On Tuesday, the Sixth Form Psychology students attended a Psychology in Action lecture day in London. Although blurry-eyed when arriving at the station, they soon perked up when the first speaker started to show them how short-term memory operates through a series of activities.

After learning some useful information on the best ways to use our psychological knowledge of memory to master revision, the students were then taken through a quick but in-depth wide-ranging series of lectures. These dealt with everything from the different gender roles existing in the world to what dance moves can tell us about a potential romantic partner.

In between, they learned about examination success, the features of psychology that magicians exploit to make their shows mystifying and the social bonding purposes discovered by the little-studied field of the psychology of laughter. Apparently, this last one has more in common with animal sounds than language – and we were surprised to find that many other mammals than humans enjoy a good chuckle every now and again! Jessamie Warwick (Upper Sixth) particularly enjoyed this talk and ‘loved the quote that was shared: “laughter is the shortest distance between two people.”

Mollie Sawford (Lower Sixth) took away an important truth about Psychology as a discipline, she said: “It was fascinating to be able to see what a wide range of careers there are under the umbrella of Psychology, and I’d recommend it to anyone who is interested.”

After a day listening to a Science Communicator / Youtuber, a magician / physicist, a neurologist / comedienne and Dr Dance – who undertook scientific research at Cambridge after being professional dancer, who left school without any examination qualifications in his youth – it is hard to argue with her conclusion!