Can mess encourage racism? New research by Dutch researchers has found that in a messy and disordered environments people think more in stereotypes and even racist thinking. Claudia Hammond speaks to Professor Siegwart Lindenberg, a social scientist at Tilburg University in Holland, who also explains how the experiment examined unconscious negative responses to race too. In a messy railway station, people sat on average further from a black person than a white one, whereas in the clean station there was no statistical difference. What implications does this research have for social policy and keeping areas prone to racial violence tidy?
Sport and one man's win is another's despair. How we bounce back from defeat is a matter of huge psychological debate. Claudia speaks to Dr Tim Rees from Exeter University who has co-authored a recent paper examining the influence of different feedback on improving performance. The research (in which the participants played darts, blindfolded) found that when positive feedback to failure put the emphasis on change being within your control, there was significant improvement in performance.
From psychiatric ward to Psychiatric Tales. Darryl Cunningham's interest in mental health because of his own problems, led him to work in that field too. Although he found he was not quite cut out for such a stressful job, he tells Claudia how he's turned a diary from that time into a published book of comic strips.