interpersonal rewards such as wit, charm and similiarity (as birds flock together) and physical attractiveness (same level of physical attraction get together).
He said that love does not exist - perhaps not a popular idea among the teenagers in the audience! It's all hormones really! Oxytocin in females and vasopressin in males.
What actually makes us attractive? - Symmetical faces which prove that the individual has overcome pathogens and mutations. Symmetry can indicate testostorone levels. This is similiar to peacocks which overcome handicap and therefore thrive. Men use their testostone to demonstrate their immunocompetence such as eyebrow ridges, full lips and cheekbones (which indicate that they can raise offspring). Oestrogen is what produces a female face. Studies show that a masculine face is only attractive when a woman is ovulating and is reduces honesty and commitment. Women who rated themselves attractive prefered masculine symmetrical faces (Little et al 2001)
Rikowski and Grammer did a study on Olfaction in 1999
The study showed that there is a correlation between female attractiveness and sexinss and body odour, a genetic distinctiveness.
A funny fact of the lecture to take away - if you type in Bikini Tools into google you get this: http://articles.cnn.com/2009-02-19/health/women.bikinis.objects_1_bikini-strip-clubs-sexism?_s=PM:HEALTH The study showed that the same parts of the brain light up on fMRI scans when looking up power tools!
He spoke about Love and Attraction.
2) Alison Lee, Lecturer at Bath Spa University.
https://applications.bathspa.ac.uk/staff-profiles/profile.asp?user=academic%5Cleea1
Who spoke about Neuropsychology.
I have a little bit of background on what this lecturer had to say having read Sacks' 'The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat'.
This Psychologist was particularly interested in vision and Parkinsons' Disease. A bit of background on Parkinsons:
It is a movement disorder that causes tremours. It changes the posture, the way they move and the speech of the sufferer. Often it can lead to depression. Unfortunately, this disease cannot be treated yet.
Each side of the brain has characteristic behaviour.
Here is quote from a person with Parkinson's about a simple everday activity of walking through a door:
Some of her research consisted of 'The Doorway Experiment' wherebys he asked how wide the door was. Normal people tend to pick a door that is 30% wider that their shoulders, however, those with Parkinson's tend to pick a door that is double this, 60% wider than themselves. Those that were healthy tend to pick a door only 18% wider than themselves.
Another test is 'The Line Bisection Test'. Healthy people were able to find the cnetre of line without any problems. However, there was naturally a slight small differentiation called Psychudongleft (My handwriting isn't brilliant on my notes) to the left for everybody.
Those who were unhealthy, showed signed of unlateral spatial neglect. When they were told to draw a house, a face or a daisy, they were only able to draw half of the picture.
This woman's motivation to study Psychology was to see why people couldn't do things, such as a woman who could not get through their gateposts and was too embrassed to tell anybody about it. This is an example of being about to let an individual lead a better life.
3) Rob Yeung, Corporate Psychologist at the consultanty Talentspace.
It's worth noting some of the books that he has written, incase anybody wants to read further: "I is for Influence". He is also a regular 'twitterer': http://twitter.com/robyeung
He stressed the importance of empathy for successful people - those who have empathy are not necessarily more successful but it definately ensures that both walk off happy.
He spoke of "The Critical Incident Technique" which focuses on 'awe' and 'cherish'. Where for awe, he spoke of the Duncher Candle Conundrum, which expressed how being creative in business is essential. Research has showed that those who have travelled abroad, are more successful as they've been exposed to different customs and cultures. For cherish, he stated that you do better when you consider others. He made us all do a little test, to see is we subconsciously think of others or not! We had to draw an 'E' on our forehead, after this, we were asked if it was drawn so we could see the E the right way round, of the audience! I am guilty that I wrote it from my persepective! Perhaps I am not built to be a business woman after all :(
4) Katy Slocombe, Department of Psychology at The University of York
http://www.york.ac.uk/psychology/staff/faculty/ks553/
A playback experiment was conducted to see the animals response. The first evidence was referential communication.
Problems with language evolution were identified:
Most work done on monkey species.
Monkey abilities may be a conclusion of convergent evolution.
13 basic calls were identified from the experiment such as the pant grunt, which maintains social hierachy. It is often used when greating a dominant by a subordinate.
There was also laughter, which was shocking for me, as I thought this was a human behaviuour... however, the laugh does not sound human at all! This is used when youngsters are playing.
There is also a rough grant which contains information about a food source. As the pitch gets lower, this means they like the food less. In this way they are able to label the food.
Who spoke about the Psychology of success and what makes certain people successful.
5) Peter Lovatt, University of Hertfordshire.
http://dancedrdance.com/default.aspx
^ he looks very different to the picture in the website! He was a very likeable man, a rags to riches type story regarding his education ending up studying a PhD at Cambridge. He claimed that he reliased that despite notbeing originally academic that he must be fairly clever in order to have the convegerent and divergent thinking demanded of learning all the complex dance moves and sequences. And he got us all dancing and laughing! Most hilarious for me, was the video he showed of people dancing in his lab, some very extravagant dancing to say the least! A very good end to a very enjoyable day!
From an educational point of view, my notes I made from when I was not dancing with him are that women can see in a night club by the way that men move, who had the more pre-natal testostorone. In a similiar, way, when women are ovulating they move their hips more, which is more attractive to men.
A wierd, yet interesting fact was that the relative size of our ears affect how we dance and indicate what our genetic make-up is like.
He spoke about the Psychology of Dance, Hormones and Thinking.
