Paul Christiansen

• PhD
• Lecturer at University of Liverpool

The impact of rapport-based interview techniques on suspect use of counter-interrogation tactics (CITs) was examined in an operational field sample of 181 police interrogations with international (Al-Qaeda and Al-Qaeda-inspired), paramilitary, and right-wing terrorists. The observing rapport-based interpersonal techniques (ORBIT) framework was used...

Adiposity has started to become the norm in many western countries. The current studies tested the hypothesis that exposure to heavier body weights will increase the acceptance of obesity, which could further propagate rises in body weight. Across three experiments we examined the effect that exposing participants to photographs of either obese or...

Hazardous drinking has been associated with risk taking and alcohol priming effects. However, the potential relationship between risk taking and priming has not been investigated. The Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) is a behavioural measure of risk taking which appears to be associated with drinking behaviour. However, alcohol's acute effects on...

When self-control resources are depleted ("ego depletion"), alcohol-seeking behavior becomes closely associated with automatic alcohol-related processing biases (e.g., Ostafin, Marlatt, & Greenwald, 2008). The current study aimed to replicate and extend these findings, and also to investigate whether the effects of ego depletion on drinking behavio...

Hazardous drinking is associated with both increased impulsivity and automatic approach tendencies elicited by alcohol-related cues. However, impulsivity is a multi-factorial construct, and it is currently unclear if all components of impulsivity are associated with heavy drinking. Furthermore, emerging evidence suggests that the relationships betw...

Purpose: Whilst the antenatal period is well established as a period of increased vulnerability to mental health difficulties, restrictions resulting from COVID-19 lockdown in the UK are likely to have negatively affected psychosocial outcomes in these women. Materials and Methods: This study aimed to describe prevalence rates of clinically relevan...

Introduction: Women identified at risk for preterm may be vulnerable to developing mental health difficulties due to the increased likelihood of poor pregnancy outcome and uncertainty surrounding their delivery. Formal assessment of mental wellbeing in specialist preterm birth clinics is not routinely offered but may offer the opportunity for early...

Background Within high income countries, individuals experiencing food insecurity have become increasingly reliant on food support to satisfy household food needs. However, experiencing food insecurity and accessing food support are highly stigmatised, negatively impacting psychological and emotional wellbeing. Being able to quantify this stigma ma...

Introduction Healthcare services for pregnant and postpartum (‘perinatal’) women were reconfigured significantly at the advent and for the duration of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, and despite the United Kingdom announcing ‘Freedom Day’ on 19 July 2021 (whereafter all legal lockdown-related restrictions were lifted), restrictions to maternity (antenatal...

Background: Alcohol use is a gendered behavior and motherhood is a life stage which may influence drinking motives. However, there are no drinking motive scales uniquely tailored to maternal populations. This work developed a new maternal drinking motives scale (M-DMS) and determined associations between the M-DMS and alcohol-related behavior. Me...

The role of anxiety is unknown in relation to postpartum bonding, unlike the well known detrimental effect of postpartum depression has on the relationship between mother and child. This study investigates how anxiety affects mother-infant bonding after childbirth, comparing the Italian version of the Postpartum Specific Anxiety Scale (PSAS-IT) wit...

Objective Mothers of premature infants are more likely to develop anxiety during the first postpartum year than mothers of term infants. However, commonly used measures of anxiety were developed for general adult populations and may produce spurious, over-inflated scores when used in a postpartum context. Although perinatal-specific tools such as...

Review question: 1) What are the psychological experiences of mothers who give birth to a preterm baby who subsequently dies?

Introduction It is well established that a premature birth increases the likelihood of developing anxiety during the postpartum period, and that the environment of the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) might be a contributing factor. Mothers of earlier premature infants may experience these anxieties to a higher degree compared to mothers of late...

Background Within high income countries such as the UK, individuals experiencing food insecurity have become increasingly reliant on food support to satisfy household food needs. However, experiencing food insecurity and accessing food support are highly stigmatised, negatively impacting psychological and emotional wellbeing. Being able to quantify...

Objective:Children’s exposure to unhealthy food marketing contributes to poor diets by influencing the foods that children like, request, buy and consume. This study aimed to use confirmatory mediational analyses to test a hypothetical model of marketing effects, to better understand the mechanisms behind food marketing’s impacts on children. Desig...

