Ken gives Person Category talk in Linköping, Sweden

Ken had an opportunity to present the work on Person Categories to the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning at Linköping University while in town for the conference keynote address at the GRASP 2014 conference.  The talk led to some interesting conversations afterward and was a chance to meet a wider group from the local department. … Read more

“Prevalence to Process” paper in Medical Education

There is a well-established literature showing the higher prevalence of stress and threats to wellbeing in medical students. There is a well-established literature showing the higher prevalence of stress and threats to wellbeing in medical students.  In this paper we argue for the importance of researching specific psychological processes that might exacerbate or moderate these … Read more

Ken gives St Andrews seminar on Person Categories

Ken recently gave the local friday afternoon school seminar in St Andrews. The title of the talk was “The person categorisation heresies: Persons AS categories, and implications for a unified theory of social categorisation”. St Andrews is an ideal place for us to pursue this work, given the great intellectual atmosphere and intellectual interest shared … Read more

Lillian Smyth PhD submitted

Lillian submitted her PhD in Social Psychology today.  The thesis is titled “Putting the Student in Context: A social and normative model of learning approaches and their outcomes”. It explores the reciprocal relationships between discipline-based social identity and learning approaches (deep/surface) in tertiary education, and effects on academic performance and course evaluation. One paper has … Read more

Ken visits ANU for PhD and project updates

Ken had the opportunity to visit ANU for a busy week of meetings and catch-ups.  The main focus was on Kathy McNeill (who submitted her thesis this week) and Lillian Smyth (who is submitting in January), but also included meetings with Daniel Skorich and Dora Sharp-Davidson about ongoing projects as well as catching up with … Read more

Kathy McNeill PhD Submitted

Kathy submitted her PhD in Clinical Psychology today just in time for a well-deserved holiday break.  The thesis is titled “An Investigation of Self-Structure, Social Identity and Norms in Medical Student Wellbeing”. She explores the unique issues for wellbeing facing medical students, what can be learned from applying the broader social psychology literature on self, … Read more

Identity and norms: The role of group membership in medical student wellbeing

McNeill, K. G., Kerr, A, and Mavor, K. I. (2014) Perspectives on Medical Education Kathy McNeill has had her first, first-author paper published from her PhD work on identity and medical student wellbeing. Congratulations Kathy! We also continue to work with Annelise Kerr, who is a medical student at the ANU, and did her Medical … Read more

“Prevalence to Process” presentation to St Andrews Medical Education

Ken had the opportunity to present our “Prevalence to Process” model to the medical education group here at St Andrews. The model integrates the social psychological concepts of self complexity, social identity and normative influence into a model of stress and wellbeing in medical students.  The talk led to some interesting discussion amongst the group.

Ken presenting at BPS social section in Exeter

Ken presented a talk at the BPS social psychology section conference in Exeter.  The talk titled “Challenging the effect of cognitive load on the efficiency of categorization versus individuation” presented several studies from Daniel Skorich’s PhD on impression formation and cognitive resources. The conference was also a good opportunity to continue some collaborations with several … Read more

Medical student wellbeing study

Update: We were pleased to have the participation from nearly 400 medical students, primarily in Australia and New Zealand, but also Europe and Asia.  We are currently analysing the data but so far we find support for several key features of our self, identity and wellbeing model featured in our recent Medical Education article. We … Read more