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Research demonstrates the pedagogical value in stressing the 'real world' applicability of subject-specific content in a psychology programme. The move to online teaching prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic has given way to more creative uses of technology to enhance the student experience. In this paper, we demonstrate the value in applied approaches to teaching psychology content, in a way that acknowledges and responds to students' lived experiences. We share a case study of an online seminar, in which students first reflect on their social connections in an online context, before participating in a mock interactive experiment that demonstrates the theory of proximity and familiarity in developing interpersonal relationships. The use of creative, interactive methods to connect social psychology theory to students' lived experiences of learning during COVID-19 may be a useful avenue for future teaching.

A feminist perspective is not only compatible with the history, objectives, and emphases of social psychology, but necessary for its continued vitality' (Lott, 1991, p.505). Social psychology is a core component of the British Psychological Society accreditation of psychology programmes. Typically, the teaching of social psychology relies upon well-established, dominant approaches. However, in recent years, critical, community, and feminist psychologists have provided alternative ways of thinking about the methods, research questions, and epistemological approaches of mainstream social psychology. Feminist social psychology is ultimately concerned with three core aims: (1) the inclusion of women and girls, (2) advocating for diverse, critical perspectives, and (3) promoting equality. I encourage students to think critically about their core social psychology teaching, to promote psychological literacy (i.e. application of content to solving societal problems; Pownall et al., 2021, 2022).

In recent years, there has been a focus in social psychology on efforts to improve the robustness, rigour, transparency and openness of psychological research. This has led to a plethora of new tools, practices and initiatives that each aim to combat questionable research practices and improve the credibility of social psychological scholarship. However, the majority of these efforts derive from quantitative, deductive, hypothesis‐testing methodologies, and there has been a notable lack of in‐depth exploration about what the tools, practices and values may mean for research that uses qualitative methodologies. Here, we introduce a Special Section of BJSP: Open Science, Qualitative Methods and Social Psychology: Possibilities and Tensions. The authors critically discuss a range of issues, including authorship, data sharing and broader research practices. Taken together, these papers urge the discipline to carefully consider the ontological, epistemological and methodological underpinnings of efforts to improve psychological science, and advocate for a critical appreciation of how mainstream open science discourse may (or may not) be compatible with the goals of qualitative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author presents a summary of her innovative work into the social psychology of ‘baby brain' in pregnancy, arguing for the value of adopting feminist approaches to social psychological research. It mentions gender stereotyping is the notion that women are cognitively inferior during their pregnancy and into the immediate postpartum period.

A personal narrative is presented which explore the author's experience of attending the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) annual conference in San Diego, California in June 2019.