Psychology blog: Enjoy a summertime read

Psychology blog: Enjoy a summertime read 19 June 2017

Late July and August, you’ll often find me settled in a deck chair, enjoying the sunshine and summer breeze on my skin, cool drink in one hand, book in the other. Bliss! The book will almost certainly be a psychology title, and every so often it leads me to reflect upon and ponder life a bit, something in all honesty I don’t often get the time to really do during term time without feeling that I should be doing something else!

The titles I’m recommending this summer!

It occurred to me that not many students probably pick up a psychology book during the summer months as it would simply feel like a homework task, a juxtaposition to their ‘down tools, it's holiday time!’ mode. But I feel they’re missing out as there are some really great and accessible reads out there. This year, I want to encourage and motivate my students to pop a psychology book into their suitcase along with their sunscreen or download an eBook, and engage in some summer psychology reading! I’m going to actively be suggesting some titles to them. As it happens many draw upon the OCR A Level Component 2, ‘Psychological themes through core studies’ content – but of course my students don’t necessarily have to know that until they arrive back to college in September!

Social psychology books

One of my favourite areas has to be social psychology, how the people around us affect our behaviour. I only need to be in a Starbucks queue for 5 minutes to spot this in action! Now I’m going to suggest some books and I’ve provided links - but of course other book sellers are available. So, some classic ‘must reads’ for me include Zimbardo, P (2008) The Lucifer effect: How good people turn evil, Milgram, S (2010) Obedience to authority: An experimental view and more recently; Pelonero, C (2016) Kitty Genovese: A true account of a public murder and it’s private consequences. These get you questioning ‘what would I do?’ Also these books can help us try and make sense of sadly the evil we sometimes see in the world, and importantly too, the good heroes out there that help during these moments.

Exploring people and personalities

Like me, if you think the categorisation of people would interest your students then why not look at directing them to find out more about the individual differences area in psychology. They could investigate the majority by looking at personality trait differences. Dr Malkin, C (2015) The Narcissist Test: How to spot outsized egos and the surprising things we can learn from them, will get you and your students secretly testing to find out if your narcissism is ‘just the right amount’ and attempting to categorise others in the process. Try not to be offended if this book is purchased for you as a gift, as my copy was! Other useful books in measuring differences could be the psychopath test, which Hancock et al (2011) used the PCL-R to categorise the murderers before analysing their language. However, Ronson, J (2011) The psychopath test, questions how helpful this diagnosis is, especially as 4% of CEO’s are said to be psychopaths. Perhaps the summer time is the best time to encourage your students to develop their good psychopathic traits? Dutton, K and McNab, A (2014) The good psychopath’s guide to success: How to use your inner psychopath to get the most out of life, will get them selecting which psychopathic traits they can adapt to get that job they’re after or how to control their personal life, such as committing to giving up smoking.

Exploring free will, control and self-control  

Discussing the ability to control, always gets me questioning the free-will vs determinism debate, how much personal control do we actually have? If a rainy summer day is forecast, why not encourage students to stay in and watch a film that will leave them thinking such as The Adjustment bureau (2011) - can we control against the agents of fate? This is where the biological area makes us question how much control we really have. Mischel, W (2014) The Marshmallow test: Understanding self-control and how to master it will leave you and your students wishing you could teach children to put down that first marshmallow and resist the temptation when you read the outcomes of the majority of low delayers and the fMRI evidence. But can the marshmallow test really predict our future? And are we able to change our biology?

Sharing ideas for a deeper understanding

I’ve been thinking about the possibility of introducing a Psychology Book Club for my students, using social media to enable them to share their thoughts and discuss books. To get started there are existing reading lists or students could create their own. 

Students may struggle with the delay of gratification so these interesting, accessible reads should help develop their interest in psychology further and lead to the real reward of a deeper understanding of psychology! I’d be really interested in hearing of any book or film suggestions you perhaps make to your GCSE or A Level students, or whether you have a book club already up and running – please do comment below or share with me on Twitter @OCR_Psychology #summerread. You can also email the team on psychology@ocr.org.uk.

A copy of this guest blog will also be featuring in a specially written newspaper being created by Oxford University Press for the ATP conference which is being held from 7-9 July at Keele University.

About the author

Michelle Clive

Michelle Clive teaches GCSE and A Level Psychology at a centre based in the Midlands. As well as teaching and being a psychology examiner for OCR, Michelle was also on the OCR team who developed the 2017 GCSE 9-1 Psychology qualification. She has also created OCR Research Methods resources to support the A Level specification. After graduating with a BSc with honours in Psychology from Sheffield Hallam University, Michelle started her professional career working in the mental health sector before moving into education. She enjoys reading, baking, going on adventures with her dog and travelling around Europe.