Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit

18/04/2016

We have a new Invited Speaker Series podcast - Dr Dan Jolley on The social psychological consequences of conspiracy theories :-)

Conspiracy theories are blooming in the 21st century. They accompany almost all significant social and political events, such as the death of Diana, Princess of Wales and the 9/11 terrorists attacks.

01/04/2016

Hi All,

Question, Explore, Discover.

QED is a science and skepticism convention taking place at the Mercure Piccadilly Hotel in Manchester from the 14th-16th October 2016 Fantastic speakers from the worlds of science and entertainment will be joining us for a weekend celebration of science, reason and critical thinking.

The speakers list has just been announced. It is a real honour for me to be included in a list of such eminent thinkers.

https://qedcon.org

Best wishes,
Chris

31/03/2016

Hi All,

Final reminder!

I know that this event is nothing to do with the psychology of the paranormal but I thought it might be of interest anyway (which I why I organised it).

Centre for Inquiry UK, the British Humanist Association and Conway Hall Ethical Society present The Magic of Maths (2/4/16): find out about the uniquely beautiful patterns hidden in Pascal's triangle; about our (often poor) intuitive understanding of probability and the risk of events governing our lives; and about the greatest unsolved puzzles in maths!

Programme

11:00–12:00 | Maths' greatest unsolved puzzles, with Katie Steckles

While mathematicians are undoubtedly brilliant, and their work is used in all kinds of amazing scientific and technological discoveries, there are still questions they can't answer. Every mathematical question is a puzzle to be solved, and while there'll be plenty of puzzles for you to chew on, we'll also discuss some of the questions that still leave mathematicians stumped - from simple-sounding number and shape problems to some truly mind-bending fundamental questions.

12:15–13:15 | Pascal's Patterns, with Professor Emma McCoy

Pascal’s triangle is named after the 17th century French mathematician Blaise Pascal. Professor McCoy will look at some of the beautiful patterns hidden in Pascal’s triangle and investigate why they appear. She will look at how Pascal’s triangle is related to diverse problems in mathematics, including examples from algebra, geometry and probability.

14:15–15:15 | The improbability principle returns: luck, lotteries, and Laura, with Professor David Hand

This talk takes a second look at the improbability principle, illustrating further popular misconceptions and failures of intuition regarding coincidences and unlikely events. It teases apart the contradiction between Borel’s law, which tells us that sufficiently improbable events are impossible, and the improbability principle, which tells us that highly improbable events happen all the time.

Speakers

Katie Steckles is a mathematician based in Manchester, who gives talks and workshops on different areas of maths. She finished her PhD in 2011, and since then has talked about maths in schools, at science festivals, on BBC radio, at music festivals, as part of theatre shows and on the internet. She enjoys doing puzzles, solving the Rubik's cube and baking things shaped like maths.

Emma McCoy is the Deputy Head of Department at Imperial College London. She is a member of the Statistics section with research interests in time series analysis and causal inference. She has worked at Imperial for over 20 years and has held various Departmental administrative roles, including that of Admissions Tutor. Professor McCoy is heavily involved in Outreach activities and regularly speaks at Higher Education careers fairs and school events.

David Hand is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Imperial College, London and Chief Scientific Advisor to Winton Capital Management. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, has served (twice) as President of the Royal Statistical Society, serves on the Board of the UK Statistics Authority, and chairs the Board of the UK’s Administrative Data Research Network. His recent book The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day was published in 2014. He was made OBE for services to research and innovation in 2013.

Registration is from 10:30, for an 11:00 start.

When

April 2nd, 2016 10:30 AM through 3:30 PM

Event Fee(s)

General £ 10.00
Members and Students (members of British Humanist Association, members of Conway Hall Ethical Society) £5.00

Book here:

http://ift.tt/1Ui3oER

Best wishes,
Chris

29/03/2016

Hi All,

My latest blog for the Guardian, this one on non-believed memories, is up: http://ift.tt/1oiVb4S

And if you liked that, you'll love this...

