Upcoming #BritishAcademy events: Open House, The Human Experience and more

Professor Sophie Scott FBA

Professor Sophie Scott FBA, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London and one of the speakers at the ‘British Academy Late: The Human Experience’

1. What have you been reading, watching, and listening to over the last month?

I recently finished The Desert and the Sea by Michael Scott Moore. An account of his lengthy kidnapping in Somalia, it’s both an extraordinary account of a truly horrific experience and a tremendously human story about love and connection. I’m currently reading Challenger by Alan Higginbotham, which is absolutely gripping. It almost reads like fiction, as it’s so well written and researched, and it’s a critical account of how extremely flawed human decision-making can be and the scale of the fallout from these terrible errors.

I saw Inside Out 2, which I really enjoyed – I loved the changing emotions of the rapidly developing teenage brain, and I especially liked how the character of Nostalgia kept trying to make an appearance and being told to go away – the new emotion of Anxiety says “Riley has 10 years, two graduations and a best friend’s wedding until Nostalgia is needed.”

I listened to Harry Hill’s autobiography, Fight! as an audiobook, and it’s both very funny and very interesting about writing and performing comedy.

2. What book do you always return to?

On The Psychology of Military Incompetence by Norman Dixon – I first encountered this excellent book when I was an undergraduate at the Polytechnic of Central London, and it’s a detailed exploration about how the personalities of those who were successful in military organisations often led to those organisations being led by those who were terrible leaders. Dixon served in the Second World War  and was a mature student at UCL and this book is informed both by his military experience and his study of psychology. Some of the psychology is very much of its time, but his assessment of the nature of effective leadership and decision-making is excellent and can be generalised far beyond military organisations.

3. What’s your guilty pleasure to read, watch or listen to?

Eric and Ernie: The Autobiography of Morecambe & Wise – I always find it very comforting, possibly because it was written by them at the height of their success, and you get a tremendous sense of their progression from performing as children, separately and together and honing their craft over decades. They had a phenomenal gift for the live performance of comedy, and their onstage relationship with each other and with the audience really reflected that. And they didn’t take any of it for granted – they’d experienced failure and knew that it could happen again at any time. A useful thing to always bear in mind!

4. What’s one piece of interesting advice you can give us that you’ve learnt from your subjects?

Studying laughter has really made me value laughter – I started off thinking that it was all about jokes and humour, but all the research indicates that laughter is primarily a social, bonding behaviour, that humans use in extremely complex ways – from making and maintaining social relationships, to expressing love and affection, to coping with stressful situations and beyond.

Strikingly, laughter does work to help people cope with stress but only if you share the laughter – laughing together really does improve people’s moods. I did implement this very deliberately when we first went into lockdown – it was a scary, stressful time and we were all extremely anxious, so from the first day I said that at 5.30pm everyone stopped work and/or home schooling and we would all sit down together as a family and watch something funny on TV. It didn’t really matter what we watched – the point was simply that we’d get a chance to laugh together and feel a bit less stressed out. We got through all seasons of Brooklyn 99, The Office (UK and US) and Seinfeld, multiple times and it did really help.

Our ‘We are the British Academy’ season showcases the pioneering thinkers, leading lights, and inspiring humanities and social sciences research changing our world for the better.