She felt “stuck” because she didn’t have the right qualifications to apply for a degree but once she heard about Edge Hill’s free Fastrack course, designed to prepare people like Lorna for higher education, a plan started to take shape. 

Lorna successfully completed the programme and went on to study an undergraduate degree in Counselling and Psychotherapy, progressing to complete an MSc Psychology (Conversion). 

She now works as a senior psychotherapist at Wilderness Way in Penrith, a provider of residential care for children who have experienced trauma, exploitation or crisis, and credits Fastrack with transforming her future. 

“I’ve always been drawn to work that allows me to make a difference in the lives of people who may not have had the easiest start,” she said. 

“Supporting children felt like a natural calling. Children show incredible resilience, and when someone believes in them – even just one consistent adult – it can completely shift the direction of their lives. 

“Without the Fastrack programme, I wouldn’t have been able to build the career I have now, because I’d never have known my own capabilities. 

“The course made me realise I had the capacity for learning and it built my confidence hugely. The lecturers were so supportive and knowledgeable. 

“If you’re thinking about changing your career but feel unsure, Fastrack is the perfect place to begin. I know how overwhelming it can feel when you’ve been out of education for a long time, or when life hasn’t taken a straightforward path – but that doesn’t limit what you’re capable of.” 

During Lorna’s studies at Edge Hill, she developed her theoretical understanding and practical skills, which prepared her for a rewarding role in child mental health. 

“I support our clinical team to deliver highquality, evidencebased therapeutic care for vulnerable children. 

“Every day is different and we’re all there to make a difference. Even the smallest wins can mean the world.” 

Edge Hill University’s Fastrack programme offers adults aged 21 and over the chance to access higher education, even if they don’t currently hold the qualifications required. 

The free full-time course begins with a oneweek induction, followed by six weeks of oncampus study designed to develop academic skills, subject knowledge and most importantly, confidence to succeed University level education.  

Find out more at the Fastrack Information Evening on Wednesday 4 March at 5:30pm.

The post From Fastrack to fulfilling career supporting vulnerable children appeared first on Edge Hill University.

There was a long pause as she glanced around the white walls of our kitchen – which, I’ll admit, do have a little bit of paint chipping off them. Then she dropped a glossy magazine on the table – World of Interiors, I think. I was trying not to look.

My partner is passionate about colours and knows the names of all the different shades. I don’t – but I am a psychologist, and that gives me some skin in this colour game too.

Let’s start with those myriad names. Clay pink, muted teal, warm taupe … psychologists have long argued that the extent of your colour vocabulary affects how good you are at colour recognition. My partner spots subtle differences that I never notice. Recently, it’s been all about katsuobushi smoke, halva sesame and black garlic amber.

Colours exert their influence through a combination of evolutionary predispositions, physiological responses, learned associations and broader cultural meanings. Because of this, I’d argue that choosing a new colour scheme is a psychological issue, not just an aesthetic one.

Indeed, a growing body of neuroscientific, behavioural and psychological research shows that colour is not merely a matter of taste. The hues that surround us influence our emotional states, cognitive performance, social interactions, sleep – and even our long-term psychological wellbeing. In other words, the colours of our walls might be shaping our lives in ways we rarely consider.

Strong or subtle?

Let’s start with a fundamental question: what does psychology say about whether to go strong or subtle in your paint choices?

Neutral colours (whites, greys, beiges) are low in visual stimulation, which helps reduce sensory overload and stress. They enhance perceived spaciousness, and can have positive effects on cognitive performance in both children and adults. But their psychological impact hinges on shade and context. Cold greys or stark whites may evoke sterility or sadness, particularly in poorly lit spaces.

Recently, there has been a general trend away from white towards using brighter colours in our homes. The hot colours for 2026 apparently include chocolate brown and burgundy – while Ikea’s colour of the year is Rebel Pink: “A vibrant, playful shade chosen to inspire joy, energy and self-expression.”

However, the psychological evidence says choose low- to mid-saturation shades rather than hyper-bright colours for your long-term comfort. Blue and muted green are associated with enhanced creativity and improved problem-solving. A muted green home office or study may make you more innovative without you really noticing why.

Green, with its obvious nature connection, is also linked to restoration and reduced mental fatigue, supporting the broader findings of environmental psychology on biophilic design.

You should probably reserve warm, energising colours for social or active areas in the house. Soft yellow feels cheerful, presumably due to its association with sunlight – but high-saturation yellows may increase agitation.

And then there’s red. In evolutionary terms, bright red wavelengths tend to increase physiological arousal, raising heart rate and galvanic skin response. It can also affect desire – one study found men perceived women as “more attractive” and “more sexually desirable” when their photos were presented on a red rather than white background.

