At the time of writing this, there were 52,564 healthcare and medical apps available to download on the Google Play store. According to a Deloitte report[1], global spending on mental health apps is likely to reach $500 million in 2022. Meanwhile, the smart-glasses, smart-textile and wearable electronics sector is expected to grow from $2.3 billion in 2021, to $6.6 billion by 2026[2]. This digital transformation has only been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, with the lockdowns pushing everything online: our friendships, education, employment and healthcare. With an increasing emphasis on private-public partnerships and expansive funding calls for more collaborative, digital research to meet the growing demand for innovation, we may all need to start thinking about how we can integrate technology into our research and clinical practice.
My introduction into the world of digital mental health started in my research assistant post at King’s College London in 2011. I worked on a healthcare service delivery project called Integrating Mental and Physical Healthcare Services: Research, Training and Services (IMPARTS), supporting general hospital services to implement routine web-based screening for common mental health problems. Patients would complete a series of tailored questionnaires on an iPad while they waited for their appointment; results would be sent immediately to their Electronic Patient Record for their clinician to review during the appointment, with in-built flags for risk assessments, or where onward referrals to mental health services might be needed. At the time, it was technically complex and a lot of my time was spent liaising with IT services to find out why the 20 questions a patient just completed had not turned up in the system in the 60 minutes they spent waiting to see their doctor.
Fast-forward ten years and I have just finished a 6-year post-doctoral post working on the Remote Assessment of Disease and Relapse – Central Nervous System (RADAR-CNS) project. This involved collecting data from wearable devices, smartphone sensors and app-delivered questionnaires from people with three long-term conditions over the course of 3 years. Depending on the source of data, we could have new information to process and store about every individual every 10 seconds. This data could then be collated and turned into a summary of each participant’s behaviour, physiology, mood or cognitive function every day.
The incredible leap in technological capabilities between my research assistant days and post-doc position still amazes me. We went from having to stand in certain areas of the clinic to make sure we had a proper wi-fi connection, to being able to collect immense amounts of data from people with very little burden to the individual themselves, or the researchers running the project. The use of digital technologies to collect data, and provide personalised interventions is the future of healthcare and it’s exciting. It also heralds the potential to adapt and change our healthcare provision; these data provide rich insight into individuals’ daily lives and may allow us to develop novel interventions which target previously un-measurable characteristics.
However, for it to be meaningfully integrated into clinical care, there are questions which remain unanswered. First and foremost: can this technology provide something of intrinsic value to the patient? Can we improve self-management and a sense of empowerment over an otherwise unpredictable illness? Might having access to one’s own health data inadvertently increase health anxiety, increase inappropriate help-seeking behaviour or even trigger a deterioration in symptoms or relapse? How can we integrate high-volume data usefully into our existing healthcare infrastructures without over-burdening already over-worked healthcare professionals? How do we make sense of what the data mean, and what actions should be taken in response to it? If risk is detected via any system, such as an adverse event related to treatment or a report of intent to self-harm, who’s responsibility is it to intervene? Who “owns” the data, and how much data is too much data?
I was thrilled to start a new role as a Lecturer in Psychology in the School of Psychology in April 2022. In addition to my teaching responsibilities, I am a developing a portfolio of research activities which are starting to address these questions. These include a series of EPSRC grants collaborating with multidisciplinary teams across the UK to test different types of remote measurement technologies in different clinical and societal contexts. For example, one of the teams I am working with are developing a smart monitoring textile for measuring loneliness and isolation in an ageing population[3]. Another group are developing an online peer-support intervention for family caregivers, using experience sampling and wearable devices to monitor real-time changes in mood and physiology as carers interact with different elements of the virtual platform. My hope is to build on these existing collaborations and develop new ones with colleagues across the University, to develop a wider understanding of how these technologies can challenge and revolutionise the way we measure and manage health and wellbeing. The future of healthcare is digital, and it’s our responsibility to make sure it’s done thoughtfully, conscientiously and ethically.
Faith Matcham is a Psychology lecturer at Sussex and a Health Psychologist specialising in mental/physical comorbidity and the use of digital technologies to measure and manage chronic health conditions.
Picture this: Walking through a park on a pleasant day, you decide to stop and rest on a park bench. However, only two benches are available, and both already have someone sitting there: one with someone you guess is roughly the same age as you, and one with someone who is much older or younger than you. Now, given that there is a strong likelihood of conversation emerging upon sitting down, which person would you rather talk to?
You might be apprehensive of even sitting down in the first place. People are often hesitant to talk to someone new. Following strict social norms,
we often avoid talking to strangers because we think conversations will consist of awkward small talk and generally feel unpleasant. Indeed, research shows people are often sceptical of thevalue of connecting with new people, despite the fact that people actually benefit, often more than they expect, from talking to strangers.
Such apprehension of talking to others we don’t know extends further in those we perceive ourselves to be different from, such as those of different ethnic or age groups. In fact, research shows we consistently give preferential treatment to people we share basic demographic traits with.
However, we also might stand to learn more from talking to others who are different from us. And though in some ways it may seem easier to talk to someone more similar to us, we might be more likely to care for their opinion, and thus might be more fearful of falling into potentially awkward small talk.
Our recent research study attempts to shed light upon this complex picture, potentially helping you choose who to sit next to on the imaginary park bench. Specifically, we asked people (aged either 25-30 or 65-70) to have a conversation with someone of the same age group or the other age group, and first report how they expected the conversation would go.
Although we anticipated that people would expect conversations with their own age group to be more positive, participants expected to enjoy conversations more with a partner of the different age group, despite thinking they would have less in common.
After the conversation, our participants reported how the conversation went. One finding, consistent with previous research, is that conversations went much better than expected: people overwhelmingly reported they enjoyed conversations more, found conversations easier, thought their partner found them more interesting, and had more in common than they initially thought they would.
Interestingly, the differences we observed pre-conversation diminished; people enjoyed conversations more and found things in common with their partners regardless of who they spoke to, and reported a strong interest in talking further with someone of the same age as their conversation partner.
Delving further, the overall effect of participants expecting to enjoy cross-generational conversations more was largely driven by younger participants being especially pessimistic about having a conversation with someone of the same age. This may indicate that younger people are overtly more apprehensive with their own peer group, caring more about appearing conversationally fluent and interesting.
Our results, consistent with previous research on minimal interactions, indicate that any apprehension about talking to others different from us, particularly in the form of worrying about not having much in common, may be largely unfounded. For example, one younger participant pointed out, “I was worried it was going to be awkward and we would have nothing in common or to speak about. However, as soon as the conversation started I realised how wrong that expectation was and I actually had a lovely time chatting with her and we had so much in common!”.
