MRCPsych on the Go: Revision Essentials

Two people can experience the same stressful event and respond in completely different ways. One develops depression; the other seems unaffected. Why? In this episode, we explore the factors that determine individual differences in vulnerability and resilience to stress. We cover biological, psychological and social vulnerability factors, and examine the landmark research of Friedman and Rosenman...

What happens when trauma is not a single event, but the air someone has breathed their entire life? In this episode, we explore complex PTSD. This is the ICD-11 diagnosis that captures the lasting impact of prolonged, repeated and inescapable trauma. We build on the core PTSD criteria from the previous episode. We focus on the additional features that define complex PTSD, why it is so often missed...

Why does a sound, a smell or a flash of light have the power to pull someone back into the worst moment of their life, years after it happened? In this episode, we explore post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in depth. We cover the ICD-11 diagnostic criteria, the three core symptom clusters, and the neurobiology that explains why PTSD symptoms are so persistent and so difficult to simply talk you...

Not all stress comes from outside events. Some of the most corrosive stress arises from within, when we are pulled in opposite directions at the same time. In this episode, we explore the psychology of conflict and trauma. We cover the three classical types of motivational conflict described by Kurt Lewin, the psychological impact of traumatic experience, and the relationship between trauma and po...

Can a single life event make you physically ill? Research suggests it can, and the evidence is more precise than you might expect. In this episode, we explore the social origins of stress. We cover Holmes and Rahe's Social Readjustment Rating Scale, the landmark studies linking life events to illness onset, and Kanner's research on daily hassles and uplifts as independent predictors of w...

We all talk about feeling stressed, but what is actually happening inside the body when stress strikes? In this episode, we explore the physiology and psychology of stress. We cover Hans Selye's landmark General Adaptation Syndrome, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, the role of cortisol, and the distinction between acute and chronic stress. Topics include the three stages of Selye&apos...

Can the same emotion mean something different depending on who is feeling it, or where in the world they live? And does being more emotionally aroused always mean you perform better? In this episode, we explore the differentiation of emotions, the debate around primary emotions, and the relationship between emotional arousal and performance. Topics include Ekman's six primary emotions and his...

Can the same physical sensation produce completely different emotions? Schachter and Singer proved that it could, using nothing more than an adrenaline injection. In this episode, we explore cognitive appraisal theories of emotion, including Schachter and Singer's two-factor theory and the counterintuitive phenomenon of misattribution of arousal. We also examine Richard Lazarus's model o...

What if your fear and your racing heart arrive at exactly the same moment, neither one causing the other? In this episode, we explore the Cannon-Bard theory as a direct challenge to the James-Lange theory. We cover Cannon's four key criticisms of James-Lange, the role of the thalamus in generating simultaneous emotional and physiological responses, and LeDoux's low road model of fear pro...

Have you ever noticed your body reacting before your mind catches up?  In this episode, we explore what emotions actually are, breaking down the physiological, cognitive, behavioural and subjective components of emotional experience. We then examine the James-Lange theory, one of psychology's most counterintuitive proposals. Topics include the four components of emotion, the famous bear in th...

Why do some people thrive after trauma, while others struggle to recover? The answer might come down to which of their fundamental needs are being met. In this episode, we explore Maslow's hierarchy of needs, one of psychology's most iconic models. We cover all five levels of the pyramid, from basic survival through to self-actualisation, and explain why understanding unmet needs is esse...

Have you ever known something was bad for you and done it anyway? That tension has a name, and understanding it could change how you think about human behaviour. In this episode, we explore cognitive dissonance and achievement motivation, two powerful forces that shape why we act the way we do. We cover Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory, the strategies people use to reduce psychological...

Why do some people thrive under pressure while others freeze? And why does a reward sometimes make us less motivated, not more? In this episode, we explore intrinsic motivation and the forces that drive us from within. We cover the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, the overjustification effect, Berlyne's theory of curiosity and the Yerkes-Dodson Law. We also introduce sel...

Why do you reach for food when you are hungry, or feel restless when you have been sitting still too long? The answer lies deep inside your brain, in a region the size of a pea. In this episode, we explore the biology of motivation, covering primary and secondary drives, Hull's drive reduction theory and the concept of homeostasis. We also examine the role of the hypothalamus in regulating hu...

Is personality written in your biology? Hans Eysenck believed so, and he spent decades building a scientific case for it. In this episode, we explore Eysenck's biological theory of personality and his PEN model, covering the three dimensions of psychoticism, extraversion and neuroticism. We explain the biological basis of each dimension, including cortical arousal and limbic reactivity, the r...

What if the stories, myths and symbols that appear across all human cultures are not a coincidence? Carl Jung thought they revealed something profound about the structure of the human mind. In this episode, we explore Jung's theory of personality, including his psychological types, the personal and collective unconscious, and the archetypes he believed we all share: the shadow, the persona, t...

Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Conscientious or spontaneous? The way we answer these questions reveals a lot about how psychologists have tried to map the human personality for over a century. In this episode, we explore trait and type approaches to personality, introducing key figures including Carl Jung, Gordon Allport, Raymond Cattell and Hans Eysenck. We trace how modern personality res...

Can personality be measured like height or weight? Or is every person so unique that general rules simply do not apply? In this episode, we explore two fundamentally different ways of studying personality. The nomothetic approach looks for patterns across large groups. The idiographic approach focuses on the individual in depth. We also cover early theories of personality, including Hippocrates&ap...

Why do smart people make bad decisions? The answer often comes down to the mental shortcuts our brains rely on without us even realising it. In this episode, we explore how we reason and solve problems, and where we go wrong. We cover deductive and inductive reasoning, the difference between algorithms and heuristics, and the cognitive biases that lead to systematic errors in thinking. These ideas...

If you do not have a word for something, can you still think about it? This is one of the most debated questions in cognitive psychology, and the answer might surprise you. In this episode, we explore the relationship between language and thought. We cover the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, mental categories known as concepts, prototype theory as described by Eleanor Rosch, and the idea of core defining...

Eyewitness testimony has sent innocent people to prison. Memory is not a recording. It is a story we tell ourselves, and that story can be wrong. In this episode, we explore why forgetting happens and how memories become distorted. We cover Hermann Ebbinghaus and the forgetting curve, proactive and retroactive interference, and the role of schemas in shaping and distorting what we remember. These...

Memory is not like a hard drive. It is a reconstructive process that is far more complex, and far more fascinating, than simply saving and replaying information. In this episode, we explore how memory works in psychology and neuroscience. We cover encoding, storage and retrieval, the role of chunking in improving memory performance, and the key memory models that explain how information is process...

Right now, your brain is ignoring thousands of pieces of information to focus on these words. How does it decide what matters and what to discard? In this episode, we explore the psychology of attention and information processing. We cover selective attention, Broadbent's filter theory and Treisman's attenuation model, tracing how our understanding of attention has developed over decades...

Your brain is not a camera. It is an active interpreter, constantly making predictions and filling in gaps. And sometimes it gets things spectacularly wrong. In this episode, we explore how the brain constructs visual perception and where that process breaks down. We cover optical illusions, pareidolia, perceptual errors and Richard Gregory's constructivist theory of perception, which argues...

Most of us hear a sound and instantly know where it is coming from and what it means. But what happens when that process goes wrong? In this episode, we explore how the brain processes sound, covering sound localisation, auditory grouping, and bottom-up and top-down processing. We explain how these mechanisms help us interpret complex sound environments, and why understanding auditory perception i...