Psychology Applicant Hub

• Dr Sam McCormick is the first-year co-ordinator for the undergraduate psychology programme. She discussed how you can prepare for a degree in psychology and some of the topics covered in the module "How to become a psychologist"
  
  
• Dr Sam Fairlamb discusses your first-year module “Understanding Individuals and Groups”
  

• Dr Jeanne Shinskey talks about her research on how humans become symbolic thinkers.
  
• Professor Ryan McKay is a lecturer on the first-year module “Introduction to Mental Health and Well-being”. Here he gives a mini-lecture on the psychology of delusions.
• Dr Sam Fairlamb talks about his research on our awareness of death.
  

Prof Szonya Durant will show you around the eye-tracking research facilities: 

Prof Narender Ramnani is seen here discussing our MRI facilities

• Student diaries: What does a week in the life of our students look like? Find out now!

Here is an exercise Dr Dee Birtles has prepared for you to start developing the academic skills you'll use in your degree. And you'll learn about synaesthesia in the process!

Step 1: Study this brief guide on how to how to read and understand a research article

Step 2: Work through this exercise and complete the test at the end to see how well you did. You can download the research article you need to complete the exercise here.

This is a list of resources recommended by first year module co-ordinators. None of these are required reading, just things that you may be interested in. 

Mental Health and wellbeing

1.Climate Anxiety- Prof Hanna Zagefka

Read this article written by the Psychology Department Head in the Conversation 

2. Bad Science – Ben Goldacre
This book by Ben Goldacre is terrific, presenting compelling stories that unpick dodgy evidence. In doing so, you will get an intuitive overview of concepts you will encounter on the course – evaluating evidence, the placebo effect, understanding confounds as so on.

3. Books by Oliver Sacks (especially “An Anthropologist on Mars” and “The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat”)
Oliver Sacks is a neurologist who covers medical histories of interesting neuropsychological cases, which is one of the approaches you will hear about.

4. Into the Silent Land - Paul Broks
A book by a neuropsychologist who discusses memory and identity. A less well-known alternative to Sacks.

Understanding Neuroscience

A Conversation article about the brain: Five amazing facts about your brain
Although this course draws heavily on the textbook, this piece might get you thinking about why we are all so interested in the brain.

Lifespan Development

Learn about the Baby Lab research in our video here:

Links to Baby Lab articles:

Learning about the world from Picture books

Why can't we remember early childhood?

Interesting TED Talks

What do babies think?

• Why we laugh– Prof Sophie Scott 
• The science inside our hearts - Prof Sarah Garfinkel 
• The Fiction of Memory - Prof Elizabeth Loftus 

Why teens confess to crimes they did not commit 

You aren’t at the mercy of your emotions, Prof Lisa Feldman Barrett 

Understanding individuals and groups

Milgram’s Obedience Studies and Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment are two of the most famous psychological studies ever conducted. Both studies suggest that we can easily be swayed by situations to commit evil. However, do current psychologists still agree?

The below TEDTalk is a good example of how modern psychologists think about their work.
The Psychology of Tyranny: Did Milgram Get It Wrong? | Alex Haslam | TEDxUQ 

#RHULPsychologyTogether

In the Psychology department, we work together! See some of our contributions from both staff and students and follow us on Twitter X, and Instagram 

Hear what our staff and students say about what they love about Psychology at Royal Holloway on our Youtube channel 

Find out more about preparing for university life on the general pages of our Applicant Activity Hub