My research area is the psychology of interpersonal perception, and I have written three books on the topic. I am particularly interested in the relationship between cognition and culture, with a focus on person perception within a cultural context. There are two main strands to my research. The first is on stereotyping as a cognitive and culture phenomenon. The second is on the Western - particularly British - understanding and misunderstanding of Japanese culture. Along with my interest in interpersonal perception, I have also written three textbooks on statistical analysis.

I first came to the University of Warwick as an undergraduate student of mathematics. After graduating, I worked as a computer programmer in London. However, my interest in psychology had been sparked and I studied in the evenings (whilst working during the day) for a degree in psychology at Birkbeck College, University of London. Afterwards I took my doctorate (DPhil) in psychology at the University of Oxford on the role of attention in reading. Subsequently, I have worked in five British Universities, as a cognitive psychologist, in various roles from lecturer to Head of Department. I have often worked as part of a multidisciplinary team, as at Coventry University and later at Oxford Brookes University, teaching psychology to students from a range of subject areas, such as psychology, linguistics, communication, culture and media studies, and education. The experience of working with colleagues from a range of social science disciplines led to my development as a cultural psychologist. I joined the Centre for Applied Linguistics to teach on the degree in Language, Culture and Communication at its inception in 2014.