Our mission

Here at the BPS Research Digest, we want to demonstrate how fascinating and useful psychological science can be, while also casting a critical eye over the methods used.

We don't just pick up on the same studies covered by the mainstream media. The editor regularly trawls hundreds of peer-reviewed journals looking for the latest findings from across the breadth of psychological science.

All our reports are based on a close reading of the original research papers. Our aim is to write accessible, accurate reports on those studies that make an important contribution, that are relevant to real life, timely, novel or thought-provoking.

You can follow the Digest via our fortnightly email (launched in '03), Facebook fan-page, Twitter feed and Google + page.

Features

Complementing our main research reports, the Research Digest has over the years published a number of special guest features - look out for more in the future. During April to May 2014, in the editor's absence, a number of star guest editors contributed to the Research Digest. From June 2014, the Digest started publishing a commissioned guest contribution every two to three weeks. Another development in 2014 is the launch of a new format in which we digest studies pertaining to a particular topic or question, with the first such post covering the psychology of first impressions. Also, every Saturday, we now publish a round-up of the previous week's best psychology links on the web.

The Digest story

The British Psychological Society's award-winning Research Digest blog launched in 2005 with the aim of providing original, authoritative reports on the latest psychology research papers. In 2014, the Digest underwent significant expansion with the part-time Editor/Writer appointed full-time, the appointment of an additional regular contributor, and through the commissioning of guest contributions every two to three weeks.

The Editor of the Digest since its inception, and creator of the Digest blog, is Chartered Psychologist and BPS Associate Fellow Dr Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer). Christian writes the majority of the Digest material, and edits all contributions. Christian became a full-time science writer after a completing a PhD in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Manchester. He's the author of the Rough Guide to Psychology; his next book Great Myths of the Brain publishes Autumn 2014. Email Christian.

Since June 2014, Christian is assisted by regular contributor, Chartered Psychologist Dr Alex Fradera (@alexfradera), formerly editor of the discontinued BPS Occupational Digest. Alex's doctoral research at UCL was in the area of autobiographical memory. Today he combines a career in science writing with work in business psychology and improvisation. Email Alex.

The Managing Editor of The Psychologist magazine and Research Digest is Dr Jon Sutton (@jonmsutton). Jon first proposed the idea of a "Research Digest" service in 2003 and today he oversees Christian's and Alex's work. A BPS Chartered Psychologist and Associate Fellow, Jon joined the Society in March 2000 from a psychology lectureship at Glasgow Caledonian University (go here for a summary of his academic work). Email Jon.

Award

Under Jarrett's editorship, the Digest blog won "best psychology blog" in the 2010 inaugural Research Blogging awards, and was "finalist" in the psychology/neuroscience category in the 2013 Science Seeker Blogging Awards.

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Note: Unless otherwise stated, all images on this blog are copyrighted. They are reproduced here via a ThinkStock licence.

Views expressed on the Digest blog belong to the Digest editor or other contributors and should not be mistaken for official BPS policy or opinion.