A second "decade in review" blog post

Back in 2010 I did a summary of the preceding decade and concluded by saying “Roll on 2020!” (Oh, how that feels hilarious right now with 2020 being a terrible year in so many ways.)

Sometimes I find that when I go back to old blog posts, reading that review feels like reading the life of a different person. I've always been struck by that (possibly untrue) statistic that says all the cells in our body are replaced over an 8 year cycle, so in a way that blogpost was written by an entirely different person.  But, anyway, ten years later, I'm still here and still blogging, albeit not as frequently as I did back then. So, a decade on, I thought I may as well review what I have been up to from my early-mid-30s to my early-mid-40s. 

I’ll do this on a year by year basis and just pick a couple of things per year. Most of the links will be to my original blog posts about things.

2010

The big things happened here on 1 day in particular, the 1st April. This was the day I had a job interview to go and work in the NHS, returned back to my current employer where I was called aside and given my official redundancy notice, and then in the evening I went to the theatre and saw Dirk Benedict in a Columbo play. Dirk Benedict was Face Man in the A Team. We used to pretend we were the A-Team in the playground at school and we all wanted to be Face. I was star-struck, as you can tell in this photo.

On the 4th May (Star Wars Day) I started my NHS job and I have been proud to work in the NHS ever since. 

2011

The big thing about 2011 was becoming an uncle for the first time. Baby Joy arrived in our lives. She yawned while I was talking to her on the first day she met me and has been tired of my antics ever since.

I've subsequently accrued four more niblings (that's a real word!) during the decade. They're all cool.

The footballing highlight of the year was a trip to the Emirates to see Shrewsbury play Arsenal in the league cup. I bought my first half-and-half scarf. #NoRegrets. Shrewsbury were even winning for a bit and the fans sang that Arsene Wenger was getting sacked in the morning. He stayed on another 7 years.

2012

The big event this year was the Olympics. I remember getting up really early to see the Olympic Torch being carried through Grangetown. 

During the actual games, I went to see the Olympic football in the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, including a double header of group games and the third place play-off match.Is still think it was a swizz that they promised us a medal ceremony then decided at the last minute that the third place winners would receive their bronze medals the next night in London. It gave me an opportunity to see a rare sight, a Great Britain international team.

I also almost got eaten by a hippo in Paris, when we visited the city for my sister-in-law Abby's 40th birthday.

2013 (there's a sort of review of the year here)

The stand out thing for me was going to London with Connor to see the Tragically Hip play a gig in Trafalgar Square to celebrate Canada Day. We then went the following night to see them play a gig in Camden. 

Later in the year Cathy and I spent our fifteenth wedding anniversary building a Lego camper van.

2014

I can't really blog anything about my experience doing Jury service, but I found it hugely interesting and there was an incident during the judge's summing up which made the national newspapers. 

I also did a work placement in a health board comms team that coincided with the Daily Mail spending an entire week running stories smearing the reputation of NHS Wales. They literally dug up story after story from the preceding ten years, many of which had been resolved, and ran them as if they were all happening that week. I learned a lot about what utter scumbags some sections of the press can be in that week. The photo is from the flu vaccination campaign I was involved in.

My work placement was based in Caerleon, where I also started my MSc course in Business Psychology. That had an unexpected outcome. In the first module we did a session on motivation and burnout and my scores were a lot higher than any of my fellow students. It was a good indication that I needed to move jobs.

2015

Three big things happened to me in 2015. Firstly, I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes in January. That came as a shock and I was put on some hardcore medication because I was extremely ill.

I lost weight (over 10kgs; 4 inches off my waist; 2 t-shirt sizes) and got my blood glucose back into the healthy range. For the last year and a half I have been off diabetes medication. I haven't blogged much about having Type 2 Diabetes. There is a lot of stigma attached to it, and it's the punchline in a lot of jokes. It takes a certain amount of confidence to tell people you have it

In June I started a new job, still in the NHS, taking on a national role as a clinical network manager. I'd spent 5 years in my previous job and had reached a point where I needed to move. I took a lot of good memories with me.

Two months after I started my new job my Grandma died. She had been hospitalised after a fall, but that was just toward the end of a long decline. I gave a tribute at her funeral. This photo taken in 2014 is one of the last photos I took of her. I like it because you can see the mischief in her eyes.

