2022

2023

2024

Conference

In person

Online workshop

Webinar

East

East Midlands

London

North East

North West

Northern Ireland

Overseas

Republic of Ireland

Scotland

South

South East

South West

Wales

Wessex

West Midlands

Yorkshire and Humber

January

February

March

April

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Addiction

ADHD

Animals

Art and culture

Autism

Bipolar

Books and reading

BPS updates

Brain

Careers and professional development

Children, young people and families

Climate and environment

Clinical

Coaching

Cognition and perception

Community

Counselling and psychotherapy

Covid

Creativity

Crisis, disaster and trauma

Cyberpsychology

Decision making

Defence and security

Dementia

Depression

Developmental

Digital and technology

Dyslexia

Dyspraxia

Eating disorders

Education

Emotion

Equality, diversity and inclusion

Ethics and morality

Evolutionary

Film and television

Genetics

Government and politics

Health

Health and wellbeing

History and philosophy

HIV and sexual health

Homelessness and rough-sleeping

Human Rights

Independent Practitioners

Intellectual Disabilities

Language and communication

Leadership and teamwork

Legal, criminological and forensic

LGBTQ+

Meditation

Memory

Mental health

Methods and statistics

Mindfulness

Music and sound

Neurodiversity

Neuropsychology

Obesity

Older people

Oncology

Palliative care

Perception

Perinatal

Personality and self

Physical Disabilities

Poverty

Practice Ethics

Professional Practice

Psychobiology

Psychological testing

Psychosis and complex mental health

Psychosis and schizophrenia

Qualitative Methods

Quantitative Methods

Race, ethnicity and culture

Regulation

Relationships and romance

Research

Research Ethics

Rules and regulations

Self-harm and suicide

Sex and gender

Sleep

Smoking

Social and behavioural

Spirituality and religion

Sport and Exercise

Stress and anxiety

Teaching and learning

Theatre and drama

Time

Tourette Syndrome

Trainees and training

TV and entertainment

Violence and trauma

Work and occupational

2025

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

1995

1996

1997

This paper contributes to the study of admonishments, the operation of shaming in family interaction, and more broadly presses the virtue of a discursive psychological reconsideration of the social psychology of emotion. It examines the methodological basis of contemporary research on shame in experimental and qualitative social psychology, illustrated through the Test of Self‐Conscious Affect (TOSCA) and qualitative work using shame narratives. Doubts are raised about how these methods can throw light on shaming practices in natural situations. The study uses a collection of video recordings of family mealtimes, focusing on admonishment sequences in which parents address the interrogatives ‘what are you doing’ or ‘what did I say’ to a ‘misbehaving’ child. Despite the interrogative syntax, rather than soliciting information we show that these interrogative forms pursue behaviour change by publicly highlighting both the problem behaviour and the child’s active and intentional production of that behaviour. This is the sense in which the practice can be understood as shaming. Although this practice prosecutes shaming, ways in which the children can ignore, push back, or rework parents’ actions are highlighted. This study contributes to a broader consideration of how enduring behavioural change can be approached as a parents’ project.

Shaming interrogatives: Admonishments, the social psychology of emotion, and discursive practices of behaviour modification in family mealtimes

Moral conviction predicts interpersonal tolerance in adults, but its role in children and adolescents is not as well understood. This study measured moral conviction for a variety of issues along two separate dimensions – cognitive and affective – in children and adolescents (4th–12th grade). Results showed that, like adults, when children and adolescents view an issue as moral, this is strongly predictive of both age groups’ discomfort with divergent beliefs. But only for adolescents, and not children, did moral conviction play a role in that discomfort, as had previously been found with adults. The context in which the divergent beliefs were encountered also mattered, but more for adolescents than for children – both groups were most comfortable with divergent beliefs when they were encountered in distal relations.