Moreover, not only were conversation fears unfounded, but those who spoke to someone of a different age reported learning much more than those who spoke to someone of the same age, as well as feeling they had learned new perspectives. As one older participant pointed out, “I learnt that age …can actually make for a much more interesting conversation …as you speak about things that are actually interesting and not small talk.”
One reason we might have mixed expectations about talking to those different to us may simply be a product of limited exposure. When asked about opportunities for daily interactions, both age groups overwhelmingly reported many more opportunities to talk to their own age group than the other.
Thus, the park bench provides an all too rare opportunity for making a cross-generational connection. We heartily encourage you to sit on the park bench with the person who is a different age than you. Our research suggests that both you and your partner are likely to enjoy your conversation more than you expect.
Joshua Moreton is a Senior Research Officer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Essex. Joshua has been conducting research on the mental health benefits of cross-generational conversations as part of an ongoing project with Sussex Psychologist, Dr Gillian Sandstrom.
By Sophie Longley, MSc Experimental Psychology student
I was diagnosed with autism last year, at 28 years old. Strangely, the diagnosis was not a surprise. In fact, it finally provided answers for why I felt so out of place in the world and why I would get so incredibly overwhelmed by things that others simply took in their stride. It also explained why I had trouble with maintaining friendships, why I tried so hard to fit in with everyone else to the point of exhaustion and why it felt like my environment was too loud, too bright, too much.
What I’ve just described are some of the many distressing experiences that autistic people encounter every day.
Autism research has come a long way in identifying our neurological differences compared to the non-autistic population. However, to truly understand our autistic experiences, research needs to go beyond our neurology towards investigating how we experience the world and in turn, how we are treated by others because of these differences, which as research suggests, results in lasting emotional harm and trauma.
This autism awareness week, I want to draw attention to research that I am conducting with my brilliant supervisor, Dr. Sophie Anns, on how late-diagnosed autistic women make sense of traumatic experiences. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), we will interview participants to identify the types of traumas they have each experienced and explore how getting an autism diagnosis later in life has affected how they make sense of these traumatic experiences. We’ve chosen IPA over other methodologies as we are not looking to generalise our findings across the entire autistic population (gasp!). Instead, we think it’s important to focus on how our autistic participants make sense of their own individual traumatic experiences since current literature highlights that these experiences are incredibly diverse across the autistic population.
To date, there is little qualitative research highlighting how autistic adults, particularly autistic women, experience trauma despite quantitative studies showing the prevalence of probable PTSD among the autistic population (Haruvi-Lamdan et al., 2020; Rumball et al., 2021). For clinicians, autism professionals and wider society to get a better grasp of what autistic people deem traumatic, not just how many of us may experience trauma, there is a need for further qualitative research on this topic. This will allow autistic people to describe, in-depth these experiences that may be perceived as not traumatic by others.
Although autistic people experience higher rates of trauma compared to the non-autistic population (these rates are higher for autistic women than autistic men), autistic people overall are less likely to receive a diagnosis for PTSD compared to non-autistic people (Rumball, 2021). This is partly due to these traumatic experiences being nuanced and not ‘traumatic enough’ to meet the PTSD diagnostic criteria, despite many autistic people reporting heightened arousal and intense anxiety following a traumatising experience – commonly associated with a clinical diagnosis of PTSD (Brewin et al., 2009)
Only until recently, research has identified a broad range of traumatic events experienced by autistic people, which may not be widely understood by clinicians. For instance, a recent study by Kerns (2022) found several sources of trauma among autistic adults such as social marginalisation, social exclusion at school and in the workplace, sensory trauma, and difficulties in seeking institutional support. Additionally, other research has identified difficulties with professional interactions and social relationships, offhand comments, challenges in finding supportive networks and repeated instances of stigma and discrimination (Gates, 2019; Sweeney, 2016; Botha & Frost, 2020) as sources of trauma. Interestingly, even the autism diagnostic process itself was cited as a traumatic event, particularly for those diagnosed in adulthood (Crane et al., 2018).
Likewise, Fulton, Reardon & Richardson et al., (2020) found that commonplace activities such as showering, brushing teeth, getting dressed, having breakfast or being in the company of others can be physically or emotionally harmful to autistic people, due to the sensory overwhelm often associated with these situations. The reason why these situations are deemed traumatic for autistic people and perhaps not others, is two-fold: not only do autistic people have a heighted sense of vigilance and hyperarousal to potential harm and are therefore primed to look out for traumatising sensory information (Fulton et al., 2020), but misunderstandings from others who label these events as not traumatic, lead to further distress (Fulton, et al., 2020). This brings to light a broad range of traumatic events that are not yet recognised by clinical measures for PTSD but are nonetheless still valid traumatic experiences for autistic people and should be taken seriously.
Stressful events not involving an immediate threat to life or physical injury such as the ones listed above are not considered trauma in the clinical sense (Paiet al., 2017) and therefore fall under the DSM-5 non-Criterion A category for PTSD. It’s the non-Criterion A trauma that our research is particularly interested in because unfortunately, no matter how many of these traumas autistic people experience, they may not be able to receive a clinical diagnosis for PTSD as such events are perceived as ‘less intense’ or even ‘harmless’. So, when assessing potential trauma among autistic people, it’s important to understand that what may be perceived as mildly distressing for most of the population, might be extremely traumatic for autistic people.
We hope that our research, among other emerging studies in this field, could potentially offer a case to revise the current clinical tools used to diagnose PTSD in autistic adults. But, with such a broad spectrum of traumatic experiences, the challenge for clinicians will be deciding which ones warrant a PTSD diagnosis. If anything, we hope our research will help to validate the traumatic experiences of our participants and raise awareness of different situations that some autistic people might find traumatic.
If you would like to find out more about this study, email Sophie Longley s.longley@sussex.ac.uk or Dr. Sophie Anns s.anns@sussex.ac.uk. They will be looking to recruit participants in April, following ethical approval.
‘Desserts of the World’ returned to the Pevensey 1 building for One World Sussex Week!
Hosted in the Bridge Café, the event celebrated our diverse student and staff population. Desserts were used as a way to learn about different cultures, traditions, and countries in a language that everyone understands: good food!
Staff and students were encouraged to make or provide dishes from their home country, as well as provide information about what their dessert was and why they were making it. Countries represented included Brazil, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Romania, Italy, and England!
Due to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, this event was also an opportunity to fundraise for the DEC Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal.
The event was a huge success, with both staff and students turning up to sample the amazing food. Not a single dish was left! We also raised an incredible £196 for Ukraine, which will make such a difference!
