Taylor and Francis Group is part of the Academic Publishing Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 3099067.

Informa
The Psychology
of Everything
Know the psychology.
Understand your world.
See life in a new way.
Series from Routledge

Welcome!

People are fascinated by psychology, and what makes humans tick. Why do we think and behave the way we do? We’ve all met armchair psychologists claiming to have the answers, and people that ask if psychologists can tell what they’re thinking. The Psychology of Everything is a series of books which debunk the popular myths and pseudo-science surrounding some of life’s biggest questions.

Throughout this website you will find specially written content pieces, where the authors expand upon some of the key themes from their books, considering contemporary issues such as the #MeToo movement and how we label our snack food.

You can also find additional information on the people behind the books, with extended author biographies, and links to their social media accounts.

Books

The Psychology of Addiction

The Psychology of Addiction

Purchase
The Psychology of Celebrity

The Psychology of Celebrity

Purchase
The Psychology of Chess

The Psychology of Chess

Purchase
The Psychology of Climate Change

The Psychology of Climate Change

Purchase
The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories

The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories

Purchase
The Psychology of Dieting

The Psychology of Dieting

Purchase
The Psychology of Dog Ownership

The Psychology of Dog Ownership

Purchase
The Psychology of Driving

The Psychology of Driving

Purchase
The Psychology of Fashion

The Psychology of Fashion

Purchase
The Psychology of Gardening

The Psychology of Gardening

Purchase
The Psychology of Gender

The Psychology of Gender

Purchase
The Psychology of Grief

The Psychology of Grief

Purchase
The Psychology of Happiness

The Psychology of Happiness

Purchase
The Psychology of Music

The Psychology of Music

Purchase
The Psychology of Performance

The Psychology of Performance

Purchase
The Psychology of Politics

The Psychology of Politics

Purchase
The Psychology of Retirement

The Psychology of Retirement

Purchase
The Psychology of School Bullying

The Psychology of School Bullying

Purchase
The Psychology of Sex

The Psychology of Sex

Purchase
The Psychology of Social Media

The Psychology of Social Media

Purchase
The Psychology of the Paranormal

The Psychology of the Paranormal

Purchase
The Psychology of Trust

The Psychology of Trust

Purchase
The Psychology of Vampires

The Psychology of Vampires

Purchase
The Psychology of Weather

The Psychology of Weather

Purchase
The Psychology of Working Life

The Psychology of Working Life

Purchase

Content Pieces

Carolyn Mair

Carolyn Mair, author of ‘The Psychology of Fashion’ talks about why we need to start applying a psychological lens to our thoughts about fashion.

Read
Jane Ogden

Jane Ogden, author of ‘The Psychology of Dieting’, talks about how food labelled as ‘snack food’ can actually leave you hungrier than food labelled ‘meal’.

Read
Gary Wood

Gary Wood, author of ’The Psychology of Gender’ tackles prejudice, homophobia, and why we shouldn’t give a f**k.

Read
Ken Rotenberg

Ken Rotenberg, author of ‘The Psychology of Trust’ provides insight into people’s personal struggles with trust, with accompanying audio files.

Read
Meg-John Barker

Meg-John Barker, author of ‘The Psychology of Sex’ discusses the #MeToo movement and the importance of consent.

Read
Richard Gross

Richard Gross, author of ‘The Psychology of Grief’, provides his guiding principles for working with the bereaved.

Read

Theresa Barlow and Craig Roberts, authors of ‘The Psychology of Dogs’, talk about the joy of understanding dog behaviour.

Read
Barry Richards

Barry Richards, author of ‘The Psychology of Politics’, talks about what psychology can tell us about populism and the changing nature of democracy.

Read
Gayle Stever

Gayle Stever, author of ‘The Psychology of Celebrity’, talks about colleagues and writers who inspired her interest in celebrity research.

Read
Geoff Beattie and Laura McGuire

Geoffrey Beattie and Laura McGuire, authors of ‘The Psychology of Climate Change’, talk about psychology shapes our views on climate and change and how we can use it to promote action.

Read
Dr Ciaran Mc Mahon

Ciarán Mc Mahon, author of ‘The Psychology of Social Media’, talks about his experience creating the book.

