Dr Andy Morley
Andy first became interested in Psychology when chatting to Educational Psychologists working within the British Forces Education Service about their role. Subsequently he completed both his undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the University of Plymouth, fulfilling a range of roles before moving to UCLan. Andy’s approach to applying the psychology underpinning attention and memory has seen him work externally with business, education and the military on creating engaging and memorable presentations. He has supervised PhD research on emotional intelligence and the psychology of career decision-making and is currently supervising work considering strength identification in sport.
As part of the School Executive Team Andy provides leadership across the School in the areas of student recruitment, course development, and partnership (both UK and International). Having previously served on the University Student Experience and Engagement Committee he is currently co-leading the University wide Student Voice and Involvement project. This project is undertaking an institutional review of the capture of, and reaction to, student voice alongside the generation of guidelines for the involvement of students in a wide range of University business including co-creation of materials and appointment of staff.
Experience
Upon completing his degree at the Polytechnic South West (previously the Plymouth Polytechnic) Andy had intended to pursue a career in Sport & Exercise Psychology but inspired by the Social Psychologists that had taught him became interested in Group Decision Making. To fund his postgraduate studies he worked as a Research Assistant providing data analysis for psychometric tests being developed for use by recruitment teams within the British Army and the Royal Navy. At this time he started his doctoral research programme considering the differences in decision making processes between face-to-face and computer-mediated decision making groups. Working part-time on his PhD he taught a wide range of research methods and statistics to undergraduate psychologists, podiatrists and organisational studies students in a role as an Associate Lecturer. Nearing submission of his thesis he moved to a Research Support Officer role in the Psychology Department at Plymouth, which was now the University of Plymouth. In this role he worked across a wide range of research projects from research considering student approaches to learning, to psychological adherence to product warning labels to linguistic issues in problem solving.
Moving to UCLan in the spring of 2003 Andy was employed as a Lecturer in Cognitive Psychology, delivering methods, cognition and social cognition lectures across the range of Psychology programmes offered by the School. Progressing a year later to Senior Lecturer Andy began to work on projects considering the application of psychology to student understanding of Psychology particularly around the delivery of, and memory for, presentations. This work, with Dr Chris Atherton, led to a series of presentations at International Conferences and working via the North West Development Agency with innovative leaders in marketing and sales based in the North West and New York. The application of this work to the recruitment process ensured impactful, memorable and engaging presentations as part of the School’s open day programme and working closely with colleagues in his new role as a Principal Lecturer in Psychology (from 2007 until 2020) he successfully led recruitment to the School for over a decade.
With a keen interest in ensuring that the student experience offered at Open Days was delivered to students who enrolled on UCLan courses Andy became involved in a range of University groups focusing upon the Student Experience. Keen to provide opportunities and support for all students he served on the Student Access Committee and more recently the Student Experience and Engagement Committee. This work continues now through both the Building Essential Skills Together (BEST) programme that looks to ease the transition from secondary to higher education and the Student Voice and Involvement Project that ensures student opinions are appropriately heard and responded to across the University.
Appointed in the summer of 2020 as Deputy Head for Business Development and Partnership, he continues to lead the recruitment and partnership work, applying his knowledge of decision making to the University recruitment programme and working with local businesses and industries to develop innovative new programmes that provide employment ready graduates.
- PhD Psychology, University of Plymouth, 2000
- BSc (Hons) Psychology, Polytechnic South West, 1991
- Decision Making, Reasoning & Creativity
- Fuzzy Risk Perception
- Comparative Optimism
- Strengths and Skills Acquisition (including in Sport)
- Group Processes
- Group Decision Making
- Memory for Presentations
- Effective Presentation Construction & Delivery
- Certified Microsoft Innovative Educator 2020
- Fellow of the Higher Education Academy 2017
Andy is a social psychologist by training, interested in group decision making processes, persuasion, influence and the clear benefits of collaboration between individuals. This work, however, extends to consider individual decision making and reasoning processes including complex “fuzzy” decisions that account for many complicated and sometimes contradictory sources of information. This work has been applied to health decision making (risk perception and self-serving biases whereby people ignore and explain away risk factors), moral dilemmas, on-field sports decisions (and how to improve them). Much of his current work focuses upon the application of cognitive processes (memory, thinking and language) to real world issues such as perception and memory for presentations in both education and business, the impact of green technology upon decision making, perceptions and understanding of R-rates and health related issues.
Use the links below to view their profiles:
- Vision, Perception and Neuroscience
- Applied Sport, Physical Activity and Performance
- Perception, Cognition and Neuroscience Research Group
- The role of fuzzy decision making in comparative optimism and pessimism
- The role of directed attention and distraction in memory for presentations
- Reasoning and decision making in an environmental context
- Leverhulme Trust £25,344, 2010
- North West Development Agency £7,000, 2010
- Curriculum Innovation Fund £15,000
- British Psychological Society Division of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 2017
Telephone:+44 (0)1772 893449
Email: Email:Dr Andy Morley
Use the links below to view their profiles: