Psychology samples - why always students?

I look at many psychology papers. It seems to me that most of them carry out their research on 'undergraduate students'. Is this a representative sample - educated, intelligent, young...can we base our psychological understanding of the whole of society on paper after paper that researches this specialised group? Why don't researchers get out in the real world and do study some real people? Unfortunately, when you read a newspaper report about the latest study it usually fails to mention the sample.

Boden appeal vanishes in credit crunch zeitgeist

I'm fascinated by brands and Boden childrenswear is one that appeals to me. I certainly am not Boden woman frolicking on the beach in a shapeless purple sweater and flat pumps. However, the children's catalogue appeals and I usually buy my daughters something from it each season. The new catalogue arrives, they peruse it at huge length ticking off things they like and I pay for one or two items that usually total about £100. The catalogue arrived today but the magic has been broken. It went straight in the bin. It's not as if I have dramatically less money than usual but I've been swept up in the credit crunch zeitgeist that is making me question aquisition of material possessions. I thought about the Boden items I had bought and realised that they weren't actually nicer than much cheaper items from H&M. I was merely buying into the back-story brand psychology of happy children frolicking around in middle-class clothes. Well at the moment Johnnie Boden, I'm sorry but I don't want it and I don't need it. The catalogue is bin fodder and I'm making do with the clothes we have already. Although, come to think of it I did spend £100 on children's clothes in designer store Desigual in Amsterdam last week. Hmmm...

Pimp my fashion

Red Light Fashion, Amsterdam
Authorities in Amsterdam are cleaning up the red light district in Amsterdam with fashion. Where once there were dodgy mafia sex traffic operations, now there are young designers, bows, satin, totally unwearable designs, dreams of fame in high fashion, hugs and air kisses. I'm just back from a press trip to Red Light Fashion - where we had a guided viewing behind the windows of former canal houses that have been transformed into designer showcases. Designers are using the old tiled beds with their grotty plastic mattresses as sofas and desks and one has even turned a former prostitute's bidet into a fish tank with two black guppy fish gurgling around in it. The fashion houses are slotted between windows of bored-looking prostitutes (I did visit at 11am) and our group of journalists was carefully lined up so we didn't stand in front of the girls, blocking the view for punters. 'They are doing their job too,' we were told. Definitely worth a look if you are visiting Amsterdam.
http://www.redlightfashionamsterdam.com/

Stuck in Blake's Heaven

Stuck in Blake’s Heaven
A little nostalgia is good for you – but a 30 year obsession with a seventies TV programme means you need to move on

