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On Thursday 20th June, CLC’s first ever cohort of Psychology students ventured on a trip to the West Midlands Safari Park. We had an amazing day taking part in numerous psychology activities around the park!

When we first arrived in the morning, we made our way to a session on phobias, led by some of the park rangers. They taught us all about the fascinating links between phobias and conservation of biodiversity, explaining how phobias such as arachnophobia (fear of spiders) can lead to excessive killing of the creatures and drastically reduce their population size. Thus, we all learned the important lesson that psychology is implicated not just in the field of mental health but in every area of society, and that an understanding of human behaviour and phobias is crucial in conserving the natural world.

The rangers then led us in a phobia workshop, during which we pretended to have a fear of spiders and devise a treatment plan to overcome this phobia, using a behavioural technique known as systematic desensitisation. This process works by imagining the worst possible scenario involving the subject of a phobia (for example, at the top of my list was a spider sitting on my head), then creating steps which slowly work up to this. A stick insect was then brought out in place of a spider and we tried out the steps of our systematic desensitisation approach, which ended with most of us touching if not holding the stick insect! We then attempted a different approach, known as flooding. This is when an individual is suddenly exposed to the fear with no working up to it. The rangers brought out a rat for us to trial this with, and most of us had a go at holding the rat and letting him crawl on us.

After this, we ate our lunch while driving around the safari. We got to see countless animals, from giraffes, to rhinos, to elephants, to lions! But the observation of animals did not stop there! The week prior to the trip we had planned out an observational study of animal behaviour to do in groups after the safari. We had researched our chosen animals, finding out their common behaviours and creating a checklist. After the safari, we found our animals, selected a few to observe and tallied all the behaviours on our checklists within a certain period. When we were back at school we wrote up our experiments, writing an aim, hypothesis and method and usiing a statistical test on our results to assess the inter-observer reliability (seeing if all group members had observed similar behaviours in the animals).

After our observational study it was time for the incredible sea lion show, during which we heard all about the ways that the sea lions are trained and got to watch them perform their amazing tricks. We were able to relate this to our study of Pavlov and his theories of classical conditioning, as well as the concepts of positive reinforcement which were used to train these animals. I found it fascinating to hear of the ways that the theories we learn in class can be applied to so many fields and used in many ways!

The day of course could not end without a quick stop to the theme park, where we enjoyed some time in the sun riding the many rollercoasters and rides that the park offered, a truly fitting and adrenaline-packed way to end a day full of fun and new psychology knowledge!

A huge thank you to Dr Stevenson and Dr Norman who meticulously planned this trip so incredibly and allowed our whole cohort to have the most amazing time. A much needed break from school after the intense two weeks of exams!

Emily, SFC1