Social, Health & Developmental Psychology
The Social, Health, and Developmental Psychology theme comprises three collaborative groupings, all of which conduct basic and applied research addressing broad issues regarding how we are affected by the situation, the factors that influence our health, and how people develop.
The School’s interests in Social Psychology use diverse concepts and levels of analysis to understand and predict behaviour. The primary research areas within this group are affect and emotions, attitudes and values, risk perception and environment (via the Understanding Risk group), and social identity. The School's interests in Wellbeing, Health and Mental Health explore issues such as psychosocial influences on reproductive health, health factors affecting human performance and mood, nutrition and behaviour, and chronic fatigue syndrome. The School’s interests in Developmental Science cover areas such as autism (via the Wales Autism Research Centre), the early development of aggression and prosocial behaviour, peer and family relationships and social cognitive abilities in infancy and childhood (via Development@Cardiff), and on the policy and practice implications of this research.
There are numerous cross-theme connections that enrich the research of individuals within the grouping. For example, Greg Maio’s research on values has been integrated with Ulrike Hahn’s work on language and reasoning. Merideth Gattis’ work on cognitive development is informed by the Learning and Development group. Tony Manstead and Andrew Lawrence jointly consider the neural correlates of emotion. Russell Spears’ interests in social identity have led to collaborations with Mike Le Pelley's research on human associative learning. Further, members of all three groupings are engaged in research in collaboration with CUBRIC.