Paul Staples

Paul Staples is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Derby's School of Psychology, part of the College of Health, Psychology and Social Care. With 27 years of teaching experience, he has previously taught at the University of Manchester and Staffordshire University before joining Derby in 2006. His research focuses on eating behaviors, including developmental food neophobia, weight stigma, stigma consciousness, and related psychological phenomena. He also explores cognitive and parapsychological topics such as supernatural beliefs, numeracy anxiety, and math anxiety through neurophysiological and behavioral studies.

Teaching responsibilities include Cognitive Psychology (memory and visual perception), Parapsychology, and Research Methods/Statistics across undergraduate and postgraduate programs. He supervises doctoral research and teaches on the Health Psychology MSc, Forensic Psychology MSc, and BSc Psychology programs. His work integrates experimental methods with applied research, such as the Derby Packed Lunch Trial addressing childhood sugar consumption. He is affiliated with the Human Sciences Research Centre and contributes to interdisciplinary projects.

Recent publications span topics from pain interpretation biases to mathematical anxiety's neurophysiological underpinnings, reflecting his dual focus on cognitive psychology and applied behavioral research. His long-term contributions include foundational work on food neophobia in children and the development of assessment tools for numeracy apprehension in early childhood.