Psychology in Action: Power of the Mind

In November, the psychology students of EF Academy Oxford had the opportunity to acquire knowledge beyond the typical textbook through an event held in the Emmanuel Centre in London.

Psychology in Action: Power of the Mind, as it was called, enabled students to explore a wide range of exciting theories and their applications channeled through sessions with five renowned speakers, all of whom had a great experience and in-depth knowledge in they brought forward.

The lecture began with James Piercy. Who analyzed the psychological effects of an injury during his talk. This topic was particularly useful as it strengthened our knowledge of brain functions and how they’re localized.

Afterward, Caroline Williams gave a talk on neuroplasticity, where she shared about her experience as a test subject. It gave a great insight into the brain’s ability to change and adapt to new learnings and experiences.

The third speaker, Stephen Richer shared the topic that intrigued me most. He discussed Milgram and Zimbardo’s famous experiments. None of these could be conducted today, but they contributed to our understanding of obedience and the role of social influence. In this engaging session, he postulated his discoveries on why our learned theories of conformity may not be as true as what we sometimes believe.

Warren Mansell, a clinical psychologist, then gave the students examples of how to control our fear and face it at our own paces. And for the closing, Martin S. Taylor explained why hypnosis isn’t real and demonstrated how he can hypnotize people without the use of hypnosis.

The event ended with laughter and a round applause and we left the room with wonder in our hearts and minds.

Not only did the event help us to better understand what we’ve learned so far, we were also able to explore theories and discoveries that were not in the textbook.