But red is also associated with danger and warning. Children did less well in problem-solving tasks when their exam number was written in red rather than green or black, or if the cover of the test booklet was red. Even just seeing the word “red” can negatively affect intellectual performance.

So think carefully before using red in your home office. A red-accented study might feel “dynamic” initially, but it could backfire when you start on tasks requiring calm focus and clear thinking. In contrast, painting an office blue seems to have a calming effect. It is associated with sky and water, and seems to be connected to improved concentration.

The 60-30-10 rule

In truth, my partner didn’t seem all that keen to take the advice of a psychologist – well, this one, anyway – about the house’s impending makeover. “Haven’t you heard of the 60-30-10 rule?” she sniffed.

The experts of interior design suggest 60% of a room should be devoted to the dominant colour (the majority of the walls plus a key piece of furniture like a sofa, say), 30% for the secondary colour to add visual interest (perhaps including curtains or carpet), and 10% to an “accent colour”. The roots of these proportions have been said to lie in visual psychology and mathematics’ “golden ratio” – although some recent studies suggest the association of this precise mathematical formula with our perceptions of beauty is something of a myth.

Nonetheless, I propose this scheme for our living room: soft sage green (dominant), warm cream (secondary), plus brushed gold as the accent colour (maybe as cushions).

My reasoning? Sage green reduces stress, improves relaxation and mimics the cognitive benefits of being in nature. Cream warms the palette, encouraging a cosy rather than “forest hermit” vibe. Finally, accent colours draw attention, and gold can have a powerful symbolic and emotional impact because of its cultural associations with wealth, success and achievement. It subconsciously signals confidence and positivity (in moderation, of course – Donald Trump famously loves excessive gold decoration).

Now I’m just waiting to see which colour paints my partner returns with.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Find out more about studying psychology at Edge Hill University.

The post What colour should I repaint my home? Ask a psychologist appeared first on Edge Hill University.

In the UK, schools are reporting a surge in young people struggling with dependence, including cases of students needing medical attention after vaping in class. In the Netherlands, researchers have found that many teenagers wake up at night specifically to vape, a sign of growing nicotine addiction in adolescents.

And in New Zealand, a widely shared image of a teenager’s blackened, shrivelled lung after three years of vaping renewed fears about the speed at which harm can develop.

These stories show how far vaping has drifted from its original purpose. Once introduced as a safer alternative to cigarettes, it is now embedded in youth culture, driven as much by social influence as by nicotine itself.

E-cigarettes have now become a lifestyle accessory: sleek, flavoured and often perceived as harmless. But behind the clouds of “strawberry ice” and “blueberry burst” vapour lies a powerful lesson in how misinformation shapes behaviour, based less on chemistry than on psychology.

Understanding why vaping feels safe, appealing and difficult to quit requires looking not only at the device but at how our minds process risk, reward and social cues.

Psychology shows that people rarely process health information in nuanced ways. Faced with complex or uncertain evidence, including emerging research on vaping, our brains reduce it to simple categories, such as safe or unsafe.

This mental shortcut helps us make quick decisions without examining every detail. When people hear that vaping is less harmful than cigarettes, many take it to mean harmless, because judging relative risk feels complicated. Brightly coloured devices, sweet flavours and wellness-focused marketing reinforce the perception that vaping is good or safe, even without long-term evidence.

This simplification helps explain why misinformation spreads easily. Once a behaviour is mentally categorised as safe or desirable, people are less likely to question it or seek contradicting evidence. Our natural tendency to think in binaries leaves complex health messages open to distortion, strengthening the influence of marketing and social cues.

Together, these forces create a self-reinforcing cycle. Binary thinking simplifies risk, social proof builds desirability and loss aversion makes quitting feel costly. Misinformation does not just mislead. It reshapes how people think, turning a harm-reduction tool into a socially embedded, hard-to-quit habit.

The rise of vaping reveals a deeper issue in how health information spreads. In the digital age, public understanding changes faster than scientific consensus. Online trends and anecdotes often outrun the slow, careful process of research, and young people are particularly susceptible.

Once misinformation takes hold, it is difficult to reverse. One in ten UK secondary school pupils currently vape, even though the NHS warns that long-term effects remain uncertain.

If misinformation helped drive the vaping boom by exaggerating its benefits, reversing the trend requires changing what people believe they stand to gain. Improving media literacy is a start, helping people spot when relatable content is actually advertising, when trends are engineered or when claims are overstated.

Public health messages also need to meet people where they are, using short, engaging content that feels native to social media. When influencers and peers highlight the real costs of vaping, such as money, energy and lung capacity, and expose the marketing behind its appeal, perceptions can shift. This taps into loss aversion by making continued vaping feel like the bigger loss.