A prize was awarded for the Most Inspirational Dessert, with 3rd Year student Semini Karunasena winning by popular vote with her milkmaid caramel pudding from Sri Lanka. We asked Semini why she made this dessert, and this is what she had to say:
“I was really excited when I heard that the Psychology department was hosting ‘Desserts of the World’ for One World Week. I’ve never really made any Sri Lankan desserts (I’m more of an eater), so I decided to make something relatively easy and went for a Sri Lankan caramel pudding. This is a great dessert to eat, especially after having spicy food as a main meal. I used my mum’s recipe which was passed down to her from her mother, so I knew it was going to taste great! My mum would always make this for me as a kid (and still does!) for special occasions and now she makes it for me when I leave home for uni after the holidays.
I want to say a huge thanks to my Mum and Dad who I face-timed at 10pm because I was struggling to steam the caramel, couldn’t have made this without your help!”
If you would like to try and recreate Semini’s winning dessert, follow her recipe:
Thank you to the Student Experience Team for organising this event, and to everyone who provided a dessert and donated!
The Make it Happen events are an amazing new set of panel events targeting several different job sectors and career types, where you can hear how graduates from the University of Sussex got into their careers, their tips for job hunting, and their top tips for you after University. As a Psychology student, the ‘Careers in Life Sciences’ talk happening on the 16th of March, where a graduate from Sussex will be speaking about her career following her degree in Neuroscience in 2021 sounds interesting. However, your degree in Psychology can open you up to so many different industries and career paths that there’s valuable knowledge to be gained from all of these talks.
This is an exclusive opportunity to get some invaluable advice and have a chance to ask questions with a Q&A after each session.
The events are taking place throughout March 2022, with different events covering specific career areas. During the events you will also hear all about Sussex Connect, which is an online platform (a bit like LinkedIn, but just for Sussex grads) where you can connect with fellow graduates once you’ve graduated and get in touch with graduates in your chosen career path. This can be a great first step in starting to build your professional network, which can be invaluable in opening doors or making you aware of courses or job advertisements and so on which may not be advertised elsewhere.
Students who have attended the Make it Happen events in previous years have said things like:
“Not only did I learn about what Sussex connect was and how it could benefit me in my future career plans, it made me understand what career path I would like to go down plus how to get there! It’s left me positive about my future and the next steps I am going to take after uni.”
“The talk was very inspiring, and the face-to-face networking was very helpful and fun. I could ask as many questions as I wanted and all the alumni were very friendly and supportive.”
So, what kind of events are happening?
Wednesday 16th March
Topic: Careers in life sciences
Speakers:
Layla Burn (BSc Neuroscience, 2021): Medical student at Queen Mary, University of London
Melina Matthiessen: Trainee Clinical Scientist (Audiology) at Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Steve Acquah: Research Professor of Chemistry and Digital Media Lab Unit Coordinator at University of Massachusetts Amherst
Wednesday 23rd March
Topic: Careers in media, arts and communications
Speakers:
Amy Alipio: Associate Managing Editor at National Geographic Travel
Charlotte Newell: Senior Press & PR Officer at FareShare
Jordi M Carter: Taking Part & Directors Prog Associate at Young Vic Theatre
Jonathan Gaiger: Global Senior Digital Creative at LEGO
Wednesday 30th March
Topic: Careers in government and public services
Speakers:
Arran Pedder: Corporate Relations Manager at Imperial War Museum
Declan McClean: Policy Advisor at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Dr Neil Churchill: Director of Experience, Participation and Equalities at NHS England
Vincent Parisi: Preparedness Analyst at US Federal Emergency Management Agency
You can book your place on one of these fantastic events using CareerHub.
Thinking about your career, at any point during your degree, can feel like a daunting prospect. In first year, it feels much too early, in second year your schedule is chock-full, and in third year it all feels too late!
The Careers and Entrepreneurship team can help you at any point during your degree, and even afterwards, as the C&E team can offer you advice up to 3 years after you graduate. It’s never too late!
In terms of online presence, the C&E offer two websites:
But where do you go first, and for what? In this blog post, myself and the C&E team have provided a breakdown of each site with advice on where to go for your specific set of career-related queries.
CareerHub
CareerHub is where you can book appointments with a Careers Consultant (more on that later!), see upcoming events, browse job and placement vacancies, and more. By clicking on the ‘Vacancies’ page, you can view all the job (part/full-time) vacancies, placement adverts, voluntary opportunities and more. It’s a great place to find and apply for jobs or just to get an idea of what’s out there to help your further research.
CareerHub is also where you can book appointments with a Careers Consultant. You can arrange a 20-minute appointment via telephone, Zoom, or in-person, either in advance or for the same day. You can book to see specific Consultants, who have different areas of speciality (Vicky Raynard is our Psychology Careers Consultant) or just check ‘Any’ if you don’t have a preference. You can then pick a specific topic to discuss, such as interview preparation, finding part-time work, postgraduate study, and many more – or you can just pick ‘Careers’ if you don’t know what you want to ask about. If you’d rather speak to someone over email, you can click ‘Ask a Question’ at the top of the CareerHub site to submit your questions via email.
These appointments can be great for making contact with someone in the working world who can help broaden your perspective, which is probably narrowed by being stuck in a University for so many years and with the stress that brings, especially working within a pandemic, which we have all had to do.
Careers & Entrepreneurship Website
Now, we’ll take a look at the Careers site embedded within the UoS website, which is a good catch-all to direct you to where you need to go: you can also find links to CareerHub and SkillsHub here.
When you go to this page, you’ll see a huge amount of options directing you to different sites, resources and more.
For career choices, and information related to your specific degree, take a look at ‘Making Career Choices’. Here, you can look at Job Sector Guides, Using Your Degree
and see info about further study you might look into. If you’re not sure where to start, click Making Career Choices, and then ‘What stage are you at with your career planning?’. Here you can pick between choices such as ‘I’m not ready to start thinking about my career yet’, ‘I have a career in mind, but I’m not sure how to get there’ and more. The page will then take you to suggestions tailored to your specific situation. For example, if you click ‘I have a career in mind, but I’m not sure how to get there’, you will be directed to the Job Sector Guides, where you can find sector overviews and job profiles to help you find out more about what is involved, as well as training routes and ways to gain experience. There are also directive goals suggested, such as getting in touch with people in your desired career over Sussex Connect, or volunteering during your studies to gain relevant work experience.
This tool is really fantastic as you can get directed, tailored suggestions, instead of trawling through all the resources available to try and pick ones that will help you.
If you want to think about your career path starting from a more bottom-up approach (i.e. starting with you!), you can use the online questionnaires and personality tests linked on the C&E website (Making Career Choices; Your interests and motivations) to identify your strengths and skills and start thinking about your career that way. It’s often helpful to start this way and try to find a career that fits you, rather than trying to fit yourself into careers that might not be a great match.
