Psychology and your other Subjects/Interests

Psychology and Philosophy:

  • If you study psychology as well as philosophy you might find it interesting to read from “Themes, Issues and Debates in Psychology” by Richard Gross; there is a great section which is useful to our discussion of the use of animals in psychological research looking at animals and what it means to be sentient, and how to emotions and feelings link to consciousness and awareness and sense of self and thus to animal suffering.
  • Beth Singler’s research explores the social and religious implications of technological advances in AI and robotics. She is a phenomenal speaker and should certainly arouse your interests if you study philosophy and psychology –  frankly I challenge anyone with a little more than a handful pulsating neurons not to be enthralled as I was when she spoke at our school. She is currently working as a Research Associate on “The Human Identity in an age of Nearly-Human Machines” project at The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge. She tweets as @BVLSingler and can be contacted about her work at bvw20@cam.ac.uk

Psychology and Forensic Science/Anthropology/Archaeology: Dr Anna Williams is a Forensic Anthropologist and we saw her speak about “The Scent of Death”at the “On the front line” conference in London. You might be interested to take a look at her website here http://www.forensicanna.com/ she is also on twitter @Bonegella and her email address is a.williams@hud.ac.uk. A fascinating lady!

Psychology, History and Politics: Learning more about the lives of the psychologists that you study in class is fascinating and often it becomes abundantly clear why their research interests and theoretical perspectives are as they are. One interesting area to look at it the life of Muzafer Sherif. A lot has been written about him in recent years and you will learn a lot about the turbulent period of history that he lived through from reading from the following sources. As well as being a brilliant social psychologist, Sherif was a political activist whose life started in Turkey and ended up in the States. Sherif was Muslim, went to a Christian school, was a staunch anti-fascist and a communist party member. His story is very interesting.

Psychology and Law: The crossovers in criminological psychology are clear cut in topics such as reliability of eye witness testimony, jury decision-making, characteristics of the defendant etc, impact of pretrial publicity, etc etc. If you want to make links with year 1 material (e.g. social influence) you could start by investigating the beating of Rodney King which happened in 1991 and was the catalyst for the LA Riots. This would provide excellent context for understanding more about the recent US riots following the death of George Floyd. Take a look at the juror Virginia Loya. You could use this as a springboard to explore other miscarriages of justice relating to cases racism and police brutality.