H Joffe
Biographic Data
| ID | 11113 |
|---|---|
| NAME | H Joffe |
| GIVEN NAMES | H |
| FAMILY NAME | Joffe |
| SIGNATURE | JOFFE H |
| AFFILIATIONS | University College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3701-5014 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 947 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 40 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
What comes to mind when you hear the term ‘trauma’? A qualitative study of social representations of trauma in Ireland
Psychological trauma is an increasingly prominent construct in contemporary culture, invoked across diverse contexts of policy, practice, and public discourse. However, little is known about how laypeople conceptualise trauma in everyday life. This qualitative study explored social representations of trauma among residents of the Republic of Ireland. Twenty participants completed interviews that elaborated their associations with the term ‘trauma…
Fostering resilient recovery: An intervention for disaster-affected teachers in Indonesia
Disasters leave survivors at heighted risk of negative psychological consequences. Teachers require post-disaster psychosocial support, given their added responsibility for supporting their students' recovery. However, alongside coping with their own mental health, teachers often lack training to support students psychologically. This study addresses this gap by detailing an intervention designed to foster resilient recovery among secondary schoo…
How trauma is represented on social media: Analysis of #trauma content on TikTok
Findings are consistent with prior suggestions that trauma's boundaries are expanding in the form of "concept creep," but also draw attention to the role of humor and irony in social media invocations of the concept. Given the current near-ubiquity of social media consumption, particularly among young people, establishing the implications of exposure to this content should be a priority for future research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA,…
Wellbeing in the city: Young adults' sense of loneliness and social connection in deprived urban neighbourhoods
Neighbourhood characteristics can facilitate or hinder the development of social ties, thereby influencing the loneliness of those who live in them. Most research to date has focused upon how either older adults (65+) or youth (under 19 years old) view and experience their neighbourhood, paying little attention to young adults (aged 16-24). Young adults are the loneliest age-group within the UK and other Western countries. Their loneliness is ass…
Lay concepts of trauma in the United Kingdom: Content and predictors
This original evidence regarding the content and predictors of lay conceptions of trauma is relevant for sensitive delivery of clinical interventions, tailoring of other supports for populations experiencing adversity, and anticipating social responses to victims of specific adversities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Adolescent girls’ representations of the role of schools and teachers post-disaster: “ Second Parents, Second Homes ”
Disasters can result in poor psychosocial outcomes for adolescents. One pathway to mitigate these risks and foster resilience is via schools, where teachers can offer students support. However, existing research lacks consideration of the role schools and teachers play from the perspective of students, particularly those from marginalized populations. Therefore, this study examines adolescents’ representations of the role of schools and teachers …
How young adults cope with loneliness: A study of London’s most deprived boroughs
There is growing recognition that young adults of low socioeconomic status are among the loneliest in the United Kingdom. However, there has been a dearth of qualitative research exploring how they cope with their loneliness. Using a novel free association technique, this study sought to explore how young adults (n = 48) in London’s most deprived areas cope with feeling lonely. A thematic analysis, informed by an inductive approach, identified si…
Thinking too much: How young people experience rumination in the context of loneliness
The recent rise in the prevalence of loneliness, particularly among young adults, coupled with its deleterious effects on wellbeing, makes understanding the issue of pressing concern. As most research on loneliness has focused on older adults, this study explored how 48 young adults aged 18–24 subjectively experienced loneliness through free association‐based interviews. Participants were sampled from the four most deprived boroughs in London, as…
Integrating psychosocial and Wash school interventions to build disaster resilience
This paper reviews the key disaster risk management (DRM) frameworks used for protecting children's wellbeing in disaster settings and identifies a lack of consideration for (1) psychosocial and (2) water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) needs. It also demonstrates that these two domains are meaningfully linked, as access to adequate WASH provision may protect psychosocial wellbeing and promote community resilience. As support in both domains is vi…
Feelings, Thoughts, and Behaviors During Disaster
Thoughts, feelings, and behaviors during traumatic events, that is, peritraumatic reactions, are key to post-trauma psychopathology development. Qualitative research is required to investigate whether existing quantitative methods capture the range and complexity of peritraumatic reactions as described by survivors. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 104 earthquake survivors. Participants reported experiencing various peritraumatic re…
Intercoder Reliability in Qualitative Research: Debates and Practical Guidelines
