Wednesday, 8th March 2017

Ben Thornton

Dr Hugh McCredie

TPF Vice Chair and widely published researcher

The topic of Hugh’s talk was ‘Adult Personality Change – Mission Impossible?’  A discussion of members’ experiences took place in two groups, followed by an extensive review of published research, with a balance between arguments both for and against personality change.  The arguments ‘for’ included both personal experience as well as research based concepts, such as nurture; brain plasticity; Big 5 research. Arguments against included: nature; psychometric data; trait theory and Big 5 research.  Hugh went on to clarify that similar to many other hot topics in psychology, there were no right answers, rather that he wanted to explore the two arguments for and against the claim.  (Taken from the review in Psyche Summer 2017 by Daphne van der Wielen and Natalie Ruffell).

Ben Thornton

Alan Redman

Director of Criterion Partnership

Alan works across the areas of assessment and development and is a specialist in the design of online psychometrics. Alan has developed a range of online assessment instruments with Criterion as well as bespoke psychometrics and assessment centres for ASDA, Centrica, Travelodge, Next, Argos and the Co-operative Group.  Alan’s talk, ‘Psychology, Technology and Snake Oil: Evidence Based Practice’ focused on how we can discern ‘good’ from ‘bad’ psychometrics and some top tips on spotting snake oil.  His proposed methodology was around evidence based practice.  (See Psyche Summer 2017 for a detailed review).