• Question: Does any of your work involve looking at the subconscious?

    Asked by anon-353180 on 8 Mar 2023.
    • Photo: Stephen Jackson

      Stephen Jackson answered on 8 Mar 2023:

      Hello,

      It is likely that much of the way that our brain processes information takes place outside of our conscious awareness. For this reason, much of the behaviour we study in psychology is governed my non-conscious processes and mechanisms. In my own work I study the nature and origin of tics (i.e., the involuntary movements and vocalisations seen in people with Tourette syndrome). In addition, there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that our concept of free will over our behaviour and our choices is often something of an illusion

    • Photo: Emily McDougal

      Emily McDougal answered on 13 Mar 2023:

      One of the topics I study is cognition, which essentially is the process of thinking. Examples include attention, memory, and planning. Most of the time, these thinking processes occur automatically and is not something we actively think about. This can make them very difficult to study, but there are tasks people can complete that allow researchers to study cognitive ability.

    • Photo: Hannah Fawcett

      Hannah Fawcett answered on 28 Mar 2023:

      I look at bias held by witnesses to crime, the police and jurors. These are usually not biases that we are aware of, but if we don’t have clear systems in place in minimise their effects, they can lead to miscarriages of justice – innocent people going to jail, and guilty people avoiding conviction.

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