Hélène Joffe

• PhD Psychology
• Professor (Full) at University College London

Objective: The ways that mental health concepts are represented on social media could have significant implications for lay understandings and behavior. The current article reports an analysis of how trauma is represented on TikTok, one of the world’s most popular social media platforms. Method: Following a search for content using the hashtag #tra...

Disasters are distressing and disorientating. They often result in enduring community-wide devastation. Consequently, young people may seek support from trusted adults to scaffold their emotional responses and to support their psychosocial recovery. An important non-familial adult in a student’s life is their teacher. However, few studies have exam...

Despite the potentially catastrophic nature of disasters, survivors can be highly resilient. Resilience, the capacity to successfully adapt to adversity, is both individual and collective. Policymakers and academics have recently emphasised the importance of community resilience, but with little consideration of local survivors’ perspectives, parti...

Objective: Readiness among laypeople to classify ordinary adversities as “trauma” may activate cognitive, social, and behavioral patterns that either promote proactive help-seeking or exacerbate mental health difficulties. Clinical understandings of trauma have expanded across recent decades to encompass a wide range of aversive experiences. While...

Disasters can result in poor psychosocial outcomes for adolescents. One pathway to mitigate these risks and foster resilience is via schools, where teachers can offer students support. However, existing research lacks consideration of the role schools and teachers play from the perspective of students, particularly those from marginalized populatio...

Adequate water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) facilities in schools are vital, especially for girls. This study addresses a gap in assessing the adequacy of WASH facilities' repair at schools affected by natural hazards. Central Sulawesi was used as a case study where principal interviews were conducted at 26 schools, and structured observations w...

Background: Disasters can have long-lasting impacts on mental health. Intrusive memories have been found to be common and persistent in the aftermath of earthquakes. Objective: To explore, using diaries, intrusive memories' presence, content, characteristics, and relationship with probable post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a small rural c...

Parenting children with conduct problems (CP) is challenging, yet very little research has examined parenting using both quantitative and qualitative methods, from the perspective of the child and their parent/caregiver, and separately for those with high vs. low levels of callous-unemotional traits (HCU vs. LCU). One hundred and forty-six boys age...

Disasters incurred by natural hazards affect young people most. Schools play a vital role in safeguarding the wellbeing of their pupils. Consideration of schools’ psychosocial influence on children may be vital to resilience-building efforts in disaster-vulnerable settings. This paper presents an evidence-based conceptualization of how schools are...

COVID-19 has required researchers to adapt methodologies for remote data collection. While virtual interviewing has traditionally received limited attention in the qualitative literature, recent adaptations to the pandemic have prompted increased discussion and adoption. Yet, current discussion has focussed on practical and ethical concerns and ret...

The recent rise in the prevalence of loneliness, particularly among young adults, coupled with its deleterious effects on wellbeing, makes understanding the issue of pressing concern. As most research on loneliness has focused on older adults, this study explored how 48 young adults aged 18–24 subjectively experienced loneliness through free associ...

Young adults are currently the loneliest demographic in the UK and other Western countries, yet little is known about how they see the causes of their loneliness. Thus, the objective of this study is to explore the subjective causes of loneliness among young adults (18–24 years old), particularly those of lower socio-economic status (SES) who are i...

Loneliness is a rapidly growing problem globally and has attracted a great deal of attention in light of the COVID‐19 pandemic. Young adults, and in particular, those residing in deprived areas are currently the loneliest group in the United Kingdom. Utilizing a novel‐free association technique, young adults’ experiences of loneliness were explored...

Pubescent girls face unique emotional barriers to returning to school after a disaster concerning water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). This paper explores themes of WASH, gender violence, the lack of dignity and sense of shame arising from inadequate WASH facilities for girls in disaster settings. We conducted a structured literature review of 126...

There is growing recognition that young adults of low socioeconomic status are among the loneliest in the United Kingdom. However, there has been a dearth of qualitative research exploring how they cope with their loneliness. Using a novel free association technique, this study sought to explore how young adults (n = 48) in London’s most deprived a...

This paper reviews the key disaster risk management (DRM) frameworks used for protecting children's wellbeing in disaster settings and identifies a lack of consideration for (1) psychosocial and (2) water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) needs. It also demonstrates that these two domains are meaningfully linked, as access to adequate WASH provision m...

Cognitive theories of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) suggest that intrusive memories result from disrupted information processing during traumatic memory encoding and are characterized by fear, helplessness, and horror at recall. Existing naturalistic studies are limited by the absence of direct comparisons between specific moments that do an...