Take a cast of dysfunctional main characters, bind them together with some caustic, ironic dialogue and spangly costumes. Mix well into ever surprising combinations and season with moral ambiguity and an air of disillusionment and you have the wondrous Blake’s 7: one of the best television programmes on the British small screen in the late seventies, early eighties. Apparently, the series is being remade and will reappear on television in 2009.
As a confused 14-year-old, Blake’s 7 was the TV panacea that kept me sane with its scathing and rebellious, yet oddly comforting, presence. Even now listening to the theme tune again for the first time in decades makes my chest tighten with anticipation and excitement.
In 1978, stuck in stultifying rural Norfolk and just on the brink of discovering the nihilism of punk, Blake’s 7 was the perfect vehicle to vicariously offload my nascent cynicism and disillusionment. It was wonderfully contemptuous (with Avon’s sneer sometimes threatening Sid Vicious proportions), yet safe and comforting (rickety sets and sparkling cat suits were hardly scary – nor was watching it at home while eating cheese and salad cream sandwiches).
‘Everyone’s out to get you,’ Vila is told in the penultimate episode of the last series, by which time I now had unforgiving pink hair, an ear lobe triple self-pierced with a safety pin and Crass painted on the back of my leather jacket. ‘I always assume that wherever I go’, Vila replies.
The perfect dialogue for an anti-social disillusioned teenager growing up in Thatcher’s Britain. Quotes to inspire a slight rebel embarking on that fiendishly problematic process of establishing my identity – which when it came to fruition could now probably best be described as, er, caustic, morally ambiguous, disillusioned and with a love of spangly costumes. Perfect then. No wonder I loved Blake’s 7 so much.
But, and forgive me if the exact details of the sound recordist, supporting cast and sub-plots are a little hazy now. For all that was almost, er, 30 years ago. And I’m happy to admit that I have moved on since then. Indeed, I haven’t watched it since. Not once, until a friend kindly loaned me a rather shaky video copy of the last ever two episodes to jog my memory for the purposes of writing this piece.
It was nice to revisit it again but I haven’t actually thought about Blake’s 7 much in the past three decades. I can’t say it has played a big part in my life. Actually, I left it all behind for a progression of new, if admittedly less inspiring, tv favourites: Brookside (hmmm!); This Life; Newsnight Review; Seinfeld, The Sopranos, Jordan and Peter… It may not actually be better quality, or more worthy, but at least I have moved on.
But some people never move on. They stay stuck in a Blake’s 7 time warp, forever pondering the miniscule nuances of every episode, every character, every member of the production team.
So why is it that a few super fans, who loved it so much they just can’t leave it behind where some believe it should stay – back when the seventies melded into the eighties? Why do some fanatics still obsess about it, love it, watch and watch again old episodes, go to Blake’s 7 conventions and feel it was the pinnacle of British television history. And is it actually bad for you to think about Blake’s 7 so much? Well psychology just might have the answer…
Psychologists believe that if you carry a torch for Blake’s 7, you could be succumbing to what researchers have labelled – nostalgic consumer bonding. It might worry friends and family and others who are bored of your obsession, but apparently it’s not dangerous, it’s not catching and it might even be good for you – in moderation.
In the US, Professor Morris Holbrook an expert on marketing at Columbia University, in New York and his colleague Professor Robert Schindler, a business professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, have researched just what it is that makes us fixate on a programme like Blake’s 7.
Their experiments reveal that some people appear to ‘imprint’ on popular products such as television programmes like Blake’s 7.
Mere exposure isn’t enough – so simply watching lots of times won’t do the trick. Rather you have to have some peculiar, and almost spiritual, deep emotional experience of bonding with the programme at the time. You have to associate it with something rather wonderful that you remember doing at the time, or some particularly strong feeling, such as watching Blake’s 7 while your parents praised you for being such a marvellous child, made you feel good and loved and wanted and fed you the most delicious cream cakes you had ever eaten in your life while you watched Blake and Avon roaming around the universe.
Or maybe you watched it while having your first sexual experience? Or more likely for most teenagers imagining your first sexual experience while your hormones surged
This potent cocktail of a favourite consumer product mixed with a good memory, in turn, leads to a powerful, enduring bond in your psyche that renders the programme with a special significance. It’s a done deal and you are inextricably and forever in love with Blake’s 7. . I don’t recall having such an epiphany while watching – which is probably why I haven’t thought about it since, even though I loved it at the time.
If you did, now, for eternity you are hooked on watching episodes of Blake’s 7 and endlessly discussing them for ever more. It’s like a drug – and you may even need to buy extravagantly priced memorabilia from the actual show to feed your addiction. The bond is so deep, you may never even escape. It’s a love thang for Blake and his team that can teleport you right back to the halcyon days of your first delicious experience of watching the original programmes. For Proust is was a bit of a buttery Madeleine cake, for you it’s watching Blake’s 7.
And such reminiscences may actually be good for you. Nostalgia is bitter sweet and we are urged to live in the moment, but apparent the occasional trip down memory lane can actually give your spirits a significant lift. A tiny trigger of Blake’s 7 has the power to unleash a flood of sunny memories that makes you more cheerful and can prove an antidote if you feel blue, according to research from psychologists at Chicago’s Loyola University.
"Reminiscence can motivate you," says Fred Bryant, researcher at Loyola University. More important, it can give you "a sense of being rooted, a sense of meaning and purpose—instead of being blown around by the whims of everyday life."
Researchers at the University of Southampton in the U.K. have also found nostalgia can make you feel happier. Studies by psychologist Tim Wildschut reveal that more nostalgic people report higher self-esteem, less depression and feel more positively about friendships and close relationships.
So nostalgia is good for you – but in small doses! Never any more than 20 minutes a day, according to the psychology researchers. Not in great dollops of all-day splurging, gooey, watching-past-episodes-every-day, having dirty dreams about Avon, obsessive-type of way. A little bit now and then – just to cheer you up on a gloomy day.
So yes, I have moved on, but I guess it won’t do me any harm to keep hold of my newly acquired video of Blake’s 7 if it’s that good for my self-esteem and mood. And while I’m at it, I just might log on to Amazon and order the whole boxed DVD set…but I’ve moved on. And I’ll only watch a bit every now and then, promise…

