psychology

This resource is the British Psychological Society's website. With over 40,000 members, the British Psychological Society (BPS) is the representative body for psychologists and psychology in the UK.

The BPS has three key aims, which are to encourage the development of psychology as a scientific discipline and an applied profession; to raise standards of training and practice in the application of psychology and to raise public awareness of psychology and increase the influence of psychological practice in society.

Motivational interviewing is a dynamic intervention that finds its base in the principles of motivational psychology. It is an intervention which employs strategies that are person-centred and aim to mobilise the person’s own change resources rather than advising or training in a specific direction towards a specific outcome.

The third programme in the series looks at the work of British psychologist Sir Frederic Bartlett who discovered that when he asked people to repeat an unfamiliar story they had read, they changed it to fit their existing knowledge, and that it was the revised story which they memorised.

Bartlett's findings led him to propose 'schema' - the cultural and historical contextualisation of memory, which has important implications for eyewitness testimony, false memory syndrome, and even for artificial intelligence. Claudia Hammond investigates the impact of Bartlett's findings.

This episode of Radio 4's Woman's Hour series looks at ways in which to help families who have been affected by the imprisonment of a family member. The charity, Action for Families, is co-ordinating 'family relationship workshops' in prisons. At Ashwell Prison near Leicester, wives and partners come together with male prisoners to spend a day thinking through some of the problems they may face. Caroline Swinburne joins Theresa Oldman of Relate.

This episode of Radio 4's Woman's Hour series looks at living with an abusive mother. In 2001, Dave Pelzer wrote about the horrific abuse he suffered at the hands of his mother during his childhood, and how she encouraged his brothers to treat him as 'the family slave'. One brother in particular stood out. Now, that brother has written his own version of events.

Jenni Murray talks to Richard Pelzer about his role as his mother's main collaborator and how, when Dave was taken away, he fell from favour and found himself on the receiving end of the abuse.

This episode of Radio 4's Thinking Allowed series consists of a segment on the management of risk in everyday life. As almost every decision a person makes involves weighing up of the odds of success or failure and risk, risk management has become a popular area of sociological debate.

Host Laurie Taylor speaks with delegates at the British Sociology Association's conference in York to find out what aspects of risk they've been discussing. Dr. Iain Wilkinson, Professor Jane Lewis and David Denney join the discussion.

This resource is one of the units on the Open University's OpenLearn website, which provides free and open educational resources for learners and educators around the world. This unit examines life stories. It looks at the way in which objects, trends, cultures or disabilities may contribute to a person's identity. This unit also considers the contribution that our own life stories make to who we are, and how remembering and revisiting our past may help us to move forward with our lives.

The aim of this learning object is to promote understanding of the key aspects of the crisis intervention model and explore its application to practice.

This resource examines the human mind. Presenter Robert Winston explores all aspects of the human mind - from how we learn, to how we're able to recognise faces and what makes one person 'click' with another. There are three programmes in the series which are available on the Open2.net website, which is the online learning portal from the Open University and the BBC.

Policy makers are becoming increasingly concerned with the long term consequences of childhood experiences. This concern is fuelled by the belief that the early years of life are crucial in shaping later life. Catch them young and save society trouble later on, runs the argument. Kenan Malik asks whether policies towards young children are based on reliable scientific evidence or on political claims.