Norman Wilson

Norman has been involved in higher education research and lecturing for over 20 years. Since 2018 he has been the Programme Leader for the BPS accredited BSc (Honours) in Psychology and has previously lectured on several other degree programmes including the BA Social Sciences, BA Child and Youth Studies, BA Health Studies, and BSc Psychology. His current teaching is all on the BSc in Psychology and the MSc Psychology conversion course.

Norman’s research interests fall into the following categories: The relationship between attitudes and behaviour. People tend to assume that attitudes and behaviours match up but, correlations between the two have ranged from very low to moderate. His interest here is in the difference between injunctive norms (how people think) and descriptive norms (how people behave).

The second topic is identity including self-identity, national identity, and threats to identity. This includes the role of blind (unquestioning allegiance) versus constructive (questioning with the intention of positive change) patriotism, as well as the role of ethnic (ascribed by criteria such as ancestry) and civic (based on citizenship) nationalism.