Year 12 Psychology School Trip To London Zoo

The Social Sciences department had a wonderful day out with Year 12 Psychology students yesterday at London Zoo. We navigated the train, tube and a walk through beautiful Regent's Park to attend a packed Psychology Study Day on animal behaviour. We were able to apply our recent work on psychological approaches, considering the extent to which animal behaviour is innate or learned. We watched a Super Species Live display where we saw positive reinforcement in action as the zookeepers used the reward of food to encourage specific behaviours they wanted repeated. A particular highlight was watching the beautiful Green-Wing Macaws who have learned to hold up their left and right claws so they can be health-checked! After lunch, we got to carry out our own animal observation which gave us real life experience of the importance of sampling and standardisation in psychological research. We delighted in watching the gorillas, giraffes, penguins, lemurs and sharing with each other afterwards what we had noticed.

We finished with a workshop on animal intelligence and discussed how humans attribute intelligence to animals based on whether an animal is “like us”. This links to the problem of ethnocentrism in psychological research and how research findings are limited if we interpret them through a specific lens or belief system. 

It was a pleasure to get to know our Year 12s better during the day’s activities and we are super proud of their impeccable behaviour, manners and teamwork, as well as the curiosity, enthusiasm and energy they showed throughout the day. Well done Year 12 Psychology!