Our next speaker at Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub is Dr Kim Wade who will be asking "Can digital forgeries change our memory? ".

Further details of the talk can be found below and at http://ift.tt/1167XXx

Please forward on to groups or individuals who may be interested.

Best wishes,
Chris

+++++

Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub:

What?
Can digital forgeries change our memory?

When?
Wednesday, 6 April 2016 at 7:30 pm

Where?
The Star and Garter
60 Old Woolwich Road, Greenwich, London SE10 9NY

Who?
Dr Kimberley Wade

What's the talk about?

Suggestive techniques can lead people to remember wholly false childhood events such as being lost in a shopping mall or being hospitalized overnight. Although most false memory research has relied on some form of verbal suggestion to influence what people recall, recent research shows that photographs—both genuine and doctored—can create havoc in memory too. I will discuss the extent to which images and videos can influence memory for significant, recent experiences, and show that people might even confess to, or testify about, events that never happened if they are confronted with fabricated evidence. I will also discuss new research on people with highly superior autobiographical memories. These people demonstrate incredibly detailed and robust memories, but are they immune to memory errors?

Dr Kim Wade is an Associate Professor in Psychology at the University of Warwick. She is a cognitive psychologist specialising in autobiographical memory and memory distortions, best known for her research demonstrating the power of doctored images to produce false memories. Kim is especially interested in the mechanisms that drive the development of false memories, and in refining the theories that explain false memory phenomena. Her research is published in many high-impact journals, and appears frequently in the media, in undergraduate texts, and in books for the educated layperson.

29/03/2016

http://ift.tt/eA8V8J

The brain can be as creative as it is inaccurate when it comes to memory, working to turn made-up stories and childhood emotions into remembered fact

The fallibility of human memory is one of the most well established findings in psychology. There have been thousands of demonstrations of the unreliability of eyewitness testimony under well-controlled conditions dating back to the very earliest years of the discipline. Relatively recently, it was discovered that some apparent memories are not just distorted memories of witnessed events: they are false memories for events that simply never took place at all.

Psychologists have developed several reliable methods for implanting false memories in a sizeable proportion of experimental participants. It is only in the last few years, however, that scientists have begun to systematically investigate the phenomenon of non-believed memories. These are subjectively vivid memories of personal experiences that an individual once believed were accurate but now accepts are not based upon real events.

Continue reading... Chris French March 29, 2016 at 11:00AM

25/03/2016

Hi All,

Thanks to Dr Deborah Bowden, there are five new podcasts available on the APRU website featuring talks given as part of this year's APRU Invited Speakers Series:

Deborah Hyde: What can we learn about people from fairies?

Dr Michael Heap: What's wrong with hypnosis?

Dr Julia Shaw: But if feels so real! Creating detailed memories of crimes that never happened

Professor Fiona Gabbert: Your memory or mine? The effects of discussion on memory

Dr Sarah Beck: The development of counterfactual thinking: How children use imagination to think about reality

You can find them here: http://ift.tt/1fOBypk

Enjoy!

Happy Easter!

Best wishes,
Chris

23/03/2016

We have 5 new podcasts from the 2015-2016 Invited Speaker Series - happy Easter! http://www.gold.ac.uk/apru/lectures/

22/03/2016

Hi All,

I know that this event is nothing to do with the psychology of the paranormal but I thought it might be of interest anyway (which I why I organised it).

Centre for Inquiry UK, the British Humanist Association and Conway Hall Ethical Society present The Magic of Maths (2/4/16): find out about the uniquely beautiful patterns hidden in Pascal's triangle; about our (often poor) intuitive understanding of probability and the risk of events governing our lives; and about the greatest unsolved puzzles in maths!

Programme

11:00–12:00 | Maths' greatest unsolved puzzles, with Katie Steckles

While mathematicians are undoubtedly brilliant, and their work is used in all kinds of amazing scientific and technological discoveries, there are still questions they can't answer. Every mathematical question is a puzzle to be solved, and while there'll be plenty of puzzles for you to chew on, we'll also discuss some of the questions that still leave mathematicians stumped - from simple-sounding number and shape problems to some truly mind-bending fundamental questions.