When not in Russia...

I have failed to obtain a Russian visa for a press trip next week - along with several other journalists in the party. Apparently, the Russian Embassy are not keen on journalists, but I've had no exact explanation of why. It was a press trip organised by Phillips to showcase future technology in Moscow. This is the second time a trip I have planned to Russia has been called off at the last minute - perhaps I'm just not meant to go there. The last attempt was several years ago. The hotel and flights were booked, but my partner at the time developed a sudden and all-consuming phobia of flying following an air crash (can't remember which one now) where several passengers were killed. I'd even been on a short course to learn a few words of Russian. We cancelled. I gather it's an interesting place - but unfortunately I have yet to visit in person...

Early to bed, early to rise makes Liz...dull

I've tried it for four weeks now. It seemed like a good idea at the start of the new school year. Getting up at 6.30am, walking the dog in the park. Back home by 7am ready to get the children out of bed and into school uniforms and into the office for 8.45. Four weeks was long enough. Getting up early is so depressing and walking the dog at that time even more grim. I began seeing the same people at the same point on my route EVERY DAY! Aaaagh. The lady in blue wellingtons with the black and white collie, Elsie in her wheelchair taking her King Charles Spaniel past the bowling green, the man jogging in an adidas tracksuit with a black labrador. It was so depressing. I just can't do it anymore. I cannot do the same thing day after day that early without it seeming like a pointless groundhog day. Even worse, by 9pm I'm exhausted and have to go to bed early. All too horrible. I tried to get up even earlier but that was impossible, vary my route - but I soon bumped into new 'park regulars'. Now I know that some people spend their whole lives doing the same thing over and over again. They may find it comforting but I find it profoundly depressing. Standing there throwing the skimmer disk so monotonously, so early in the morning is very wrong for my constitution. I'm genetically hard-wired to get up late. The dog will have to wait for her walk, I'm staying in bed longer.

£6,000 Jimmy Choos - cause of financial collapse?

A friend of a friend of a friend married this summer 2008. This story is somewhat third hand, but apparently the bride spent £6,000 on their wedding shoes - a luxury villa wedding in Italy, all very chi chi. My first thought was ‘well how on earth do you find somewhere to spend that much money on shoes’. Good quality shoes are so scarce in my home town of Norwich that I wouldn’t actually be able to find any costing that much. Indeed, I could come back from a shopping trip with hundreds of pairs for that kind of budget. Well, apparently these were hand-made, hand-crafted, hand-died, kissed, sweated-over, delighted-in and money in the bank by the esteemed shoe designer Jimmy Choo. The Jimmy Choo. My next question, of course, was how can she have afforded such extravagant shoes which apparently could barely be seen beneath her dress – what does she do for a living? The answer: ‘She does something high-up in banking.’ In a world where a City banker earns such a bonus they have money to burn on exorbitantly-priced shoes, hardly surprising the financial system is collapsing around us. Sadly, I’m not sure hand-made Jimmy Choo’s hold their value as much as cash in a savings account. Just hope for her sake, she didn’t work at Lehmann brothers…