Paul Taylor
Paul is interested in how people cooperate. Using experimental, archival and field research, he has studied both the fundamental behavioural and cognitive processes that make human interaction possible and, more practically, the kinds of tactics and policies that promote peaceful resolutions.
He places a high value on ecological validity. Consequently he's examined the interpersonal dynamics of crisis negotiations, police interrogations, pub fights, vetting interviews, and serious sexual assaults. He has also used ‘process’ methodologies to study contextual determinants of cooperation, such as the factors that precede violence in the lives of male and female terrorists. Common patterns emerge over these contexts, and these provide the basis of operational support and training to law enforcement agencies worldwide.
Recent publications
- Giebels, E., Oostinga, M. S. D., Taylor, P. J., & Curtis, J. (2017). The cultural dimension of uncertainty avoidance impacts police-civilian interaction. Law and Human Behavior, 41, 98-102. doi:10.1037/lhb0000227
- Taylor, P. J., Holbrook, D., & Joinson, A. (2017). A same kind of different: Affordances, terrorism and the Internet. Criminology and Public Policy. doi:10.1111/1745-9133.12285
- Carrick, T., Rashid, A., & Taylor, P. J. (2016). Mimicry in online conversations: An exploratory study of linguistic analysis techniques. Proceedings of 2016 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining. doi:10.1109/ASONAM.2016.7752318
- Miri, H., Kolkmeier, J., Taylor, P. J., Poppe, R., & Heylen, D. (2016). project SENSE – Multimodal simulation with full-body real-time verbal and nonverbal interactions. In R. Poppe, J-J Meyer, R. Veltkamp, & M. Dastani (Eds). Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment, 178, 279-284.
- Wall, H., Taylor, P.J., Campbell, C. (2016) Getting the balance right?: a mismatch in interaction demands between target and judge impacts on judgement accuracy for some traits but not others. Personality and Individual Differences. 88, p. 66-72.
- Vrij, A., Taylor, P.J., Picornell, I. (2015) Verbal lie detection. In Communication in investigative and legal contexts. Wiley
- Conchie, S.M., Woodcock, H.E., Taylor, P.J. (2015) Trust-based approaches to safety and production. In The Wiley Blackwell handbook of the psychology of occupational safety and workplace health. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell p. 111-132.
- Charitonidis, C., Rashid, A., Taylor, P.J. (2015) Weak signals as predictors of real-world phenomena in social media. In ASONAM '15 Proceedings of the 2015 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining 2015. New York : ACM p. 864-871.
- Taylor, P.J., Bennell, C., Snook, B., Porter, L. (2014) Investigative psychology. In APA handbook of forensic psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
- Poppe, R., Van der Zee, S., Heylen, D., Taylor, P.J. (2014) AMAB: automated measurement and analysis of body motion. In Behavior Research Methods. 46, 3, p. 625-633.
- Richardson, B., Taylor, P.J., Snook, B., Conchie, S., Bennell, C. (2014) Language style matching and police interrogation outcomes. In Law and Human Behavior. 38, 4, p. 357-366.
- Taylor, P., Larner, S., Conchie, S., Van der Zee, S. (2014) Cross-cultural deception detection. In Deception detection. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell p. 175-202.
- Taylor, P.J. (2014) The role of language in conflict and conflict resolution. In The Oxford handbook of language and social psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press p. 459-470.
- Taylor, P., Dando, C., Ormerod, T., Ball, L., Jenkins, M., Sandham, A., Menacere, T. (2013) Detecting insider threats to organizations through language change. In Law and Human Behavior. 37, 4, p. 267-275.
- Jacques, K., Taylor, P. (2013) Myths and realities of female-perpetrated terrorism. In Law and Human Behavior. 37, 1, p. 35-44.
- Wells, S., Taylor, P., Giebels, E. (2013) Crisis negotiation: from suicide to terrorism intervention. In Handbook of research in negotiation. London: Edward Elgar p. 473-498.
