Editorial
I edited this month's cover article around the time my kids were badgering me to get a dog (or doggedly requesting a badger... I wasn't really listening). On p.172, Deborah Wells certainly makes a case that 'pets are good for us'.
Did you know, for example, that dog owners are eight times more likely to be alive one year after a heart attack than non-dog owners? Not so good if you own a cat though.
The piece also features my favourite ever line from a Psychologist article: 'More recently, Hunt et al. (1992) found that a woman sitting in a park received significantly more social approaches from passers-by whenever she was accompanied by a rabbit or turtle, than when she sat alone with a television set or blowing bubbles.'
Also this month, the third of our 'Big picture' centre spread pull-outs. Richard Wiseman's work stars in our own version of the X-Files: we hope it will appeal to all those psychology sceptics out there. Professor Wiseman will be speaking at the Society's Psychology for All public engagement event in London this month.
Dr Jon Sutton
Contents
The value of pets for health
Deborah Wells has a menagerie of surprising and controversial research on animal antics
Falling on deaf ears
Geoffrey D. Munro examines when people believe psychology is not science
Are you being outsourced?
Stephanie J. Morgan looks at how psychology can aid our understanding of work fragmentation
Responding to the problem of 'parent abuse'
Amanda Holt asks whether there is a role for psychology
The psychological transformer
Kerry Chamberlain talks to Lance Workman about the academic evolution of his work
Letters
National well-being; psychology myths; gender; your deadly sins; and more
News and digest
Cuts begin to bite; Sure Start; ECT; reports from the Division of Occupational Psychology conference; and nuggets from the Society's Research Digest
Media
The history and future of mind control, with Kirsten V. Smith
Book reviews
Narratives in human science; challenging religion; creativity in the classroom; and more
Society
Taking a stance in the President's column; online archive; QMIP Section awards; and more
Careers
How psychology sang to Jake Farr; the things Jillian Sullivan wished she had known at the beginning of her PhD
Looking back
The strange history of tropical neurasthenia, by Anna Greenwood
One on one
...with Ruth Mann