The discipline of social and cultural psychology is broadly centred on understanding the ways in which culture and society shape how people think, behave and relate to one another.
In the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science (PBS), our international experts come from multidisciplinary backgrounds to approach and draw on theories, concepts and methods to tackle the pressing issues of today, including a strong focus on inequality, the Global South, and responses to global emergencies.
Experts in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science work across the following broad themes and topics:
Cognition
Human development under adversity and conflict
Global emergencies
Community development
Health and science communication
Individual and social decision-making
Perfectionism
Cultural and societal change
WEIRD psychology.
Our research is anchored in a shared evidence-based approach that is theoretically informed and policy relevant.
Expertise in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science
Key areas of expertise: Contextual effects; group perception; person perception; ensemble perception; crowding; eye gaze perception; emotion; facial familiarity; age perception; psychophysics; eye tracking.
Key areas of expertise: Public understanding and public engagement; rhetoric and science communication; resistance and critical innovation studies; public opinion; common sense; conspiracy mentality; mass media monitoring and text analysis.
Key areas of expertise: Cognition and culture; evolutionary perspectives; categorisation and concepts; conspiracy theory; agency; self-construal; religion.
Key areas of expertise:Social identity dynamics; effect of mergers on group identities; how social identity can affect well-being; impact of multiple social identities on well-being and performance; social identity dynamics in leadership; ethics of online research.
Key areas of expertise: Social and community development; human development under contextual adversity; social representations; socio-cultural psychology of community; public sphere; Latin America.
Key areas of expertise: Assimilation; behavioural sciences; corruption; cross-cultural psychology; cultural and social change; data science; democracy; economic psychology; entrepreneurship; human evolution; innovation; intelligence; multiculturalism; cultural evolution.
Key areas of expertise: Intergroup conflict; intergroup boundaries; political narratives; collective memory; contact research; social representations; dialogical interdependencies; qualitative methodology.
Key areas of expertise: Identity threat; stigma; Social Identity Theory; Social Representations Theory; stereotype threat; welfare benefits; unemployment.
Key areas of expertise: Political psychology; intergroup relations & conflict; behavioural economics of poverty; Inequality & social stratification; power & status; evolutionary psychology.
