Experimental Psychology Research Group

Our Research group aims to bring together researchers who use experimental methods to advance our scientific understanding of human behaviour and the processes that underlie it. We conduct basic research across cognitive, developmental, social, and biological areas of psychology and work with internal and external partners so that our research might have impact across many sectors, including policing, consumer behaviour, health, and education.

Meet our team

Lab Co-ordinator: Annie Scudds, Senior Lecturer

Margaret Cousins, Head of School

Julie Kirkham, Senior Lecturer

Nicola Lasikiewicz, Lecturer

Paul Rodway, Senior Lecturer

Astrid Schepman, Senior Lecturer

Suzanne Stewart, Senior Lecturer

Heather Wilkinson, Senior Lecturer

Some of our current projects

Do social inferences act as contextual influences on face perception? (PI: Suzanne Stewart)

When we interpret the emotional expression on another person’s face, we might think we are only paying attention to their face. However, previous research has shown that we actually take into account the surrounding context. For emotions that share certain characteristics (such as fear and disgust -- both are negative), interpretations we make about a social situation can influence the emotion we perceive in a face. In two experiments, we replicate this finding but also show that even when emotions are dissimilar (happiness - sadness), social inferences can slow our judgement of what emotion we perceive in a face. Our study suggests that the conclusions we make about another person’s emotional reaction to a situation strongly influence the speed and the accuracy with which we assess emotional facial expressions.

Self-respect, moral identity, cognition and sense of belonging within undergraduate and postgraduate students (PI: Heather Wilkinson)

The current research study aims to investigate the link between the interactive effect of self-respect, self-control and an academic sense of belonging within Undergraduate and Postgraduate Psychology students. While self-efficacy is concerned with one’s beliefs in one’s ability to carry out certain actions, self-control is concerned with the ability to self-regulate one’s actions and its role in predicting cheating has also been supported (e.g. Bolin, 2004; Mead, Baumeister, Gino, Schweitzer, & Ariely, 2009). However, no previous research has looked at the interactive effects of self-respect, self-control and university belonging. If the study demonstrates a relationship between self-respect and these areas, fostering self-respect would be useful not only to reduce academic dishonesty and malpractice but also increase students’ well-being.

A picture of health: Does knowledge of positive vs. negative health behaviours affect the spatial representation of neutral faces? (PI. Annie Scudds)

The experiment employs an intensive training paradigm to investigate memory and attention for faces previously paired with messages associated with positive and negative health-related behaviours.

Understanding aesthetic preferences for abstract and representational art (PIs: Paul Rodway & Astrid Schepman)

The desire to experience and create aesthetic objects is a property of human behaviour in all societies. To understand what drives aesthetic appreciation our work has examined people’s emotional and semantic responses to abstract and representational art. We have also examined how aesthetic appreciation is shared among individuals and how this develops in children. Our results highlight the influence of several factors in determining aesthetic preferences and, more generally, suggest ways in which humans develop share patterns of understanding and liking.

Recent publications

Zickfeld, J. H., van de Ven, N., Pich, O., Schubert, T. W., Berkessel, J. B, Pizarro J.,…& Vingerhoets, A. (in press). Tears evoke the intention to offer social support: A systematic investigation of the interpersonal effects of emotional crying across 41 countries. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2021.104137

Stewart, S. L. K., Wright, C., & Atherton, C. (2019). Deception detection and truth detection are dependent on different cognitive and emotional traits: An investigation of emotional intelligence, theory of mind, and attention. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 45, 794-807. doi: 10.1177/0146167218796795

Stewart, S. L. K., Schepman, A., Haigh, M., McHugh, R., & Stewart, A. J. (2019). Affective theory of mind inferences contextually influence the recognition of emotional facial expressions. Cognition and Emotion, 33, 272-287. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2018.1450224

Rodway P., Kirkham J., Schepman A., Lambert J., & Locke, A. (2016). The development of shared liking of representational but not abstract art in primary school children and their justifications for liking. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 10:21. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00021

Schepman, A., Rodway, P., & Pritchard, H. (2015) Right-lateralized unconscious, but not conscious, processing of affective environmental sounds. Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition. DOI:10.1080/1357650X.2015.1105245

Schepman, A., Rodway, P., & Pullen, S. J. (2015). Greater cross-viewer similarity of semantic associations for representational than for abstract artworks. Journal of Vision, 15(14), 12. doi:10.1167/15.14.12

Schepman, A., Rodway, P., Pullen, S., & Kirkham, J. (2015). Shared liking and association valence for representational art but not abstract art. Journal of Vision, 15, 11. doi:10.1167/15.5.11

Morrison, A. P., French, P., Stewart, S. L. K., Birchwood, M., Fowler, D., Gumley, A.I., Jones, P. B., Bentall, R. P., Lewis, S. W., Murray, G. K., Patterson, P., Brunet, K., Conroy, J., Parker, S., Reilly, T., Byrne, R., & Dunn, G. (2012). Early Detection and Intervention Evaluation for people at risk of psychosis (EDIE-2): A multisite randomised controlled trial of cognitive therapy for at risk mental states. British Medical Journal. doi: 10.1136/bmj.e2233.

Clucas, C., Karira, J., & St Claire, L. (2012). Respect for a young male with and without a hearing aid: A reversal of the “hearing aid effect” in medical and non-medical students? International Journal of Audiology, 51:10, 739-45, doi:10.3109/14992027.2012.700772.

Wilkinson, H., Holdstock, J.H., Baker, G., Herbert, A., Clague, F., & Downes, J.J. (2012). Long-term accelerated forgetting of verbal and non-verbal information in temporal lobe epilepsy, Cortex, Mar 48(3), 317-32.

Clucas, C., & St Claire, L. (2011). Influence of patients’ self-respect on their experience of feeling respected in doctor-patient interactions. Psychology, Health and Medicine, 16, 2, 166-177. doi: 10.1080/13548506.2010.542168.

Clucas, C., & St Claire, L. (2010). The effect of feeling respected and the patient role on patient outcomes. Applied Psychology: Health and Well-being, 2, 298-322. doi: 10.1111/j.1758-0854.2010.01036.x

Stewart, S. L. K., Corcoran, R., & Drake, R. J. (2009). Mental state references in psychosis: A pilot study of prompted implicit mentalizing during dialogue and its relationship with social functioning. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 14, 53-75. doi: 10.1080/13546800902743449

Stewart, S. L. K., Corcoran, R., & Drake, R. J. (2008). Alignment and theory of mind in schizophrenia. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 13, 431-448. doi: 10.1080/13546800802405610