Young adults (16–24 years old) are currently the loneliest group in Western countries. In particular, young adults of lower socio-economic status (SES) living in the most deprived areas are loneliest in the United Kingdom. This mixed-methods study explored the experience of loneliness among this under-explored demographic in London. Using a novel f...

Peritraumatic reactions such as fear, psychic and somatoform dissociation, tonic immobility, data-driven processing, and mental defeat are important in the etiology of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, current measures of such reactions overlap conceptually and do not clearly identify distinct peritraumatic processes. It is not known w...

Thoughts, feelings, and behaviors during traumatic events, that is, peritraumatic reactions, are key to post-trauma psychopathology development. Qualitative research is required to investigate whether existing quantitative methods capture the range and complexity of peritraumatic reactions as described by survivors. Semi-structured interviews were...

The evidence that social relationships are associated with well‐being is so strong that it is taken as a ‘fact’ (Kushlev et al., 2018, Journal of Research in Personality, 74, 124). The bulk of the existing evidence derives from research examining social relationships with close others, such as family, romantic partners, and friends (Dolan et al., 2...

Evaluating the intercoder reliability (ICR) of a coding frame is frequently recommended as good practice in qualitative analysis. ICR is a somewhat controversial topic in the qualitative research community, with some arguing that it is an inappropriate or unnecessary step within the goals of qualitative analysis. Yet ICR assessment can yield numero...

Background: Attributions of both cause and blame form part of the diagnostic criteria for PTSD in DSM-5. Most work on attributions and psychopathology has focused on survivors of interpersonal violence and the two types of attribution have not been investigated together in natural disaster contexts. Previous work has identified that attributions to...

The distinction between natural and human-made disasters is ingrained in everyday language. Disaster scientists have long been critical of this dichotomy. Nonetheless, virtually no attention has been paid to how disaster survivors conceptualize the causes of the disasters they experience. In this mixed-methods longitudinal study, 112 survivors of t...

Vulnerability to natural disasters is increasing globally1–3. In parallel, the responsibility for natural hazard preparedness has shifted to communities and individuals⁴. It is therefore crucial that households increase their preparedness, yet adoption of household preparedness measures continues to be low, even in high-risk regions5–8. In addition...

Parenting children with conduct problems (CP) is challenging, yet very little is known about the impact of the child’s behaviour on family functioning or how parents of children with CP perceive their child. The aim of this research was to examine whether families with children with CP and high vs. low levels of callous–unemotional traits (HCU vs....

This data article presents the UK City LIFE1 data set for the city of Birmingham, UK. UK City LIFE1 is a new, comprehensive and holistic method for measuring the livable sustainability performance of UK cities. The Birmingham data set comprises 346 indicators structured simultaneously (1) within a four-tier, outcome-based framework in order to aid...

This paper explores how earthquake scientists conceptualise earthquake prediction, particularly given the conviction of six earthquake scientists for manslaughter (subsequently overturned) on 22 October 2012 for having given inappropriate advice to the public prior to the L'Aquila earthquake of 6 April 2009. In the first study of its kind, semi-str...

Recently, much of the literature on sharing in cities has focused on the sharing economy, in which people use online platforms to share underutilized assets in the marketplace. This view of sharing is too narrow for cities, as it neglects the myriad of ways, reasons, and scales in which citizens share in urban environments. Research presented here...

Background: Community preparedness for natural hazards remains poor across cultures. In addition, evaluated intervention studies in natural hazard preparedness are scarce and contain methodological problems. This study presents results of an intervention study on earthquake preparedness conducted in Seattle, U.S.A. Methodology: This is a quasi-expe...

Published, evaluated community intervention studies concerning natural hazard preparedness are rare. Most lack a rigorous methodology, thereby hampering the development of evidence-based interventions. This paper describes the rationale and methodology of a cross-cultural, longitudinal intervention study on earthquake and home fire preparedness, te...

This paper explores city dweller aspirations for cities of the future in the context of global commitments to radically reduce carbon emissions by 2050; cities contribute the vast majority of these emissions and a growing bulk of the world's population lives in cities. The particular challenge of creating a carbon reduced future in democratic count...

Current community preparedness campaigns and interventions for natural hazards are not as effective as they aim to be. Research consistently shows that levels of preparedness for natural hazards are low across cultures, despite increased efforts in public hazard education and outreach. Individuals living in areas at risk of natural disasters are no...