Combining media literacy with relatable, well-targeted content can change vaping perceptions, make psychological biases work in favour of health and help people resist misleading narratives.

Ultimately, addressing the vaping boom requires understanding the minds and social environments of those caught up in it, not just the science behind the device.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Find out more about studying psychology at Edge Hill University.

The post How misinformation may be fuelling teen vaping appeared first on Edge Hill University.

Typefaces carry personalities, and we react to them more than we realise. My work explores how the shapes of letters can subtly influence our feelings.

When we read, we are not just processing the words. We are also taking in the typeface, which can shape how we interpret a message and even what we think of the person who wrote it.

Researchers demonstrated this in a 2018 study using simulated text conversations. They presented participants with an ambiguous message (for example, “That’s what I do”) and altered the typeface. A cheerful-looking font seemed to encourage readers to interpret the message positively, while a harsher one pushed them toward a more negative reading.

A similar pattern appears in email communication. In a 2014 study, the same email sent in Times New Roman made the sender seem formal and professional, whereas the more playful Kristen ITC made them appear more polite and even more attractive. Just as a voice sets the mood of a conversation, a typeface sets the mood of the page.

Research also shows that we process words more quickly when the typeface matches the meaning we expect. In one experiment, published in 1989, people recognised the word “slow” more quickly when it appeared in Cooper Black, a typeface associated with heaviness and slowness, but took longer when the same word was shown in Palatino Italic, which conveys lightness and speed.

A 2021 study found a similar priming effect in brand logos. After seeing a logo set in a particular typeface, participants were quicker to identify words that matched the qualities suggested by that design. When the style of the lettering aligns with the message, our brains seem to work more efficiently.

But how is that possible?

The answer is a mix of factors. Some qualities are built into the physical features of the typeface. Thick, straight lines signal sturdiness, while curves tend to feel softer or more approachable. Some associations may even have evolutionary roots.

Across a range of studies, people reliably link curved shapes with positivity and angular ones with threat or negativity. A 2016 review of this research traces the pattern back to survival mechanisms.

Sharp, angular forms in the environment can indicate danger, so our visual system has evolved to detect and prioritise them quickly. This bias appears to spill over into our perception of typefaces too, making angular fonts feel harsher or more alarming, while curved ones seem warmer and more pleasant.

Other typeface personalities have been shaped by history and use. Take Times New Roman, originally designed in the 1930s for the British newspaper the Times. Over time, its connection with journalism has become ingrained, making Times New Roman synonymous with professionalism and formality today.

The influence of typefaces becomes even clearer when the wrong choice is made. An example comes from the European organisation for nuclear research, Cern, in 2012 when researchers used Comic Sans to announce the discovery of the Higgs boson (also called the “God particle”).

The decision sparked widespread criticism because Comic Sans is widely seen as playful and informal, hardly befitting one of the most important scientific discoveries of our time.

People who work in design, communication and marketing know this phenomenon well and use it deliberately. Think about the last time you bought a product you couldn’t see inside the box. What persuaded you if the product itself wasn’t visible? Most likely the packaging.

Designers choose typefaces as well as images that communicate the qualities they think you’re looking for.

If you’re searching for screws for a DIY project, you’re more likely to trust packaging set in bold, heavy lettering that signals strength and sturdiness. If you’re choosing a perfume as a gift, a delicate, flourished typeface might suggest elegance and femininity before you’ve even smelled it.

In one 2006 study, people were shown a range of fonts and asked where they would feel appropriate.

Serif typefaces such as Times New Roman and Cambria, which are recognisable by the small finishing strokes at the ends of their letters, were judged most suitable for business documents. Monospaced fonts like Courier New, in which every character takes up the same amount of space, were seen as better suited to technical materials and computer code.

This very article is set in Baskerville, and that’s no accident. Baskerville, like Goudy Old Style and other classic typefaces, tends to be seen as professional, trustworthy and high-quality. Those are the qualities The Conversation aims to convey to its readers. The same principle applies to any professionally designed website. Every typeface has been chosen to create the right impression.

Typefaces can also shape our experience of music. An album cover with rounded letters, for example, can make the music feel more pleasant. Designers also match typefaces to the genre: curvy, playful fonts appear on hippy music covers, conveying joy and peace, while sharp, angular lettering is common on punk albums, signalling anger and aggression.

Sometimes we don’t know exactly why a font feels a certain way. In a 2023 article, I reviewed studies from the past century that asked people to rate how they perceived different typefaces.

This large collection of data revealed some surprising patterns. For example, condensed typefaces, which have letters packed closely together, tend to convey a sense of sadness more than other fonts.

