Professor John Maltby

I am a member of the TIMMS research group in the School of Healthcare. My research applies psychological and health science to child health and development, with a focus on resilience, mental health, cognitive functioning, and decision-making in healthcare. I explore how psychological processes shape early learning, emotional development, and well-being.

My GoogleScholar Site

My main areas of interest are:

1. Individual Differences, Well-ebing, and Resilience Science. Research on personality traits including authenticity, gratitude, narcissism, life satisfaction and coping. Examination and measurement of trait resilience and its application across multiple life domains.

2. Psychometrics and Measurement Development. Development and validation of psychological scales focused on resilience, well‑being and cognitive assessment. Cross‑cultural and interdisciplinary approaches to psychological measurement.

3. Child Health and Development Application of psychological science to child health, early cognitive development and perinatal mental health. Creation of tools to assess cognitive development and well‑being in young children.

4. Adolescent Digital and Social Contexts. Investigation of digital and social influences on adolescent identity. Examination of the impact of digital and social environments on adolescent mental health.

5. Translational and Applied Health Interventions. Development of whole‑school and community interventions to address vaccination disparities and improve health outcomes for preterm‑born individuals. Creation of decision‑support tools to enable shared decision‑making in treatment options.

Current and Recent funding. 

Postavaru, G., Maltby, J. (co-PIs), Moss, E., & Packer, R. (2025-2026). Developing a Whole-School and Community-based Social-Marketing Intervention to Reduce HPV Vaccination Disparities in Under-served Communities. NIHR Programme Development Grants (PDG) £242,579.10

Zeitlin, J., & Consortium. (2025-2030). (CI: Leicester) IMPROVE PRETERM: IMPROVing Lifelong Health and Development for Children and Adults Born Very Preterm – Observational Studies to Enhance Randomised Trials for Comparative Effectiveness Research. Horizon Europe. (€7.8 million). (£668,728 to Leicester)

Cheng, A., Murphy, G., Maltby, J., & Pufulete, M. (2024-2028). (CI) Shared decision-making tool for individuals considering revascularisation options for Coronary Artery Disease. NIHR PhD Fellowship. (£421,000).

Murphy, G., Owens, G., Abbasciano, R.G., Barwell, Brookes, C., Clift, P., Cotton, A., Lewis, M., Maltby, J. et al. [CI] (2024-2029). Mixed methods co-design and evaluation of a Decision Support Tool to enable shared decision making for people who are considering cascade screening for Thoracic Aortic Disease: The DECIDE TAD Programme. NIHR: Programme Grants for Applied Research  £2,953,078.

Baltzer, H., Anjum, A., Maltby, J., Jones, C., Zhou, H., Kaduk, J., Tansey, K., Liu, L., Touri, M., et al [CI, Workpackage Lead]. (2023-2025). Self-learning Digital Twins for Sustainable Land Management. ESPRC. £2.4 million

Morris, R.K., Hodgetts-Morton, V., Webb, S., Maltby, J., et al.  (2022-2026). Optimising the care of women following childbirth related perineal trauma. NIHR Programme Grants for Applied Research. £1.2 million.

Recent Publications (A full list is provided via GoogleScholar)

Bridger, E. K., Maltby, J., Fried, E. I., & Nettle, D. (2025). Causal beliefs about social determinants of depression, poverty, and mortality. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/asap.70018

Turel, Z. B., Perry, A., Balicki, A., Mukaetova-Ladinska, E., Vargas Triguero, E., Lesniak, A., & Maltby, J. (2025). Measuring meaning-based well-being in individuals with dementia: The creation and validation of the well-being in dementia inventory. Age and Ageing, 54(4), Article afaf092. https://doi.org/10.1093/ageing/afaf092

Maltby J, Rayes T, Nage A, Sharif S, Omar M, Nichani S (2024) Synthesizing perspectives: Crafting an Interdisciplinary view of social media’s impact on young people’s mental health. PLoS ONE 19(7): e0307164. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307164

Maltby, J. (2025). Networking trait resilience: Unifying fragmented trait resilience systems from an ecological systems theory perspective. Journal of Personality, 93(2), 216–232. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12925

Maltby, J., & Hall, S. S. (2022). Less is more: Discovering the latent factors of trait resilience. Journal of Research in Personality, 97, 104193. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2022.104193

Morris, R.K., Hodgetts-Morton, V., Webb, S., Maltby, J., et al.  (2022-2026). Optimising the care of women following childbirth related perineal trauma. NIHR Programme Grants for Applied Research. £1.2 million.

Example Recent Publications (A full list is provided via GoogleScholar)

Bridger, E. K., Maltby, J., Fried, E. I., & Nettle, D. (2025). Causal beliefs about social determinants of depression, poverty, and mortality. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/asap.70018

Turel, Z. B., Perry, A., Balicki, A., Mukaetova-Ladinska, E., Vargas Triguero, E., Lesniak, A., & Maltby, J. (2025). Measuring meaning-based well-being in individuals with dementia: The creation and validation of the well-being in dementia inventory. Age and Ageing, 54(4), Article afaf092. https://doi.org/10.1093/ageing/afaf092

Maltby, J. (2025). Networking trait resilience: Unifying fragmented trait resilience systems from an ecological systems theory perspective. Journal of Personality, 93(2), 216–232. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12925

Maltby J, Rayes T, Nage A, Sharif S, Omar M, Nichani S (2024) Synthesizing perspectives: Crafting an Interdisciplinary view of social media’s impact on young people’s mental health. PLoS ONE 19(7): e0307164. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307164

Krockow, E.M., Cheng, K.O., Maltby, J. et al. Existing terminology related to antimicrobial resistance fails to evoke risk perceptions and be remembered. Commun Med3, 149 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43856-023-00379-6

Maltby, J., Norton, W. H. J., McElroy, E., Cromby, J., Halliwell, M., & Hall, S. S. (2022). Refining anger: Summarizing the self-report measurement of anger. Journal of Personality Assessment, 105(6), 752–762. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2022.2152345

Maltby, J., & Hall, S. S. (2022). Less is more: Discovering the latent factors of trait resilience. Journal of Research in Personality, 97, 104193. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2022.104193

Hall, S. S., McGill, R. M., Puttick, S., & Maltby, J. (2022). Resilience, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and anger: A linguistic inquiry into the psychological processes associated with resilience in secondary school STEM learning. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 92(3), 1223–1241. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjep.12496

I teach on a range of psychology courses available at the University of Leicester. My main teaching is around individual differences and I teach on 2nd and 3rd year modules on the topics of intelligence and applied aspects of individual differences.

I am also an author of the textbook Personality, Individual Differences, and Intelligence (published by Pearson Education).

British Psychological Society

Higher Education Academy

British Society for the Psychology of Individual Differences (Founding Society Officer).

National Institute for Health Research; East Midlands

European Huntington’s Disease Network 

University of Ulster 1995 D/Phil (PhD) in Psychology

University of Ulster 1991 BSc in Social Psychology (BPS accredited)

Sheffield Hallam University 1997 PGCE Education

British Psychological Society 2014 Occupational Ability and Personality (Level A and B)