Read
Jane Ogden

Jane Ogden

Jane Ogden is a Professor in Health Psychology at the University of Surrey.  She completed her PhD on eating behaviour about 30 years ago and has been involved in research and writing about eating behaviour and weight management since this time.  She has published 8 books and over 180 research papers most relating to aspects of diet.

Her books include: Fat Chance: the Myth of Dieting Explained; The psychology of eating; and The Good Parenting Food Guide which have been aimed at both academic readers and the general public.  She is also is a frequent contributor to the media for newspapers, magazines, radio and TV shows.  For example, she has written features for The Conversation, the Independent, The Huffington Post, the Daily Mail and Sky News online, been a guest on Women’s hour, All in the Mind as well as numerous radio shows and has appeared in TV programmes including Channel 4s Secret Eaters, The Truth about Fat and The secret of staying slim.   She has also been involved in numerous consultancy projects for companies involved in food such as Jamie Oliver’s Kitchen Garden Project and his Ministry of Food Foundation, hello fresh and Premier Foods and has produced an online module on eating behaviour and weight loss for Advanced Coaching Academy for personal trainers and coaches to use with their clients. 

Harriet Gross

Harriet Gross

Read more
Meg-John Barker

Meg-John Barker

Meg-John Barker is the author of a number of popular books on sex, gender, and relationships, including Queer: A Graphic History (with Julia Scheele), How To Understand Your Gender (with Alex Iantaffi), Enjoy Sex (How, When, and IF You Want To) (with Justin Hancock), Rewriting the Rules, The Psychology of Sex, and The Secrets of Enduring Love (with Jacqui Gabb). They have also written numerous books, articles, chapters, and reports for scholars and counsellors, drawing on their own research and therapeutic practice.

In particular they have focused their academic-activist work on the topics of bisexuality, open non-monogamy, sadomasochism, non-binary gender, and Buddhist mindfulness. Barker is currently a senior lecturer in psychology at the Open University. They co-founded the journal Psychology & Sexuality and the activist-research organisation BiUK, through which they published The Bisexuality Report. They have advised many organisations, therapeutic bodies, and governmental departments on matters relating to gender, sexual, and relationship diversity (GSRD). They are also involved in facilitating many public events on sexuality and relationships, including Sense about Sex and Critical Sexology.

Stewart Cotterill

Stewart Cotterill

Stewart Cotterill, PhD, is Head of School for Health, Wellbeing and Performance; a consultant sport and performance psychologist, and a leadership and performance researcher at AECC University College, Bournemouth, UK. He is a British Psychological Society (BPS) Chartered Psychologist; and is a Registered Practitioner Psychologist with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC).

Stewart has been working as a psychology consultant for over 15 years and has extensive applied practice experience across multiple performance domains including: sport, business, the performing arts and medicine. His current research interests include the psychology of performance, decision-making under pressure, leadership in sport, and factors determining team performance under pressure. He is also author of a number of other books including: Performance Psychology; Team Psychology in Sports; Psychology of Cricket; and Sport and Exercise Psychology: Practitioner Case Studies. He is also the coordinator of the sport and performance psychology clinic based at the AECC University College Parkwood campus in Bournemouth. Providing psychology support services from performing at the elite level down to aspiring and local level performers from across a broad range of performance domains.

Toon Taris

Toon Taris

Toon Taris (1962) received a BSc and MSc in Administrative Science/Research Methods (Free University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands), and received a PhD in Psychology from that university in 1994 on a thesis that focused on the analysis of the work career trajectories of young adults. Subsequently he held several positions as a post-doctoral researcher. In 2000 he was appointed Assistant professor at the Department of Work and Organizational Psychology of the Radboud University of Nijmegen, followed by appointments of Associate and Full Professor (2006). In 2009 he was appointed Full Professor at the department of Social and Organizational Psychology of Utrecht University.

He has published several hundreds of papers, chapters and books in the area of work and organizational psychology on topics such as stress, workaholism, work motivation, burnout and work engagement. He is member of the boards of several Dutch and international scientific journals, and Editor-in-Chief of Work & Stress, one of the leading journals in occupational health psychology.

Toon Taris is married (three children), lives in the heart of the Netherlands, and spends his leisure time (if any) on gardening, reading books, playing guitar, or on what he likes to think of as "home improvement" activities.

