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Wed 25 Jun 15:00: The Role of Voting Advice Applications in Combatting Misinformation

Other Psychology Seminars - Tue, 24/06/2025 - 10:26
The Role of Voting Advice Applications in Combatting Misinformation

Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) have become an influential feature of many electoral democracies, offering citizens algorithmically derived estimates as to how their policy preferences align with the positions of the political candidates or parties vying for election. This talk examines the dual role VAAs can play in combatting political misinformation: first, by fostering fact-based reflection on public policy issues; and second, by generating large-scale attitudinal and behavioural data that can enable novel areas of inquiry into the mechanisms by which misinformation spreads and influences public opinion.

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Mon 09 Jun 15:00: Climate beliefs across borders: National patterns and digital interventions

Other Psychology Seminars - Tue, 03/06/2025 - 10:21
Climate beliefs across borders: National patterns and digital interventions

Like many social psychologists, I began my career thinking about the individual; how worldviews, ideologies, and belief systems shape people’s responses to climate change. Most of this work has been rooted in the Global North, where political ideology and education are often central. But climate change (in)action is not easily explained at the level of the individual. Rather, it’s a global phenomenon shaped by national histories, economies, and political systems. In this talk, I shift focus from the individual to the national level, drawing on international datasets, social media data, and machine learning to explore how country-level factors — such as GDP , fossil fuel dependence, and democracy — shape climate concern, scepticism, and activism. The findings underscore calls for a globally informed approach to climate psychology, one that takes seriously the political, economic, and structural context in which beliefs are formed. Finally, the talk turns to the dual role of artificial intelligence in this space, both as a vector for amplifying climate-related misinformation and as a tool for enhancing trust and promoting accurate scientific communication. I explore recent work testing AI-facilitated interventions to reduce conspiracy theories and misinformation about climate science and renewable energy, interventions that are potentially scalable to international contexts.

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Wed 28 May 15:00: The Long-Term Effectiveness of Gamified Inoculation: Mapping Decay, Booster Interventions, and Diffusion Messages

Other Psychology Seminars - Sun, 25/05/2025 - 10:39
The Long-Term Effectiveness of Gamified Inoculation: Mapping Decay, Booster Interventions, and Diffusion Messages

In this project (N = 8,525) we longitudinally evaluate the effectiveness of a gamified inoculation intervention that protects people against vaccine misinformation (“Bad Vaxx”). Across 30 days after the initial intervention (Bad Vaxx or Tetris) we re-invited a subset of participants to an item rating task to establish their misinformation discernment skills. Some participants in the control group were exposed to inoculation “diffusion messages”, messages generated by inoculated participants to help protect non-inoculated participants. This is the first inoculation longevity study that maps the inoculation decay curve with daily data points for an entire month. We found that the effects decay completely within the first two weeks, unless a booster intervention was administered to top up the effect. We also establish that a key mechanism for the decay of the effect is forgetting what was learned, rather than a decline in motivation. Meanwhile, inoculation diffusion messages had little to no effects, indicating that the scope for spread immunity is likely limited.

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Fri 30 May 16:30: "Animal Consciousness: Evidence, Models, and Clues”

Other Psychology Seminars - Thu, 22/05/2025 - 10:33
"Animal Consciousness: Evidence, Models, and Clues”

The Hosts for this talk are Nicky Clayton and Max Knowles

The talk will look at evidence for felt experience (consciousness in a minimal sense) in a number of invertebrate animals. I’ll do this by going through a sequence of experiments (some well-known, some newer) on hermit crabs, octopuses, cuttlefish, bees, and fruit flies. I will emphasize interactions between different kinds of evidence, and the role of some fortuitous observations. A preprint by Hakwan Lau criticizing the whole enterprise will be discussed at the end.

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Mon 09 Jun 15:00: Title to be confirmed

Other Psychology Seminars - Thu, 15/05/2025 - 12:17
Title to be confirmed

Abstract not available

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Thu 05 Jun 14:00: From anatomy to systems: Charting the language connectome

Other Psychology Seminars - Tue, 13/05/2025 - 09:55
From anatomy to systems: Charting the language connectome

Abstract not available

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Wed 14 May 15:00: Strategic Climate Change Communication: The Questions Few are Asking

Other Psychology Seminars - Sat, 10/05/2025 - 00:49
Strategic Climate Change Communication: The Questions Few are Asking

Climate change is an urgent threat to the people and places we love. Solutions to climate change exist, but we are held back by the lack of public and political will to successfully address the issue. Put simply, the primary barriers are social and psychological in nature. In this presentation, Dr. Matthew Goldberg discusses critical yet often overlooked questions that shape climate communication: Do effective messages convince more people (i.e., breadth), or convince people to a large degree (i.e., depth)? How does message testing help us make strategic gains? And how does self-report data help us better predict real-world outcomes? Drawing on insights from his latest research, Dr. Goldberg will discuss how researchers and practitioners can use social scientific research to ask better questions, understand strategic tradeoffs, and get more out of their climate change communication efforts.