Natural or human-made hazards may occur at any time. Although one might assume that individuals plan in advance for such potentially damaging events, the existing literature indicates that most communities remain inadequately prepared. In the past, research in this area has focused on identifying the most effective ways to communicate risk and elic...

Levels of natural hazard preparedness continue to be low across cultures. Studies on natural hazard preparedness have consistently found that simply providing people with information about risk is not sufficient to change preparedness behaviours. Research in the field of social representations and emergency preparedness indicate that it is a combin...

In the burgeoning debate about neuroscience’s role in contemporary society, the issue of brain optimization, or the application of neuroscientific knowledge and technologies to augment neurocognitive function, has taken center stage. Previous research has characterized media discourse on brain optimization as individualistic in ethos, pressuring in...

This chapter highlights the key role played by self-control in people's social representations of themselves and of others. Self-control is the ability to exercise restraint over one's emotions, desires and actions. An ethos is a fundamental value within a given culture that displays moral character. Thus the self-control ethos is the guiding value...

Neuroscience research on sex difference is currently a controversial field, frequently accused of purveying a 'neurosexism' that functions to naturalise gender inequalities. However, there has been little empirical investigation of how information about neurobiological sex difference is interpreted within wider society. This paper presents a case s...

This commentary highlights the importance of attending to the sociocultural contexts that foster essentialist ideas. It contends that Cimpian & Salomon's (C&S's) model undervalues the extent to which the development of essentialist beliefs is contingent on social experience. The result is a restriction of the model's applicability to real-world ins...

Recent years have seen a major expansion of the position of neuroscience in the mass media, public policy, and legal dialogue. Drawing on interviews with 48 London residents, this article examines how people with no prior involvement with neuroscience make sense of the concept of “brain research.” Thematic analysis of the data furnished little evid...

This article traces the history of free association in psychoanalysis, cognitive psychology, and social psychology and builds on these traditions to develop a novel research method for eliciting how people think and feel about social and personal issues. These range from climate change to pandemics, from earthquakes to urban living. The method, ter...

The present study utilises social representations theory to explore common sense conceptualisations of global warming risk using an in-depth, qualitative methodology. Fifty-six members of a British, London-based 2008 public were initially asked to draw or write four spontaneous "first thoughts or feelings" about global warming. These were then expl...

Much research on people's seismic adjustment activity in highly seismic areas has assumed that low levels of adjustment are attributable to insufficient awareness of seismic risk. Empirical evidence for this assumption is weak, and there is growing appreciation of the role played by sociocultural and emotional variables in risk perception and behav...

The prominence of neuroscience in the public sphere has escalated in recent years, provoking questions about how the public engages with neuroscientific ideas. Commentaries on neuroscience's role in society often present it as having revolutionary implications, fundamentally overturning established beliefs about personhood. The purpose of this arti...

This chapter explores how lay publics respond to potential disasters. It contends that the current risk perception field largely neglects the common-sense beliefs and emotions that lie at the root of public responses to risks. The chapter challenges several of the assumptions that buttress the conventional construal of the terms ‘risk’ and ‘percept...

With the major growth of the world’s population over the past century, as well as rapid urbanisation, people increasingly live in crowded cities. This trend is often accompanied by proliferation of poorly built housing, uncontrolled use of land, occupation of unsafe environments and overstretched services. When a natural hazard strikes such a city...

The public profile of neurodevelopmental research has expanded in recent years. This paper applies social representations theory to explore how early brain development was represented in the UK print media in the first decade of the 21st century. A thematic analysis was performed on 505 newspaper articles published between 2000 and 2010 that discus...

The media are increasingly fascinated by neuroscience. Here, we consider how neuroscientific discoveries are thematically represented in the popular press and the implications this has for society. In communicating research, neuroscientists should be sensitive to the social consequences neuroscientific information may have once it enters the public...

Using social representations theory this paper casts light on the pattern of content that characterises the public response to emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases (EID). The pattern is: distancing the disease from the self/ one's in-groups; blame of particular entities for the disease's origin and/or spread; and stigmatisation of those who...

As a route to providing a framework for elucidating the content of public thinking concerning emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases (EID), this article examines public engagement with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). It explores how British lay publics represent MRSA utilising a social representations framework. For this g...

A large proportion of people the world over do nothing or very little to adjust to seismic hazards. Antecedents of seismic adjustment adoption rates relate to fundamental motivations to understand, to belong, to enhance a sense of self-worth, to trust and to control. These motivations are accommodated within socioeconomic and cultural constraints....