Evaluating the intercoder reliability (ICR) of a coding frame is frequently recommended as good practice in qualitative analysis. ICR is a somewhat controversial topic in the qualitative research community, with some arguing that it is an inappropriate or unnecessary step within the goals of qualitative analysis. Yet ICR assessment can yield numerous benefits for qualitative studies, which include improving the systematicity, communicability, and…
The Fix-it face-to-face intervention increases multihazard household preparedness cross-culturally
Stigma in science: The Case of Earthquake Prediction
This paper explores how earthquake scientists conceptualise earthquake prediction, particularly given the conviction of six earthquake scientists for manslaughter (subsequently overturned) on 22 October 2012 for having given inappropriate advice to the public prior to the L'Aquila earthquake of 6 April 2009. In the first study of its kind, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 earthquake scientists and the transcribed interviews were …
City dweller aspirations for cities of the future: How do environmental and personal wellbeing feature
This paper explores city dweller aspirations for cities of the future in the context of global commitments to radically reduce carbon emissions by 2050; cities contribute the vast majority of these emissions and a growing bulk of the world's population lives in cities. The particular challenge of creating a carbon reduced future in democratic countries is that the measures proposed must be acceptable to the electorate. Such acceptability is foste…
How the Public Engages With Brain Optimization: The Media-mind Relationship
In the burgeoning debate about neuroscience's role in contemporary society, the issue of brain optimization, or the application of neuroscientific knowledge and technologies to augment neurocognitive function, has taken center stage. Previous research has characterized media discourse on brain optimization as individualistic in ethos, pressuring individuals to expend calculated effort in cultivating culturally desirable forms of selves and bodies…
Social Representations of Brain Research: Exploring Public (Dis)engagement With Contemporary Neuroscience
Recent years have seen a major expansion of the position of neuroscience in the mass media, public policy, and legal dialogue. Drawing on interviews with 48 London residents, this article examines how people with no prior involvement with neuroscience make sense of the concept of “brain research.” Thematic analysis of the data furnished little evidence that neuroscience has meaningfully infiltrated lay thinking. Respondents consigned brain knowle…
How has neuroscience affected lay understandings of personhood? A review of the evidence
The prominence of neuroscience in the public sphere has escalated in recent years, provoking questions about how the public engages with neuroscientific ideas. Commentaries on neuroscience’s role in society often present it as having revolutionary implications, fundamentally overturning established beliefs about personhood. The purpose of this article is to collate and review the extant empirical evidence on the influence of neuroscience on commo…
Media representations of early human development: Protecting, feeding and loving the developing brain
The public profile of neurodevelopmental research has expanded in recent years. This paper applies social representations theory to explore how early brain development was represented in the UK print media in the first decade of the 21st century. A thematic analysis was performed on 505 newspaper articles published between 2000 and 2010 that discussed early brain development. Media coverage centred around concern with 'protecting' the prenatal br…
How the public engages with global warming: A social representations approach
The present study utilises social representations theory to explore common sense conceptualisations of global warming risk using an in-depth, qualitative methodology. Fifty-six members of a British, London-based 2008 public were initially asked to draw or write four spontaneous "first thoughts or feelings" about global warming. These were then explored via an open-ended, exploratory interview. The analysis revealed that first thoughts, either dra…
Thematic Analysis
This chapter contains sections titled: Description of the Method Historical Origins and Influences Key Epistemological Assumptions What Kind of Research Questions is Thematic Analysis Most Suited to Addressing? What Kinds of Data are Most Appropriate and From Whom Should They be Collected? What Approach is Taken to the Involvement of Research Participants, Including Mental Health Service Users? How to Use This Method What Makes for a Better Quali…
Public apprehension of emerging infectious diseases: Are changes afoot
Using social representations theory this paper casts light on the pattern of content that characterises the public response to emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases (EID). The pattern is: distancing the disease from the self/one’s in-groups; blame of particular entities for the disease’s origin and/or spread; and stigmatisation of those who have contracted it and/or who are represented as having intensified its spread. This pattern is not …
The social psychology of seismic hazard adjustment: Re-evaluating the international literature
The majority of people at risk from earthquakes do little or nothing to reduce their vulnerability. Over the past 40 years social scientists have tried to predict and explain levels of seismic hazard adjustment using models from behavioural sciences such as psychology. The present paper is the first to synthesise the major findings from the international literature on psychological correlates and causes of seismic adjustment at the level of the i…
Climate change in the British press: The role of the visual