Background/objective Sugar-sweetened beverages are a substantial source of dietary sugar that can contribute to weight gain and the risk of type 2 diabetes. Dietary guidelines recommend non-nutritive sweetened (NNS) beverages to reduce sugar consumption, however, there is a need for long-term randomised controlled trials on their use. We aimed to c...

Background Statistics anxiety is common among social science students. Despite much evidence examining statistics anxiety and test performance, little research has explored the role of student self-prediction on test performance in a higher education setting. Objective The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between statistic...

Videogame livestreaming platforms are an emerging form of digital media, popular with young people, where users watch gaming influencers play videogames. Food and non-alcoholic beverage (hereafter: food) brands have a substantial presence on these platforms, yet no studies have examined the impact of this food marketing on young people. This system...

Introduction While often positive, the lifecourse transition to motherhood is susceptible to the risk for developing mood disorders. Postpartum anxiety has often been overshadowed by other perinatal-specific mental health disorders, such as postpartum depression, and therefore has not been at the forefront or center of as much empirical study. This...

Objective: The aim of this study was to compare non-nutritive sweetened (NNS) beverages versus water for weight loss after a 12-week behavioral weight-management program. Methods: This is an ongoing, 2-year, parallel-group, open-label, controlled equivalence trial; week-12 data are reported. Adults with BMI of 27 to 35 kg/m2 who regularly drank...

Dietary temptations and lapses challenge control over eating and act as barriers toward successful weight loss. These are difficult to assess in laboratory settings or with retrospective measures as they occur momentarily and driven by the current environment. A better understanding of how these experiences unfold within real-world dieting attempts...

On average, more than 200 child sex offences were recorded by UK police every day in 2020, and investigations for offences including rape, online grooming and sexual assault against children in the United Kingdom (UK) increased by 57% from 2014/15 to 2019/20. The interview process is central to information gathering, but empirical research regardin...

1) What is the relationship between gestational age and postpartum anxiety? 2) What are the experiences of mothers of premature infants with postpartum anxiety? PROSPERO Registration Number: CRD42023369647

1) What is the relationship between prenatal anxiety and gestational age? 2) What are the experiences of prenatal anxiety in mothers who have previously experienced a preterm birth? 3) What are the experiences of prenatal anxiety in mothers who have previously experienced a mid-trimester loss (from 14 weeks' gestation)? 4) What are the experiences...

Statistics anxiety is common among social science students, with over 70% experiencing some form of anxiety when undertaking statistics modules at degree level. Statistics anxiety has been assumed to impact negatively on students’ academic performance, however, evidence is equivocal. Despite much evidence examining statistics anxiety and test perfo...

Background Increased weight-related stigma during the COVID-19 pandemic has amplified the need to minimise the impacts on mental wellbeing. We investigated the relationship between the perceived changes in the representation of obesity in the media and mental wellbeing during the pandemic in a sample of people with obesity across 10 European countr...

Research shows cognitive and neurobiological overlap between sign‐tracking (value‐modulated attentional capture [VMAC] by response‐irrelevant, discrete cues) and maladaptive behaviour (e.g., substance abuse). We investigated the neural correlates of sign‐tracking in 20 adults using an additional singleton task (AST) and functional Magnetic Resonanc...

Aim In a series of pre-registered online studies, we aimed to elucidate the magnitude of the effect of general sustainability labels on U.K. consumers’ food choices. Methods Four labels were displayed: ‘Sustainably sourced’, ‘Locally sourced’, ‘Environmentally friendly’, and ‘Low greenhouse gas emissions’. To ensure reliable results, contingency v...

Bearth and colleagues’ (2014) Perception of Artificial Sweetener Scale (PASS) has been widely used but has yet to be subject to thorough psychometric evaluation. The current study aimed to assess the factor structure and internal reliability of the scale, as well as assess its predictive utility. In a pre-registered study, 489 participants (age ran...

The Postpartum Specific Anxiety Scale [PSAS] was developed and validated as a research tool with a four-factor structure; with predictive validity corroborated in studies examining infant-feeding and maternal bonding outcomes. The PSAS has not been examined in relation to birth experiences. We aimed to confirm the PSAS four-factor structure and exa...