2016

I turned 40 in 2016 and had a big party. The next month we went on a massive road trip in the USA and Canada. We watched the Red Sox at Fenway on Star Wars night. We went to Cooperstown, to the Baseball Hall of Fame. We went on pilgrimage to Kingston, Ontario. We fell in love with Toronto and visited Niagara Falls.

(Those pancakes were the "healthy" breakfast option. They came with fruit!)

2017

Our holiday the following year was a bit more low key. We had a day exploring Lundy, which felt like visiting the end of the world even though we didn't even really leave the Bristol Channel.

I also graduated with my MSc. It was a lovely graduation ceremony and I felt very pleased to have completed the course, given some of the difficult things that had happened in the duration. One of my favourite pieces of work was analysing the psychology of Lego's marketing. My final piece of work seemed to uncover a link between personal self-worth and a diminished opinion of your manager.

My gigs this year were a bit eclectic. Midnight Oil in London (after many year thinking I would I never get the chance to see them in concert again) and Sir Tom Jones, recording a TV show in Cardiff Bay.

2018

Shrewsbury Town went to Wembley twice, and lost both times. They are five for five in losing there now. I can't even express how incredibly frustrating the 2017-2018 season ultimately was.

Cathy and I had a better time in London a couple of months later when we went and saw The Muppets live at the O2 Arena. It was brilliant. The Electric Mayhem rock!

The second half of the year was spent in a state of flux because we had our kitchen gutted and rebuilt. It was a very stressful experience. I really love our new kitchen but I've yet to take any photos that do it justice. Or show the finished floor.

Cathy had a lot of health news in 2018, beginning with a visit to Addenbrookes in Cambridge where she was given a diagnosis of lipodystrophy. It's an ultra-rare condition, affecting fewer than 4 people per million. I always knew she was special. Then towards the end of the year she was diagnosed with cancer and had to have surgery. We literally had the kitchen and other construction work finish on the Friday and she had her surgery on the Monday. Thankfully they got it all in one go. It was a stressful way to end the year and I was glad to see the back of 2018!

2019
The last year up for review. I went out to Pizza Hut with Cathy one night and didn't take my phone. Cathy had a message on her phone from my brother asking if she knew where I was. So I rang him. We were due to go on a fishing weekend together and I thought he was calling to get me to pay my half of the costs.

He wasn't.

When I called him back, he told me my Dad had died.

I'm still getting used to not having Dad phoning me every week. In my tribute to him at the funeral I told a story about a time he was described as being "stuck on transmit". I miss those transmissions.

I miss my Dad.

Trawling through photos for this blogpost I found a few of him that I'd forgotten. I really like this one of him with my nephew in 2014.

The rest of 2019 was a bit of a blur in comparison. There was the trip to Belfast to see Barry Town play in the Europa League, and we had a lovely week in Caernarfon in the autumn. But most of the year was spent helping my Mum sort out stuff in her house and slowly coming to terms with not having Dad around.

So that's where I will close out this inordinately long post. After the optimism of the post back in 2010, I have no desire to tempt fate by saying roll on 2030! Hopefully I will still be blogging then. If not, well, this was 2010-2019. 

Highlights of 2017: Graduating with a MSc

I feel a bit embarrassed to be writing about graduating with a MSc in Business Psychology, but if I can be indulged as I pat myself on the back for a short post, I'd be grateful.

Red sash for science

2017 saw the culmination of my post-graduate degree that I began back in 2014. By the time it had finished the course had moved campus, I had learned a lot about organisational psychology, and I had changed jobs, partly because of a classroom exercise.

The first term was a basic introduction to key concepts like motivation, job satisfaction and burn out, which were three themes that really interested me. We did the burn out quiz and I scored very highly compared to other people on the course. I remember looking at the results and thinking, 'I need to change jobs'. Nine months later I had started a new role, leaving behind a job I realise now I had stagnated in.

At the start of the second term, I received a significant diagnosis, which resulted in being put on medication that had significant effects on my ability to concentrate. Fortunately I was off those particular drugs by the April. I just about scraped through that module, recording just above the 40% cut off. But, hey, a pass is a pass.

For the second year our lessons moved from the Caerleon campus to Trefforest. This was better for me in terms of travel, although not for my class colleagues, who were all travelling from Bristol. At some point during this year we were all asked if we were willing to be photographed for the course prospectus. We all agreed and I really liked my photos. However, I clearly wasn't sexy enough to be the face of Business Psychology in future years.