Children's and adolescents’ tolerance for divergent beliefs: Exploring the cognitive and affective dimensions of moral conviction in our youth

The current studies explored early humour as a complex socio‐cognitive phenomenon by examining 2‐ and 3‐year‐olds’ humour production with their parents. We examined whether children produced novel humour, whether they cued their humour, and the types of humour produced. Forty‐seven parents were interviewed, and videotaped joking with their children. Other parents (N= 113) completed a survey. Parents reported children copy jokes during the first year of life, and produce novel jokes from 2 years. In play sessions, 3‐year‐olds produced mostly novel humorous acts; 2‐year‐olds produced novel and copied humorous acts equally frequently. Parents reported children smile, laugh, and look for a reaction when joking. In play sessions, 2‐ and 3‐year‐olds produced these behaviours more when producing humorous versus non‐humorous acts. In both parent reports and play sessions, they produced novel object‐based (e.g., underwear on head) and conceptual humour (e.g., ‘pig says moo’) and used wrong labels humorously (e.g., calling a cat a dog). Thus, parent report and child behaviour both confirm that young children produce novel humorous acts, and share their humour by smiling, laughing, and looking for a reaction.

Early humour production

The accounts given by those who have violated a rule are likely to have important self‐presentational consequences, potentially reducing the negative impact of the breach on social evaluations of transgressors. However, little is known about young children's self‐presentational reasoning about such accounts. In the present study, a sample of 120 4‐ to 9‐year‐olds responded to rule violation stories where the transgressor uses either an apology, an excuse, or no account. Results showed that whereas children rated both account types similarly in terms of their impact on punishment consequences, even the youngest saw apologies as leading to significantly more positive social evaluation than excuses. Correspondingly, children were more likely to identify prosocial motives for apologies than for excuses, and more likely to identify self‐protective motives for excuses than for apologies. Explicit references to self‐presentational motives when explaining the accounts increased significantly with age, and were more likely following social‐conventional rather than moral rule violations.

Children's reasoning about the self-presentational consequences of apologies and excuses following rule violations

As part of an extensive series of interviews about men and masculinity, small groups of 17 to 18‐year‐old male students were invited to look forward to their future romantic and domestic lives. Their responses were analysed using the approach and methods of discourse analysis in order to examine both the interpretative resources used within their accounts and to look at how the young men attempted to manage the ‘ideological dilemma’ (Billig, Condor, Edwards, Gane, Middleton & Radley, 1988) that was framed by these cultural themes. The analysis describes three such strategies while paying particular attention to the ‘action orientation’(Heritage, 1984) of these constructions. Finally, the paper moves on to discuss, albeit briefly, the broader implications of this research.

Imagined futures: Young men's talk about fatherhood and domestic life

Situational antecedents and experiential correlates of shame and guilt in children were examined by having 6‐11‐year‐olds give ratings of the extent to which two types of situations would elicit a protagonist's feelings of shame and guilt. It was predicted that one type of situation should elicit both shame and guilt, because the protagonist caused harm to another person by behaving incoherently or incompetently. The other type of situation was predicted to elicit more shame than guilt, because the protagonist behaved incoherently or incompetently without causing harm to anyone. Two types of questions were used to elicit children's ratings: in term‐based questions the emotion terms ‘guilt’ and ‘shame’ were used, while in correlate‐based questions guilt and shame were alluded to by citing experiential correlates of these emotions. Children aged 9 and upward differentiated between both types of situations and between judgments of shame vs. guilt, both when giving term‐based and when giving correlate‐based ratings. There were no systematic differences in children's performance depending on whether they gave correlate‐based or term‐based judgments.

Shame and guilt in children: Differential situational antecedents and experiential correlates

‘H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, PEE! Get it? Pee!’: Siblings’ shared humour in childhood

Discussion: On social interaction as a type of explanation of language development

Maternal interpretations of the intentionality of infant behaviour have played a key role in many theoretical accounts of the development of intentionality. However, the assessment of maternal interpretations has generally proceeded in an indirect fashion. The present study sought to assess maternal interpretations in a more direct manner. Sixty primiparous mothers of 4‐ or 8‐month‐old infants viewed video clips of unfamiliar infants engaged in social‐, object‐ or non‐directed activities and rated the actions for perceived intentionality. Results indicated that mothers of younger infants assigned more intentionality to social behaviours than did mothers of older infants, suggesting that maternal interpretations change over the course of infant development. Explanations for this pattern are explored, including the possibility that mothers become less sensitive to established behaviours or that they use a type of moving threshold to judge infant actions. Future avenues of research are suggested.

Maternal interpretations of infant intentionality: Changes over the course of infant development

Highland and Island psychiatric reflexions

The concept of identity: a review

Regressive forces in anorexia nervosa

Here’s what we found