Jan-Willem van Prooijen

Jan-Willem van Prooijen

Jan-Willem van Prooijen received his PhD in 2002 from the Department of Social and Organizational Psychology at Leiden University. Currently he works as Associate Professor at the department of Experimental and Applied Psychology of VU Amsterdam, and as Senior Researcher at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement. He has been fascinated by the psychology of conspiracy theories for the past ten years, and extensively studied the cognitive, social, and political factors that contribute to conspiracy theories.

Other research interests include the causes of corruption, the roots of ideological extremism, the human instinct to punish offenders, justice-based responses to crime victims, procedural justice, and various other issues that are related with human morality and belief systems. He studies these topics from multidisciplinary perspectives including psychology, criminology, and political science.

Van Prooijen received funding for his research from various sources, and published widely on his research in the form of books, book chapters, and scientific journal articles. He presented his work for both lay and scientific audiences around the world, and regularly appears in the Dutch media.  

Jenny Svanberg

Jenny Svanberg

Jenny Svanberg qualified as a Clinical Psychologist in 2006 in Glasgow, Scotland. She later completed further training in Neuropsychology, and gained standard accreditation in Schema Therapy, approved by the International Society of Schema Therapy. After qualifying, she worked in addiction and neuro-rehabilitation services in Glasgow for five years, and then moved to lead on addiction psychology services in the NHS Forth Valley for another five years. During these roles, she contributed to research into Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome, a type of Alcohol-Related Brain Damage, and service-related research into addiction and complex trauma.

In doing so, she became interested in the way in which addiction and addictive behaviours represent one way of responding to threat or disempowerment, and how service systems can either exacerbate or reduce this. During her roles in Scotland, Jenny was involved with a number of British Psychological Society groups, including the Division of Clinical Psychology’s Faculty of Addiction, and latterly sat on the Scottish Government’s Partnership for Action on Drugs in Scotland Quality Sub-Group. She currently lives in London. 

Gary Wood

Gary Wood

Read more
Ken Rotenberg

Ken Rotenberg

Read more
Carolyn Mair

Carolyn Mair

Read more
Richard Gross

Richard Gross

Read more
Geoff Beattie and Laura McGuire

Geoff Beattie and Laura McGuire

Professor Geoffrey Beattie is professor of psychology at Edge Hill University, with a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Cambridge. He was awarded the Spearman Medal by the British Psychological Society for 'published psychological research of outstanding merit' and the internationally acclaimed Mouton d'Or for his work in semiotics. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is the author of 25 books published by Granta, Victor Gollancz, Chatto & Windus, Penguin, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Orion, Headline, Routledge etc.  His books have been translated into a variety of languages including Chinese, Taiwanese, German, Italian, Portuguese and Finnish. He has published over one hundred academic articles in a range of journals including Nature, Nature Climate Change and Semiotica. He was the resident on-screen psychologist for eleven series of Big Brother on Channel 4 from 2000-2010, and has presented a number of television series, including 'Life's Too Short' (BBC1), 'Family SOS' (BBC1), 'The Farm of Fussy Eaters' (UKTV) and 'Dump Your Mates in Four Days' (Channel 4). www.geoffbeattie.com

Dr. Laura McGuire is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Faculty of Education at Edge Hill University.  Her PhD research focussed on tackling an issue of global importance, namely why consumers are not doing more to change their behaviour in the face of the threat posed by climate change. Laura previously worked as a research assistant at the Sustainable Consumption Institute at the University of Manchester. Her early career was in drama and theatre; she also worked as a secondary school teacher in the north of England for ten years. She draws upon this diverse background to promote changes in attitudes to sustainability and climate change using a multi-disciplinary approach

Gayle Stever

Gayle Stever

Gayle Stever lives in the Finger Lakes region of New York State and teaches for Empire State College, a part of the State University of New York system. She is an associate professor and has taught psychology for Empire State/SUNY for 10 years. Before that she was on the faculty of Arizona State University for 15 years after having completed her Ph.D. in Lifespan development there in 1994. But her career began with a bachelor's degree in music education and a ten year stint as a music teacher and church musician. Given this background, it was a natural thing to gravitate to a study of the cultural influence of music via popular singers like The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Josh Groban and others. A master's thesis and then doctoral dissertation in the study of fans led to further publications in the area of how media affects development, and the nature of what has come to be known as parasocial engagement, the social engagement of media personalities mostly known in other than a face-to-face environment. She has been married to her best friend for 42 years and has two adult sons of whom she is very proud.