In the second year, we did the course I found most interesting - External Communications. This focused on cognitive psychology and examining how we are manipulated into buying things, showing brand loyalty, and so on. I wrote an essay about the psychological techniques the Lego company use to boost sales. They use a lot, although I can't say for sure that they do it knowingly. I saw great correlation between marketing techniques I'd read or heard from various gurus and psychological theory, and the whole subject really engaged me. I blogged about Neuromarketing at the time.

The Leadership module didn't engage me. Partly because the lecturer was a few weeks away from quitting the university to go and work for a rival. The subject matter felt very much like a run of the mill business theory course. And in the first week the lecturer started talking about how all the problems in the NHS were down to poor leadership. I thought this was hilariously simplistic and told her so. She told me I should read the Francis Report into the Mid Staffordshire scandal, and didn't seem to hear me when I said that I had written a white paper partly in response to the Francis Report.

I've been very lucky to have a job where I have met a number of NHS CEOs, not to mention Medical Directors, Nursing Directors, executive directors of all shapes and sizes. Generally I think they are all very smart, committed, people who really give a damn about doing a good job and somehow keeping the NHS limping along. The truth is, though, NHS organisations are unleadable. They are too big, too riven by competing interests, too underfunded and over-demanded, too entrenched in delivery mechanisms that were always a compromise, and are basically organisational oil tankers that need turning circles the size of cities. Anyway, she wasn't having it. She had never worked in the NHS but knew how to fix it. I just shrugged and left her to her delusions.

The last section of the course was a dissertation. I did a study trying to see if positive reflection on work affected job satisfaction. I didn't find any statistically valid effect except that if you ask people to reflect on their successes they are more likely to be dissatisfied with the performance of their manager. This is bad news for me as I now line manage three people, so I obviously need to make sure they only think about their failures and not their successes! (Only joking!)

The dissertation took up the latter half of 2016, particularly the final three months. When I finally submitted it in January, the feeling of relief was immense. I remember going with Cathy to the cinema and sitting there and realising that I didn't feel guilty about doing something fun for the first time in months.

The graduation ceremony was fun too. We were arranged in order of qualification and then alphabetically by course title. There were only four of us attending the graduation and 'Business Psychology' was the first of the MSc courses listed. One of the PhD students didn't show, meaning that my friend Nick was the second person called on stage and I was the third. We had an address from Steven Moffatt, the Doctor Who show-runner. He was quite funny but overdid the message of how badly his generation had messed things up for the generation of fresh-faced youngsters who made up the majority of graduates there.

I was very pleased to share the day with Cathy. and with Connor, who had come down from Birmingham for the event. Cathy was my rock during the dissertation in particular, but she has also been a tremendous support throughout the course. Without her, I'm not sure I would have carried on post-diagnosis back in 2015 so it seemed only fitting that I let her share my graduation hat!

Neuromarketing - how advertisers could use our brains against us

This is a chunk of an essay I wrote for my MSc. in the module I think has been most interesting so far: External Communications. I previously posted some nuggets from research papers about TV adverts. This is a bit more in-depth. I hope you find it as interesting as I did.

A neuroscientist, plotting

In addition to the insights gleaned from cognitive and social psychology, many marketing experts are monitoring the emerging field of neuroscience, the study of physical changes in the brain that underlie thought processes, such as problem-solving, decision-making and recalling memories. Neuroscience proposes “these mechanisms must be rooted in brain function” (Standage and Trappenberg, 2012, p.235). Although electroencephalography has been used to study the effect of marketing materials on the brain since the 1970s, it is the growth in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) procedures that has enabled neuroscience, ‘neuroeconomics’ and ‘neuromarketing’ to develop in the 21st Century (Kenning, Hubert and Linzmajer, 2012, pp.419-426).

Plassmann et al (2015) claim a number of large polling and market research companies with “neuromarketing” departments, used by companies as diverse as the food company, Campbell’s, and the broadcaster, Fox News. While it complements traditional consumer research, Standage and Trappenberg (2012) warn neuroscience is not ready to replace it entirely. There are critics of the neuromarketing approach, such as Addie (2011) who cites the “number of inadequacies” of using fMRI to examine brain functions, and is highly sceptical that neuroscience can actually deliver what it’s proponents claim.