The majority of people at risk from earthquakes do little or nothing to reduce their vulnerability. Over the past 40 years social scientists have tried to predict and explain levels of seismic hazard adjustment using models from behavioural sciences such as psychology. The present paper is the first to synthesise the major findings from the interna...

In contrast to the psychological literature on adolescent smoking, little research has investigated the social identities of adult smokers. This study aimed to identify shared 'smoking identities' amongst a sample of 64 British smokers from different socio-economic groups using Q-methodology. Participants were asked to sort 70 items concerning smok...

This study explores the link between affiliation to one's own group and the endorsement of multiculturalism, among a sample of young White and Black British people. The White British (dominant) and Black British (non-dominant) group are tested with regard to a difference between in-group affiliation and endorsement of multicultural ideology. Existi...

From earthquakes to epidemics, AIDS to industrial accidents, the mass media continually bring into our daily lives the awareness of risk. But how do people respond to this increased awareness? How do people cope with living in what has been termed 'the risk society'? This book attempts to explain how, within a given social and cultural context, ind...

The present investigation identifies the key images that British newspapers use to represent climate change risks. In doing so, it widens the scope of the burgeoning literature analysing textual content of climate change media information. This is particularly important given visual information's ability to arouse emotion, and the risk perception l...

This study examines women's social representations of female orgasm. Fifty semi-structured interviews were conducted with British women. The data were thematically analysed and compared with the content of female orgasm-related writing in two women's magazines over a 30-year period. The results indicate that orgasm is deemed the goal of sex with em...

This paper explores whether, and to what extent, national newspaper messages tally with public perceptions about meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). It compares research on media messages about MRSA with interview data gathered from a demographically diverse sample of 60 people interviewed from the Greater London area. Across the int...

This paper integrates literature from the social sciences and humanities concerning the persuasive impact of visual material, highlighting issues of emotion and identification. Visuals are used not only to illustrate news and feature genres but also in advertising and campaigns that attempt to persuade their target audiences to change attitudes and...

This theoretical article presents a cultural-level analysis of stereotype content concerning derogated outgroups in the West. It proposes that the ethos of self-control is a key source of widespread thinking about outgroups, and thus a key factor in the social construction of certain groups as superior and others as inferior. Drawing on the social...

Issues of communication lie at the heart of "risk perception" since the vast majority of risks would be known to only those who experience them were it not for the mass media. The historically individualist field of "risk perception" has tended to pay little attention to the contents of the mass media and the role these played in constructing risk-...

L'A. presente une approche psycho-dynamique de la theorie des representations sociales. Celle-ci est censee permettre de mieux comprendre de quelle maniere les individus repondent a l'evolution de leur environnement social. Il montre que certaines images elaborees pendant l'enfance liees a la representation du « moi » et de l'« autre » constituent...

The concept the “other” is central to a theory of identity and identity formation. Social psychology has not made sufficient use of it. Outside the discipline, “othering” is widely utilized to explain Western ways of subordinating certain peoples and thereby constructing superior identities. However, the process by which people buttress their own s...

This chapter sets out a way in which an emotion — namely, anxiety — shapes the response to mass crises, such as potential epidemics, threats of terrorism, and influxes of refugees. The sense in which the term ‘anxiety’ is used in this chapter can be defined in relation to fear: fear is said to have a specific object to which it is a reaction, where...

This paper considers the symbolic, experiential and institutional basis of the stigmatization of British smokers, particularly in the context of the higher rates of smoking in lower socio-economic status (SES) groups. Interviews based on a free association task were conducted with 40 smokers and non-smokers from higher and lower SES groups. Themati...

The so-called 'hospital superbug' methcillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) became a topic of media and political concern in Britain from the middle of the 1990s. It was increasingly politicised in the period leading up to the British General Election of 2005. This study examines the meanings of MRSA that circulate in Britain by analysing n...

Issues of communication lie at the heart of risk perception since the vast majority of risks would be known to only those local to them were it not for the mass media. The historically individualist field of "risk perception" paid little heed to the contents of the mass media and the role they played in constructing riskrelated thinking. Rather, th...

The paper explores the social representation of the 2001 Hong Kong avian bird flu epidemic from the perspective of local women. Fifty women were asked to describe their first thoughts about the flu, and these were subsequently explored. Thematic analysis of the semi-structured interviews revealed that the first thoughts were characterized by: (a) t...

