Psychology students Svetlana Gatt and Sarah Tabone placed first in the NSTF Malta Student Psychology Forum in 2014, a programme targeted for all students interested in psychology and social wellbeing, and learnt quite a bit through their experience.
“I had read about the Forum and was quite interested, later mentioning it to Svetlana during a lecture… and we began to working together. It was a very positive experience however required a lot of work and preparation. We would often be on Google Drive or Facebook discussing and preparing for both our presentation, as well as questions for others”.
They chose censorship as their topic, while others had subjects including immigration and cannabis.
Both Svetlana and Sarah explained that one of their main arguments against censorship was that by denying an object to a person, that person would want the object even more.
An argument in favour of censorship saw the girls describe the Bandura Bobo doll experiment, where children watched videos of other people being aggressive towards a Bobo doll. The children were then placed in a room with the same doll and those who had watched the video were quite violent towards it. “We gave this as an example of how censorship can be important for vulnerable sections of society”.
An important tool earned by those who participated was the ability to “apply what we learnt through theoretical concepts into a more practical approach,” the two students said. “Presentation skills were also quite important, especially when judges were questioning us and criticising our arguments”.
As a prize, the winning team, in this case Sarah and Svetlana, participated in an exchange with the SPS-NIP Netherlands Instituut van Psychologen. In the first stage of the exchange, the Dutch participants came to Malta. The theme for their stay in Malta was culture and identity. The week included a number of cultural visits to main Maltese tourist attractions, including the ĦaġarQim temples, Mdina, Valletta, an agricultural visit, a regatta and boċċi activity, a visit to the Malta Experience and Sagra Infermeria as well as a visit to a Maltese feast, Gozo and Comino. In addition, “activities which encouraged them to think about our identity as Maltese, and in the case of the Dutch, their identity as Dutch, and discussed this as a whole group.
“One particularly fun activity was a ‘cook the culture’ activity, where us Maltese had to give directions to the Dutch on how to prepare certain simple Maltese dishes”.
One of the girls was unable to travel to The Netherlands. Svetlana having went, said the theme of the exchange in the Netherlands was 'Challenge Your Senses'. “As part of the exchange experience, we were involved in several workshops and cultural outings. The very first workshop related to cross-cultural communication. We discussed the Lewis Model of Culture. We were also divided into teams and given roles; an interviewer, an interviewee and an observer, all coming from different backgrounds. It was evident that conducting and experiencing the interview from a different cultural perspective was no easy task, and helped us become more aware of how we can unknowingly come across to others not accustomed to our practices”.