Dr Andrew Cooper

Andrew’s research understands how variations in personality traits is underpinned by emotional and motivational states.

Staff details

Dr Andrew Cooper

Position

Reader

Department

Psychology

Email

a.cooper (@gold.ac.uk)

Summary of research

Personality and emotion states; emotion regulation; psychometrics and scale development; decision-making; addictive behaviours.

Areas of supervision

I am happy to consider projects for undergraduate and postgraduate supervision in the following broad areas:

  • Extraversion, positive emotion states and subjective well-being
  • Extraversion and approach motivation for reward
  • Personality and mood state effects on decision-making and problem-solving
  • Neural indices associated with reward processing and anhedonia
  • Risk and resilience factors in the onset and development of adolescent substance
  • The role of positive and negative urgency traits in alcohol and cannabis use.

 

Publications and research outputs

Book Section

Schmitt, Helena; Sindermann, Cornelia; Cooper, Andrew and Montag, Christian. 2023. Empathy: A cognitive neuroscience approach. In: Gregory Boyle; Georg Northoff; Aron K. Barbey; Felipe Fregni; Marjan Jahanshahi; Álvaro Pascual-Leone and Barbara J. Sahakian, eds. The Sage Handbook of Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience: Cognitive Systems, Development and Applications. London: Sage, pp. 306-322. ISBN 9781529753547

Gomez, Rapson and Cooper, Andrew. 2008. Reinforcement sensitivity theory and mood induction studies. In: Philip J. Corr, ed. The reinforcement sensitivity theory of personality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 291-316. ISBN 9780521617369

Article

Camp, J.; Durante, G.; Cooper, Andrew; Smith, Peter K. and Rimes, K. A.. 2024. Clinical outcomes for sexual and gender minority adolescents in a dialectical behaviour therapy programme. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 52(4), ISSN 1352-4658

Kale, Dimitra; Pickering, Alan and Cooper, Andrew. 2023. Electronic cigarette use among adult smokers: longitudinal associations with smoking and trait impulsivity. Journal of Substance Use, ISSN 1465-9891

Megranahan, Karen and Cooper, Andrew. 2023. Provision of creative arts interventions in UK drug and alcohol services: A cross-sectional study. Qeios, A81M47. ISSN 2632-3834

Research Interests

My research largely focuses on understanding how variation in key personality traits is underpinned by emotional and motivational states, and the neural systems that potentially regulate these processes.

Most recently, this research has focused on how individual differences in extraversion relate to the experience of positive affective states and approach to rewarding stimuli, and how the links between these processes are underpinned by dopaminergic processes in the brain.

Related to this research, I am also interested in the role that impulsivity-related personality traits and emotional states play in decision-making and risk-taking broadly, and in the context of substance use and gambling more specifically.

Lastly, my work in these areas has often involved the development and testing of psychometric instruments, and so I am interested in the application of statistical techniques, such as Item Response Theory, in the development and testing of measurement tools in personality and clinical research.