̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Department of Psychology

AI can be good for our health and wellbeing

cjb250 — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 08:00:08 +0000

Cambridge researchers are looking at ways that AI can transform everything from drug discovery to Alzheimer's diagnoses to GP consultations.

Cambridge Festival Speaker Spotlight: Professor Paul Bays

zs332 — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 13:24:10 +0000

Paul Bays is a Professor of Computation and Cognition in the Department of Psychology at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. He investigates the nature of the internal representations our brains construct and sustain to interact with the world and the computations performed on them to achieve behavioural goals.

Researchers celebrated at the Cambridge Awards for Research Impact and Engagement

zs332 — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 08:09:41 +0000

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Awards for Research Impact and Engagement, formerly the Vice-Chancellor's Award, are held annually to recognise exceptional achievement, innovation, and creativity in developing research engagement and impact plans with significant economic, social, and cultural potential. Awarded in 3 categories, the winners for 2024 are:

Established Academic

Winner: Professor Sander van der Linden (Department of Psychology, School of Biological Sciences and Churchill College) and his team at the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab (Team application)

Project: A psychological vaccine against misinformation

Professor Sander van der Linden and team have developed a novel approach to countering the spread of harmful misinformation. This ‘psychological vaccine’ resulted in award-winning public impact tools that have shown millions of people how to spot fake news online. These games have been adopted by the World Health Organization, United Nations, UK Government and Google, and led to key policy changes in the EU Digital Services Act.

Early Career Researcher

Winner: Dr Gabriel Okello (Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, School of Technology)

Project: Applying multidisciplinary, collaborative approaches to tackle air pollution in rapidly urbanising African cities

̽��ֱ��project catalysed Uganda’s first-ever air quality standards, advancing policy and public health. It drove transformative growth in the e-mobility sector and battery-swapping stations. ̽��ֱ��Clean Air Network was established as a multi-regional community of practice for air quality management across Africa. ̽��ֱ��platform now provides real-time air quality data enabling evidence-based decision-making in Uganda and 8 other African countries.

Collaboration Award

Winner:

Lead: Professor Paul Fletcher (Department of Psychiatry, School of Clinical Medicine, Clare College), Dr Dervila Glynn (Cambridge Neuroscience IRC), Dominic Matthews (Ninja Theory Ltd), Sharon Gilfoyle (Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust)

Project: Representing psychosis in video games: communicating clinical science and tackling stigma

This work draws together expertise in video game design and clinical neuroscience, with lived experience of mental illness to co-produce two award-winning video games vividly conveying the nature of altered experience of reality in a character with psychosis. Within conversations around mental health, psychosis is neglected and highly stigmatised.

In creating a powerful character and telling her story through gameplay, the project has enabled sensitive and thoughtful conversations about psychosis, and mental illness in general. It has had a measurably positive impact on stigma.

More about the Cambridge Awards for Research Impact and Engagement

Find out more about the winning projects and meet our runners-up.

From helping to inoculate the public against misinformation to tackling air pollution in rapidly urbanising African cities, researchers from across the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge were honoured at the Cambridge Awards on 3 February.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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̽��ֱ��Cambridge Awards 2024 for Research Impact and Engagement

zs332 — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 10:27:01 +0000

Meet the winner of the Cambridge Awards 2024 for Research Impact and Engagement and learn more about their projects.

‘Manifest’ is Cambridge Dictionary Word of the Year

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 09:03:53 +0000

‘Manifest’ was looked up almost 130,000 times on the Cambridge Dictionary website, making it one of the most-viewed words of 2024.

̽��ֱ��word jumped from use in the self-help community and on social media to being widely used across mainstream media and beyond, as celebrities such as singer Dua Lipa, Olympic sprinter Gabby Thomas and England striker Ollie Watkins spoke of manifesting their success in 2024.

Mentions of it gained traction during the pandemic and have grown in the years since, especially on TikTok and other social media, where millions of posts and videos used the hashtag #manifest.

They use ‘to manifest’ in the sense of: ‘to imagine achieving something you want, in the belief that doing so will make it more likely to happen’. Yet, manifesting is an unproven idea that grew out of a 100-year-old spiritual philosophy movement.

Wendalyn Nichols, Publishing Manager of the Cambridge Dictionary, said: “When we choose a Cambridge Dictionary Word of the Year, we have three considerations: What word was looked up the most, or spiked? Which one really captures what was happening in that year? And what is interesting about this word from a language point of view?

“‘Manifest’ won this year because it increased notably in lookups, its use widened greatly across all types of media due to events in 2024, and it shows how the meanings of a word can change over time.”

However experts warn that ‘manifesting’ has no scientific validity, despite its popularity. It can lead to risky behaviour or the promotion of false and dangerous beliefs, such as that diseases can be simply wished away.

“Manifesting is what psychologists call ‘magical thinking’ or the general illusion that specific mental rituals can change the world around us," said Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� social psychologist Professor Sander van der Linden, author of ̽��ֱ��Psychology of Misinformation.

