Julia Irwin

My PhD is in associative learning, an area that I teach to undergraduate psychology students. In applying the principles of learning to how we behave and make decisions in uncertain circumstances, I became interested in risky behaviour and from there to traffic psychology. My area of expertise in this field is in driver distraction, with a particular emphasis on gender differences, the role of emotion in distraction, the problem of reducing optimism bias in young drivers, and the social marketing of anti-speeding messages.