SkillsHub
SkillsHub is somewhere you can go with pretty much any academic problem you’re struggling with. From digital skills, critical thinking, writing essays, referencing guides – it’s got it all! I personally used SkillsHub when I was struggling with the Statistics module in my Psychology degree – unless you’re part of a lucky (and, I think, mythical) few, you’re probably struggling with Stats too. No worries – there’s no need to do it in your third year! (Apart from your dissertation, but that’s a whole other blog post). There’s links to resources, videos from lecturers specialising in that topic, and student perspectives too. SkillsHub is great to use when you don’t feel the need to reach out to a staff member (or maybe feel too scared to), as it focuses on self-directed learning and gives you real-life tips on how to improve your grades and confidence in your skills.
Events
Lastly, you can find upcoming C&E events in lots of ways. You can see events on CareerHub, through the C&E’s Instagram page (@sussexunicareers), or through the C&E website (sussex.ac.uk/careers). The C&E team run a great timetable of events, most of which are open to all current students and recent graduates. Some examples of these events include ‘STEM Women’, ‘Time Management Webinar’, ‘Aspire: an event for students of Black heritage’, and so much more. I’d really recommend trying out one of these events, and many of them have online attendance options, which makes it all the easier to fit them into your schedule.
There is also a Canvas module specifically for Careers in Psychology, where you can access previous talks from professionals from different fields, current vacancies, career profiles and more.
If you’ve made it this far, well done! As you can tell, there are so many resources offered by the Careers & Entrepreneurship Centre it can all feel a bit daunting and like you’re not sure where to start. Hopefully, this blog post has helped to break down the different offerings into a more manageable source of information, and if there’s anything we’ve missed off, or you have a question about Careers in Psychology, please feel free to contact me Louise Drake, as the Psychology Careers Connector, and most importantly: you’ve got this!
This is a time of life where these things are bound to be scary and feel overwhelming. It’s a really good idea to put the effort in to utilise some of these resources to help alleviate your fears and get your questions answered.
Louise Drake is a final year Psychology Student and Careers Connector at the University of Sussex.
By Petar Raykov, Psychology Research Fellow at Sussex.
I am not one to enjoy promoting myself, yet I have been in Sussex for a while now and I quite like the research I have been doing here, so here it goes. Back in the day I started my PhD with Prof. Chris Bird and Prof. Jane Oakhill. My research focused, and I guess still focuses, on how prior knowledge and experiences affect the learning and representations of new everyday information.
Ok, so let’s slightly unpack this. By new everyday information, I mean my research often uses naturalistic video stimuli that show narrative plots unfolding over time. There is a rather new trend in psychology to use such stimuli, since they may be more easily generalizable to everyday life, or indeed can be particularly useful to address psychological questions such as how do we comprehend events and discourse, and how do we integrate information over time. Notably, as most trends this one also has very much been inspired by work done previously – seminal psychological studies have investigated how we comprehend and remember text (Bartlett, 1932; Bransford & Johnson, 1972; Johnson-Laird, 1983)[https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(72)80006-9], and process events and actions from videos (Newtson et al., 1977)[https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.35.12.847].
To comprehend everyday situations, we often rely on our prior knowledge. For instance, when we go into a library, we expect to see a lot of books and people studying rather than dancing. My research focused on distinguishing the effects on different types of prior knowledge. For instance, we have more general knowledge about how a typical library might work – such general or schematic knowledge has been learned over multiple experiences with libraries. However, we might also have prior specific knowledge about one particular library (e.g., what happened yesterday at the library at University of Sussex).
In different studies I tested how specific and general prior knowledge might affect learning and what brain regions might support integrating prior knowledge with new incoming information.
For instance, in one study I showed that simply knowing the previous topic of conversation can lead to improved memory for a continuation video. This study also replicated previous fMRI (brain scanning technique) results from Chris Bird’s lab (Keidel et al., 2017)[ https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhx218] and further extended them by showing what brain regions are involved in integrating this specific prior knowledge with the newly incoming information. Furthermore, by using newly developed machine learning methods we were able to show that having specific prior knowledge changed the comprehension and memory for the continuation video among participants. Specifically, having prior knowledge increased the consistency of interpretation of the second half videos leading to more similar memories across participants that had the prior knowledge (Raykov et al., 2018)[ https://doi.org/10.1101/276683].
In parallel, researchers in cognitive neuroscience and psychology have also started to adopt new machine learning methods (various decoding and encoding models) to examine how different stimulus features may predict brain activity. Indeed, this has proven very fruitful approach. Combining brain imaging with such machine learning methods can be helpful to address longstanding questions in psychology. For instance, Ediz Sohoglu who works at University of Sussex recently used encoding models to show how prediction errors affect speech perception (Sohoglu & Davis, 2020)[https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.58077]. Warrick Roseboom and colleagues have used neural network models to build a computational model of how we might perceive time (Roseboom et al., 2019)[ https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-08194-7]. Interestingly, this model has been further updated and currently also has implications for episodic memory and event processing (how we distinguish one event from another) (Fountas et al., 2021)[ https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.02.17.953133]. These methods are not only useful for neuroimaging data. Nora Andermane, Jenny Bosten, Anil Seth and Jamie Ward applied a clustering algorithm to examine individual differences in a set of perceptual tasks that measured how prior expectations affect perception (Andermane et al., 2020)[ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2020.102989]. Notably this is just a small sample of the incredible research done at Sussex University. But hopefully, it can highlight the usefulness of such methods, especially when combined with rigorous experimental design, and point out to students that sometimes coding pays off. Now to stop wasting your precious time I will stop with my digression.
Figure 1. Highlighted words in yellow are words the algorithm identifies are related to the word ‘king’. These synonyms relationships are automatically learned by computational algorithm (word2vec), but may resemble the knowledge we represent about these objects in our brains.
In another study, we familiarised participants with one TV show and later asked them to watch and remember new video clips taken from the trained show and clips taken from a similar but untrained show. The training allowed participants to learn schematic information over multiple episodes about the main characters and their personalities. This design allowed us test how prior generic person knowledge affected the processing of new related information. I showed that person schematic knowledge helped participants remember more story specific information from the new clips taken from the trained show. We were able to identify brain patterns of activity that were specific for the person schematic knowledge. Interestingly, these patterns were present in medial prefrontal cortex, a brain region often associated with complex thought, reasoning and emotional processing. We observed that participants showing more robust evidence for these schematic patterns showed higher memory benefit for the trained videos (see Fig. 2). Furthermore, using videos and pattern recognition methods we were able to show that schema patterns were likely present throughout the whole duration of the video. These results start to elucidate how and when schema knowledge exerts its effects on new learning (Raykov et al., 2020, 2021)[https://doi.org/10.1080/02643294.2019.1685958; https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhab027].
Figure 2. More robust schema representation in the remedial prefrontal cortex (MPFC; the yellow blob in the brain) predicted better memory for the trained video clips when compared to the untrained video clips.
