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I knew it: Being nice to people all day is bad for you.

How are juvenile delinquents portrayed in modern culture? (indeed do we even use the term ‘delinquent’ anymore?) The contemporary media  paints a picture of surly youths hanging around on street corners drinking ‘alcopops’ and wearing hoodies. However, things were obviously quite different back in 1925, when eminient psychologist Sir Cyril Burt used the following illustration in his book ‘The Young Delinquent”:

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If you click on the ‘read rest of entry‘ link at the end of this post to look at the rest of the pictures, you’ll discover that back then three piece suits and working mens caps were very ’street’ for boys, whereas young ladies were smoking on the dancefloor and hanging about on enormous stuffed horses…..  

….. terrifying……

All pictures from Burt, C.L. (1925). The young delinquent. London: University of London Press,  with many thanks to Saxon (aged 43 11/12) of the excellent ‘Too Many Pipes’ for the original text.

(Also, talking of delinquents, have you looked at ‘Contemporary Mottled Sheep’ ?)

  Read the rest of this entry »

Ha ha….. good one…

Matters of psychological interest conveyed for your convenience and edification in the modern realplayer format. Bought to you by the British Broadcasting Corporation and the wonders of the electronic interweb:

 Solomon Asch - Conformity

 Jean Piaget - The Three Mountains

 Sir Frederic Bartlett - War of The Ghosts

Sigmund Freud argued that aggression could be represented as an ‘energy’ that somehow builds up inside of us, causing us to experience tension and psychological discomfort and maybe ultimately mental disorders, unless we could somehow  ‘release’ it, by indulging in aggressive behaviour…. So if you’ve ever found yourself ‘boiling over with rage’ and have ‘taken it out on’ something or someone to make yourself feel better, then you’ve been indulging in a bit of Freudian thinking.. Freud called this process of release ‘catharsis’.

If you are studying aggression, this idea forms an interesting discussion point: Most of the social approaches imply to us that taking part in, or viewing,  aggressive behaviours somehow increases the likelihood of our committing further aggressive acts, whereas for Freud the release of pent-up energy through a violent act actually decreases our inclination to be violent - So maybe you should go and beat up an inflatable children’s toy next time someone winds you up…

There’s an easy way to test this of course: Head over here and have a quick arm wrestle with the man himself. If you come away from the experience feeling noticeably more calm and relaxed, then Sigmund has the argument nailed. If you find yourself a boiling mass of frustrated rage with a broken keyboard, well… then maybe not, but please note that, either way, we here at the Cat & Dogs Book Publishing Company Inc. can accept absolutely no responsibility for damaged computer equipment and patrons take on the mighty Sigmund entirely at their own risk. 

In the new edition of The Complete Companion (which is now on sale if you haven’t had your copy!) we have presented an updated diagram of the multi-store model which may confuse some people because it is different to the one given in some books – for a reason. The model was first proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin in 1968, consisting of only two stores – short- and long-term memory. The third store – sensory memory – was added later. This early model is often shown with information being lost through forgetting (as shown below).

In 1971 Atkinson and Shiffrin produced a slightly different diagram, indicating how information is retrieved from memory – via the short term store, as shown below. No mention was made of forgetting. Read the rest of this entry »