The present investigation identifies the key images that British newspapers use to represent climate change risks. In doing so, it widens the scope of the burgeoning literature analysing textual content of climate change media information. This is particularly important given the visual information's ability to arouse emotion and the risk literature's increasing focus on the importance of affect in shaping risk perception. From a thematic analysi…
The Power of Visual Material: Persuasion, Emotion and Identification
This paper integrates literature from the social sciences and humanities concerning the persuasive impact of visual material, highlighting issues of emotion and identification. Visuals are used not only to illustrate news and feature genres but also in advertising and campaigns that attempt to persuade their target audiences to change attitudes and behaviours. These include health, safety and charity campaigns, that attempt to socially engineer c…
The Centrality of the Self-Control Ethos in Western Aspersions Regarding Outgroups: A Social Representational Approach to Stereotype Content
This theoretical article presents a cultural-level analysis of stereotype content concerning derogated outgroups in the West. It proposes that the ethos of self-control is a key source of widespread thinking about outgroups, and thus a key factor in the social construction of certain groups as superior and others as inferior. Drawing on the social representations approach, the article complements and extends existing analyses of stereotype conten…
Intercoder Reliability in Qualitative Research: Debates and Practical Guidelines
Evaluating the intercoder reliability (ICR) of a coding frame is frequently recommended as good practice in qualitative analysis. ICR is a somewhat controversial topic in the qualitative research community, with some arguing that it is an inappropriate or unnecessary step within the goals of qualitative analysis. Yet ICR assessment can yield numerous benefits for qualitative studies, which include improving the systematicity, communicability, and…
Risk: From perception to social representation
This paper is concerned with how people make meaning of the risks they face. It explores certain assumptions of the risk perception approaches, which dominate the area. It argues that despite changes currently taking place in the field, such models still focus on static, intrapersonal processes, with many viewing human thinking as analogous to erroneous information processing. In the place of an individual 'deficit' focus, the paper proposes a mo…
Representations of far-flung illnesses: The case of Ebola in Britain
How the public engages with global warming: A social representations approach
The present study utilises social representations theory to explore common sense conceptualisations of global warming risk using an in-depth, qualitative methodology. Fifty-six members of a British, London-based 2008 public were initially asked to draw or write four spontaneous "first thoughts or feelings" about global warming. These were then explored via an open-ended, exploratory interview. The analysis revealed that first thoughts, either dra…
Climate change in the British press: The role of the visual
The present investigation identifies the key images that British newspapers use to represent climate change risks. In doing so, it widens the scope of the burgeoning literature analysing textual content of climate change media information. This is particularly important given the visual information's ability to arouse emotion and the risk literature's increasing focus on the importance of affect in shaping risk perception. From a thematic analysi…
Aids research and prevention: A social representational approach
The KABP paradigm (knowledge‐attitude‐belief‐practice) dominates social scientific AIDS research and prevention programmes. This paper questions a number of the assumptions of the paradigm both theoretically and empirically. Having discussed a number of the paradigm's shortcomings, an alternative, a social representational approach, is proposed. The choice of an alternative approach is guided by theoretical concerns but its efficacy is demonstrat…
"The "hospital superbug: Social representations of MRSA
Social Representation of Aids among Zambian Adolescents
This study explores shared thinking about HIV/AIDS among Zambian adolescents. With high numbers affected, the question is how this group represents its risk. Social representations of the origin, spread and risk of HIV/AIDS were gleaned via 60 semistructured interviews with urban 15 to 20 year olds. A systematic analysis revealed a shared picture: AIDS was linked to the West, God and teenage girls; its spread lay beyond the control of adolescent …
The Power of Visual Material: Persuasion, Emotion and Identification
This paper integrates literature from the social sciences and humanities concerning the persuasive impact of visual material, highlighting issues of emotion and identification. Visuals are used not only to illustrate news and feature genres but also in advertising and campaigns that attempt to persuade their target audiences to change attitudes and behaviours. These include health, safety and charity campaigns, that attempt to socially engineer c…
Pollution, peril and poverty: A British study of the stigmatization of smokers
This paper considers the symbolic, experiential and institutional basis of the stigmatization of British smokers, particularly in the context of the higher rates of smoking in lower socio‐economic status (SES) groups. Interviews based on a free association task were conducted with 40 smokers and non‐smokers from higher and lower SES groups. Thematic analysis identified several areas of stigmatization of British smokers by non‐smokers: identificat…