In more recent work I examined what information do we actually represent when we remember an event (Bromis et al., 2021)[https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_01802]. In a collaborative project with Konstantinos Bromis we tested how repeated and unique elements are remembered. Specifically, most psychological work often examines memory for unique items or narratives, however, in our everyday lives a lot of information is actually repeated and shared among events. For instance, on Monday and Tuesday I might work in the office and see Sam on both days. So, when I am remembering an event from Tuesday, I have to differentiate it from my memories from Monday on which I also saw Sam. Apart from these repeated elements there also event unique elements, e.g. I might have had different conversations on Monday and Tuesday, furthermore I might have seen different combination of people (e.g. on Monday I saw Sam and Dominika, but on Tuesday I saw Sam and Flavia). Traditional views in memory research are that since each event is composed of unique combination of elements, we simply represent all elements equally. However, this has not been tested empirically. Furthermore, since our memories may be particularly important on how we make predictions and decisions for the future, it might be the case that we do not represent frequently and predictably occurring elements equally to event unique elements. Me and Kostas addressed exactly this question in a two-session fMRI study using conversations written by Leah Wickens (an ex-undergraduate student at University of Sussex). We asked participants to learn very well conversations that comprised of repeated and unique elements. Participants could remember the conversations and both types of elements very well. Indeed, behaviourally they rated the event unique elements as more important and remembered more from them. Yet when we examined how their brains represented these memories, we found that actually the repeated and predictable elements were more strongly represented during retrieval. This result argues against the standard view of holistic retrieval where we represent all elements equally, and start to elucidate that our memories may put more weight on repeated and predictable elements, since they may be more important in the future (Anderson & Milson, 1989; Gershman, 2017)[https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.96.4.703; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2017.05.025]. You can see more about the research in this presentation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_cVAIKPyFE&t=0s).
More recently, I have started to investigate how prior knowledge can lead to memory errors, and biases in interpretation. Indeed, although prior knowledge often benefits learning sometimes it makes learning more difficult and can lead to false memory errors – where people falsely remember things that never happened. Furthermore, I am interested in how we learn information that contradicts our prior expectations. This new line of research is done in collaboration with Dominika Varga (you can see an interview she did posted on the Sussex Neuroscience channel – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMhBRvfePUb1T_1XRn9hhcA ).
Apart from how prior knowledge affects processing of new information there are still multiple questions to be addressed. For instance, it is clear that prior knowledge effects are not necessarily linear and additive, so future research is needed to better understand the conditions that affect new learning. Furthermore, recently there has been large leaps in technology (e.g. development of various new brain imaging techniques and new computational and analysis methods) that allow us to empirically test new research questions and gain better understanding on how certain psychological processes are implemented in the brain. Yet there are still multiple questions to be addressed in future research. Indeed, it is still not clear how best to examine representations that are not currently active or in working memory, which may be necessary to best understand the effects of prior knowledge. One of the biggest remaining questions is also how newly learnt information becomes integrated with our previous memories and become part of our general knowledge about how the world works.
Hopefully, you enjoyed my blabbing and found the research interesting. And who knows, you might even consider participating in brain imaging research. One cool bit of it is that you can get a picture of your brain (the Van Gogh brain in Figure 2 is actually mine) and even get a 3D print of your brain (that can glow in the dark).
As a person, I feel I have a pretty unique experience of first year psychology so, to begin with, let me introduce myself. Hi, my name is Eli. This is actually my second year studying at the university as I also completed a psychology foundation year which, given the circumstances of the past few years, presented its own set of advantages and challenges. I am also from a low-income background, pansexual, non-binary, and I have ADHD as well as a plethora of mental health issues. These things all affect me not only as a person, but also as a student, yet none of them have hindered my ability to reach the position I am in today.
Going into first year was a challenge. I had never even approached the idea of revision before, and I suddenly found myself in a position where I needed to gain that skill quickly in order to just keep up. I felt overwhelmed, lost, and fell into a real state of panic. Honestly, I was a mess. But in time, as I adjusted to university, and it to me, I began to find myself as a student. Understanding what worked for me and adapting to this new way of life took real time and effort that I wasn’t used to, but eventually the picture came together.
One of my main concerns when looking at the syllabus was coding: “What!? I thought psychology was just reading research articles and learning about disorders, what is this doing here?” is how I imagine that thought spiral started. But with practice and careful assistance from Dr Evans, (Psychology lecturer and R extraordinaire) I began to find myself making light work of what initially seemed to me like a foreign language.
Don’t get me wrong, university isn’t easy and isn’t a decision to be made lightly. You are plunged into a new style of learning, with less support from lecturers as well as leaving behind your previously established support network (given you are studying away from home). However, you are given the opportunity for a new level of independence, self-discovery and to build new relationships (usually found in the most random of situations) without being fully exposed to the wider world just yet.
Overall, university can be a lot maybe even too much at times, but once you find your rhythm, it really can be enlightening. It is incredibly liberating to learn about the thing that you love alongside people that get it whilst being taught by people that really get it. All of this with the knowledge you are supported by a team of people that only want you to do well really helps to make this experience one worth taking. It wasn’t easy getting to this point but given the opportunity, I would choose it all over again. Psychology at the University of Sussex really is an experience like no other.
Eli Hooper is currently studying BSc Psychology with Clinical Approaches at the University of Sussex.
University of Sussex professor, Zoltan Dienes talks cold control theory and phenomenological control with Psychology MRes student, Kev Sheldrake.
I first heard of Zoltan Dienes (pronounced ‘dee-en-es’, or more correctly, ‘dee-en-esh’) when I devoured the theory section of the Oxford Handbook of Hypnosis. His chapter with Amanda Barnier described ‘cold control theory’ – an integrative theory of how suggestions were taken. Unlike the neoneodissociation theories (dissociated control, for example) it didn’t invent parts of the brain or mind to explain what was going on. And unlike Nicholas Spanos’s role-play or Graham Wagstaff’s ‘expectation, strategy and compliance’ theories, it took a strong, solid stab at accounting for the feelings of automaticity and involuntariness. As far as I was aware, only Irving Kirsch’s response set theory had really attempted this in the socio-cognitive (or cognitive-behaviour) domain, so it was a big deal.
Fast forward to the UK Hypnosis Convention in 2019 and Zoltan and I were speaking on the same stage on the same day – Zoltan missed my talk but I’ve since forced him to watch a recording of it on pain of death. We got chatting afterwards and I expressed how influential his work had been on my thinking about hypnosis, and in the development of the (theoretical but never-formally-tested) Automatic Imagination Model, that Anthony Jacquin and I put together while at Head Hacking (circa 2010).
Since then, and since starting this wonderful blog with my amazing wife, Amy, I’ve been reading a lot of vintage and classic academic texts on the topic, and decided to ask Zoltan whether there was any way he would supervise me studying for a part-time PhD. He agreed on the proviso that I studied first for a Master of Research degree in psychological methods, so that’s where I am right now – one term into a Master’s degree, being supervised by my hypno-hero, Zoltan Dienes! When it came to choosing people to interview for this blog, Zoltan was an obvious first candidate.