Thick lines reliably signalled strength, but the opposite was not true: thin lines were not consistently judged as weak. Instead, perceptions of weakness were more strongly associated with irregular strokes and high contrast, features common in typefaces that resemble handwriting. Why do they do that? I am afraid I don’t have an answer.

Next time you pick up a book, scroll through a website or glance at a label, take a moment to notice the font. Those subtle lines and curves are doing more than you might think, shaping your experience in subtle ways.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Find out more about studying Psychology at Edge Hill University.

The post It’s not you – some typefaces feel different appeared first on Edge Hill University.

The cast features former James Bond and Mamma Mia star Pierce Brosnan as the legendary Irish trainer Brendan Ingle, alongside the talented Amir El-Masry, named 2020 BAFTA Breakthrough Brit, in the role of Prince Naseem Hamed.

Geoff is credited as executive producer on Giant, a role he shares with Nick Manzi and the legendary Rocky star Sylvester Stallone.

Psychology expert Geoff, himself a keen boxer, rubbed shoulders with director Rowan Athale and Amir El-Masry at the premiere in Leicester Square, London, where the film was showcased at Vue Cinema as part of the BFI London Film Festival.

“It was inspiring and humbling to see the film. It’s an excellent movie, exciting and emotional, and it brilliantly captures that period in Sheffield. Pierce Brosnan was excellent as Brendan Ingle, the manager, and Amir El-Masry is very convincing as a world champion boxer, which is not the case in all boxing movies!

“Naz was an extraordinary fighter, with the confidence to go with it, a certain invincibility. And Amir portrayed that on the screen really well.”

Geoff’s books, written in the 1990s when Prince Naseem was at his peak, focus on Brendan Ingle’s famous gym in Wincobank, Sheffield where Professor Beattie also trained.

The Ingle Gym launched the careers of a string of famed boxers including Prince Naseem and fellow world champions Johnny Nelson, Junior Witter and Kell Brook.

“It was very odd to hear your dialogue in a movie theatre, and very emotional to be reminded of what Brendan Ingle did for those kids in Wincobank in Sheffield who had so little going for them.

“He taught them social and life skills, to survive inside and outside the ring. I got quite emotional watching that part of the film to be honest, and to be reminded of what had inspired me to write On the Ropes: Boxing as a Way of Life and The Shadows of Boxing in the first place.”

Professor Geoff Beattie had fully immersed himself in the boxing world when he was researching the books, directly connecting with both Prince Naseem Hamed and trainer Brendan Ingle. On the Ropes went on to be shortlisted for Sports Book of the Year in 1996.

The film project began several years ago when the Hollywood studio AGC first secured the rights to Professor Beattie’s books. Filming commenced in 2024, but not before the director and screenwriter Rowan Athale had sent Geoff the script to review.

“He’d taken many details from the books, and some of the dialogue, some of the conversations and so on and worked them into the script,” Professor Beattie said.

“Going through the screenplay got me really excited about the film and to see some of the conversations from my book included in the film helped it come alive.”

Professor Beattie is eagerly awaiting confirmation of the date for Giant’s major Hollywood premiere! The film is set for general release in the UK and US from 9 January 2026.

To discover more about studying Psychology or Film at Edge Hill University, come along to our next open day on Saturday 15 November.

The post Edge Hill professor’s book hits the big screen at BFI London Film Festival   appeared first on Edge Hill University.

So how do people cope with competing threats like this? And what happens to climate anxiety when wars suddenly erupt and compete for our attention?

Climate change affects our physical and mental health, directly through extreme climate-related droughts, wildfires and intense storms. It also affects some people indirectly through so-called “climate anxiety”. This term covers a range of negative emotions and states, including not just anxiety, but worry and concern, hopelessness, anger, fear, grief and sadness.

A team of researchers led by Caroline Hickman from the University of Bath surveyed 10,000 children and young people (aged 16 to 25 years) in ten countries (Australia, Brazil, Finland, France, India, Nigeria, Philippines, Portugal, the UK and the US). They found that 45% of respondents said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily lives. It was worse for respondents from developing countries.

Climate anxiety can potentially serve a positive function. Anger, for example, can push people to act to help mitigate the effects of climate change.

But it can also lead to “eco-paralysis”, a feeling of being overwhelmed, inhibiting people from taking any effective action, affecting their sleep, work and study, as a result of them dwelling endlessly on the problem.

Climate anxiety is not included in the American Psychiatric Association’s authoritative guide to the diagnosis of mental disorders. In other words, it is not officially recognised as a mental disorder.

Some say this is a good thing. The author and Stanford academic Britt Wray wrote: “The last thing we want is to pathologise this moral emotion, which stems from an accurate understanding of the severity of our planetary health crisis.”