“Manifesting gained tremendous popularity during the pandemic on TikTok with billions of views, including the popular 3-6-9 method which calls for writing down your wishes three times in the morning, six times in the afternoon and nine times before bed. This procedure promotes obsessive and compulsive behaviour with no discernible benefits. But can we really blame people for trying it, when prominent celebrities have been openly ‘manifesting’ their success?

‘Manifesting’ wealth, love, and power can lead to unrealistic expectations and disappointment. Think of the dangerous idea that you can cure serious diseases simply by wishing them away," said Van der Linden.

“There is good research on the value of positive thinking, self-affirmation, and goal-setting. Believing in yourself, bringing a positive attitude, setting realistic goals, and putting in the effort pays off because people are enacting change in the real world. However, it is crucial to understand the difference between the power of positive thinking and moving reality with your mind – the former is healthy, whereas the latter is pseudoscience.”

‘Manyfest’, manifest destiny, and manifestos

̽��ֱ��600-year history of the word ‘manifest’ shows how the meanings of a word can evolve.

̽��ֱ��oldest sense – which Geoffrey Chaucer spelled as ‘manyfest’ in the 14th century – is the adjective meaning ‘easily noticed or obvious’.

In the mid-1800s, this adjective sense was used in American politics in the context of “manifest destiny”, the belief that American settlers were clearly destined to expand across North America.

Chaucer also used the oldest sense of the verb ‘manifest’, ‘to show something clearly, through signs or actions’. Shakespeare used manifest as an adjective in ̽��ֱ��Merchant of Venice: ‘For it appears, by manifest proceeding, that...thou hast contrived against the very life of the defendant’.

̽��ֱ��verb is still used frequently in this way: for example, people can manifest their dissatisfaction, or symptoms of an illness can manifest themselves. Lack of confidence in a company can manifest itself through a fall in share price.

̽��ֱ��meaning of making something clear is reflected in the related noun 'manifesto': a ‘written statement of the beliefs, aims, and policies of an organisation, especially a political party’ – a word that also resonated in 2024 as scores of nations, including the United Kingdom and India, held elections where parties shared manifestos.

Other words of 2024

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Dictionary is the world’s most popular dictionary for learners of the English language. Increases and spikes in lookups reflect global events and trends. Beyond “manifest”, other popular terms in 2024 included:

brat: a child, especially one who behaves badly

“Brat” went viral in the summer of 2024 thanks to pop artist Charli XCX’s album of the same name about nonconformist women who reject a narrow and highly groomed female identity as portrayed on social media. (We weren’t the only dictionary publisher to notice this.)

demure: quiet and well behaved 

Influencer Jools Lebron’s satirical use of “demure” in a TikTok post mocking stereotypical femininity drove lookups in the Cambridge Dictionary.  After brat summer, we had a demure fall.

Goldilocks: used to describe a situation in which something is or has to be exactly right 

Financial reporters characterized India’s strong growth and moderate inflation as a Goldilocks economy in early 2024.

ecotarian: a person who only eats food produced or prepared in a way that does not harm the environment 

This term rose in overall lookups in 2024, reflecting growing interest in environmentally conscious living. 

New words, future entries?

All year round, Cambridge Dictionary editors track the English language as it changes. Newly emerging words that are being considered for entry are shared every Monday on the Cambridge Dictionary blog, About Words.

Words Cambridge began tracking in 2024 include:

quishing: the scam of phishing via QR code.

resenteeism: to continue doing your job but resent it. This blend of “resent” and “absenteeism” is appearing in business journalism.

gymfluencer: a social media influencer whose content is focused on fitness or bodybuilding.

cocktail party problem (also cocktail party effect): the difficulty of focusing on one voice when there are multiple speakers in the room. This term from audiology is now being used with reference to AI.

vampire: a vampire device or vampire appliance is one which uses energy even when not in use. This is a new, adjective sense of an existing word.

Adapted from the Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press & Assessment website.

̽��ֱ��controversial global trend of manifesting has driven Cambridge Dictionary’s Word of the Year for 2024.

Why psychologists warn against manifesting - Cambridge Dictionary Word of the Year

Yes

Time alone heightens ‘threat alert’ in teenagers – even when connecting online

fpjl2 — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 09:03:21 +0000

People in their late teens experience an increased sensitivity to threats after just a few hours left in a room on their own – an effect that endures even if they are interacting online with friends and family.

This is according to latest findings from a cognitive neuroscience experiment conducted at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, which saw 40 young people aged 16-19 undergo testing before and after several hours alone – both with and without their smartphones.

Many countries have declared an epidemic of loneliness*. ̽��ֱ��researchers set out to “induce” loneliness in teenagers and study the effects through a series of tests, from a Pavlovian task to electrodes that measure sweat.

