Psychology Research Group

Prizing intellectual curiosity, adventurousness and a willingness to wrestle with difficult issues, Psychology’s cutting-edge research is rich and diverse, drawing on a research toolkit encompassing experimental design, qualitative analysis, anthropological observations, eye tracking, EEG measures and study of genetic markers. Staff collaborate within the division, nationally and internationally.

Members of the division publish in prestigious outlets, including Behavioral and Brain SciencesProceedings of the National Academy of SciencesJournal of Experimental Psychology: GeneralJournal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & CognitionCognitionAppetite, Maternal and Child NutritionCognition & EmotionEmotionEvolution and Human Behavior and British Journal of Social Psychology.

Our research has been funded by the ESRC, Leverhulme Trust, the British Academy, the British Psychological Society, the Experimental Psychology Society, Feeding for Life Foundation, MacMillan Cancer Support, Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, Airbus UK, and the EU FP7 framework, among others.Our research is impactful. Our staff are developing apps and games to increase fruit and vegetable consumption in children.

We host several special interest clusters, including health psychology, cognition & neuroscience, psychology & technology, and self & identity. We have strengths in cross-cultural research, higher metal processing, cyber-cognition, gamification, eating behaviours, neuroscience, and emotion. Current projects include promoting good outcomes in LGBT cancer care; music as a regulation strategy for emotional eating; multicultural identity and wellbeing; decrease of cognitive decline, malnutrition and sedentariness by elderly empowerment in lifestyle management and social inclusion (DO RE MI project); a research monograph on cybercognition; multimodal approaches to brain function; how people create new norms; real-time language comprehension; implicit and explicit learning in second language acquisition; and cross-cultural study of emotion, facial displays, and social influence.

Research Clusters

Health Psychology

Cognition and Neuroscience

Psychology and Technology

Self and Identity

Contact

Prof Shira Elqayam
Research Lead for the Division of Psychology and REF coordinator for UoA4 (Psychology, Psychiatry and Neurosiences)
E: selqayam@dmu.ac.uk    

Dr Iain Williamson
REF impact coordinator for UoA4 (Psychology, Psychiatry and Neurosiences)
E: iwilliamson@dmu.ac.uk

Dr Mark Scase 
Head of Division of Psychology and Associate Head of the School of Applied Social Sicences
E: mscase@dmu.ac.uk  

Prof Nicky Hudson
Head of Research for the School of Applied Social Sicences
E: nhudson@dmu.ac.uk

Prof Brown
Head of Research for the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences
E: brown@dmu.ac.uk   

Research Equipment

Many members of staff use specialist equipment to conduct their research. We currently have the following:

  • Three Eye Tribe eye-trackers
  • Eye-Link 1000 plus eye-tracker from SR Research
  • SMI eye-tracker
  • BioSemi Active Two EEG portable system with 128 electrodes
  • Perception laboratory, equipped with a Cambridge Research Systems Visual Stimulus Generator and light box for conducting plate based tests under controlled lighting conditions
  • Specialist software (AD instruments Labchart, Superlab, Psychopy, Matlab and Qualtrics)