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The academics of tomorrow Ella Rhodes reports from the Annual Conference of the Psychology Postgraduate Affairs Group (PsyPAG) An image and communication problem for psychologists and their research were top of the agenda at the 29th annual Psychology Postgraduate Affairs Group (PsyPAG) conference at Cardiff Metropolitan University. The opening keynote speech from Dr Paul Hutchings (University of Wales Trinity St David), exploring how better psychological expertise could be used to inform the general public, began by outlining the many stereotypes psychologists encounter when speaking about their jobs, with ‘boffin’ and ‘mind reader’ labels having been encountered by most. Dr Hutchings argued that, although the media are sometimes to blame for dispersing this warped view of research psychologists, much of the blame lies within the psychological community itself. He told the assembled crowd: ‘It’s the fault of the people in this room. It’s the fault of psychologists living and dead
all over the world, anyone who calls themselves a psychologist has to shoulder some of that blame.’ Dr Hutchings spoke of the parts of psychology that often make it into popular news media, particularly the Blue Monday phenomenon in January, which has been termed the ‘worst day of the year’. He added: ‘If people don’t hear anything else about psychology for the entire year, they’ll hear about that. And they sit in judgement of us and all the pejorative words that people use will come up – crap, kidology, psychobabble, pseudoresearch. “Real scientists” sit in judgement of us. That’s a massive problem for us, how do we deal with that? Whose fault is it if that’s the stuff that gets out there and strong research on sound empirical bases doesn’t? Whose fault is it?’ He said that researchers and others in psychology should contribute to news stories about the field. He added: ‘If nature
abhors a vacuum then so too does the news media, never in the history of a newsroom has anyone said ‘Oh you can’t find me an expert on that well let’s not run that story then’, it doesn’t happen. Psychology is impacting on so many different things. Psychology influences almost everything, you can find a psychological angle to feed into any study, and there are people out there looking for psychologists to talk about things, and if they’re not there they’ll find someone, they’ll drag someone in. Some people out there are experts in all areas of psychology, and that’s fine, but it’s about making sure that the information we get across is correct. It’s not necessarily about the expertise but making sure the right information gets out there.’ Dr Hutchings argued that many postgraduate students are experts in their respective fields and should use this knowledge to help spread good
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vol 27 no 9
september 2014