Professor Zoltan Dienes chatting to Kev via Zoom.
When asking Zoltan about how he became interested in hypnosis, it was surprising to discover that, really, hypnosis chose him:
“It was sort of a coincidence, really. My first degree was natural sciences, and I specialised in psychology, and decided I wanted to be an academic while I was doing my first degree. I was born in Australia, and grew up there until I was 11. And I thought, it would be nice to go back to ‘the fatherland’ and do a Master’s there before going on to do a PhD. And so I applied to Australian universities. At that time, I didn’t think about hypnosis, but I thought about maybe the application of cognitive psychology to clinical issues. One of the places I applied was Macquarie [Sydney], and they took my application to be for what they called an MA, which is actually like an MPhil, or a mini PhD in two years.
“So the crucial issue then was having a supervisor retain me as you would with a PhD. Kevin McConkey was interested in the application of cognitive psychology in hypnosis. They accepted me and I arrived at Macquarie, and Kevin gave me the review of hypnosis that had just been written by John Kihlstrom (this was in 1985). And he said, ‘If you want me to be your supervisor, it has to be on hypnosis, so read this review, and see what you think.’ Anyway, I read Kihlstrom’s review and thought, ‘Well, this sounds quite interesting to me really.’”
I’ve heard many a lay-hypnotist claim that academics aren’t very good at hypnosis and that they rarely use it, preferring instead to theorise, but not Zoltan: “So then I sort of hypnotised 100 people in the name of science and wrote that up as a Master’s thesis.” Zoltan explained that Kevin McConkey had a very active lab (one of the ‘big five’ in the world at the time; the other four being in the USA), and that they would screen hundreds of new psychology undergraduate students entering the university each year, for their response to hypnosis. He told me that back then, each UK university might have had between 30 and 40 new psychology undergraduates each year, making hypnosis research implausible, but that now Sussex (where Zoltan is a professor of experimental psychology) has an intake of over 500 each year, and that the majority of them are screened. The point being that if you want to run experiments, it is very helpful to have a large, pre-tested set of students who are prepared to take part in experiments, where you already know how good or bad they are at taking suggestions before you start.
When I asked him if that made Sussex the leading university in the UK for hypnosis research, he was unequivocal: “So part of first-year psychology requirements is a phenomenological control screening now, and we’ve been screening hundreds of people a year for hypnotisability since about 2006. I don’t know of any other place in the UK that has a regular year-on-year screening. Every year we’ll get out several papers on hypnosis. I can’t think of anywhere else [in the UK]; Oakley did have a big operation at UCL, but he’s now retired.”
Especially as Zoltan hadn’t specifically chosen to research hypnosis, I really wanted to know what he thought it was when he started out, and what he thinks it is now. He told me that initially he had no idea what was going on, and that non-hypnosis academics often fall into a similar camp:
“It’s interesting when you talk to scientists who don’t do hypnosis, about hypnosis, because they have absorbed the cultural stereotypes, and they haven’t really processed it in terms of their scientific understanding of the world yet, so they can believe all these myths about hypnosis. At the same time, they’re trying to be a scientist, so they try and square all that information. And I guess I was like that, but I found it intriguing. So I didn’t have any set ideas and I found all the ideas out there a bit baffling in a sense.”
Zoltan told me that Ernest Hilgard’s theory of parallel streams of consciousness made little sense to him when it came to pain control, because: “Why would anyone want hypnotic analgesia, if there’s this other conscious stream in intense pain?”. But on the other side of the debate, he didn’t really think that role enactment (Nicholas Spanos, Theodore Sarbin, William Coe, etc) properly explained hypnotic phenomena, nor was even saying anything fundamentally different to Hilgard.
Zoltan appeared as the hypnosis expert on The Assassin, one of Derren Brown: The Experiments TV shows broadcast on Channel 4 in 2011.
Zoltan’s insight, and the way he currently thinks about hypnosis, was that both sides of the debate were simply using different metaphors for the same thing. On the one side, Hilgard was describing parts of the mind in ways that Zoltan understood to be metaphors – even if Hilgard himself believed them as actual fact (“I don’t think Hilgard thought it was a metaphor”). On the other side, Spanos was using the metaphor of role enactment, essentially saying that the participant performs the action but somehow believes they aren’t the cause of it.
“I think I got to the bottom of that confusion in my mind when I came up with cold control theory, because there was a sense in which both Spanos and Hilgard were saying the same thing, which is what I put my finger on, in terms of cold control. And that sort of, I think, was partly a way of resolving my sense of confusion about what are they really arguing about? Well, part of that was because actually they had quite a lot in common, even though they sounded so very different.”
I suggested to Zoltan (pun intended) that what I found interesting and unique to cold control theory was that it presented testable hypotheses and, if the theory stood up, it would result in things you could actually change in order to improve response to suggestion, which other theories typically did not. Zoltan agreed; so I had to ask him, what role did he think the hypnotic induction plays in all of this? “I think no role,” he replied. He told me that William James in the late 19th century concluded that almost anything could be an induction: “Rubbing the temples, looking into the eyes… You could write a letter, it also has that!”. The implication was that if anything could be an induction, then an induction was essentially nothing, other than just a suggestion to enter a ‘trance’.
And on that, we discussed what people meant by the word ‘trance’ and what he thought of that whole area: “The thing with special states, and the sort of approach you find is people think, ‘Oh, good, cognitive neuroscience, EEG and ERPs’, and all sorts of things. And what they seem to think is if we find anything happening at all, in this huge mass of EEG data, that it’s a sign that the state is real, which obviously doesn’t follow at all. There’s no theory there. You’re just looking at a tonne of data. But there has not been a theory of trance that makes predictions about what will happen in EEG, fMRI or anything else, or at least that could not also be equally well explained by use of imagination in accordance with demand characteristics.”
Regardless of whether there is a state (spoiler: there isn’t) different people respond to differing levels to suggestion, so where did Zoltan find himself on that scale? “One of the first things I did when I went to Kevin McConkey’s lab to start my Master’s was sit in on the Harvard screening and, unfortunately, I am a low. I can experience some of the basic motor suggestions, which I’m pleased with.
“Irving Kirsch tells me he’s a medium. Hilgard [statetist] apparently was a low. But Theodore Barber [socio-cognitive theorist, or non-state] was a high. So Hilgard thought, ‘Wow, these highs are really amazing with what they can do’; because he couldn’t do it, he thought it was something special. Whereas Barber thought: any old fool can do this.”