Projects
Articles
Academic Publications
Facilitating recall and particularisation of repeated events in adults using a multi-method interviewing format
Reports about repeated experiences tend to include more schematic information than information about specific instances. However, investigators in both forensic and intelligence settings typically seek specific over general information. We tested a multi-method interviewing format (MMIF) to facilitate recall and particularisation of repeated events through the use of the self-generated cues mnemonic, the timeline technique, and follow-up questions. Over separate sessions, 150 adult participants watched four scripted films depicting a series of meetings in which a terrorist group planned attacks and planted explosive devices. For half of our sample, the third witnessed event included two deviations (one new detail and one changed detail). A week later, participants provided their account using the MMIF, the timeline technique with self-generated cues, or a free recall format followed by open-ended questions. As expected, more information was reported overall in the MMIF condition compared to the other format conditions, for two types of details, correct details, and correct gist details. The reporting of internal intrusions was comparable across format conditions. Contrary to hypotheses, the presence of deviations did not benefit recall or source monitoring. Our findings have implications for information elicitation in applied settings and for future research on adults’ retrieval of repeated events.
(From the journal abstract)
Kontogianni, F., Rubinova, E., Hope, L., Taylor, P. J., Vrij, A., & Gabbert, F. (2021). Facilitating recall and particularisation of repeated events in adults using a multi-method interviewing format. Memory, 29(4), 471–485.
https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2021.1903508Behavioral consistency in the digital age
Efforts to infer personality from digital footprints have focused on behavioral stability at the trait level without considering situational dependency. We repeat Shoda, Mischel, and Wright’s (1994) classic study of intraindividual consistency with data on 28,692 days of smartphone usage by 780 people. Using per app measures of ‘pickup’ frequency and usage duration, we found that profiles of daily smartphone usage were significantly more consistent when taken from the same user than from different users (d > 1.46). Random forest models trained on 6 days of behavior identified each of the 780 users in test data with 35.8% / 38.5% (pickup / duration) accuracy. This increased to 73.5% / 75.3% when success was taken as the user appearing in the top 10 predictions (i.e., top 1%). Thus, situation-dependent stability in behavior is present in our digital lives and its uniqueness provides both opportunities and risks to privacy.
(From the journal abstract)
Shaw, H., Taylor, P., Ellis, D. A., & Conchie, S. (2021). Behavioral consistency in the digital age [Preprint]. PsyArXiv.
https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/r5wtn
Projects
Articles
Academic Publications
Facilitating recall and particularisation of repeated events in adults using a multi-method interviewing format
Reports about repeated experiences tend to include more schematic information than information about specific instances. However, investigators in both forensic and intelligence settings typically seek specific over general information. We tested a multi-method interviewing format (MMIF) to facilitate recall and particularisation of repeated events through the use of the self-generated cues mnemonic, the timeline technique, and follow-up questions. Over separate sessions, 150 adult participants watched four scripted films depicting a series of meetings in which a terrorist group planned attacks and planted explosive devices. For half of our sample, the third witnessed event included two deviations (one new detail and one changed detail). A week later, participants provided their account using the MMIF, the timeline technique with self-generated cues, or a free recall format followed by open-ended questions. As expected, more information was reported overall in the MMIF condition compared to the other format conditions, for two types of details, correct details, and correct gist details. The reporting of internal intrusions was comparable across format conditions. Contrary to hypotheses, the presence of deviations did not benefit recall or source monitoring. Our findings have implications for information elicitation in applied settings and for future research on adults’ retrieval of repeated events.
(From the journal abstract)
Kontogianni, F., Rubinova, E., Hope, L., Taylor, P. J., Vrij, A., & Gabbert, F. (2021). Facilitating recall and particularisation of repeated events in adults using a multi-method interviewing format. Memory, 29(4), 471–485.
Behavioral consistency in the digital age
Efforts to infer personality from digital footprints have focused on behavioral stability at the trait level without considering situational dependency. We repeat Shoda, Mischel, and Wright’s (1994) classic study of intraindividual consistency with data on 28,692 days of smartphone usage by 780 people. Using per app measures of ‘pickup’ frequency and usage duration, we found that profiles of daily smartphone usage were significantly more consistent when taken from the same user than from different users (d > 1.46). Random forest models trained on 6 days of behavior identified each of the 780 users in test data with 35.8% / 38.5% (pickup / duration) accuracy. This increased to 73.5% / 75.3% when success was taken as the user appearing in the top 10 predictions (i.e., top 1%). Thus, situation-dependent stability in behavior is present in our digital lives and its uniqueness provides both opportunities and risks to privacy.
(From the journal abstract)
Shaw, H., Taylor, P., Ellis, D. A., & Conchie, S. (2021). Behavioral consistency in the digital age [Preprint]. PsyArXiv.