This article outlines the development and application of the Prioritization and Intervention for Violent Extremists Tool (PIVET) to a large-N sample of violent extremist offenders in the United States. PIVET was constructed from the already well-validated Kent Internet Risk Assessment Tool (KIRAT) developed for prioritizing contact sexual offenders...

What are the psychometric properties of scales that currently exist to measure anxiety in women in the first year postpartum?

Two studies examined whether rapport-based interviewing with child sexual abuse (CSA) suspects provides greater interview yield that could result in overall cost-savings to the investigation. First, multi-level modelling was applied to 35 naturalistic CSA suspect interviews to establish whether rapport-based interviewing techniques increase “yield”...

The Postpartum Specific Anxiety Scale (PSAS) is a valid, reliable measure of postpartum anxiety (PPA). However, it contains 51 items, so is limited by its length. This study aimed to reduce the number of items in the PSAS, produce a small number of high-performing short-form tools, and confirm the factor structure of the most statistically and theo...

Food insecurity (a lack of stable access to nutritious food) is reliably associated with obesity, although the underlying mechanisms are unclear. Past research indicates that this relationship may, in part, be explained by the distress of being food insecure and using food as a coping mechanism. While previous work has focused on long-term food ins...

Food insecurity (a lack of stable access to nutritious food) is reliably associated with obesity, although the underlying mechanisms are unclear. Past research indicates that this relationship may, in part, be explained by the distress of being food insecure and using food as a coping mechanism. While previous work has focused on long-term food ins...

Background Coronavirus (COVID-19) resulted in lockdown measures in the UK, which has impacted alcohol use. Alcohol is often used as a coping mechanism and there are public health concerns regarding excessive consumption due to the pandemic. We aimed to longitudinally assess drinking behaviors, and associated factors, during the first UK government-...

Objective Prospective studies on relationships between hedonic hunger and BMI (Body Mass Index) during weight management are lacking. This study examined if hedonic hunger reduced during a behavioural weight management programme, and if hedonic hunger predicted future BMI. Methods Participants were 594 community-dwelling, UK-based adults(396 femal...

Urban agriculture (UA), the growing of fruits and vegetables in urban and peri-urban areas, may improve food security and access, public health and dietary quality on both a broad and personal scale. However, there is little research on the relationship between UA and diet, and potential mediating factors are also unclear. This study aimed to inves...

Altering the quality of episodic meal memories has been shown to affect subsequent food intake. Acute alcohol consumption disrupts memory formation and produces short-term overeating. In two studies, we investigated whether alcohol consumption can affect meal-related memories and later food intake. Study 1 (N = 60, 50% male) investigated how consum...

Background: Global crises inevitably increase levels of anxiety in postpartum populations. Effective and efficient measurement is therefore essential. This study aimed to create a 12-item research short form of the 51-item Postpartum Specific Anxiety Scale [PSAS] and validate it for use in rapid response research at a time of global crises [PSAS-RS...

Background: There are associations between maternal mental health (anxiety and depression), maternal-infant bonding, and infant temperament. However, few studies have examined these variables simultaneously, and none have applied a parallel mediation analysis to consider maternal mental health as an explanatory variable. We aimed to examine these r...

This chapter is concerned with individual and social factors that may influence suspects’ decision-making during police interviews, as well as with the procedural and contextual landscape in which the interviews take place. The focus is on presenting descriptive data on a sample of 20 terrorist organization and organized criminal gang suspects and...

This chapter examines the impact of the UK National Counter-Terrorism Training program (Alcyone). Alcyone is a 6-day course that provides the following: (1) psychological training in Observing Rapport Based Interpersonal Techniques (ORBIT), (2) input on pre-interview briefing, and (3) legislation and input on safety interviewing. Approximately 80%...

This chapter outlines the initial research conducted into the efficacy of the ORBIT model on detainees’ use of counter-interrogation tactics and the amount of evidentially useful information gained from detainees. Counter-interrogation tactics have been defined as a deliberate strategy adopted by a suspect to resist cooperating and may be conscious...

Objective Food insecurity (a lack of stable access to nutritious food) is reliably associated with poor diet, malnutrition, and obesity; however, the underlying mechanisms are unclear. In this study, the hypothesis that these relations are explained by higher levels of distress, which are due to the experience of food insecurity, and unhealthy copi...