Barry Richards

Barry Richards

Barry Richards is Professor of Political Psychology at Bournemouth University, UK, where he leads the MA Political Psychology programme. After a degree in psychology at the University of Reading, Barry trained and worked for some years as a clinical psychologist in the National Health Service, working primarily in the adult mental health field. He then undertook a PhD in sociology and began an academic career. Prior to moving to Bournemouth in 2001, he was Professor and Head of the Department of Human Relations at the University of East London, where he had worked from 1977. Barry’s previous books include Images of Freud: Cultural Responses to Psychoanalysis (1989), Disciplines of Delight: The Psychoanalysis of Popular Culture (1994), The Dynamics of Advertising (with I. MacRury & J. Botterill, 2000), Emotional Governance: Politics, Media and Terror (2007), and What Holds us Together: Popular Culture and Social Cohesion (2018).  Most of Barry’s academic career has been spent in teaching and writing based on using the insights of the psychoanalytic tradition to throw new light on some basic issues in contemporary society. He has pursued that aim in the study of both politics and popular culture, and of the increasing linkages between those two domains of life. Since it is always necessary to locate the individual mind in its social contexts, Barry has tried to take a psychosocial approach, by integrating psychological inquiry with the use of theories and data from sociology.

Fernand Gobet

Fernand Gobet

Fernand Gobet earned his Ph.D. in psychology in 1992 at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. After a six-year stay at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, where he worked on chess expertise with Nobel Prize winner Herbert Simon, one of the founders of artificial intelligence, he was Senior Research Fellow and then the Allan Standen Reader in Intelligent Systems at the University of Nottingham. He moved to Brunel University in 2003 to take up a Chair in Cognitive Psychology. Since 2013, he is Professor of Decision Making and Expertise at the University of Liverpool. His main research interests are (a) the psychology of expertise and talent, (b) cognitive training, (c) the development of computer models of expertise and the acquisition of first language, and (d) in artificial intelligence, the use of genetic programming to automatically generate scientific theories. He is the designer of CHREST (Chunk Hierarchy and REtrieval STructures), one of the few cognitive architectures in the world. He has carried out extensive research on chess psychology and education. He has over 300 scientific publications, including 10 books. His latest books are Understanding Expertise: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach (London: Palgrave) and The Psychology of Chess (London: Routledge).

http://chrest.info/fg/home.htm   http://www.expertmind.uk

Trever Harley

Trever Harley is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Dundee, and a writer, science journalist, public speaker, and comedian. He was formerly Chair of Cognitive Psychology at Dundee, where he was Head of Department and then Dean from 2003 until 2016. Trevor grew up in Southampton, and did his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at Cambridge, where his PhD thesis research was on slips of the tongue. Trevor was then at the University of Warwick until he moved north in 1996. He is the author of several books, including the best-selling text The Psychology of Language, currently in its fourth edition, and published in three languages. Trevor’s research interests are wide, including language, consciousness, sleep and dreams, ageing, futurology, and psychology and the weather. He has several obsessions, including music, photography, and the weather; he has kept weather records for many years, and his favourite month in recent times is December 2010.

Dr Ciaran Mc Mahon

Dr Ciarán Mc Mahon

Read more
Celia Hodent

Celia Hodent

Celia Hodent is an expert in the application of cognitive science and psychology to improve products, systems, services, and video games. She currently leads an independent UX consultancy, working with a wide range of international media and enterprise companies.

She works in-depth with companies to help ensure their products are both engaging and successful by considering the entire user experience they will provide to their audience. Celia conducts workshops and provides guidance on the topics of playful learning, ethics, implicit bias, and inclusion in tech and video games.

Celia holds a PhD in psychology and has over ten years experience in the development of user experience (UX) strategy in the entertainment industry, and more specifically with videogame studios through her work at Ubisoft, LucasArts, and as Director of UX at Epic Games (Fortnite). 

Celia is the author of The Gamer’s Brain: How Neuroscience and UX can Impact Video Game Design and The Psychology of Video Games.