The University of Sheffield
Department of Psychology

Professor Peter Harris BSc, PhD

Peter HarrisAddress
The University of Sheffield
Sheffield S10 2TP, UK
Tel: (+44) 0114 222 6627
Fax: (+44) 0114 276 6515
Room: 2023
Email P.Harris@sheffield.ac.uk

Qualifications

BSc (University of London), PhD (University of London)

Teaching and administrative duties

I am module organiser for module 302: The Social Psychology of the Self and also teach on module 242: Social and Health Psychology, Module 104: Methods and Reasoning for Psychologists and module 330: The Psychology of Goals and Goal Striving.

In addition I am p/g Tutor Soc Sci.

Research Interests

My research interests lie in social and health psychology.

Responses to health-risk information
At its most general, my research interest is in how people respond (cognitively, emotionally, behaviourally) to health-risk information. I am interested in discovering more about when and why people respond defensively to such information (e.g., by downplaying the extent to which they see the risk as being relevant to them) and I am currently exploring the ways in which a technique know as "Self-affirmation" enables people to respond to such information in a more open-minded, unbiased way.

Self-affirmation
Self-affirmation involves reflecting upon an important self-aspect, such as one´s core self-values, and research in our labs has shown it reduces the biased response to information about both relatively novel health risks, such as the risk of breast cancer from alcohol consumption in women, to well-established ones, such as the health-risks from smoking. We are currently working to discover more about when and why self-affirmation has such beneficial effects, and I am interested in both its theoretical implications and practical potential.

International collaboration
Internationally, I collaborate in self-affirmation research with colleagues at the Universities of Pitttsburgh, USA, British Columbia, Canada, Maastricht, Netherlands and Zurich, Switzerland. In collaboration with colleagues at the University of Northumbria, I am also examining how people use the Internet to search for health-related advice and how they subsequently decide to act upon it.

I have well-established research interests in "unrealistic optimism", which is the tendency to perceive other people as being more at risk of negative events than the self. I am also interested in understanding how people respond psychologically to chronic conditions (e.g., thrombosis, epilepsy).

Recent Research Grants

Consumer processing of risk related information.
2008-2010. Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. CA$140,400 with Professor D. W. Griffin, UBC, Vancouver, Canada.

The attentional and behavioural effects of threatening health-risk messages: The role of self-affirmation.
2008-2011. University of Maastricht. With Dr Rob Ruiter, UM, The Netherlands.

Communicating health risks and benefits.
2007-2009. Hampton Research Fund, UBC, Canada. CA$35,000. With Professor D. W. Griffin, UBC, Vancouver, Canada.

Bodies Online – information and advice seeking in the health and fitness domain.
2003–2005. ESRC e-Society Research Programme. £100,895. With Professor P. Briggs, and Dr. L Fishwick, University of Northumbria. Rated "outstanding" at review.

How do consumers process risk-related information on the World Wide Web?
2001-2003. Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. CA$75,500. With Professor D. W. Griffin, UBC, Vancouver, Canada.

Activities and Distinctions

Key Publications

Griffin, D.W. & HARRIS, P. R. (in press). Calibrating the Response to Health Warnings: Limiting both overreaction and underreaction with self-affirmation.

HARRIS, P. R. & Epton, T. (2009). The impact of self-affirmation on health cognition, health behaviour and other health-related responses: A narrative review. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 3, 962-78. (further information)

Klein, W. M. P., & Harris, P. R. (2009). Self-affirmation enhances attentional bias toward threatening components of a persuasive message. Psychological Science, 12, 1463-7. (further information)

HARRIS, P., Griffin, D. W., & Murray, S. (2008). Testing the Limits of Optimistic Bias: Event and Person Moderators in a Multi-Level Framework. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 1225-1237. (abstract)

EPTON, T. and HARRIS, P. R. (2008) Self-affirmation promotes health behavior change. Health Psychology. 27(6), 746-752. (abstract)


Sillence, E., Briggs, P., HARRIS, P. R., Fishwick, L. (2007). How do patients evaluate and make use of online health information? Social Science and Medicine, 64, 1853-1862.

View a full list of Peter Harris' publications.

Postgraduate Students