This perspective on the researcher’s own hypnotic (or phenomenological control) capabilities, and the subsequent way they devised theory was really interesting. The guy who pretty much couldn’t achieve any hypnotic phenomena saw those who could as special, and invented special mechanisms by which they experienced the things they did. Whereas the guy who could personally experience all the phenomena didn’t think it was special at all, and consequently felt that all minds had the capability, and that it must just be the way he was using his, that resulted in the phenomena that he experienced.
Zoltan on The Assassin.
So we got talking about hypnotic anecdotes and Zoltan revealed that he is, in fact, a secret street hypnotist!
“One anecdote through phenomenological control I often tell people relates to what you’re asking about how hypnotizable researchers are. I had a PhD student, Rebecca, doing a hypnosis session; she was a high, and at the time I was doing work with Irving on the colour experiment. I was quite interested in that the highest could do it without an induction and just be told to do it, basically. So I said to Rebecca, ‘We’re sitting in a cafe, you see that bottle in front of you, you can turn it red, if you want’. She said, ‘No I can’t do that’, and then she said ‘Oh! It’s turned red!’. So she didn’t know she had this capability to do it. Or somehow she deceived herself enough that it was surprising to her.”
This reminded me of a Head Hacking discovery of ‘permanosis’, where once we’d hypnotised someone, we could just deliver suggestions at a future time and they would be taken as if we’d re-hypnotised them. Obviously, now I know it’s all just suggestion and the induction was unnecessary, but, at the time, Anthony gave a similar suggestion with a bottle in a cafe to someone he had hypnotised once about three weeks prior. He told him his hand was stuck to the bottle and that it would rise into the air. While filming this, I reached out from behind the camera and grabbed his other hand and told him it was stuck to Anthony, and of course it was. I’d never hypnotised the guy before, but he knew I was a hypnotist. At the time we thought we’d discovered something but obviously this was well known (even James referred to it back in the 1890s!).
I asked Zoltan for his favourite hypnosis book and he nominated Lynn and Kirsch’s Essentials of Clinical Hypnosis: An Evidence-Based Approach (review coming soon!). “I like the stuff Irving Kirsch has done. I quite liked the preamble to that; I use it as a basis for my introductory lectures to hypnosis that I give to first-years.”
But when asked for a fiction reference Zoltan was far from forthcoming. No amount of celebrating The Exorcist II, The Manchurian Candidate, Fear In The Night, or Dean Koontz’s False Memory would draw him into giving a literary reference that he actually liked. “I probably get annoyed by the way hypnosis is portrayed in literature generally. So no I can’t think of a favourite hypnosis film.” (Sad face.)
I asked Zoltan what he thought about the effect that Derren Brown has had on people’s beliefs about hypnosis and he revealed that he had actually appeared on one of his shows – The Assassin – as the hypnosis expert!
“So he brings in a hypnosis expert, mainly me. I say, ‘That can’t be done’. He says, ‘That’s what the experts say. But what can I do?’. It was fun. And it was really interesting to see how stage hypnosis works in a TV setting. Because the responses he was getting were just phenomenal. You know, there’s a TV audience, and he says, ‘I’ll tell you to do some suggestions and I’ll select the people who are responding well’. So he’s giving these really complex suggestions, like you’ll see people naked or things that only highs should be able to experience, but the whole audience was acting them out as if they’re intensely experiencing these.”
I asked him what he thought this meant for the public’s understanding of psychology and hypnosis in particular, and he was relatively measured in his response: “To be fair to him, I picked up one of his books in the bookshop, and just skimmed it on hypnosis, and he said, ‘Don’t believe anything I say on TV’. So he openly acknowledges that, but, still, that doesn’t get through to the fanbase.”
All this talk of Derren inevitably led to a conversation about NLP: “There’s a lot of wishy-washy stuff. I mean, couldn’t you be put into trance by stroking Erickson’s dog, for example?” (As a reminder, Zoltan thinks ‘trance’ is the result of a suggestion, not a state, and he probably thinks it is quite a silly concept.) “There’s all sorts of things; ‘if you confuse a person, they’ll be at the point of sort of trance’ seems like, you know, all sorts of wishful thinking about magic.”
And similar with conversational or covert hypnosis: “What I think happens is, particularly if you want to be part of the group, you want to sort of fulfil the requirements of being in that group. And in an experiment, it’s part of the experimental team, as it were, and you feel motivated to create the effects that the experimenter wants. Because that is sort of what’s meant to happen in that context, and so you do it. You can imagine that – I mean, in religious contexts, it’s exactly the same thing: social pressure, adherence, something religious. If you’re a high, you create those experiences.”
But this means that the application of conversational or covert hypnosis is limited to these circumstances: “That means you wouldn’t be able to hypnotise the mugger to stop him mugging you” – which I think is worth knowing! (The wall outside my house is four-feet high, by the way, Derren.)
And this conversation about NLP naturally led to one about hypnotherapy. I recounted a story where Irving told a room full of hypnotherapists (at ‘change | phenomena’ in 2011) that, if they weren’t otherwise qualified to treat psychological issues without hypnosis, that they shouldn’t be treating them with hypnosis, and that maybe they should limit their offerings to helping people handle chronic pain instead. When I asked Zoltan where he stood on this issue he drew a comparison with the teaching of martial arts.
He said that in France they limit martial arts training to only those that are accepted and regulated, which meant that the introduction of mixed martial arts (MMA), where many fighting approaches are combined, was very slow to gain acceptance and therefore become available. Whereas in the UK (where Zoltan teaches martial arts), there isn’t such stringent regulation; it was easy for him and others to pivot from karate to MMA with few requirements to satisfy, resulting in a much faster uptake.
Whilst he didn’t want “charlatans who don’t know what they’re doing” charging people for therapies that don’t work, he also felt his instincts were against the idea of mandatory regulation. He didn’t think that science was yet in a position to state which therapy works well enough to regulate it and force everyone to stick with that one.
So, there we have it – possibly one of the best interviews I’m ever going to conduct. Partly, that’s because Zoltan is high-hypno-hero-priest, up there with Irving Kirsch, and few others could hope to achieve the insights that he has; and partly, because he’s my supervisor for my Master’s degree and, assuming everything goes well, for my PhD in experimental psychology, specialising in hypnosis. Or should I say ‘phenomenological control’? Either way, what a fantastic opening to our (hopeful) series of interviews with academics. I can only hope that Graham Wagstaff gives me the same level of gossip, or that Donald Gorassini is secretly a Mason.
(Side note: Amy thinks that hypnosis should be rebranded as Zoltanism, because it just sounds so mystical. I didn’t get to ask what he thought, but I imagine Zoltan is more interested in removing the mysticism than he is in adding it, hence phenomenological control. Sorry, Amy – this rebrand isn’t going to happen.)
This interview was originally featured on hypnosis website Cosmic Pancakes.