Scientists found that periods of isolation, including those in which participants could use their phones, led to an increased threat response – the sensing of and reacting to potential dangers. This alertness can cause people to feel anxious and uneasy.

̽��ֱ��authors of the study say that isolation and loneliness might lead to excessive “threat vigilance”, even when plugged in online, which could negatively impact adolescent mental health over time.

They say it could contribute to the persistent and exaggerated fear responses typical of anxiety disorders on the rise among young people around the world.

While previous studies show isolation leads to anxious behaviour and threat responses in rodents, this is believed to be the first study to demonstrate these effects through experiments involving humans.

̽��ֱ��findings are published today in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

“We detected signs of heightened threat vigilance after a few hours of isolation, even when the adolescents had been connected through smartphones and social media,” said Emily Towner, study lead author from Cambridge’s Department of Psychology.

“This alertness to perceived threats might be the same mechanism that leads to the excessive worry and inability to feel safe which characterises anxiety,” said Towner, a Gates Cambridge Scholar.

“It makes evolutionary sense that being alone increases our vigilance to potential threats. These threat response mechanisms undergo a lot of changes in adolescence, a stage of life marked by increasing independence and social sensitivity.”

"Our experiment suggests that periods of isolation in adolescents might increase their vulnerability to the development of anxiety, even when they are connected virtually.”

Researchers recruited young people from the local area in Cambridge, UK, conducting extensive screening to create a pool of 18 boys and 22 girls who had good social connections and no history of mental health issues.

Participants were given initial tests and questionnaires to establish a “baseline”. These included the Pavlovian threat test, in which they were shown a series of shapes on a screen, one of which was paired with a harsh noise played through headphones, so the shape became associated with a feeling of apprehension.

Electrodes attached to fingers monitored “electrodermal activity” – a physiological marker of stress – throughout this test.**

Each participant returned for two separate stints of around four hours isolated in a room in Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Psychology Department, after which the tests were completed again. There was around a month, on average, between sessions.

All participants underwent two isolation sessions. One was spent with a few puzzles to pass the time, but no connection to the outside world. For the other, participants were allowed smartphones and given wi-fi codes, as well as music and novels. ̽��ֱ��only major rule in both sessions was they had to stay awake.***

“We set out to replicate behaviour in humans that previous animal studies had found after isolation,” said Towner. “We wanted to know about the experience of loneliness, and you can’t ask animals how lonely they feel.”

Self-reported loneliness increased from baseline after both sessions. It was lower on average after isolation with social media, compared to full isolation.****

However, participants found the threat cue – the shape paired with a jarring sound – more anxiety-inducing and unpleasant after both isolation sessions, with electrodes also measuring elevated stress activity.

On average across the study, threat responses were 70% higher after the isolation sessions compared to the baseline, regardless of whether participants had been interacting digitally.

“Although virtual social interactions helped our participants feel less lonely compared to total isolation, their heightened threat response remained,” said Towner.

Previous studies have found a link between chronic loneliness and alertness to threats. ̽��ֱ��latest findings support the idea that social isolation may directly contribute to heightened fear responses, say researchers.

Dr Livia Tomova, co-senior author and lecturer in Psychology at Cardiff ̽��ֱ��, who conducted the work while at Cambridge, added: “Loneliness among adolescents around the world has nearly doubled in recent years. ̽��ֱ��need for social interaction is especially intense during adolescence, but it is not clear whether online socialising can fulfil this need.

“This study has shown that digital interactions might not mitigate some of the deep-rooted effects that isolation appears to have on teenagers.”

Scientists say the findings might shed light on the link between loneliness and mental health conditions such as anxiety disorders, which are on the rise in young people.

Notes

*For example, in 2023 the U.S. Surgeon General declared an epidemic of loneliness and isolation.

**Electrodes placed on the fingers record small deflections in sweat and subsequent changes in electrical conductivity of the skin (electrodermal activity). Electrodermal activity is used to detect stress levels and increases with emotional or physical arousal.

*** ̽��ֱ��baseline tests were always taken first. ̽��ֱ��order of the two isolation sessions was randomly allocated. For sessions with digital interactions allowed, most participants used social media (35 out of 40), with texting being the most common form of interaction (37 out of 40). Other popular platforms included Snapchat, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Participants mainly connected virtually with friends (38), followed by family (19), romantic partners (13), and acquaintances (4).

**** Average self-reported loneliness more than doubled after the isolation session with social media compared to baseline and nearly tripled after the complete isolation session compared to baseline.

Yes

Trump voters believe American values and prosperity are ‘under threat’

fpjl2 — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 08:31:40 +0000

Data also suggests that Democrat appeals to unity were popular across the board, but “politicians need to do more to understand why some people feel under threat”.

Mental Health Overhaul: probing the processes behind the symptoms

jg533 — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 08:43:46 +0000

A new Cambridge network is turning to basic science in a bid to advance our understanding and treatment of mental health disorders