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I live in Cardiff with my Bearded Collie called Eira, who is 17 months old. Eira is the best running buddy and can definitely out-run me! Her favourite toy is a pink pig, that has to go everywhere with her 

I am an instructor in the Army Cadet Force, and am the Commanding Officer of the Band and Drums. I have been doing this for over 12 years now (mostly as a cadet myself!) and wouldn’t change it for the world

So many people think that psychology is all about talking about peoples feelings, or “reading their minds”. This isn’t true – psychologists study people’s behaviours and try and find out why people behave in the way that they do. For a Low Carbon Psychologist, the interest is in why people behave the way that they do with technology. Why do people walk away and leave all of their equipment and lights on? What can we change in people’s environments to make them more energy efficient? These are the questions I’m faced with on a daily basis.

The company I work for measure half-hourly energy data. Where there is a lot of variance in this data (big spikes, or a recurring high usage when certain people are working) despite all processes remaining the same (like in a factory, for example), this is probably caused by human factors – the way that people are behaving. By exploring the behaviour behind the variance, I am able to develop projects and interventions to eliminate or reduce that behaviour.

Human behaviour is made up of clusters of similar behaviours, which we know within psychology as “constructs”. The name comes from the fact that it is something that has been “constructed” – we observe the natural behaviour, make judgements about the common features of that behaviour, and label it according to the commonality of it’s cause. A good example of this is how people behave within an exam, or classroom test. If you see another student in the classroom before a big test biting their nails, fidgetting, sweating and looking pretty scared, you might think that they were nervous about the test. This is known as test anxiety, and is a behavioural construct – the construct here is the summary of the behaviour and a logical explanation of it.

The way that people interact with their environment (this could be something like school…) is really interesting, and has a massive impact on their carbon footprint. I’m really interested in these behaviours, and seeing if there’s anything I can do to change them to make the world a greener place