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Mon 09 Jun 16:00: Title to be confirmed

Other Psychology Seminars - Wed, 07/05/2025 - 12:18
Title to be confirmed

Abstract not available

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Wed 07 May 16:00: The Importance of Distinguishing Between Misinformation and Disinformation

Other Psychology Seminars - Fri, 02/05/2025 - 14:05
The Importance of Distinguishing Between Misinformation and Disinformation

As disinformation fighters we sometimes use the terms misinformation and disinformation interchangeably amongst ourselves, because we know what we mean and understand how they are similar and different—even if we are fighting both at once. When this carries over into conversations with media and the general public, however, the results can be disastrous. Cable news anchors often prefer the term “misinformation” because it shields them from having to report on strategic denialist campaigns and the people who are behind them as a lie rather than a mistake. As a result, their audience may not appreciate that what we are up against is often more like information warfare than a natural disaster, which marks the difference between being helpless and having the tools to fight back. In this talk I will argue that we sometimes undermine our own efforts in fighting back against disinformation when we fail to distinguish sharply between these two terms.

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Wed 07 May 16:00: Title to be confirmed

Other Psychology Seminars - Fri, 02/05/2025 - 11:54
Title to be confirmed

Abstract not available

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Fri 23 May 16:30: Brain Mechanisms of Attention: Sensory Selection to Free Will The host for this talk is Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

Other Psychology Seminars - Mon, 28/04/2025 - 13:55
Brain Mechanisms of Attention: Sensory Selection to Free Will

The Host for this talk is Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

ABSTRACT : Selective attention relies on intricate neural mechanisms that shape how the brain processes information. In this lecture, I will present findings from our research on the neural underpinnings of voluntary spatial, feature, and object attention, utilizing EEG , fMRI and eye-tracking methods. I will highlight key findings related to attentional control within the frontal and parietal cortices, as well as how these mechanisms influence sensory and perceptual processing. In addition, I will present studies investigating voluntary attention in free-choice conditions, where individuals exert their free will to direct attention without external guidance. This presentation is framed by our Specificity of Control (SpoC) model of attention, which emphasizes the microstructural organization

The host for this talk is Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

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Fri 30 May 16:30: Animal Consciousness: Evidence Models and Clues

Other Psychology Seminars - Mon, 28/04/2025 - 10:11
Animal Consciousness: Evidence Models and Clues

The Hosts for this talk are Nicky Clayton and Max Knowles

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Fri 23 May 16:30: To be confirmed The host for this talk is Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

Other Psychology Seminars - Mon, 28/04/2025 - 10:08
To be confirmed

The Host for this talk is Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

The host for this talk is Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

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Fri 02 May 16:30: How the Built Environment Affects Spatial Behavior, Brain Activity and Aesthetics

Other Psychology Seminars - Mon, 28/04/2025 - 10:08
How the Built Environment Affects Spatial Behavior, Brain Activity and Aesthetics

The host for this talk is Nicky Clayton

Abstract: The talk will present research from our research team where we have explored how the structure of the environment affects wayfinding behaviour. It will cover our research with Sea Hero Quest in which we found growing up in griddy cities has a negative impact on navigation behaviour, as well as well as research with London taxi drivers how the environment affects how they plan. In the second part I will cover our recent research in neuroarchitecture exploring brain responses (fMRI) during watching movies of pleasant or unpleasant built environment and crowd dynamics in a study of 100 people navigating and exploring a fabricated large-scale art gallery (The 100 Minds in Motion Project).

Bio: Hugo Spiers is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, and a Vice Dean for Enterprise, at University College London (UCL). He has over 25 years of research experience in neuroscience and psychology studying how our brain recalls the past, navigates the present and imagines the future. He has published over 100 academic articles and received numerous awards including the Charles Darwin Award from the British Science Association and a James McDonnell Foundation Scholar Award. He is co-director of the International Centre for NeuroArchitecture and NeuroDesign, a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation, a Lighthouse Fellow of the Centre for Conscious Design and the Vice Chair of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture in the UK. His research project Sea Hero Quest has tested over 4 million people in 195 nations on their navigation ability, providing a powerful benchmark for assessment in Alzheimer’s disease and global insight into cognition.

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Thu 19 Jun 14:00: Insights into mental health disorders from genetics and immunology

Other Psychology Seminars - Thu, 24/04/2025 - 14:42
Insights into mental health disorders from genetics and immunology

Abstract not available

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Thu 12 Jun 14:00: Rethinking the sensory-deprived brain: How sensory deprivation improved our vision on brain function

Other Psychology Seminars - Thu, 24/04/2025 - 14:41
Rethinking the sensory-deprived brain: How sensory deprivation improved our vision on brain function

Abstract not available

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Thu 22 May 14:00: A computational perspective on causal interventions in psychiatry

Other Psychology Seminars - Thu, 24/04/2025 - 14:40
A computational perspective on causal interventions in psychiatry

Abstract not available

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Thu 15 May 14:00: Dissecting the neural control of skilled movements

Other Psychology Seminars - Thu, 24/04/2025 - 14:39
Dissecting the neural control of skilled movements

Abstract not available

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Thu 05 Jun 14:00: Talk title tbc

Other Psychology Seminars - Thu, 24/04/2025 - 14:39
Talk title tbc

Abstract not available

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Thu 08 May 14:00: The human sense of smell: From hunter-gatherers to wine experts

Other Psychology Seminars - Thu, 24/04/2025 - 14:36
The human sense of smell: From hunter-gatherers to wine experts

Abstract not available

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