Adopting a cautious approach, Plassmann et al (2015) outline five ways neuroscience could inform advertising strategy: identifying mechanisms, for example what causes consumers to lose control over their buying impulses; measuring implicit processes to explore situations where consumers cannot explain their buying actions; dissociating processes to see which decisions are intuitive reflexes and which are the product of conscious, rational thought; understanding the differences between individuals, which could help advertisers target individuals who are more likely to be susceptible to their messages; and, finally, improve predictions of how consumers are likely to behave. There are also challenges to using neuroscience in this way, including determining whether changes in the physiology of the brain definitely leads to behaviour change.

There have been some applied uses of neuroscience of interest to advertisers. Research reviewed by Kenning, Hubert and Linzmajer (2012) includes that adverts that consumers consider attractive led to brain activity in areas associated with integrating emotions into decision-making and rewards. Adverts rated as highly attractive and highly unattractive were more likely to be remembered. Brain areas associated with ‘rewards’ are also activated when products regarded as status symbols are viewed, with claims that neurological responses to products can then be used to predict purchasing behaviour.

Price has also been shown to have an effect – excessively high prices activate parts of the brain that anticipate losses, reducing the likelihood of a consumer to pick them. Kenning et al propose this could help businesses establish an acceptable ‘price threshold’. Finally, reinforcing the theory outlined by Harris & Sanborn (2014) about sex in advertising, Kenning et al (2012) comment that neuroimaging shows male consumers have the reward centres of their brains triggered by an attractive female face in an advert. This may have implications when businesses are choosing the ‘face’ of a particular advertising campaign.

References

Addie, I.  (2011) Is neuroscience facilitating a new era of the hidden persuader? International Journal of Market Research 53(3), 303-305

Harris, R. & Sanborn, F. (2014) A Cognitive Psychology of Mass Communication. Abingdon: Routledge

Kenning, P., Hubert, M. & Linzmajer (2012) “Consumer neuroscience” in Wells, V. & Foxall, G. (eds) Handbook of Developments in Consumer Behaviour. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar

Plassmann, H., Venkatraman, V., Huettel, S. & Yoon, C. (2015) Consumer Neuroscience: Applications, Challenges, and Possible Solutions. Journal of Marketing Research 52(4), 427-435

Standage, D. & Trappenberg, T. (2012) “Cognitive neuroscience” in Frankish, K. & Ramsey, W. (eds) The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Psychological insights into "collecting" - taxonomic and aesthetic collections

As I have mentioned a few times recently, I am doing a MSc in Business Psychology. A recent module, about marketing and advertising has been really interesting, particularly a tangent in a recent assignment about collecting. I find this particularly interesting as both Cathy and I have the collecting 'bug', and as a result we have a lot of stuff in our house.

The main psychological research into collecting I've read has been by Russell Belk. He distinguishes 'collecting' from 'hoarding' and 'accumulating', although I reckon they can look quite similar. But for the record, 'collecting' is "the process of actively, selectively, and passionately acquiring and possessing things removed from ordinary use and perceived as part of a set of non-identical objects or experiences". Hoarding, meanwhile, is defined as collecting several things that are exactly the same, while accumulating is the gathering of things without the idea of completing a 'set', e.g. when a person doesn't throw out newspapers and they just start to pile up.

Collecting experiences: My collection of commemorative scarfs 

That note about experiences is true, I 'collect' football grounds that I have been to and I know several other football fans who do the same thing. It's the motivation behind buying mementoes like half and half scarfs or keeping ticket stubs.

There are different ways of ‘collecting’. Belk distinguishes between taxonomic and aesthetic collecting. Taxanomic collecting is working on the basis that you can complete a set - whether that set is stamps from Zanzibar, or one of each type of Roman coin, or the complete range of original Kenner Star Wars figures from the 80s. I'd say football stickers are a very good example of this - you even get an album showing which ones you need to complete the collection. Taxonomic collectors don't tend to give up when they complete the set. They usually move on to a new set or keep trying to improve their collection with better examples of the objects in it.

Football stickers are an example of taxonomic collecting

Aesthetic collecting is open-ended. It's when you collect a particular type of art, for example, where there is no finite limit. Of the two, taxonomic collecting is more active, with collectors deliberately seeking out the objects they need to complete their collection, while aesthetic collecting is more passive - people add to their collections as they see objects they want with less 'urgency'.