12:15–13:15 | Pascal's Patterns, with Professor Emma McCoy

Pascal’s triangle is named after the 17th century French mathematician Blaise Pascal. Professor McCoy will look at some of the beautiful patterns hidden in Pascal’s triangle and investigate why they appear. She will look at how Pascal’s triangle is related to diverse problems in mathematics, including examples from algebra, geometry and probability.

14:15–15:15 | The improbability principle returns: luck, lotteries, and Laura, with Professor David Hand

This talk takes a second look at the improbability principle, illustrating further popular misconceptions and failures of intuition regarding coincidences and unlikely events. It teases apart the contradiction between Borel’s law, which tells us that sufficiently improbable events are impossible, and the improbability principle, which tells us that highly improbable events happen all the time.

Speakers

Katie Steckles is a mathematician based in Manchester, who gives talks and workshops on different areas of maths. She finished her PhD in 2011, and since then has talked about maths in schools, at science festivals, on BBC radio, at music festivals, as part of theatre shows and on the internet. She enjoys doing puzzles, solving the Rubik's cube and baking things shaped like maths.

Emma McCoy is the Deputy Head of Department at Imperial College London. She is a member of the Statistics section with research interests in time series analysis and causal inference. She has worked at Imperial for over 20 years and has held various Departmental administrative roles, including that of Admissions Tutor. Professor McCoy is heavily involved in Outreach activities and regularly speaks at Higher Education careers fairs and school events.

David Hand is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Imperial College, London and Chief Scientific Advisor to Winton Capital Management. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, has served (twice) as President of the Royal Statistical Society, serves on the Board of the UK Statistics Authority, and chairs the Board of the UK’s Administrative Data Research Network. His recent book The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day was published in 2014. He was made OBE for services to research and innovation in 2013.

Registration is from 10:30, for an 11:00 start.

When

April 2nd, 2016 10:30 AM through 3:30 PM

Event Fee(s)

General £ 10.00
Members and Students (members of British Humanist Association, members of Conway Hall Ethical Society)

Book here:

http://ift.tt/1Ui3oER

Best wishes,
Chris

19/03/2016

Hi All,

Final reminder!

The final speaker in the current APRU Invited Speaker Series is Dr Roger Newport. The intriguing title of Roger's talk is "Things that make you go weird." The talk will take place at 6:10 pm on Tuesday, 22 March 2016.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS TALK WILL NOT TAKE PLACE IN OUR USUAL VENUE (LG01, PROFESSOR STUART HALL BUILDING). Instead, it will take place in the nearby Screen Room 1 of the Media Research Building (see map on College web site). Signs will be in place to guide you to the right place.

As always, the talk is free, open to the public and there is no need to book. For further information, contact me (c.fr....ac.uk) or visit

http://ift.tt/1PbouvY

Feel free to forward this message to individuals or groups that may be interested in attending (if you received this email that way, you are strongly advised to subscribe to the (free) Psychology of the Paranormal email list at http://ift.tt/Oplkuh in order to ensure that you are kept informed about any changes in schedule, future events, etc.). To be sure that you are informed immediately of any very last-minute changes, you might like to follow me on Twitter (Twitter name: - note the middle "c").

Best wishes,
Chris

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Date: 22 March 2016

Time: 6:10 pm

Venue: Screen Room 1, Media Research Building, Goldsmiths (see http://ift.tt/1cBFIpw)

Speaker: Dr Roger Newport

Title: Things that make you go weird

Abstract
The experience of our own body is built upon how the brain puts together information from the different senses along with knowledge about how our body should look and feel. For most people, most of the time, the result is a constant, stable and largely accurate representation of the body. It turns out in reality that the way our body looks and feels to us is remarkably flexible. By playing around with the information that our brain receives, we can give the rather unsettling experience of having misshapen, missing, duplicated, numb, throbbing, disconnected and misbehaving body parts. By creating such illusory experiences (because in none of these examples does the body actually change) we can begin to investigate how to understand and treat aberrant and abnormal experiences in clinical conditions. We can also have a lot of fun.