But if it is not officially recognised, will people take it seriously enough? Will they just dismiss people who suffer from it as “snowflakes” – too sensitive and too easily hurt by the hard realities of life. This is a major dilemma.

I explore how climate anxiety relates to other types of clinical anxiety in my recent book, Understanding Climate Anxiety, recognising that there are adaptive and non-adaptive forms of anxiety.

According to Steven Taylor, a clinical psychologist from the University of British Columbia, adaptive anxiety can “motivate climate activism, such as efforts to reduce one’s carbon footprint”. Maladaptive anxiety, however, may “take the form of anxious passivity”, he warned, where the person feels anxious but utterly helpless.

Identifying different types of climate anxiety, understanding their precursors and how they interact with personality is a major psychological challenge. Identifying ways of alleviating climate anxiety and making it more adaptive, and focused on possible climate mitigation, is a major societal challenge.

But there’s another important issue. Some global leaders, including Donald Trump, don’t believe in human-induced climate change, claiming it’s “one of the great scams”. He seems to view climate anxiety as an overblown reaction to propaganda pumped out by a biased media.

This can make the experience much worse for those who feel anxious but then having their feelings dismissed.

Some psychologists argue that climate anxiety can be a form of pre-traumatic stress disorder. This hypothesis arose from observations of climate scientists and their growing feelings of anger, distress, helplessness and depression as the climate situation has worsened.

In 2015, researchers devised a new clinical measure to assess pre-traumatic stress reactions using items found in the diagnostic and statistical manual for post-traumatic stress disorder, but now focused on the future rather than the past, asking about “repeated, disturbing dreams of a possible future stressful experience”, for example.

They tested Danish soldiers before their deployment in Afghanistan and found that “involuntary intrusive images and thoughts of possible future events … were experienced at the same level as post-traumatic stress reactions to past events before and during deployment”.

They also found that soldiers who experienced higher levels of pre-traumatic stress before deployment had an increased risk of post-traumatic stress disorder after their return from the war zone. Their hypervigilance primed their nervous system to react more strongly when anything untoward occurred.

This would suggest that we need to take stress reactions to future anticipated events such as climate change very seriously.

The crisis response

But how important is climate anxiety in the context of these other threats? Researchers assessed the emotional state and mental health of people aged 18 to 29 years in five countries (China, Portugal, South Africa, the US and UK) focusing on three global issues: climate change, an environmental disaster (the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan), and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

They found the strongest emotional engagement was with the ongoing wars, with climate change a close second, and the radiation leak third. The strongest emotional responses to the wars were concern, sadness, helplessness, disgust, outrage and anger. For climate change, the strongest responses were concern, sadness, helplessness, disappointment and anxiety.

All three crises made young people feel concerned, sad, and very importantly helpless, but climate change has this burning level of anxiety added into the bubbling mix.

It seems that climate anxiety still has this undiminished power regardless of all the other awful things that are currently happening in the world, and I suspect the stigma of being dismissed as “snowflakes” makes this particular fear response all the more unbearable.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Find out more about studying psychology at Edge Hill University.

The post Could climate anxiety be a form of pre-traumatic stress disorder? A psychologist explains the research appeared first on Edge Hill University.

After having a suspicious mole removed and awaiting results from a second biopsy, the 41-year-old has become an outspoken critic of social media personalities who lie to their followers about sunscreen products.

Cancer misinformation can have serious consequences, such as leading people to delay or even avoid life-saving treatments, and eroding trust in medical professionals.

Misinformation spreads easily because it taps into people’s emotions and reasoning about health. When faced with a cancer diagnosis, fear, confusion and a desire for control can drive people to seek remedies that offer hope – even if that hope comes from sources that don’t use credible evidence.

Misinformation often offers simple, comforting answers, while real medicine is complex, uncertain and sometimes difficult to accept. Fake cancer claims can feel convincing because they seem to eliminate the uncertainty about whether treatment will work, or if the cancer will return.

Social media platforms can amplify false cancer messages, making them appear more credible or popular than they actually are. This is compounded by the role of influencers and unqualified practitioners, who often profit from promoting pseudoscience.

Message framing plays a significant role in the spread of cancer misinformation. Studies show that we respond more to messages focused on what we might lose rather than what we could gain. This happens because of loss aversion – our psychological tendency to fear losses more than we value equivalent gains.

Cancer messages that highlight potential losses – such as health, comfort or life itself – feel more urgent, personal and motivating than those focusing on potential gains, like improved survival or better quality of life.

Cancer misinformation that emphasises scary losses can be especially persuasive because it taps directly into people’s fears. False claims warning about dangerous side-effects of treatments, hidden risks or conspiracies suggesting doctors want to harm patients strike a deep emotional chord. This makes people more likely to believe and share these messages, even when untrue.

