My research to date has focused on three main areas:

(1) Goal and implementation intentions as determinants of behaviour change

How do people achieve their goals and make changes to their behaviour? The usual answer is that people need to be motivated. However, even medium-to-large changes in people's intentions seem to have only a small-to-medium effect on their behavior. In short, motivation is not enough. As a result, much of my research to date has investigated how the effects of motivation can be boosted by forming specific plans -- known as "implementation intentions" -- that link good opportunities to act with suitable responses to those opportunities.

(2) Emotion regulation

As part of an ESRC large grant titled "Emotion Regulation in Others and Self" (EROS) we investigated the efficacy of a number of affect regulation strategies as well as the neurophysiology of emotion regulation.

(3) Determinants and consequences of monitoring goal progress

In Summer 2011 I was awarded an ERC Starting Independent Researcher Grant to investigate the role of monitoring (and not monitoring) in goal striving. The project proposes that there is an 'ostrich problem' such that, in many instances, people bury their heads in the sand and fail to monitor the relation between their current behaviour and their desired behaviour.