Biography
Given half a chance Dr Roger Newport will grab your hand and do something weird to it. As a psychologist studying how brain-damaged patients learn new motor strategies for rehabilitation he accidentally invented a method for applying sensory illusions to a person’s own body. This system, known as MIRAGE, can give the illusion of having stretched fingers and extra limbs or even of have a missing hand. Fulfilling his childhood desire to mess with people’s heads, he is driven to create ever more creative illusions by devilment alone, although some of his illusions occasionally turn out to have theoretical importance such as the chance discovery that they can change how people experience pain. This system is currently being used across the globe to research body image and sensory processing in healthy adults and children as well as in conditions such as brain damage, autism, medically unexplained symptoms and chronic pain. He is also available for weddings and children’s parties.

16/03/2016

Hi All,

I'll be one of ten Goldsmiths geeks taking part in a Science Showoff event at the Amersham Arms on Friday, 18 March 2016. Further details below and at

http://ift.tt/1PBvmth (where you can also book tickets - only 23 left, so hurry!)

Best wishes,
Chris

+++++++

Join us for a chaotic science cabaret in the pub featuring a line-up of experts who will delve into the weird and wonderful side of science.

What happens if you fill a pub with clever and lovely people then invite loads of amazing scientists to entertain them?

Join us at the Amersham Arms on Friday, 18 March to hear Goldsmiths, University of London scientists take you on a high-speed dash through their chosen subject. Featuring s*x robots, aliens, and an invisible guitar. Expect laughs, facts that sound totally made up but aren't, and loads of terrible PowerPoints.

Goldsmiths is teaming up with the Telegraph Hill Festival for this special Showoff event to coincide with British Science Week. 'Geek comedian' and compere Steve Cross will be venturing south of the river once again to keep everyone to time. He used to work at UCL, but we won't hold it against him.

The line-up:

Chris French (Psychology) introduces the weird and wonderful world of anomalistic psychology - with jokes.

Kate Devlin (Computing) on why s*x robots are coming.

Caspar Addyman (Psychology) asks ‘Where are all the aliens?’

Sarah Wiseman (Computing) on experimenting on the WEIRDest humans in the world.

Mick Grierson (Computing) plays an invisible guitar.

Sophie von Stumm (Psychology) explains why stupid people think they are smart.

Mohammad Majid Al-Rifaie (Computing) tells us what AI can learn from bees, birds and ants.

Nicky Donald (Computing) talks about the interactive future of television.

Rebecca Charlton (Psychology) asks what's happening in our brains as we get old and how we can stop it.

Gordon Wright (Psychology) presents Psychological Sleuthing 101. What can we really tell about people we've barely (or never) met?

All proceeds from ticket sales will go to CARA, the Centre for At-Risk Academics.

16/03/2016

Hi All,

The final speaker in the current APRU Invited Speaker Series is Dr Roger Newport. The intriguing title of Roger's talk is "Things that make you go weird." The talk will take place at 6:10 pm on Tuesday, 22 March 2016.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS TALK WILL NOT TAKE PLACE IN OUR USUAL VENUE (LG01, PROFESSOR STUART HALL BUILDING). Instead, it will take place in the nearby Screen Room 1 of the Media Research Building (see map on College web site).

As always, the talk is free, open to the public and there is no need to book. For further information, contact me (c.fr....ac.uk) or visit

http://ift.tt/1PbouvY

Feel free to forward this message to individuals or groups that may be interested in attending (if you received this email that way, you are strongly advised to subscribe to the (free) Psychology of the Paranormal email list at http://ift.tt/Oplkuh in order to ensure that you are kept informed about any changes in schedule, future events, etc.). To be sure that you are informed immediately of any very last-minute changes, you might like to follow me on Twitter (Twitter name: - note the middle "c").

