Representative Publications

1. Bale, C., Morrison, R., & Caryl, P. G. (2006). Chat up lines as male sexual displays. Personality and Individual Differences, 40, 655-664.
2. Saxton, T. K., Caryl, P. G. & Roberts, S. C. (2006). Vocal and facial attractiveness judgments of children, adolescents and adults: The ontogeny of mate choice. Ethology, 112, 1179-1185.
3. Cooper, M., O'Donnell, D., Caryl, P. G., Morrison, R. & Bale, C. (2007). Chat-up lines as male displays: Effects of content, sex, and personality. Personality and Individual Differences, 43, 1075-1085.
4. Caryl, P. G., Bean, J. E., Smallwood, E. B., Barron, J. C., Tully, L. & Allerhand, M. (2009). Women's preference for male pupil-size: effects of conception risk, sociosexuality and relationship status. Personality and Individual Differences, 46(4), 503-508. DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2008.11.02

Research (brief summary)

1. Brain mechanisms and intelligence: Psychophysiology and psychometrics; particular interest in the electrophysiology of human intelligence. My work in this area has looked at brain event related potentials (ERPs) in a subset of elementary cognitive tasks, such as Inspection Time, in which task performance correlates with intelligence. ERP studies of task performance throw light on the brain mechanisms underlying individual differences in intelligence as well as task performance. I am a member of the British Psychophysiology Society and the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences (ISSID).
2. Animal behaviour, sociobiology, and evolutionary psychology. I trained as an ethologist; I have interests in animal communication, the evolution of aggressive displays and the application of game theory and other mathematical modelling techniques to evolutionary questions. I am interested in evolutionary psychology, particularly the cues underlying attractiveness in humans. I have been an editor of Animal Behavour (1999-2001); I am a member of the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour (ASAB).
3. The psychology of assessment in higher education. This is interesting as a judgement and decision task; the area also related to my interest in psychometrics and to professional issues in learning and teaching.