‘To be able to have input into government is a real power’

Could you take yourself and your work and transport it anywhere in the country?

Yes, I think I could, but at the same time, there are still those unique local issues, especially in my area – prejudice and discrimination. South Wales is a very different place to many areas, particularly England.

When asylum seekers and refugees come into an area like this, there isn't necessarily the the government infrastructure, and we're not quite like London, where there are already diverse populations, which people can assimilate into. Sometimes, they can find themselves very isolated.

If you look at what happened down at Stradey Park, for instance, with the hotel where asylum seekers were moved in, there was never particularly any mechanism there to integrate people into the community.

There were protests, counter-protests, and a lot of very vulnerable people caught in the middle in this hotel probably wondering what the hell was going on, through no fault of their own. Third-sector organisations become really important, and we work with those such as the African Community Centre.

Do you think there is anything distinctive about the Swansea psyche and Swansea people? This could be an interesting question to ask you, from a stereotype perspective… if you try and pick out things that are distinctive about a whole population, it's pretty easy to slip into stereotypical ways of thinking.

Well, I do think there is a great sense of pride around Swansea and the surrounding valleys. But of course, you will also find that pride in many places.

I'd imagine it's probably the same in places like Leicester – you've got this city called Leicester but inside, you've got the different parts of it. If you're talking about where you're from, you might refer to the bit that you're from rather than from the city as a whole. It's the same in Swansea. People might have pride around the parts they come from, rather than just Swansea as a whole. 

I'm starting to wonder whether, if I go around the country asking psychologists if there is anything unique about the psyche of their area, most people are going to say there is some kind of unique identity, but all those unique identities are going to be pretty similar. Like a Barnum effect of geography. Proud, resilient, welcoming… kind of a shared uniqueness. 

What role, if any, do you think the BPS has played in your journey in psychology?

Actually, quite a lot. I joined the BPS Welsh Branch as a postgrad. We're going back 18, 19 years now. It gave me insight into a lot of different elements of psychology across the UK that I don't think I would have necessarily seen if I hadn't been involved with it. So it has been really influential – especially being in a small university, you have less access to the wider things that are going on.

Any chance that you do get to be able to go to different places, meet different people, on the BPS Senate for example. So I've tried pushing people towards the BPS – it can be hard work, you know, there's not much thanks that go with doing that role. But for me, it has benefited me as a psychologist.

I think branches have a massive role to play in the BPS, perhaps particularly somewhere like the Welsh Branch, where that national identity is strong.

Yes. I think having that ability to engage, particularly with the Senate, and to be able to have input into government, is a real power. With several branches, it was a lot more difficult for them to gain any traction with Westminster… but through the devolved nations, the ability to actually input into government policy in the nation, it's an important thing. We've done some really good stuff with the Welsh government. That's rewarding to do.

Do you think the Welsh Government are quite open to psychological input?

I think they are, actually. Probably about 10 years ago, we really started to push on it… and you have got to push, you've got to make yourself known, get people on to committees, give evidence at hearings. It takes time and effort, but when you see it producing results on the other side, that's what makes it worthwhile. And we've been fortunate to see that happen in a number of cases, particularly around dementia and obesity. 

You work with virtual reality. Have you found things or done things using VR that would not have been possible in using any other technique?

I think so, yes. VR stuff has been around for a long time, and we were probably still a lot of the time using it in the way that we did 20 years ago. But there have been movements. Some of the work that we've done with the Assistive Technologies Innovation Centre, for instance, when we were looking at different workspace options… we were able to put people into that environment in a bit of a different way. We've got an immersive suite, a decent sized room with three of the walls as pure LED screens. Instead of somebody being inside goggles, they're able to work with other people inside that environment. You can bring things into that environment and use augmented reality. Half a dozen people can work together within an environment, which is virtual, but able to use real objects. It gave people the potential to see what it would be like to be in an environment that didn't exist, and to try out different environments. There's no way that you could do that without VR.

So I think from that perspective, things are changing with the technology, but by and large, yes, we're still going back to the 'goggles on, being shown things'.

So the potential is there, but it's probably still not being fully used?

One factor is that the immersive room was incredibly expensive. As the cost comes down, hopefully more of these options will crop up, which will give people a greater ability to do it. It's a bit like with fMRI machines: they used to cost millions upon millions of pounds, very specialised things, and hardly anyone got to play with them. As they got cheaper and became more ubiquitous, the fMRI research exploded.

How else have you used VR?

There's some really interesting work going on with looking at how people respond to things like hate crimes. Putting people into the shoes of a Muslim, for instance, who is being verbally attacked, or somebody's being attacked for their sexuality. The ability to put somebody into the shoes of somebody else is really powerful stuff.

Did participants report that it really feels real to them?

Yes. The question of how long that lasts for is this something that we're still looking at at the moment, but the immediate reaction really is real. That stuff was professionally filmed.

So it's not using avatars, or virtual environments, it's actually filled with actors?

Yes, so it's a really realistic environment.

That's interesting to me, because I suppose when I think of virtual reality, in psychology, I still think of these quite blocky avatars, that in some ways, the more real you try to make them, the more you enter the 'uncanny valley', and you're better off not making it that real! But if you have actual video footage, that does feel a bit like there's more potential applications.

That's the thing – you literally can put somebody into what can feel like a very real experience, because the filming itself is real. It really is powerful.

But are we still always waiting for the technology to develop that next step, and constantly going 'When the technology gets that little bit better, we'll be able to use it for all sorts of things'? Or have we got to the stage now where the technology is not far off as good as it's going to get?

There will always be that next step. The immersive suite, for instance, it's a step up, in terms of multiple people all interacting together within this one environment. But it's still an artificial environment, there are still many things that you could do to be able to make that even more realistic. I wish I knew what those are, because I'd probably be very rich!

But yes, the technology keeps moving on. And making it affordable is just as important as improving the tech. It needs to be affordable for us to implement it in lots of different places, rather than just a specialist suite.