Are you a people watcher? Do you wonder why people do the things they do? Do you sometimes wonder why you are the way you are? If so then maybe the Psychology Group would interest you, as we try to understand the human mind and how it affects behaviour. We meet on the 4th Wednesday of the month at 1.30 pm in The Sun Inn. New members are welcome.
The contacts for this group are Jim Stirland on 07977 415072 and Diana Pidgeon on 0115 9169343.
Next meeting: Wednesday 26th October at 1.30 The Sun Inn, Eastwood – The Psychology of Love….continued from last month.
Last month, as an introduction to this topic, we watched a lecture by Dr Frank Conner, Professor of Psychology at Grand Rapids Community College entitled The Psychology of Love https://youtu.be/iOHdZKDldIg
What is love? How do we define it? Are there different types of love? How does love differ for family, lovers and friends? There are many psychological theories of love, but to start our September session we looked at at Robert Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love (1986) composed of intimacy, passion and commitment.
Past topics include:
Happiness
Prejudice
Placebo effects
States of consciousness
Child development
Previous meetings:
In May and June we looked at the brain – how it develops and changes through aging and illness and the effect on mental well-being.
April – we looked at attitudes to money and factors that affect different behaviours such as compulsive spending, gambling and fear of spending.
Wednesday 23rd March.
Our topic was ‘Social Influence’ and we examined how a person’s opinion, behaviour and emotions are affected by others. We looked at why people conform in groups and how social influence affects opinions and behaviours.
Wednesday 23rd February:
Our topic was ‘Aging’ and this led to a wide ranging discussion, which encompassed discrimination, loss and differences across nations. Everyone participated and we by no means covered all areas and may return to this in future sessions.
Wednesday 27th November
This month we looked at motivation.
Wednesday 27th March – Stress & Coping
Is life more stressful now than in the past? Are schoolchildren more stressed than we were? Is that because there are more stressful things in their life now or simply just that they know the word? We discussed many questions in this session.
Wednesday 27th February – Psychological Aspects of Illness & Wellbeing
This month we looked at different times in our lives when we may be stressed e.g. new job, house move, bereavement etc. We talked about how people react in different ways to stress. How what is stressful for one person may be excitement for another. We looked at the different ways that people deal with problems: avoidance, head in sand, run away, pretend it’s not happening etc. and the possible repercussions of burying pain.
Wednesday 23 January 2019
We reviewed the visit to the University in November and planned for the coming months.