Join us for a series of interactive live talks from experts in the Department of Psychology at Lancaster University, accessible and open to everyone.
Make yourself a cup of tea, tune in the wireless (internet), and join us for insight and discussion into contemporary areas of psychological research.
Each seminar lasts 30 minutes, with 30 minutes for questions.
Join each seminar by clicking the link by each talk – it will go live 30 minutes before the talk is scheduled to start. You can join a seminar anonymously via any internet browser. You can type questions during the talk for the speaker to answer.
All times given are British Summer Time (GMT+1).
Tuesday 20th April 7.30pm-8.30pm
Prof Gert Westermann: Curious babies
Infants are not merely absorbing information that is provided to them, but they are active participants in their own learning, creating opportunities to learn based on their intrinsic curiosity. In this talk you will learn more about our work on trying to understand how curiosity drives infants’ exploration and how this affects their ability to learn.
Join seminar here: https://tinyurl.com/vc2uf8mf
Video of the seminar: https://youtu.be/qqCkLcBr3Y4
Tuesday 27th April 7.30pm-8.30pm
Talk cancelled.
We’re very sorry to announce that due to unforeseen circumstances, we have had to cancel Dr Mark Hurlstone’s talk “Construal Level Theory and Psychological Distancing: Implications for Grand Environmental Challenges”.
We will see you next week!
Why do we think that bystanders are unhelpful? How good is the evidence for the so-called ‘bystander effect? And is it really true that the presence of others has a negative effect on the likelihood of bystander intervention? In this talk I will examine the history of the ‘guilty bystander’; review what we know from the meta-analyses of bystander effect research; and then present a series of analyses of bystander behaviour in emergencies captured on CCTV.
By studying real-life intervention in public space emergencies (like street aggression, roving terrorist attacks, police brutality) I will demonstrate that bystander intervention is much more common than we think; that the presence of others (particularly in violent or dangerous emergencies) actually promotes rather than inhibits intervention; and that bystanders are far more likely to be a force for good than a marker of moral failure.
Tuesday 11th May 7.30pm-8.30pm
Dr Lara Warmelink: Lying across the lifespan: honest ageing
In a follow-up from my talk about lying in the last seminar series (which can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/IPG54amZvOI), this time I’ll be talking about how much people differ in how honest they are. Particularly, I’ll be discussing whether older people are more honest than younger people.
Tuesday 18th May 7.30pm-8.30pm
Leslie Hallam: Legal, decent, honest, truthful…?
How the limits society places on advertising subvert our rational choices, mirror and amplify our prejudices – and also sell us more products!
Tuesday 25th May 7.30pm-8.30pm
Dr Kate Slade: The neuroscience of hearing
Are you ready for an exciting journey down the ear canal? In this talk we will discuss how we hear, what happens to our hearing as we age, and how we can use neuroscientific methods to better understand how we process sound.
Tuesday 1st June 7.30pm-8.30pm
Prof John Towse: Online fraud: The role of psychology in cyberspace
Online communication is ubiquitous, Yet its simplicity, functionality and cost-effectiveness has spawned a darker ecosystem – online fraud. As criminals continue to find ways to circumvent technological defences, the onus remains on all of us to detect and deal with online threats. Are we psychologically equipped to handle the challenge?
Tuesday 8th June 7.30pm-8.30pm
Dr Francesca Citron: Emotion, language and aesthetic perception – the impact of a powerful read
In the last decade, empirical research on aesthetic perception has flourished. In other words, the focus of investigation has moved from what makes a painting or a statue or a poem beautiful toward what it is that people experience when they look at or read something pleasurable. We now know that beauty perception engages parts of the brain associated with emotion, reward, and bodily sensations. Research on literary reading has only more recently developed and therefore we now have more open questions than answers! In my talk, I will address questions such as: What is it that makes literary works beautiful or immersive? Which physiological and brain responses does pleasurable reading elicit? Is beauty perception something we can measure empirically?
Tuesday 15th June 7.30pm-8.30pm
Dr Marina Bazhydai: “I don’t know but I know who to ask”: How babies seek information from others
This talk is about the origins of active social learning through seeking knowledge from other people. I will highlight developmental psychology studies showing that even before being able to ask questions, when uncertain about something and not able to find out for themselves, infants actively communicate with people who are more knowledgeable to gain information from them. This remarkable early ability to actively shape their own learning makes infants apt participants in social information exchange.
