PSYCHOLOGIST & NEUROSCIENTIST
NEWS & UPDATES
A summary of my latest updates, including:
new blogs, latest scientific publications, and additions to the website
August 25, 2021
You may have noticed a trend in the app world over the last few years. Apps about everything from Health & Fitness, to Well-being, to Productivity are feeling more like games. They all seem to have levels, streaks, badges, and leaderboards. A lot of these apps even have their own economies where points can be exchanged for features. This is all part of a growing trend called Gamification.
NEW JOB AT NIELSENIQ
July 31, 2021
As a few of you know today is my last day at Gorilla Experiment Builder. It's been a whirlwind year and I'm incredibly grateful to Jo Evershed for giving me this wonderful opportunity. I've learnt so much from her whilst getting to work with amazing clients & colleagues.
I'm excited to announce I'll be joining NielsenIQ as Director of Neuroscience in Sept. I'm incredibly excited for this next stage in my career and can't wait to tell you all about it!
June 16, 2021
The Covid-19 pandemic has forced most behavioural science researchers to transition from in-person and lab-based testing to online research. The sudden explosion in the quantity of online research studies has inevitably affected both participant recruitment and engagement. In this increasingly crowded market space, how can researchers maximise data quality and recruitment? In the last decade, gamification has been increasingly employed as a tool to promote recruitment, engagement, and learning in a range of fields (i.e., marketing, education, health and productivity tools, and fundamental research). Here, we review the concept of gamification in behavioural science research, outline some of the different ways it is used, and discuss examples where gamification has been employed to great effect in online research.
June 14, 2021
Rarely do students sign up to a psychology degree because they’re passionate about normal distributions and conditional statements. Programming knowledge can help, but it can also detract you from focussing on the important parts of your research.
May 4, 2021
Many academics have thought about life outside of academia. Who hasn’t found themselves thinking ‘I wish I could just drop this marking and become a…’ at some point in their career? Maybe it’s a big transition like opening a cafe, working in a bookshop, or running a vineyard. Or maybe it’s finding a similar job outside of academia with a better work-life balance. As more people are turning that dream into reality, we wanted to share the stories of two academics that happened to move into the same company.
December 31, 2020
Like most people, this year has been an emotional rollercoaster filled with highs and lows. Maybe if I'd known what was coming I wouldn't have embarked on a massive career change...
August 14, 2020
Data visualisation can be a great way to reflect on your research. Here's a simple tutorial in R for extracting text and presenting it.
July 30, 2020
Are you wearing a mask? How do you feel when you see other people wearing masks? You may not realise it but just learning the value preferences of other people changes your own preferences and makes you more like them.
July 20, 2020
Attention and memory are two of the most studied areas of psychology and cognitive neuroscience. They are routinely used as indicators of brand and consumer engagement. But do we really know what these words mean? Or to put this another way, when we use these terms do we mean the same thing? Click the title to go to the full blog post.
July 17, 2020
I'm pleased to unveil my brand new website. I'll be updating this regularly with news and views, including a new blog that will begin with a series of posts about the psychology and neuroscience underpinning social influence.
THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP
July 12, 2020
My PhD student Louisa Thomas presented our recent work at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies conference. We show how implicit social influence is more powerful when learning about the values of friends compared to strangers. This is linked to increased brain activity in social brain regions.
Interested in learning more about my research?
August 17, 2021
One of my passions is science communication. I've always enjoyed teaching and the pandemic was an opportunity to embrace the social influencer within! I've decided to collate all the videos and media articles I've been involved with and place them in one handy location - click here.
If you'd like to engage my services for public speaking, please feel free to contact me.
June 6, 2022
A tool is only as good as the question you're asking. So with that in mind, I really enjoyed the recent #AttentionInContext workshop hosted by Thinkbox. It was also a great opportunity to reflect on the last 9 months at my new role as Neuroscience Director at BASES NielsenIQ. In particular, it made me consolidate my thoughts on the role of attention in advertising. When is attention a useful metric for marketers?