Best wishes,
Chris

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Date: 22 March 2016

Time: 6:10 pm

Venue: Screen Room 1, Media Research Building, Goldsmiths (see http://ift.tt/1cBFIpw)

Speaker: Dr Roger Newport

Title: Things that make you go weird

Abstract
The experience of our own body is built upon how the brain puts together information from the different senses along with knowledge about how our body should look and feel. For most people, most of the time, the result is a constant, stable and largely accurate representation of the body. It turns out in reality that the way our body looks and feels to us is remarkably flexible. By playing around with the information that our brain receives, we can give the rather unsettling experience of having misshapen, missing, duplicated, numb, throbbing, disconnected and misbehaving body parts. By creating such illusory experiences (because in none of these examples does the body actually change) we can begin to investigate how to understand and treat aberrant and abnormal experiences in clinical conditions. We can also have a lot of fun.

Biography
Given half a chance Dr Roger Newport will grab your hand and do something weird to it. As a psychologist studying how brain-damaged patients learn new motor strategies for rehabilitation he accidentally invented a method for applying sensory illusions to a person’s own body. This system, known as MIRAGE, can give the illusion of having stretched fingers and extra limbs or even of have a missing hand. Fulfilling his childhood desire to mess with people’s heads, he is driven to create ever more creative illusions by devilment alone, although some of his illusions occasionally turn out to have theoretical importance such as the chance discovery that they can change how people experience pain. This system is currently being used across the globe to research body image and sensory processing in healthy adults and children as well as in conditions such as brain damage, autism, medically unexplained symptoms and chronic pain. He is also available for weddings and children’s parties.

15/03/2016

Hi All,

The penultimate speaker in the current APRU Invited Speaker Series is Dr Dan Jolley. The title of Dan's talk is "The social psychological consequences of consipiracy theories." The talk will take place tonight (15/3/16) at 6:10 pm in LG01 in the Professor Stuart Hall Building (formerly the New Academic Building) at Goldsmiths (details below). As always, the talk is free, open to the public and there is no need to book. For further information, contact me (c.fr....ac.uk) or visit

http://ift.tt/1M68yv8

You can find the full programme of APRU speakers for 2015/16 here:

http://ift.tt/QKFQl7

Feel free to forward this message to individuals or groups that may be interested in attending (if you received this email that way, you are strongly advised to subscribe to the (free) Psychology of the Paranormal email list at http://ift.tt/Oplkuh in order to ensure that you are kept informed about any changes in schedule, future events, etc.). To be sure that you are informed immediately of any very last-minute changes, you might like to follow me on Twitter (Twitter name: - note the middle "c").

Best wishes,
Chris

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Date: 15 March 2016 (tonight)

Time: 6:10 pm

Venue: LG01 in the Professor Stuart Hall Building (formerly the New Academic Building), Goldsmiths (see http://ift.tt/1cBFIpw)

Speaker: Dr Dan Jolley

Title: The social psychological consequences of consipiracy theories

Abstract
Conspiracy theories are blooming in the 21st century. They accompany almost all significant social and political events, such as the death of Diana, Princess of Wales and the 9/11 terrorists attacks. Whilst psychologists are learning more about who endorses conspiracy theories, and why, little is known about their potential consequences. Initially some people thought conspiracy theories were ridiculous beliefs that are simply harmless fun. In this talk however, I present my current research programme where this assumption is turned on its head. I will first present a series of studies examining the social and political consequences of conspiracy theories. Next, I will discuss the system-justifying function of conspiracy theories, before ending with some on-going research into addressing their consequences. The aim of this talk is to ultimately highlight some of the potentially damaging consequences of conspiracy theories.

Biography
Dr Daniel Jolley completed his PhD in 2014 at the University of Kent on the psychology of conspiracy theories. Following a spell as a post-doctoral Research Associate at Lancaster University, he is now a Lecturer in Psychology at Staffordshire University.