Join seminar here: https://tinyurl.com/yhpz7e8p
Video of the recording: https://youtu.be/he3WCpnNRCs
Tuesday 22nd June 7.30pm-8.30pm
Dr Patrick May: Harnessing auditory neuroscience for green energy production
What do ocean waves, auditory neuroscience, and green energy have to do with each other? This talk outlines research carried out at Lancaster University as part of an international project that is developing power plants for using ocean waves as a green energy source. A crucial requirement in this endeavour is the ability to predict when the next wave will hit and with what height. To this end, we are combining machine learning with computer models of the hearing system of the brain. This unusual combination produces computer algorithms that are excellent at predicting ocean waves.
– Talks we hosted in 2020 –
Tuesday 17th November 7.30pm-9.00pm
On Tuesday 17th November 2020 at 7.30 pm, the Psychology Department at Lancaster University will host an online event around Developmental Language Disorder for parents, teachers and practitioners. We’ll talk about what Developmental Language Disorder is, about ongoing research at Lancaster University on DLD, and about local services available for families with children with language difficulties. There will also be ample opportunity to ask questions.
Tuesday 12th May 7.30pm-8.30pm
Dr Lara Warmelink: Lying: the good, the bad, and the ugly
Lying is a complex behaviour that is usually studied as an anti-social behaviour, but actually it has uses to keep communities and people sticking together as well. This talk will discuss what we know about the psychology of lying and how we measure and detect it.
Tuesday 19th May 7.30pm-8.30pm
Dr Calum Hartley: Children’s understanding of ownership
The concept of ownership is a foundation of human culture. Determining ownership is vital to wide-ranging social situations, ranging from playground disputes to international political decisions. This talk will discuss how children figure out ‘who owns what’ and why ownership is so important to them.
Tuesday 26th May 7.30pm-8.30pm
Dr Sally Linkenauger: The Pint Glass Illusion: Large distortions in the perceived shape of everyday objects
We take for granted that our perceptions of objects reveal an accurate representation of their geometrical dimensions. However, because our brain is the most expensive organ in our body, processing visual information is a costly process. Hence, it stands to reason, that we would only expend neural energy deriving the dimensions of the environment that our useful for our interactions within it. In this talk, I will show how our perceptions of the dimensions of everyday objects are greatly distorted presumably because those dimensions are not necessary for facilitating environmental interaction.
Tuesday 2nd June 7.30pm-8.30pm
Prof Charlie Lewis: Developmental psychology in the courts: Can we help children provide more convincing evidence?
Getting testimony from children in court cases is a deep and intricate problem. Children are usually encouraged to guess and are not usually relied on as the only arbiters of truth. The talk explores how children behave in these situations and how psychologists have informed legal process around children providing evidence.
Please note that the subject matter of this talk concerns cases involving child abuse. For advice and help on issues concerning child abuse, please see the Citizens Advice website.
Tuesday 9th June 7.30pm-8.30pm
Dr Ryan Boyd: How to talk about your feelings: The peculiar relationship between words and emotions
In today’s age of hyper-self-awareness, the ability to label our emotions is often celebrated. Self-styled emotion experts publish lengthy lists of emotion words to help people articulate feelings as precisely as possible, and it is often assumed that people who use rich emotional vocabularies are emotionally and physically healthier than those who do not. However, the science behind our emotional experiences and our verbal behaviour is still in its infancy, and our research suggests that the current wisdom on emotion labeling doesn’t give us the full picture.
Video of seminar: coming soon
Tuesday 16th June 7.30pm-8.30pm
Leslie Hallam: Advertising: The dark art
The potency of advertising is well-understood by those who use it; much less so by those who are subject to it. Often characterised as exploiting our basest desires to sell us things we don’t need and didn’t know we wanted, more subversive uses can also be seen as contributing to more pro-social agendas, such as public health or sustainability. At one level (decent, honest, truthful) advertising messages hold up a mirror to our societies; if we don’t like the dark reflections we see, we need to be able to understand its inaccuracies and distortions, in order to change it – or perhaps, change ourselves.
Tuesday 23rd June 7.30pm-8.30pm
Dr Kirsty Dunn: Prenatal development: Learning from our environment before we are born
The prenatal period is a time of intense and rapid development – a time that sees our brains and sensory systems develop to surprisingly sophisticated levels. How do the things we hear, see, taste and feel before birth lead to specific abilities and influence our preferences for what we like to see and listen to after birth? This talk will look at the incredible ways in which researchers around the world have been working to understand how the sensory environment in the womb shapes fetal brain development.