I'd say the Tsum-Tsums are taxonomic and the Groots are aesthetic

I think there is also a middle ground. I'm a member of the British Thematic Association, which is the aesthetic side of stamp collecting. While I have gone out and made my own 'list' of stamps that fit my theme, I also buy things that it simply wouldn't be possible to list. That is very much a case of 'If I see it, I'll decide whether I want it in my exhibition.' There's no way of knowing if my collection is complete because it's not as simple as 'have I got every stamp featuring the Statue of Liberty?' - there are all the envelopes with those stamps on, many of which are interesting in their own right.

My stamp collection on display for a stamp society

Having said that, there are attempts all the time to turn aesthetic collecting into taxonomic collecting - the Boba Fett Fan Club has tried to list absolutely every toy and other piece of merchandise featuring the galaxy's most feared bounty hunter. It's a nigh on impossible job. My collection is pretty much aesthetic in that I buy stuff when I see it but don't go actively looking. (Although I do always check out the Star Wars toys in toy shops and other shops that sell toys.)

My Boba Fett collection

Belk notes one of the more unusual aspects of collecting, in that once a thing is in a collection, it becomes special, precious, and 'sacred'. A collector can't just get rid of it, unless replacing it with a better item. The collector needs to look after the collection. It's kind of like the old saying that what you own can end up owning you because I admit sometimes all this stuff is inconvenient.

But I can't just get rid of it, it's my collection...

What makes TV adverts memorable: Some nuggets from psychology research

I’m currently studying a part-time MSc in Business Psychology and we have moved on to a module about ‘external communications’. Branding and advertising, in other words.

Stars of a memorable TV ad...

I've been reading a number of papers while preparing for my first essay assignment. For fun, and to spread the knowledge, I’ve pulled out 9 factoids about TV advertising that have been evidenced by psychological researchers. Spot how many of these are true for you and how many techniques are being used by the broadcasters.

TV ads are remembered more if they are followed by ‘congruent programme content’, e.g. a beer advert is followed by a scene where people drink beer. (Furnham et al 2002)

However, TV ads are remembered less if they follow ‘congruent programme content’. (Furnham et al 2002) This means smart script writers would want to know what ads are going where to put all their congruent scenes in the right place. You want your scene in a pub after the beer advert, not before.

People are more likely to remember longer adverts than shorter ones. (Pieters & Bijmolt, 1997)

Stick too many adverts together and it’s more likely none of them will be remembered particularly well. Increasing the number of ads in a block from 4 to 5 begins to negatively impact memory. (Pieters & Bijmolt, 1997)

However, brand recognition afterwards is not reduced by having more adverts. People might not be able to consciously recall the advert, but the brand name is lurking in their brain somewhere! They will recognise it if they are shown it later. (Brown & Rothschild, 1993)

Don’t bother running your ads in the middle of commercial breaks. People tend to remember the first and last adverts in a sequence. (Terry, 2005) This is true even if they are the exact same adverts, just shown in a different order.

People are also more likely to remember adverts that appear in the earlier commercial breaks in a programme, than in ones later on. (Terry, 2005)

Leaving very short gaps between TV ads makes them easier to remember. (Pieters & Bijmolt, 1997) This one is clearly being used on a lot of channels these days. The break in programming catches our attention as viewers. Probably.

The BBC would make a killing if it could flog space in the middle of East Enders. Advertising content placed in ‘happy’ programmes was not remembered as well as in ‘unhappy’ content. (Furnham et al 2002) The effect of an unhappy programme is magnified if the advert is violent and/or offensive. (We are lovely people, aren’t we? Remembering violent adverts in miserable programmes.)

References

• Brown & Rothschild (1993) "Reassessing the Impact of Television Advertising Clutter," Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 20
• Furnham, Bergland & Gunter (2002) "Memory for Television Advertisements as a Function of Advertisement–Programme Congruity." Applied Cognitive Psychology 16
• Pieters & Bijmolt (1997) "Consumer Memory for Television Advertising: A Field Study of Duration,Serial Position, and Competition Effects." Journal of Consumer Research. Vol. 23
• Terry (2005) "Serial Position Effects in Recall of Television Commercials." The Journal of General Psychology, 132(2)