For instance, misinformation claiming that chemotherapy doesn’t cure cancer – and instead causes it to spread and shortens your life – can trigger fear and resistance to treatment.

In contrast, truthful messages stating that chemotherapy can have side-effects, but it greatly increases your chance of survival, may seem less frightening and, sometimes, less compelling because they focus on potential gains rather than losses.

Cancer is an emotionally charged and high-stakes diagnosis. Loss-framed misinformation spreads quickly and can influence decisions that can put people at risk. Even when presented with correct medical information, the emotional weight of loss-informed cancer misinformation can override rational thought.

The psychological principle that bad is stronger than good (also called “negativity bias”) explains why cancer misinformation that triggers fear or anxiety often sticks more than hopeful, fact-based messages. Negative information simply has a bigger impact on how we think and feel in times of uncertainty.

Prebunking

One effective way to help people avoid falling victim to cancer misinformation is through prebunking. This approach involves teaching people how to spot and resist false or misleading messages before they take hold.

In particular, it focuses on exposing the tactics people use to deceive or scare others, so they’re easier to recognise and dismiss when encountered.

The tactics people can learn to look out for – and prebunk – include fear-mongering, where messages exaggerate risks to induce anxiety, or promises of miraculous cures lacking scientific evidence and misleading statistics that distort facts to support false claims.

By being aware of these common techniques, people with cancer can become more vigilant and sceptical when they encounter suspicious information online, on social media, or through word of mouth.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Find out more about studying psychology at Edge Hill University.

The post How cancer misinformation exploits the way we think appeared first on Edge Hill University.

So we either literally met our participants, or we had multiple corroborating points of evidence that indicated we were dealing with a real person who was, therefore, likely to be telling us the truth about themselves.

Since then, technology has done what it always does – creating opportunities for us to cut costs, save time and access wider pools of participants on the internet. But what most people have failed to fully realise is that internet research has brought along risks of data corruption or impersonation which could be deliberately aiming to put research projects in jeopardy.

What enthused scientists most about internet research was the new capability to access people who we might not normally be able to involve in research. For example, as more people could afford to go online, people who were poorer became able to participate, as were those from rural communities who might be many hours and multiple forms of transport away from our laboratories.

Technology then leapt ahead, in a very short period of time. The democratisation of the internet opened it up to yet more and more people, and artificial intelligence grew in pervasiveness and technical capacity. So, where are we now?

As members of an international interest group looking at fraud in research (Fraud Analysis in Internet Research, or Fair), we’ve realised that it is now harder than ever to identify if someone is real. There are companies that scientists can pay to provide us with participants for internet research, and they in turn pay the participants.

While they do have checks and balances in place to reduce fraud, it’s probably impossible to eradicate it completely. Many people live in countries where the standard of living is low, but the internet is available. If they sign up to “work” for one of these companies, they can make a reasonable amount of money this way, possibly even more than they can in jobs involving hard labour and long hours in unsanitary or dangerous conditions.

In itself, this is not a problem. However, there will always be a temptation to maximise the number of studies they can participate in, and one way to do this is to pretend to be relevant to, and eligible for, a larger number of studies. Gaming the system is likely to be happening, and some of us have seen indirect evidence of this (people with extraordinarily high numbers of concurrent illnesses, for example).

It’s not feasible (or ethical) to insist on asking for medical records, so we rely on trust that a person with heart disease in one study is also eligible to take part in a cancer study because they also have cancer, in addition to anxiety, depression, blood disorders or migraines and so on. Or all of these. Short of requiring medical records, there is no easy answer for how to exclude such people.

More insidiously, there will also be people who use other individuals to game the system, often against their will. We are only now starting to consider the possibility of this new form of slavery, the extent of which is largely unknown.

Enter the bots

Similarly, we are seeing the rise of bots who are pretending to be participants, answering questions in increasingly sophisticated ways. Multiple identities can be fabricated by a single coder who can then not only make a lot of money from studies, but also seriously undermine the science we are trying to do (very concerning where studies are open to political influence).

It’s getting much more difficult to spot artificial intelligence. There was a time when written interview questions, for example, could not be completed by AI, but they now can.

It’s literally only a matter of time before we will find ourselves conducting and recording online interviews with a visual representation of a living, breathing individual, who simply does not exist, for example through deepfake technology.

We are only a few years away from such a profound deception, if not months. The British TV series The Capture might seem far-fetched to some, with its portrayal of real-time fake TV news, but anyone who has seen where the state of the art now is with respect to AI can easily imagine us being just a short stretch away from its depictions of the “evils” of impersonation using perfect avatars scraped from real data. It is time to worry.