Media representations of early human development: Protecting, feeding and loving the developing brain
The public profile of neurodevelopmental research has expanded in recent years. This paper applies social representations theory to explore how early brain development was represented in the UK print media in the first decade of the 21st century. A thematic analysis was performed on 505 newspaper articles published between 2000 and 2010 that discussed early brain development. Media coverage centred around concern with 'protecting' the prenatal br…
Social Representations and Health Psychology
The author examines the specific contribution that social representations research has made to health psychology. In particular, the approach highlights the symbolic, emotive and social aspects of how lay people make meaning of facets of health and illness, and emphasizes the importance of the evolution of these meanings. Empirical work on health and illness is used to cast light on the specific workings of social representations and on the enric…
Social Representations of Brain Research: Exploring Public (Dis)engagement With Contemporary Neuroscience
Recent years have seen a major expansion of the position of neuroscience in the mass media, public policy, and legal dialogue. Drawing on interviews with 48 London residents, this article examines how people with no prior involvement with neuroscience make sense of the concept of “brain research.” Thematic analysis of the data furnished little evidence that neuroscience has meaningfully infiltrated lay thinking. Respondents consigned brain knowle…
The Shock of the New: A Psycho‐dynamic Extension of Social Representational Theory
Safer sex: Lessons from the male sex industry
Discerning the complex factors influencing male sex work is an important element of understanding HIV transmission. The present study examines a sample of London‐based masseurs and street workers' ideas concerning their sexual encounters, their partners and their role in society. Unsafe sex is associated with (1) a lack of perception of control in the sexual encounter, (2) attractive clients, and (3) loving relationships with non‐clients. The way…
City dweller aspirations for cities of the future: How do environmental and personal wellbeing feature
This paper explores city dweller aspirations for cities of the future in the context of global commitments to radically reduce carbon emissions by 2050; cities contribute the vast majority of these emissions and a growing bulk of the world's population lives in cities. The particular challenge of creating a carbon reduced future in democratic countries is that the measures proposed must be acceptable to the electorate. Such acceptability is foste…
How the Public Engages With Brain Optimization: The Media-mind Relationship
In the burgeoning debate about neuroscience's role in contemporary society, the issue of brain optimization, or the application of neuroscientific knowledge and technologies to augment neurocognitive function, has taken center stage. Previous research has characterized media discourse on brain optimization as individualistic in ethos, pressuring individuals to expend calculated effort in cultivating culturally desirable forms of selves and bodies…
Feelings, Thoughts, and Behaviors During Disaster
Thoughts, feelings, and behaviors during traumatic events, that is, peritraumatic reactions, are key to post-trauma psychopathology development. Qualitative research is required to investigate whether existing quantitative methods capture the range and complexity of peritraumatic reactions as described by survivors. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 104 earthquake survivors. Participants reported experiencing various peritraumatic re…
The Fix-it face-to-face intervention increases multihazard household preparedness cross-culturally
De la perception à la représentation du risque: Le rôle des médias
Les questions de communication sont au cœur des « perceptions du risque » car la grande majorité des risques ne seraient connus que de ceux qui l’expérimentent n’eut été les médias. Le champ historiquement individualiste de la « perception du risque » a manifesté peu d’intérêt pour le contenu des mass media et leur rôle dans la construction d’une pensée sur le risque. Bien au contraire, le processus de « l’information » sur le risque était situé …
Juxtaposing positivist and non‐positivist approaches to social scientific Aids research: Reply to Fife‐Schaw's commentary
Many academics argue that the AIDS‐related debates are hackneyed, that the area has been oversubscribed and that most AIDS research merely reinvents the wheel. I disagree. The energy which continues to be dedicated to the area is invaluable not only in terms of the theoretical and preventive terrain which is still to be covered, but with regard to the future transfer of knowledge to other areas of health risk research. Fife‐Shaw's commentary cont…
Self-proclaimed ignorance about public affairs
This paper explores the consequences of the socio-historical exclusion of women, and of young people, from public life. It is based upon an empirical study in which depth-interviews were conducted with 96 Britons, male and female, and of a younger and an older generation, concerning their private and public lives. Self-proclaimed ignorance is significantly more likely to be found in the interviews of the women rather than the men, and in those of…
Stigma in science: The Case of Earthquake Prediction
This paper explores how earthquake scientists conceptualise earthquake prediction, particularly given the conviction of six earthquake scientists for manslaughter (subsequently overturned) on 22 October 2012 for having given inappropriate advice to the public prior to the L'Aquila earthquake of 6 April 2009. In the first study of its kind, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 earthquake scientists and the transcribed interviews were …