A few of you might have followed a very recent pile-on on Twitter. For those that have not, here is some context: a recent paper by Felig et al. (2021) investigated the notion of whether women that dress lightly in the evening when going out, feel “hot” despite the cold temperatures and if this phenomenon could be explained with self-objectification. The authors are female PhD students and early-career researchers (ECR) from Florida. After their paper – first published in the British Journal for Social Psychology – was promoted on Twitter, it was heavily criticized by – what has been coined – “bropen science”. Although supportive posts quickly outnumbered the initial attackers, the consequences for the authors and those involved are heavy. In this post, I will outline why we should view such attacks under a lens of power asymmetry, and why this is particularly detrimental for those still trying to gain credibility. I make some suggestions on how to deal with this issue.
The open science movement conveys the message that we as researchers need to be transparent and make our work accessible to be credible. Because of that it has become a powerful institution and dictates research routines more and more. However, the system seems to work better for some than for others. Against its initial objectives to reform the field and make it better for all, it rather is a reflection of societal power structures and privileges, benefitting those who have achieved a position that does not make them worry about career prospectives anymore (e.g., academic tenure, but also retirement). It systematically allows little diversity, imposes often impractical requirements on research strands that are not quantitative, and keeps its eyes closed when those that, in line with the movement’s criteria, transparently provide their work and by doing so exhibit potential shortcomings, limitations, or imperfections, get punished, rather than positively reinforced.
The twist in “bropen science” then linguistically illustrates which characteristics are fostered by the system (Kirstie Whitaker and Olivia Guest provide a brilliant elaboration on the term) and who seems to get away with such attacks in the name of open science. The asymmetry in power relations in those attacks become obvious when considering that, first, the target of such attacks often is a woman, women-led research or a team of females researchers (even established ones, such as in the case of Dr Amy Cuddy), concerned with women empowerment; second, that such attacks can have heavy consequences for the attacked; the least harmful might revolve around pre-existing statistics anxieties which may become worse among the attacked but also among to-be-authors after witnessing what online promotion can entail. As many have pointed out, while the attackers will move on, the scars will remain with the victims; and that third, the consequences weigh heavily also for the reputation and credibility among those that are still building such up (i.e., PhD students and/ or ECR).
What happened to Felig et al. (2021), concerned with self-objectification among young women, shows such signs of asymmetry: The attack involved an original post by a now retired researcher retweeting the promotion of the paper, ridiculing its relevance, and questioning its statistical credibility while tagging established others from which, presuming, support was expected. While this remained absent, the post was promptly turned into a heavy pile-on, involving people – among them established statisticians and psychologists – almost entirely men (followed by a few “Karens”[1]) sharing silly memes and ridiculing the paper and authors even more. The attack went on over days, even after (or because of?) Felig defended herself online but was evidently emotionally affected. It went as far as re-examining the (transparently!) provided dataset by including outliers and DVs that were openly declared by Felig et al. (2021) as left out for good reasons. Apart from the fact that some might call this p-hacking, that such re-analyses take place in public space is not helpful for the authors, nor is the original attack that contributed nothing to constructive feedback from which the authors could have learned and improved their skills for future open science studies, if necessary.
Fortunately, since then, many academic Twitter users stood up for the authors and called the unacceptable behaviour out. This not only involved other PhD students, established academics, and even one of the peer reviewers but also researchers who admitted to having engaged in similar inappropriate behaviour themselves before but who now had “learned their lesson”. One of the people who had initially jumped on the pile now even took the time to carefully analyse the paper and provided the authors with constructive feedback and emphasised the effort and transparency the authors provided. Again, whether such public criticism is the best solution, is up for debate.
Publishing and promoting academic work online is crucial for us as researchers; for our reputation, for job perspectives (after the PhD), and networking, but it makes us vulnerable, too. The recent situation has shown me even more how vulnerable we are. Criticism is always uncomfortable, and while no serious researcher ever wants to engage in questionable methods, mistakes can happen, especially in early work. Although open science should reward learning processes, the recent situation has revealed how public engagement in the name of open science can also be detrimental; those that engaged in the pile-on were neither interested in contributing to “good science” nor in mentoring the to-be-scientists, but acted in self-interest, cementing their position of power, and using it against a group of ECRs, who are still building up reputation and credibility.
So, what can we do?
Get in touch with the authors or editor if you have concerns
The first author provides their email address for a reason. If you see a paper, you do not agree with or you have your concerns about, why not get in touch directly? You can do so with the authors themselves, but also with the journal or editor. This way, concerns can be expressed and clarified in a way that gives the authors a chance to write a correction or erratum if needed.
Get in touch with the authors and/ or influential others if you want to support them
Being a female PhD student myself, I was in shock observing how the conversation unfolded. The fear of being yet another target has made me step back from calling out anyone on Twitter myself. Instead, I decided to get in touch with the first author and express my solidarity. I also reached out to an influential researcher who was tagged in the tweet and asked them to act. However, I was left disappointed since they explained that they would prefer to stay silent, which unfortunately only contributes to letting the attackers off the hook, unpunished.
Contribute to shifting power dynamics
Open science being a powerful movement, we should focus on its core values, namely, to make science transparent and accessible and to foster learning and improvement in a respectable way. Observing the situation unfold, supportive and constructive comments eventually outnumbered the original attack by far. You can contribute to this by speaking out yourself or by amplifying such posts. In this way, weights may be shifted in the conversation.
Leaving Twitter?
Finally, the majority might agree with me that Twitter is not an ideal medium for academic discussion (perhaps not for any discussion). However, the reason why I put a question mark at this point is because that there are obvious benefits in being on academic Twitter: It helps us with staying up to date with research and colleagues, networking, promoting ourselves, and perhaps even with finding a job. So how can we reconcile the benefits and risks? While I do not have a definite answer, there are ways to protect yourself on social media, including using a fake name or anonymous account (or writing a blog post anonymously?!). You may be even able to change your name on the publication and use a pseudonym. The obvious downside is that with anonymity, publications cannot be attributed to us and therefore not contribute to professional development. Thus, protection goes at the expense of progression and reputation!
Concluding, what we have witnessed is unacceptable, and strongly shaped by what the open science movement allows to happen. Fortunately, people have positioned themselves and supported the ones concerned. I have outlined some ways in which you can contribute to this without exposing yourself or others (even more).
[1] The “Karen” trope is commonly used in the context of racist attacks on Black people, dominantly in the US. A “Karen” thereby represents white middle-class, middle-aged women complaining about what they – against all face value – describe as “criminal behaviour” of a Black person (mainly men). This can go as far as calling the police (which can constitute lethal consequences for the Black person). I argue that we can use this term here too since the trope represents an attempt by a “Karen” to gain her share of the power in a (white) male-dominated world by playing along with it – even at the expense of those systematically disadvantaged, which on another level includes the “Karen” herself.
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