Objectives: Laboratory studies have contributed important information about the determinants of food and alcohol intake, and they have prompted the development of behavior change interventions that have been evaluated in randomized controlled trials conducted in the field. In this article we apply a recent experimental medicine (EM) framework to th...

Background: Alcohol use is a considerable public health concern, leading to negative health and adverse social consequences. Despite widespread knowledge and acceptance of these consequences many individuals continue to drink excessively. Lack of regret for these consequences may partially explain this. Objectives: To examine the prevalence of reg...

Background Data on actual harm of magic mushrooms suggest that toxicity and abuse potential is low, however, their legal status suggests otherwise. We aimed to gauge perception of harm of magic mushrooms in both users and mushroom-naïve participants. We also aimed to observe differences in expectations of effects between users and mushroom-naïve pa...

When decisions are made under time pressure, individuals tend to reduce the number of hypotheses generated to explain and solve problems. This research investigates the extent to which individual differences in (a) domain-specific experience, (b) fluid intelligence, (c) need for closure (NFC), and (d) time urgency moderated the effect of time press...

Aims The aim was to investigate the acute and sustained effects of foods previously shown to reduce appetite on appetite and weight loss maintenance. Methods Following an 8-week weight loss phase achieving ≥ 8% weight loss and 7–10 days of weight-stabilization, participants underwent a double-blinded, randomized, parallel 12-week weight loss maint...

Motivational interviewing (MI) is an evidence-based intervention that has proved effective across diverse clinical contexts with clients ambivalent about and resistant to behavioral change. This article argues that the principles of MI can be successfully applied to law enforcement (LE) interviews with high-value detainees (HVDs; i.e., terrorist su...

The observing rapport-based interpersonal techniques (ORBIT) behavioral coding manual (Alison, Alison, Noone, Eltnib, & Christiansen, 2013) was used to code 103 hr of investigative interviews with sexual offense victims—a sample of 86 single-victim cases conducted by 26 police interviewers in South Korea. In all cases, there was a subsequent convic...

New dietary-based concepts are needed for treatment and effective prevention of overweight and obesity. The primary objective was to investigate if reduction in appetite is associated with improved weight loss maintenance. This cohort study was nested within the European Commission project Satiety Innovation (SATIN). Participants achieving ≥8% weig...

Laboratory studies have contributed important information about the determinants of food and alcohol intake, and they have prompted the development of behavior change interventions for obesity and problem drinking that have been evaluated in randomized controlled trials conducted in the field. In this paper we apply a recent experimental medicine (...

Food and beverage cues (visual displays of food or beverage products/brands) featured in traditional broadcast and digital marketing are predominantly for products high in fat, sugar and/or salt (HFSS). YouTube is hugely popular with children, and cues featured in content uploaded by YouTube video bloggers (influencers) has been shown to affect chi...

Background The Postpartum Specific Anxiety Scale [PSAS] was originally developed and validated as a research tool with a four-factor structure. Its predictive validity has been corroborated in studies examining both infant feeding and maternal bonding outcomes. Validation is an iterative process and confirmatory factor analyses are necessary to ver...

Background The Postpartum Specific Anxiety Scale [PSAS] was originally developed and validated as a research tool with a four-factor structure. Its predictive validity has been corroborated in studies examining both infant feeding and maternal bonding outcomes. Validation is an iterative process and confirmatory factor analyses are necessary to ver...

Background: Impaired inhibitory control is thought to contribute to alcohol (mis)use. However, current definitions of inhibitory control are over-simplified by a failure to distinguish reactive inhibitory control from proactive slowing. Objectives: To distinguish “reactive” inhibitory control and proactive slowing in heavy drinkers, and characteriz...

Background Cannabis intoxication is commonly reported to increase appetite and enhance appreciation of food (the ‘munchies’). These effects are attributed to activation of the endocannabinoid system. However, the psychological changes that underlie these phenomena are under-researched. We report here the results of an extensive online survey of can...

Rationale Alcohol intoxication and alcohol cue exposure impair ‘reactive’ inhibitory control and increase motivation to drink. However, inhibitory control is a multi-component process that also comprises signal detection and proactive control. It is unknown whether intoxication and cue exposure selectively influence these subprocesses in heavy drin...

