Psychology on the Box..week commencing the 23rd August

Why do most of the programmes relevant to psychology seem to be focused on crime at the moment? The public obviously has an appetite for them, and from a psychology teachers point of view, students love the topic! They make engaging resources too.This week is no exception to the usual forensic-fest. Even is you don't teach it currently, forensic psychology is an option on the new AQA specification so resources may come in handy ( and for all the other specifications too.)

Saturday night brings a documentary called 'Psychopath night' which explores what a psychopath is and how they are identified. Currently figures suggest that around 1% of the population are psychopathic, much higher than originally thought. This documentary challenges the idea that psychopaths are also all murderers. A good myth to shatter. You can see the documentary on Channel 4 at 11.15.

A series of Cracker starts on ITV3 on Monday evening at 11pm. It runs for the following 2 nights too, at the same time. Cracker is a criminal profiler, ably acted by Robbie Coltrane. Methods of profiling do appear on the specifications ( and on the new AQA one) so clips from this series might be useful to you?

On Thursday 28th on Channel 5 at 8pm there is a new series of Anatomy of a Murder. These show the build up to a murder and are a good resource for making students consider all the different factors. They often take Psychology as a subject to be able to explain behaviour, so this is Psychology applied! Discussion following the film about the main contributing factors is always rich and engaging. They all have opinions. I have used such cases as homework for them to watch and fill out a sheet whilst they watch to discuss later. It takes a minimal amount of preparation... which is always a bonus!