ORCID Profile
0000-0002-8267-5727
Current Organisation
Murdoch University
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Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2021
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Date: 13-11-2017
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 07-2023
DOI: 10.1177/14747049231179408
Abstract: In recent years, researchers have discovered much about how disgust works, its neural basis, its relationship with immune function, its connection with mating, and some of its antecedents and consequents. Despite these advances in our understanding, an under-explored area is how disgust may be used to serve a communicative function, including how in iduals might strategically downplay or exaggerate the disgust display in front of different audiences. Here, we generated two hypotheses about potential communicative functions of disgust, and tested these hypotheses in four countries (Turkey, Croatia, Germany, and Norway). We found no evidence in support of either hypothesis in any country. Discussion focuses on the likely falsity of the two central hypotheses, alternative interpretations of our findings, and directions for future research.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 04-2023
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 12-2020
DOI: 10.1002/PER.2292
Abstract: The field of personality psychology aspires to construct an overarching theory of human nature and in idual differences: one that specifies the psychological mechanisms that underpin both universal and variable aspects of thought, emotion, and behaviour. Here, we argue that the adaptationist toolkit of evolutionary psychology provides a powerful meta–theory for characterizing the psychological mechanisms that give rise to within–person, between–person, and cross–cultural variations. We first outline a mechanism–centred adaptationist framework for personality science, which makes a clear ontological distinction between (i) psychological mechanisms designed to generate behavioural decisions and (ii) heuristic trait concepts that function to perceive, describe, and influence others behaviour and reputation in everyday life. We illustrate the utility of the adaptationist framework by reporting three empirical studies. Each study supports the hypothesis that the anger programme—a putative emotional adaptation—is a behaviour–regulating mechanism whose outputs are described in the parlance of the person description factor called ‘Agreeableness’. We conclude that the most productive way forward is to build theory–based models of specific psychological mechanisms, including their culturally evolved design features, until they constitute a comprehensive depiction of human nature and its multifaceted variations. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 07-06-2021
Publisher: Center for Open Science
Date: 17-04-2020
Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion regulation strategy which modifies how one thinks about a situation. Participants from 87 countries/regions (N = 21,644) were randomly assigned to one of two brief reappraisal interventions (reconstrual or repurposing) or one of two control conditions (active or passive). Results revealed that both reappraisal interventions (vs. both control conditions) had consistent effects in reducing negative emotions and increasing positive emotions across different measures. Reconstrual and repurposing had similar effects. Importantly, planned exploratory analyses indicated that reappraisal interventions did not reduce intentions to practice preventive health behaviours. The findings demonstrate the viability of creating scalable, low-cost interventions for use around the world to build resilience during the pandemic and beyond.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 24-08-2022
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2018
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2018
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2023
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Date: 23-06-2021
DOI: 10.3389/FPSYG.2021.648206
Abstract: COVID-19 has had a profound negative effect on many aspects of human life. While pharmacological solutions are being developed and implemented, the onus of mitigating the impact of the virus falls, in part, on in idual citizens and their adherence to public health guidelines. However, promoting adherence to these guidelines has proven challenging. There is a pressing need to understand the factors that influence people’s adherence to these guidelines in order to improve public compliance. To this end, the current study investigated whether people’s perceptions of others’ adherence predict their own adherence. We also investigated whether any influence of perceived social norms was mediated by perceptions of the moral wrongness of non-adherence, anticipated shame for non-adherence, or perceptions of disease severity. One hundred fifty-two Australians participated in our study between June 6, 2020 and August 21, 2020. Findings from this preliminary investigation suggest that (1) people match their behavior to perceived social norms, and (2) this is driven, at least in part, by people using others’ behavior as a cue to the severity of disease threat. Such findings provide insight into the proximate and ultimate bases of norm-following behavior, and shed preliminary light on public health-related behavior in the context of a pandemic. Although further research is needed, the results of this study—which suggest that people use others’ behavior as a cue to how serious the pandemic is and as a guide for their own behavior—could have important implications for public health organizations, social movements, and political leaders and the role they play in the fight against epidemics and pandemics.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 2017
DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X17001029
Abstract: Pepper & Nettle use an evolutionary framework to argue that “temporal discounting” is an appropriate response to low socioeconomic status (SES), or deprivation. We suggest some conceptual refinements to their “appropriate-response” perspective, with the hope that it usefully informs future research on and public policy responses to the relationship between deprivation and temporal discounting.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 02-2023
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 2017
DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X16001692
Abstract: Burkart et al.'s impressive synthesis will serve as a valuable resource for intelligence research. Despite its strengths, the target article falls short of offering compelling explanations for the evolution of intelligence. Here, we outline its shortcomings, illustrate how these can lead to misguided conclusions about the evolution of intelligence, and suggest ways to address the article's key questions.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 09-2022
Publisher: Springer Publishing Company
Date: 02-2019
DOI: 10.1891/1933-3196.13.1.32
Abstract: Although treatment fidelity measures for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) have been cited in past research, none have been subject to any empirical investigation of reliability. This three-phase study aimed to quantify the interrater reliability of a measure of EMDR treatment fidelity. First, two raters refined the reprocessing section of the EMDR Fidelity Checklist (Leeds, 2016) by developing a descriptive item-by-item scoring system to improve interpretation and reliability. The resultant checklist was piloted on recordings of five EMDR session recordings from the Laugharne et al. (2016) study. The checklist was then revised. Next, the raters used the checklist to assess 15 other recorded EMDR sessions from the same study. The intraclass correlations (ICCs) were in the excellent range for all subscales and total session scores (i.e., .75), with an exception of the Desensitization subscale, ICC = 0.69 (0.08, 0.90). Finally, in idual items in that subscale were evaluated, finding that five items did not contribute to the ICC. When these were removed/revised, the ICC for this subscale moved into the excellent range, ICC = 0.81(0.43, 0.94). The findings of this study indicate that this checklist may be a reliable measure of treatment fidelity for single reprocessing EMDR sessions with the possible exception of the Body Scan phase. Future research using the checklist with raters who were not involved in checklist development is needed to confirm the generalizability of these findings.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 02-12-2022
DOI: 10.1177/01461672221115218
Abstract: Despite progress in attractiveness research, we have yet to identify many fitness-relevant cues in the human phenotype or humans’ psychology for responding to them. Here, we test hypotheses about psychological systems that may have evolved to process distinct cues in the female lumbar region. The Fetal Load Hypothesis proposes a male preference for a morphological cue: lumbar curvature. The Lordosis Detection Hypothesis posits context-dependent male attraction to a movement: lordosis behavior. In two studies (Study 1 N: 102, Study 2 N: 231), we presented men with animated female characters that varied in their lumbar curvature and back arching (i.e., lordosis behavior). Irrespective of mating context, men’s attraction increased as lumbar curvature approached the hypothesized optimum. By contrast, men experienced greater attraction to lordosis behavior in short-term than long-term mating contexts. These findings support both the Lordosis Detection and Fetal Load Hypotheses. Discussion focuses on the meaning of human lordosis and the importance of dynamic stimuli in attractiveness research.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Date: 26-01-2022
DOI: 10.1093/OXFORDHB/9780197536438.013.22
Abstract: Attractiveness is a perception produced by psychological mechanisms in the mind of the perceiver. Understanding attractiveness therefore requires an understanding of these mechanisms. This includes the selection pressures that shaped them and their resulting information-processing architecture, including the cues they attend to and the context-dependent manner in which they respond to those cues. We review a erse array of fitness-relevant cues along with evidence that the human mind processes these cues when making attractiveness judgments. For some of these cues, there is unequivocal evidence that the cue influences attractiveness judgments, but exactly why attractiveness-assessment mechanisms track that cue is an area of current debate. Another area of active inquiry is when these cues influence attractiveness judgments: because the fitness costs and benefits associated with these cues would have varied across contexts, selection should have shaped attractiveness-assessment mechanisms to be sensitive to contextual variables. As a consequence of this context-sensitive design, these mechanisms, despite being universal, should produce attractiveness assessments that vary systematically and predictably across contexts. We review evidence indicating that this is how human perception of attractiveness works, and highlight the need for more comprehensive and systematic investigations into contextual variation in human standards of attractiveness. We conclude by identifying limitations on existing evolutionary research on attractiveness, and provide concrete suggestions for how future work can address these issues.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 11-02-2023
DOI: 10.1038/S41597-022-01811-7
Abstract: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Psychological Science Accelerator coordinated three large-scale psychological studies to examine the effects of loss-gain framing, cognitive reappraisals, and autonomy framing manipulations on behavioral intentions and affective measures. The data collected (April to October 2020) included specific measures for each experimental study, a general questionnaire examining health prevention behaviors and COVID-19 experience, geographical and cultural context characterization, and demographic information for each participant. Each participant started the study with the same general questions and then was randomized to complete either one longer experiment or two shorter experiments. Data were provided by 73,223 participants with varying completion rates. Participants completed the survey from 111 geopolitical regions in 44 unique languages/dialects. The anonymized dataset described here is provided in both raw and processed formats to facilitate re-use and further analyses. The dataset offers secondary analytic opportunities to explore coping, framing, and self-determination across a erse, global s le obtained at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which can be merged with other time-s led or geographic data.