The only answer, for now, will be to simply conduct interviews face-to-face, in our offices or laboratories, with real people who we can look in the eye and shake the hand of. We will have travelled right back in time to the point a few decades ago mentioned earlier.

With this comes a loss of one of the great things about the internet: it is a wonderful platform for democratising participation in research for people who might otherwise not have a voice, such as those who cannot travel because of a physical disability, and so on. It is dismaying to think that every fraudster is essentially stealing the voice of a real person who we genuinely want in our studies. And indeed, between 20–100% of survey responses have been found as fraudulent in previous research.

We must be suspicious going forward, when our natural propensity as amenable people who try to serve humanity with the work we do, is to be trusting and open. This is the real tragedy of the situation we find ourselves in, over and above that of the corruption of data that feed into our studies.

It also has ethical implications that we urgently need to consider. We do not, however, seem to have any choice but to “hope for the best but assume the worst”. We must build systems around our research, which are fundamentally only in place in order to detect and remove false participation of one type or another.

The sad fact is that we are potentially going backwards by decades to rule out a relatively small proportion of false responses. Every “firewall” we erect around our studies is going to reduce fraud (although probably not entirely eliminate it), but at the cost of reducing the breadth of participation that we desperately want to see.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Find out more about studying psychology at Edge Hill University.

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This phrase has since become emblematic of presidential accountability and leadership. Truman wasn’t interested in trying to pass the buck, not as a man and certainly not as president.

Interestingly, the sign was made in the Federal Reformatory (prison) at El Reno, Oklahoma, suggesting an implicit moral dimension to this issue of responsibility and accountability. We’re all accountable for our actions, whoever we are, but the president above all.

But how things seem to have changed with Donald Trump in the White House.

Trump continually takes personal credit for any perceived successes as president – fixing global tariffs, Nato members paying more, the Middle East (even taking credit for things that were completed before he took office). But he makes sure that any failures are immediately attributed elsewhere.

He frequently positions himself as surprised or “blindsided” by unpopular decisions, which are always somebody else’s doing, somebody else’s fault. Subordinates are held responsible. He is not averse to pointing the finger directly at them, and often in public, high-profile settings.

That great loyal Trump supporter, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, for example, has recently been in the firing line for being personally responsible for pausing the delivery of missile shipments to Ukraine. US defence officials had apparently become concerned that weapons stockpiles were becoming low, as they needed to divert arms to Israel to help in the war with Iran.

But the pause in supplying some weapons to Ukraine announced by the Pentagon on July 2 was a hugely unpopular decision that resonated around the world. Hegseth was blamed.

Some have suggested that having loyalists such as Hegseth in critical positions like secretary of defense is highly strategic, and not just for the more obvious reasons. You could argue that having loyal supporters with delegated but overlapping authority is highly advantageous when it comes to the blame game.

Trump can publicly distance himself when things go wrong (as he did here), claim a degree of surprise, and swiftly change course. That way he is publicly reasserting his role as leader without admitting fault.

It is also noteworthy that Trump often reverses these decisions made by his subordinates in high-visibility environments, which suggests a determined pattern of strategic image management.

It’s a simple set of moves – you allow a subordinate to initiate a controversial decision, then you rein it in publicly and reassert your authority, thus showcasing your resolve. In other words, delegation to loyal insiders like Hegseth becomes a useful buffer against political fallout.

Loyal insiders still stay loyal (for the foreseeable future at least). They won’t sling mud, like some might in their position. So Trump can appear masterful.

But of course, there’s more to this than everyday political shenanigans. Personality plays a major role. Some psychologists have argued that not internalising failure is psychologically beneficial.

If you take credit for success but externalise failure, that makes you resilient (and happy). But there are clearly limits to this, and there’s a darker side.

People with high levels of narcissism (“I like to be the centre of attention”; “I am an extraordinary person” – both items on the narcissism personality inventory, a method of measuring personalities) often avoid accountability because they perceive themselves as superior to others. But only, it should be noted, in certain “key” aspects of life.

In the words of Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, authors of The Narcissism Epidemic: “Narcissists think that they are smarter, better looking and more important than others, but not necessarily more moral, more caring or more compassionate.”

Narcissistic individuals tend to externalise blame to protect their fragile self-esteem and maintain their self-image. They may refuse to admit fault because doing so threatens their grandiose concept of self.

Individuals exhibiting Machiavellian traits, characterised by manipulativeness and a lack of empathy, are also more prone to shifting blame. They may deflect responsibility to serve their self-interest, which is clearly a highly manipulative manoeuvre. You just do whatever is required.

Research also indicates that individuals with low conscientiousness, one of what are considered the “big five” personality traits, are less likely to accept responsibility for their actions. They may be somewhat careless or irresponsible in their work or actions, and when mistakes do occur – which they will – they blame external factors or other people.