Thinking too much: How young people experience rumination in the context of loneliness
The recent rise in the prevalence of loneliness, particularly among young adults, coupled with its deleterious effects on wellbeing, makes understanding the issue of pressing concern. As most research on loneliness has focused on older adults, this study explored how 48 young adults aged 18–24 subjectively experienced loneliness through free association‐based interviews. Participants were sampled from the four most deprived boroughs in London, as…
Safer sex: Lessons from the male sex industry
Discerning the complex factors influencing male sex work is an important element of understanding HIV transmission. The present study examines a sample of London‐based masseurs and street workers' ideas concerning their sexual encounters, their partners and their role in society. Unsafe sex is associated with (1) a lack of perception of control in the sexual encounter, (2) attractive clients, and (3) loving relationships with non‐clients. The way…
Meanings of self-attributed ignorance: An introduction to the Symposium
Aids research and prevention: A social representational approach
The KABP paradigm (knowledge‐attitude‐belief‐practice) dominates social scientific AIDS research and prevention programmes. This paper questions a number of the assumptions of the paradigm both theoretically and empirically. Having discussed a number of the paradigm's shortcomings, an alternative, a social representational approach, is proposed. The choice of an alternative approach is guided by theoretical concerns but its efficacy is demonstrat…
The Shock of the New: A Psycho‐dynamic Extension of Social Representational Theory
Self-proclaimed ignorance about public affairs
This paper explores the consequences of the socio-historical exclusion of women, and of young people, from public life. It is based upon an empirical study in which depth-interviews were conducted with 96 Britons, male and female, and of a younger and an older generation, concerning their private and public lives. Self-proclaimed ignorance is significantly more likely to be found in the interviews of the women rather than the men, and in those of…
Juxtaposing positivist and non‐positivist approaches to social scientific Aids research: Reply to Fife‐Schaw's commentary
Many academics argue that the AIDS‐related debates are hackneyed, that the area has been oversubscribed and that most AIDS research merely reinvents the wheel. I disagree. The energy which continues to be dedicated to the area is invaluable not only in terms of the theoretical and preventive terrain which is still to be covered, but with regard to the future transfer of knowledge to other areas of health risk research. Fife‐Shaw's commentary cont…
Risk and 'The Other'
From earthquakes to epidemics, AIDS to industrial accidents, the mass media continually bring into our daily lives the awareness of risk. But how do people respond to this increased awareness? How do people cope with living in what has been termed 'the risk society'? This book attempts to explain how, within a given social and cultural context, individuals make sense of impending crisis. In particular it tries to explain the phenomenon of a wides…
Representations of far-flung illnesses: The case of Ebola in Britain
Social Representations and Health Psychology
The author examines the specific contribution that social representations research has made to health psychology. In particular, the approach highlights the symbolic, emotive and social aspects of how lay people make meaning of facets of health and illness, and emphasizes the importance of the evolution of these meanings. Empirical work on health and illness is used to cast light on the specific workings of social representations and on the enric…
Risk: From perception to social representation
This paper is concerned with how people make meaning of the risks they face. It explores certain assumptions of the risk perception approaches, which dominate the area. It argues that despite changes currently taking place in the field, such models still focus on static, intrapersonal processes, with many viewing human thinking as analogous to erroneous information processing. In the place of an individual 'deficit' focus, the paper proposes a mo…
Social Representation of Aids among Zambian Adolescents
This study explores shared thinking about HIV/AIDS among Zambian adolescents. With high numbers affected, the question is how this group represents its risk. Social representations of the origin, spread and risk of HIV/AIDS were gleaned via 60 semistructured interviews with urban 15 to 20 year olds. A systematic analysis revealed a shared picture: AIDS was linked to the West, God and teenage girls; its spread lay beyond the control of adolescent …
De la perception à la représentation du risque: Le rôle des médias
Les questions de communication sont au cœur des « perceptions du risque » car la grande majorité des risques ne seraient connus que de ceux qui l’expérimentent n’eut été les médias. Le champ historiquement individualiste de la « perception du risque » a manifesté peu d’intérêt pour le contenu des mass media et leur rôle dans la construction d’une pensée sur le risque. Bien au contraire, le processus de « l’information » sur le risque était situé …
Pollution, peril and poverty: A British study of the stigmatization of smokers
This paper considers the symbolic, experiential and institutional basis of the stigmatization of British smokers, particularly in the context of the higher rates of smoking in lower socio‐economic status (SES) groups. Interviews based on a free association task were conducted with 40 smokers and non‐smokers from higher and lower SES groups. Thematic analysis identified several areas of stigmatization of British smokers by non‐smokers: identificat…