This textbook offers an excellent introduction to the variety of research methods used within the fields of clinical and health psychology. The book provides a detailed, yet concise, explanation of both qualitative and quantitative approaches and draws upon case-study examples to illustrate how these can be used in a variety of health-care settings...

This study explores shared thinking about HIV/AIDS among Zambian adolescents. With high numbers affected, the question is how this group represents its risk. Social representations of the origin, spread and risk of HIV/AIDS were gleaned via 60 semistructured interviews with urban 15 to 20 year olds. A systematic analysis revealed a shared picture:...

This paper is concerned with how people make meaning of the risks they face. It explores certain assumptions of the risk perception approaches, which dominate the area. It argues that despite changes currently taking place in the field, such models still focus on static, intrapersonal processes, with many viewing human thinking as analogous to erro...

The author examines the specific contribution that social representations research has made to health psychology. In particular, the approach highlights the symbolic, emotive and social aspects of how lay people make meaning of facets of health and illness, and emphasizes the importance of the evolution of these meanings. Empirical work on health a...

This paper proposes that health promotion may benefit from a social psychological theory that maps the contents and evolution of lay `logic'. Social representations theory forms the focus, since it facilitates entry into people's meaning systems regarding risks, as well as into the functions served by such meanings. The theory is assessed once the...

In western cultures lay people are faced with a plethora of far-flung illnesses, relayed to them by the mass media. A number of social scientists have called for scrutiny of the link between people's patterns of thinking concerning such events, and the messages to which they are exposed. Using the outbreaks of Ebola in Africa in the mid-1990s as a...

The study explores the link between remembered non-verbal sexual communication in the home, current sexual behaviours and feelings of sexual guilt, among a sample of young British men and women. Non-verbal sexual communication encapsulates: openness about nudity in the home; the showing of affection between parents; signs of parental sexual activit...

Non-adherence to regimes recommended by health practitioners is prevalent in the health and safety area. Even the most effective of interventions does not tend to lead to substantial improvements in adherence. This paper reviews models from the health psychology sphere that predict which factors might lead people to practice health-enhancing behavi...

Social representations theory is evaluated with a view to ascertaining the contribution it makes to the AIDS field. Utilising a primarily European body of research, the various processes involved in social representation formation, and the functions served by social representations, are explicated. Social representations theory's fundamental contri...

Many academics argue that the AIDS-related debates are hackneyed, that the area has been oversubscribed and that most AIDS research merely reinvents the wheel. I disagree. The energy which continues to be dedicated to the area is invaluable not only in terms of the theoretical and preventive terrain which is still to be covered, but with regard to...

The KABP paradigm (knowledge-attitude-belief-practice) dominates social scientific AIDS research and prevention programmes. This paper questions a number of the assumptions of the paradigm both theoretically and empirically. Having discussed a number of the paradigm's shortcomings, an alternative, a social representational approach, is proposed. Th...

This article outlines some of the occupational stresses in dental practice. In a profession which combines skillful precision with aesthetics many dentists are vulnerable to stress-yet most practitioners minimize or deny the suggestion that they face "burn-out'. Regular seminars on pressures pertaining to dental practice would provide support to pr...

This paper explores the consequences of the socio-historical exclusion of women, and of young people, from public life. It is based upon an empirical study in which depth-interviews were conducted with 96 Britons, male and female, and of a younger and an older generation, concerning their private and public lives. Self-proclaimed ignorance is signi...

Discerning the complex factors influencing male sex work is an important element of understanding HIV transmission. The present study examines a sample of London-based masseurs and street workers' ideas concerning their sexual encounters, their partners and their role in society. Unsafe sex is associated with (1) a lack of perception of control in...

Dominant social representations concerning the origin and spread of AIDS have frequently contained allusions to 'risk groups'. This paper focuses on the social psychological consequences of these allusions for members of one of the 'risk groups': gay men. As part of a wider study, depth interviews were conducted with a sample of British and South A...

This paper by the LSE Social Representations Group, challenges the notion that consensus defined as 'agreement in opinion' is at the heart of the theory of social representations. We suggest that the problem of consensus is a highly complex aspect of social life requiring appraisal. Consensus refers neither to mere agreement nor to the mere sharedn...

Inter-group blame for AIDS has been documented across a myriad of cultures. The dynamics of the blame have not been systematically theorised. A cross-cultural study of social representations of AIDS in South Africa and in Britain was used to forge a theory of inter-group blame. Semi-structured, depth interviews were carried out with sixty young, ed...