Professor Robbie Sutton

About

Robbie is a Professor of Social Psychology, Director of Graduate Studies (Research), a member of the Undergraduate Outreach Team and Postgraduate Progression Monitoring Lead in the School of Psychology

Research interests

Robbie is interested in the social psychology of justice and (in)equality, including:

+ Just-world beliefs
These refer to the extent to which people believe they, and others, receive the treatment and life outcomes they deserve. These are related to psychological health, functioning, and a raft of social attitudes (for more information, see Hafer & Sutton, 2014; Sutton & Douglas, 2005; Sutton & Winnard, 2007; Sutton et al., 2008; Wu et al., 2013 in the publication list).

+ Conspiracy beliefs
Robbie collaborates with Professor Karen Douglas on conspiracy belief (see Douglas & Sutton, 2008, 2011, Sutton & Douglas, 2014. Their work examines the psychological mechanisms that cause people to entertain such beliefs.

+ Immanent justice reasoning
Robbie collaborates with Mitch Callan (University of Essex) on why people tend to perceive that a person's misfortune must be attributable to some prior misdeed of theirs, even when the two cannot be related (Callan et al., 2010, 2013, 2014).

+ Gender, sexism and inequality
Robbie has studied several aspects of gender inequality, including gendered fear of crime (Sutton & Farrall, 2005, 2008; Sutton, Robinson & Farrall, 2011), sexist intrusions on the autonomy of women during pregnancy (Murphy et al., 2011; Sutton, Douglas, & McClellan, 2011), and gender inequality in educational attainment (Hartley & Sutton, 2013).

He is interested in social communicative approaches to these and other questions, such as intergroup relations (e.g., Douglas & Sutton, 2003, 2010; Sutton, Elder & Douglas, 2006). A related interest is in environmental psychology.

Supervision

Current Students:
Phatthanakit (Bryan) Chobthamkit: Cultural perspectives on just world beliefs
Aino Petterson: Attitudes to gene editing and reproductive medicine

Past research students:
Dr Rael Dawtry: Income inequality through a psychological lens
Dr Amy Murphy: Sexist ideology, health beliefs and paternalism towards pregnant women
Dr Katherine Wilson: The anticipated fruits of victory: Why groups make absolute sacrifices for relative gains
Dr Tadios Chisango: Understanding 'infrahumanisation' of the outgroup in terms of the linguistic Intergroup Bias.
Dr Jennifer Cole: From speech acts to dispositions: How impressions of persons are shaped by their descriptions of others. (Graduated 2007)
Dr Bonny Hartley: Will boys become boys? Stereotype threat and boys' academic underachievement. (Graduated 2013)
Dr Amy-Jo Lynch: Fear of crime, gender, and social control: Experimental tests of radical feminist notions. (Graduated 2013)

Professional

Other academic activities

+ Fellow, Society of Experimental Social Psychology
+ Fellow, Association for Psychological Science
+ Associate Editor, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 2016-2018
+ Editorial Board Member, British Journal of Social Psychology, European
Journal of Social Psychology, Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 2009
+ Workshop tutor, European Association of Social Psychology Summer School, Lisbon, 2014 (http://sseasp2014.iscte-iul.pt/)
+ External examiner of MSc programmes at the University of Exeter (2011-2014), Lancaster (2015-2018), BSc and MSci programmes at the University of Birmingham (2012-2016), BSc programmes at Keele University (2016-2019)
+ PhD examiner at Utrecht, Lancaster, LSE, Australian National University, the University of Queensland, ULB Brussels, University of Queensland, Birmingham, ISCTE (Lisbon), Lahore, and Granada
+ Conference organiser and host, 14th Biennial Conference of the International Society for Justice Research, Canterbury, July 2016
+ Member of ESRC Peer Review panel since 2011

Conference organisation:
+ The Kent Workshop on Linguistic Bias