Dr Luke Smillie
B.A. (Hons), PhD, University of Queensland
Senior Lecturer
Contact details:
|
My main research interests lie at the interface of personality, motivation and emotion. Personality traits reflect coherent patterns of basic psychological processes, including motivation and emotion. For example, the personality trait of extraversion reflects a composite of behavioural activity, reward motivation and positive mood. My focus on motivation is mainly in terms of the basic appetitive processes that regulate behaviour toward desired goals. My focus on emotion primarily concerns the subjective experiences that arise during or following goal pursuit, and which vary in both pleasantness (e.g., happy vs sad) and arousal (e.g., lively vs sluggish). I study the interplay of these phenomena using a combination of behavioural and neuroscientific paradigms; my long-term goal is to further understanding of how basic brain-behaviour systems regulate motivation and emotion, and how individual differences in the functioning of these systems manifest in personality.
Questions addressed in my research include, for example, which personality dimensions (if any) reflect individual differences in appetitive motivation? Also, people with an extraverted personality tend on average to experience more positive emotion – is this primarily due to motivational or emotional processes? Put differently, do extraverts LIKE more of what they do, or do they DO more of what they like? Conversely, individuals reporting symptoms of depression often disengage from the kinds of things they used to enjoy (hobbies, work, relationships etc). Is this because they are no longer deriving pleasure from these things, or because they lack the motivation to bring themselves toward such goals?
Research Interests:
- Personality psychology
- Emotion and motivation
- Neuroscience approaches to studying personality/emotion/motivation
- Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory
- Influences of personality/emotion/motivation on cognition (e.g., Working Memory)
Professional Associations, Memberships & Awards:
- Consulting Editor, Journal of Research in Personality (JRP)
- Founding Member, British Society for the Psychology of Individual Differences (BSPID)
- Member, International Society for the Study of Individual Differences (ISSID)
- Member, Society for the Study of Motivation (SSM)
Recent Funded Research:
| Project: | Goal orientations, self-regulation and learning: Accelerating learning via goal-setting. |
| Year: | 2008-2011 |
| Funded by: | Australian Research Council (Discovery Grant) |
| Project: | Individual differences as operating parameters for affect, behaviour and cognition. |
| Year: | 2009 |
| Funded by: | The Royal Society, UK |
Selected Publications: |
Peer Reviewed Journal Articles:
Avery, R. E. & Smillie, L. D. (in press). The Impact of Achievement Goal States on Working Memory. Motivation and Emotion
Smillie, L. D., Cooper, A., Wilt, J. & Revelle, W. (in press). Do Extraverts Get More Bang for the Buck? Refining the Affective-Reactivity Hypothesis of Extraversion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Crockett M. J., Clark L., Smillie, L. D., Robbins T. W. (2012).The effects of acute tryptophan depletion on costly information
sampling: impulsivity or aversive processing? Psychopharmacology, 219, 587-597.
Smillie, L. D., Cooper, A., & Pickering, A. D. (2011). Variation in event related potential (ERP) index of dopamine signalling as a function of extraverted personality. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 6, 646-652.
Smillie, L. D. & Gökçen, E. (2010). Caffeine enhances working memory for extraverts. Biological Psychology, 85, 496–498.
Perkins, A., Cooper, A., Abdelall, M., Smillie, L. D., & Corr, P. J. (2010). Personality and defensive reactions: Fear, trait anxiety and threat magnification. Journal of Personality, 78, 1071-1090.
Smillie, L. D., Cooper, A., Proitsi, P., Powell, J., & Pickering, A. D. (2010). Variation in DRD2 dopamine gene predicts extraverted personality. Neuroscience Letters, 468, 234-237.
Smillie, L. D., Yeo, G. B., & Lang, K. L. (2009). Impulsiveness and resource allocation: Testing Humphreys and Revelle’s (1984) explanation of impulsive personality. Journal of Research in Personality, 43, 1083-1086.
Smillie, L. D., Cooper, A. J., Tharp, I. J., & Pelling, E. L. (2009). Individual differences in cognitive control: The role of psychoticism and working memory in set-shifting. British Journal of Psychology, 100, 629-643.
Smillie, L. D., Bhairo, Y., Gray, J., Gunasinghe, C., Elkin, A., Farmer, A., & McGuffin, P. (2009). Personality and the bipolar spectrum: Normative and classification data for Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 50, 48-53.
Yeo, G., Sorbello, T., Koy, A., & Smillie, L. D. (2008). Goal orientation profiles and task performance growth trajectories. Motivation and Emotion, 32, 296-309.
Cooper, A. J., Smillie, L. D., & Jackson, C. J. (2008). A trait conceptualisation of reward-reactivity: Psychometric properties of the Appetitive Motivation Scale (AMS). Journal of Individual Differences, 29, 168-180.
Smillie, L. D. (2008). What is reinforcement sensitivity? Neuroscience paradigms for approach-avoidance process theories of personality. European Journal of Personality, 22, 359-384. [Target paper with open peer commentary]
Smillie, L. D., Dalgleish, L. I., & Jackson, C. J. (2007). Distinguishing between learning and motivation in behavioural tests of the Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory of personality. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, 476-489.
Smillie, L. D., Pickering, A. D., & Jackson, C. J. (2006). The new Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory: Implications for psychometric measurement. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10, 320-335.
Smillie, L. D., Jackson, C. J., & Dalgleish, L. I. (2006). Conceptual distinctions among Carver and White’s (1994) BAS scales: A reward-reactivity versus trait impulsivity perspective. Personality and Individual Differences, 40, 1039-1050.
Smillie, L. D. & Jackson, C. J. (2006). Functional Impulsivity and Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory. Journal of Personality, 74, 47-83.
Smillie, L. D. & Jackson, C. J. (2005). The Appetitive Motivation Scale and other BAS measures in the prediction of approach and active avoidance. Personality and Individual Differences, 38, 981-994.
Edited Book Chapters:
Smillie, L. D., Loxton, N., & Avery, R. E. (2011). Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory, Research, Applications and Future. In T. Chamorro-Premuzic, A. Furnham & S. von Stumm (Eds.), Handbook of Individual Differences. Wiley-Blackwell.
Wytykowska, A. M. & Smillie, L. D. (2009). Trait anxiety and categorization in experimental paradigms. In M. Fajkowska and B. Szymura (Eds.), Anxiety: Genesis, mechanisms, and functions. Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar. [In Polish]
Pickering, A. D. & Smillie, L. D. (2008). The Behavioural Activation System: Challenges and opportunities. In P. J. Corr (Ed.), The Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory of personality. Cambridge University Press.