Objectives Bariatric surgery is an effective weight loss tool, but an under-communicated side effect may include the increased risk for alcohol problems. Few studies have examined contributors towards alcohol problems following surgery using a qualitative approach. Therefore, the current study aimed to generate insight informed by participants with...

Many studies have reported that heavy substance use is associated with impaired response inhibition. Studies typically focused on associations with a single substance, while polysubstance use is common. Further, most studies compared heavy users with light/non-users, though substance use occurs along a continuum. The current mega-analysis accounted...

Background: Children are active on social media and consequently are exposed to new and subtle forms of food marketing. Objectives: To examine whether exposure to a YouTube video featuring influencer marketing of an unhealthy snack affects children's ad libitum snack intake and whether inclusion of an advertising disclosure moderates this effect...

Pharmacotherapy as an adjunct to behaviour modification, may provide an effective addition to individual weight management plans in specialised weight management services. There are four FDA approved centrally acting weight-loss drugs (liraglutide, bupropion/naltrexone, lorcaserin, phentermine/topiramate), and several additional candidate drugs yet...

Objectives: To examine the impact of social media influencer marketing of foods (healthy and unhealthy) on children's food intake. Methods: In a between-subjects design, 176 children (9-11 years, mean 10.5 ± 0.7 years) were randomly assigned to view mock Instagram profiles of 2 popular YouTube video bloggers (influencers). Profiles featured imag...

Low-calorie sweetened (LCS) beverages may help consumers to satisfy hedonic food cravings without violating dieting goals, however this remains unexplored. The present research investigated the effect of priming hedonic eating motivations on ad libitum energy intake in frequent and non-consumers of LCS beverages. It was hypothesised that energy int...

Objective Lower socioeconomic status is robustly associated with obesity; however, the underpinning psychological mechanisms remain unclear. The current study sought to determine whether the relationship between lower socioeconomic status and obesity is explained by psychological distress and subsequent emotional eating as a coping strategy. It als...

Background: Negative personality characteristics have been implicated in promoting overconsumption of both alcohol and food. Furthermore, positive motivations (enhancement) and negative motivations (coping) may mediate the association between personality and alcohol or food (over)consumption. Objectives: This study hypothesized that i.) drinking...

The current study aims to investigate corresponding self‐control and self‐control failures that are the result of ego depletion and its impact on police officers’ decision to use force. For that purpose, a total of 200 German police recruits were randomly assigned to either an experimental or control group. Ego depletion was manipulated using the “...

The visual probe task (VPT) is a computerized task used to measure attentional bias to substance-related stimuli. Little research has examined the psychometric properties of the VPT, despite concerns it demonstrates poor test–retest reliability and internal consistency. These issues can reduce confidence in inferences based on VPT performance. As s...

Background: Attentional bias (AB) is the tendency for substance-related stimuli to grab attention. The addiction Stroop task is widely used for measuring AB in the lab, but it has poor reliability and inconsistent predictive validity. Therefore, there is a need to improve the psychometric properties of the task. Objectives: This study contrasts...

Acute alcohol administration can lead to a loss of control over drinking. Several models argue that this ‘alcohol priming effect’ is mediated by the effect of alcohol on inhibitory control. Alternatively, beliefs about how alcohol affects behavioural regulation may also underlie alcohol priming and alcohol-induced inhibitory impairments. Here two s...

Alcohol diary results. (DOCX)

Introduction: The Visual Probe Task (VPT) is a computerised task commonly used to measure attentional bias to substance-related stimuli. Despite concerns it demonstrates poor reliability and internal consistency little research has examined its psychometric properties. These issues can reduce confidence in inferences based on VPT performance. As su...

Food insecurity is a lack of the financial resources needed to ensure reliable access to food to meet dietary, nutritional, and social needs. In the UK, 8.4 million people were food-insecure in 20141. Household food insecurity is associated with poor diet, malnutrition and obesity2, however the explanation for this remains unclear. Psychologi...

Bariatric surgery is an effective treatment for severe obesity, but it can have unintended negative psychosocial consequences, including an increased risk of alcohol use disorder. A greater understanding of the psychosocial effects of bariatric surgery will probably improve treatment outcomes.