Dr Paul McCarthy
Senior Lecturer in Psychology
Department of Psychology
My research spans social, cognitive and biological psychology. In particular, I am interested in three lines of research.
First, understanding how emotions (especially positive emotions) influence motivation and attention in sport performers. This research also examines the development of expertise from a social (for example, developmental activities) and cognitive perspective (for example, expert-novice differences in learning using eye-tracking).
Second, my colleagues and I examine challenge and threat motivation in sport performers from a social and biological psychology perspective.
Finally, I explore interventions to examine how teams could perform more effectively through personal disclosure and mutual sharing.
The following research questions are under investigation:
- How does personality related to swing speed among golfers?
- Do expert/novice differences emerge in green reading among golfers?
- Could writing about putting performance help golfers putt better
- Does age affect putting performance in professional golf?
- Does induced positive emotion enhance attention on mental and physical tasks?