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A psychology summer

We set some challenges to keep you occupied over the holidays.

12 June 2017

  1. Send a friend, anonymously, something you think will brighten their day; plus a note encouraging them to do the same.
  2. Take a walk to a street with a psychological name, and when you get there tweet us a photo.
  3. Think about three novel uses for a white bear. And then stop thinking about it.
  4. Tweet us a ‘news cliché photo’ related to your life in psychology: for example, you holding an oversized grant cheque, looking angryin front of the thing that’s making you angry, or leaping in the air with a group of your mates while holding your exam results.
  5. Embrace your failures by writing a ‘negative CV’ (read Aidan Horner’s).
  6. Write and post a letter of gratitude to someone who has helped you along the way in psychology.
  7. Tweet us a photo of you ‘hadouken-ing’, ‘Vader-ing’, or achieving a perspective illusion using your copy of The Psychologist. (If you’re visiting Paris or Pisa this summer, this one’s for you).
  8. Tell us what makes you laugh by adding a comment here.
  9. Reimagine a chart hit as a journal article title, for example, Michael, G. & Ridgeley, A. (1984). Living organ donation: recipient rejection predicts donor regret at one-year follow-up. Journal of Christmas, 1a, 51.
  10. Find and play a song in your musical collection which has a link to psychology.
  11. Dig out the earliest piece of your own psychology writing you have, and marvel at the neatness of your handwriting.
  12. Write us a cathartic letter saying how this is all frivolous nonsense and it would never have been allowed in the days of the Bulletin.


To share your progress on Twitter, please tag @psychmag and use the hashtag #PsySummer

Also, here's a more meaty challenge. What do you think is underrated/overrated in psychology? We're looking for authors for our new(ish) format, exemplified by Professor Elizabeth Meins in a January article which quickly became one of our top three most viewed pieces ever.

The concept is simple: write 1500 words of engaging, informative and persuasive material on something in psychology/a psychological perspective on life which you think is underrated, and the same on something you think is overrated.

Share your ideas for topics on Twitter @psychmag or email the editor on [email protected].