Charles Abraham, PhD

Professor of Psychology Applied to Health, University of Exeter Medical School (Affiliate)

Research Overview

Charles Abraham is a social and health psychologist. His research focuses on identifying modifiable psychological antecedents of action and designing and testing interventions to change behaviour. He is interested in understanding both reflective and impulsive behavioural control mechanisms. He has published reports of randomised controlled trials of interventions designed to change health behaviours including condom use, exercise, healthy eating and alcohol reduction.

CA is interested in identifying the particular contents (or active ingredients) of behaviour change interventions responsible for successful behaviour change. Together with Susan Michie, he has developed a standardised taxonomy of change techniques that can be used to design intervention content. He is now developing and applying this taxonomy in an NIH-funded project with Blair Johnston and in a UK MRC-funded project with Susan Michie. CA was the founding chair of the Division of Health Psychology and is a past co-editor of Psychology & Health (P&H). He is currently co-editing another edition of P&H with Blair Johnson on behaviour change interventions. CA has acted as a research consultant in the UK Department of Health. He was also a member of the group who developed the UK NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) guidance on behaviour change practice.

Education

D. Phil., University of Sussex, 1982 (social psychology)
B.A., University of Sussex, 1978 (social psychology)

Recent Publications