"The "hospital superbug: Social representations of MRSA
The Centrality of the Self-Control Ethos in Western Aspersions Regarding Outgroups: A Social Representational Approach to Stereotype Content
This theoretical article presents a cultural-level analysis of stereotype content concerning derogated outgroups in the West. It proposes that the ethos of self-control is a key source of widespread thinking about outgroups, and thus a key factor in the social construction of certain groups as superior and others as inferior. Drawing on the social representations approach, the article complements and extends existing analyses of stereotype conten…
Le pouvoir de l'image: Persuasion, émotion et identification
The Power of Visual Material: Persuasion, Emotion and Identification
This paper integrates literature from the social sciences and humanities concerning the persuasive impact of visual material, highlighting issues of emotion and identification. Visuals are used not only to illustrate news and feature genres but also in advertising and campaigns that attempt to persuade their target audiences to change attitudes and behaviours. These include health, safety and charity campaigns, that attempt to socially engineer c…
Climate change in the British press: The role of the visual
The present investigation identifies the key images that British newspapers use to represent climate change risks. In doing so, it widens the scope of the burgeoning literature analysing textual content of climate change media information. This is particularly important given the visual information's ability to arouse emotion and the risk literature's increasing focus on the importance of affect in shaping risk perception. From a thematic analysi…
The social psychology of seismic hazard adjustment: Re-evaluating the international literature
The majority of people at risk from earthquakes do little or nothing to reduce their vulnerability. Over the past 40 years social scientists have tried to predict and explain levels of seismic hazard adjustment using models from behavioural sciences such as psychology. The present paper is the first to synthesise the major findings from the international literature on psychological correlates and causes of seismic adjustment at the level of the i…
Thematic Analysis
This chapter contains sections titled: Description of the Method Historical Origins and Influences Key Epistemological Assumptions What Kind of Research Questions is Thematic Analysis Most Suited to Addressing? What Kinds of Data are Most Appropriate and From Whom Should They be Collected? What Approach is Taken to the Involvement of Research Participants, Including Mental Health Service Users? How to Use This Method What Makes for a Better Quali…
Public apprehension of emerging infectious diseases: Are changes afoot
Using social representations theory this paper casts light on the pattern of content that characterises the public response to emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases (EID). The pattern is: distancing the disease from the self/one’s in-groups; blame of particular entities for the disease’s origin and/or spread; and stigmatisation of those who have contracted it and/or who are represented as having intensified its spread. This pattern is not …
How the public engages with global warming: A social representations approach
The present study utilises social representations theory to explore common sense conceptualisations of global warming risk using an in-depth, qualitative methodology. Fifty-six members of a British, London-based 2008 public were initially asked to draw or write four spontaneous "first thoughts or feelings" about global warming. These were then explored via an open-ended, exploratory interview. The analysis revealed that first thoughts, either dra…
How has neuroscience affected lay understandings of personhood? A review of the evidence
The prominence of neuroscience in the public sphere has escalated in recent years, provoking questions about how the public engages with neuroscientific ideas. Commentaries on neuroscience’s role in society often present it as having revolutionary implications, fundamentally overturning established beliefs about personhood. The purpose of this article is to collate and review the extant empirical evidence on the influence of neuroscience on commo…
Media representations of early human development: Protecting, feeding and loving the developing brain
The public profile of neurodevelopmental research has expanded in recent years. This paper applies social representations theory to explore how early brain development was represented in the UK print media in the first decade of the 21st century. A thematic analysis was performed on 505 newspaper articles published between 2000 and 2010 that discussed early brain development. Media coverage centred around concern with 'protecting' the prenatal br…
Social Representations of Brain Research: Exploring Public (Dis)engagement With Contemporary Neuroscience
Recent years have seen a major expansion of the position of neuroscience in the mass media, public policy, and legal dialogue. Drawing on interviews with 48 London residents, this article examines how people with no prior involvement with neuroscience make sense of the concept of “brain research.” Thematic analysis of the data furnished little evidence that neuroscience has meaningfully infiltrated lay thinking. Respondents consigned brain knowle…
Psychology (31 works) · Sociology (23 works) · Social Psychology (18 works) · Political science (15 works) · Social science (11 works) · Community Health and Development (10 works) · Qualitative research (10 works) · Social Representations and Identity (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Medicine (9 works)