Listen to your conscious mind

Nudges are psychological techniques designed to help people to make better decisions in context that impact their health and wellbeing by targeting unconscious mechanisms. One of the issues with the Nudge position is that it falls short of providing an adequate theoretical account for how nudges might work in more complex contexts (e.g., buying houses one cannot afford, not saving for the future, etc.).
It raised the question of “how much control do we have?”

The current views from psychological research suggest that the vast majority of what we do is based on unconscious mechanisms. The talk will go through what the evidence is and some of the major theoretical claims used to shape government policies (incl. the drives supported by the behavioural insights unit). The work by Dr Osman will be demonstrate that the grand claims being made about the role of the unconscious exceed the current limited evidence in psychology that is used to support them.

Learning a 2nd language involves much more than learning the grammar and vocabulary in the particular language. Indeed, it has been argued that it involves learning to think in a different way. Tiina’s research examines the question of whether speaking in a second language changes the way we are able to understand and communicate emotions. In her talk she will present research evidence to illustrate the impact that speaking more than one language has on the speakers’ emotional reactions.