In other words, certain personality traits are associated with a tendency to avoid accountability and responsibility.

It has been said that Trump’s inner circle consists of loyal sycophants who, even when it’s cringeworthy for outsiders, publicly praise him to amplify and protect his self-image. He needs this from them.

But they have another use as well. When things don’t go so well, they take it on the chin for him. That’s almost part of the job description. When things go wrong, his inner circle all understand the buck really stops with them.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Find out more about studying psychology at Edge Hill University.

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This came a day after Trump had announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. By the next day, the ceasefire had been violated by both Iran and Israel. Trump was clearly furious, and his language showed it.

This was not a verbal slip – there was no immediate correction, no apology, no nonverbal indication of embarrassment. He just stormed off, clearly angry.

This is not the kind of language that is normally associated with a president. Some have been reported to use the f-word before, but usually behind closed doors.

We expect presidents to be calm, measured, thoughtful, considered. Trump’s comment was none of these things. Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th US president, once recommended a foreign policy strategy that was based on speaking softly and carrying a big stick. He was suggesting quiet menace, but Trump showed frustration, barely contained. His furious, aggressive response was like something straight out of an old psychology textbook.

In the 1930s, psychologists developed the frustration-aggression hypothesis to explain how aggressive behaviour can arise. The hypothesis suggested that when a person’s goal is blocked in some way, it leads to frustration, which then results in aggression. Aggression was considered a “natural” way of releasing this unpleasant state of frustration. They were clearly different times.

Over the next few decades, this hypothesis was thought by most psychologists to be a gross oversimplification of complex human behaviour. It assumed a direct causal relationship between frustration and aggression, ignoring all the other situational and cognitive factors that can intervene.

Human beings are more complex than that, psychologists argued — they find other ways of dealing with their frustrations. They use their rational system of thought to find solutions. They don’t have to lash out when they’re frustrated in this seemingly primitive way.

Perhaps, that’s why many people feel shocked when they watch this US president in certain situations. To many of us, it all seems so basic, so unsophisticated, so frightening.

Fast v slow thinking

The Nobel laureate and psychologist Daniel Kahneman, in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), characterised the two systems that underpin everyday decision-making. His work may help with understanding of what’s going on here.

He describes system one as the evolutionary, basic system. It operates unconsciously, automatically and very quickly, handling everyday tasks like reading other people’s emotions, without any effort. It is an intuitive system designed to work in a world full of approach and avoidance, scary animals and friendly animals. It is heavily reliant on affect to guide decision-making.

In contrast, system two is slower, more deliberative. It requires conscious effort and is used for complex thinking, solving difficult problems, or making careful decisions.

The relationship between the two systems is critical, and that may get us thinking about Trump in more detail.

Kahneman says that system one is a bit of a “workaholic”, beavering away all the time, making “suggestions” for system two to endorse. Good decisions – depend upon system two checking the suggestions of system one. But system one often jumps quickly and unconsciously to certain conclusions. System two should check them, but often doesn’t, even when it would be easy.

Here is a well-known example. Answer the following question: “A bat and ball cost one pound ten pence, the bat costs one pound more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?”

One answer looks blatantly obvious – but it isn’t correct. The correct answer (after a bit of thought) is five pence.

About 80% of university students give the very quick and incorrect answer of ten pence because it “looks” right. Their system two never checked.

In many people, it seems system two is not used nearly enough. There are striking individual differences in the way that people rely on emotion and gut instinct versus the rational system in making decisions.

Emotional decisions?

It appears that Trump makes decisions very quickly (classic system one), often without extensive deliberation or consultation with advisers. Both in his presidency and in his business career, he seemed to prioritise immediate action over any sort of prolonged and thoughtful analysis. That’s why he changes his mind so often.

His decisions seem to be driven by strong emotions. His response to events, opponents and issues are often passionate and visceral. This could lead to to decisions being unduly influenced by personal feelings, first impressions based on arbitrary cues, and interpersonal perceptions, rather than anything more substantial.

Trump’s style of decision-making emphasises immediacy and emotional conviction, which can be effective in rallying supporters and creating a sense of decisiveness. However, it also can lead to unpredictable outcomes and, as has been seen again and again, somewhat controversial, impulsive actions.

Many suggest that Trump’s decision-making style reflects his background in the high-pressure and high-stakes world of business, where quick judgements and gut instinct can be advantageous in these sorts of competitive winner-takes-all environments

But the world at war is a more precarious place, where system one needs to be kept more firmly in check. Gut instincts may have a role to play, but that old lazy system two needs to be more vigilant. Especially, it would seem, in Trump’s case.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Find out more about studying psychology at Edge Hill University.

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