Publisher: Center for Open Science
Date: 30-05-2021
Abstract: Finding communication strategies that effectively motivate social distancing continues to be a global public health priority during the COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-country, preregistered experiment (n = 25,718 from 89 countries) tested hypotheses concerning generalizable positive and negative outcomes of social distancing messages that promoted personal agency and reflective choices (i.e., an autonomy-supportive message) or were restrictive and shaming (i.e. a controlling message) compared to no message at all. Results partially supported experimental hypotheses in that the controlling message increased controlled motivation (a poorly-internalized form of motivation relying on shame, guilt, and fear of social consequences) relative to no message. On the other hand, the autonomy-supportive message lowered feelings of defiance compared to the controlling message, but the controlling message did not differ from receiving no message at all. Unexpectedly, messages did not influence autonomous motivation (a highly-internalized form of motivation relying on one’s core values) or behavioral intentions. Results supported hypothesized associations between people’s existing autonomous and controlled motivations and self-reported behavioral intentions to engage in social distancing: Controlled motivation was associated with more defiance and less long-term behavioral intentions to engage in social distancing, whereas autonomous motivation was associated with less defiance and more short- and long-term intentions to social distance. Overall, this work highlights the potential harm of using shaming and pressuring language in public health communication, with implications for the current and future global health challenges.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 02-08-2021
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 06-11-2018
Abstract: Women have consistently higher levels of disgust than men. This sex difference is substantial in magnitude, highly replicable, emerges with erse assessment methods, and affects a wide array of outcomes—including job selection, mate choice, food aversions, and psychological disorders. Despite the importance of this far-reaching sex difference, sound theoretical explanations have lagged behind the empirical discoveries. In this article, we focus on the evolutionary-functional level of analysis, outlining hypotheses capable of explaining why women have higher levels of disgust than men. We present four hypotheses for sexual disgust and six for pathogen disgust, along with testable predictions. Discussion focuses on additional new hypotheses and on future research capable of adjudicating among these competing, but not mutually exclusive, hypotheses.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 13-03-2023
DOI: 10.1038/S41598-023-31175-W
Abstract: In 1753, artist William Hogarth declared a specific S-shaped line to be the ‘Line of Beauty’ (LoB). Hogarth’s assertion has had a profound impact on erse fields over the past two and a half centuries. However, only one recent (2022) study has investigated whether Hogarth’s assertion accurately captures humans’ actual aesthetic preferences, and no research has explored why people find the LoB beautiful. We conducted two studies testing the hypothesis that the LoB’s perceived beauty is an incidental by-product of cognitive systems that evolved to attend to fitness-relevant morphological features in people. In Study 1, we replicated the finding that female bodies whose lumbar curvature approximates the biomechanical optimum for dealing with the exigencies of pregnancy are rated as more attractive. In Study 2, we found that abstract lines extracted from these bodies were perceived as more beautiful than other lines. These results suggest that the preference for Hogarth’s LoB is an incidental by-product of psychological mechanisms that evolved for other purposes. More broadly, these findings suggest that an evolutionary psychological approach – in particular the concept of evolutionary by-product – may be useful for understanding, explaining, and predicting people’s aesthetic preferences for certain abstract symbols, which otherwise might seem arbitrary and inexplicable.
Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Date: 17-10-2016
Abstract: Pathogens, and antipathogen behavioral strategies, affect myriad aspects of human behavior. Recent findings suggest that antipathogen strategies relate to political attitudes, with more ideologically conservative in iduals reporting more disgust toward pathogen cues, and with higher parasite stress nations being, on average, more conservative. However, no research has yet adjudicated between two theoretical accounts proposed to explain these relationships between pathogens and politics. We find that national parasite stress and in idual disgust sensitivity relate more strongly to adherence to traditional norms than they relate to support for barriers between social groups. These results suggest that the relationship between pathogens and politics reflects intragroup motivations more than intergroup motivations.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 05-2017
DOI: 10.1037/A0040409
Abstract: Researchers in the social and behavioral sciences are increasingly using evolutionary insights to test novel hypotheses about human psychology. Because evolutionary perspectives are relatively new to psychology and most researchers do not receive formal training in this endeavor, there remains ambiguity about "best practices" for implementing evolutionary principles. This article provides researchers with a practical guide for using evolutionary perspectives in their research programs and for avoiding common pitfalls in doing so. We outline essential elements of an evolutionarily informed research program at 3 central phases: (a) generating testable hypotheses, (b) testing empirical predictions, and (c) interpreting results. We elaborate key conceptual tools, including task analysis, psychological mechanisms, design features, universality, and cost-benefit analysis. Researchers can use these tools to generate hypotheses about universal psychological mechanisms, social and cultural inputs that lify or attenuate the activation of these mechanisms, and cross-culturally variable behavior that these mechanisms can produce. We hope that this guide inspires theoretically and methodologically rigorous research that more cogently integrates knowledge from the psychological and life sciences. (PsycINFO Database Record
No related grants have been discovered for David M. G. Lewis.