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The emotional face: What determines preferential expression processing. The processing of facial expressions of emotion is essential for successful social functioning. However, we still lack a good understanding of key factors that facilitate or impede the processing of these important social signals. The current project aims to address this knowledge gap by providing a) a more rigorous test of the currently dominant account of expression processing, the evaluative congruence account, and deline ....The emotional face: What determines preferential expression processing. The processing of facial expressions of emotion is essential for successful social functioning. However, we still lack a good understanding of key factors that facilitate or impede the processing of these important social signals. The current project aims to address this knowledge gap by providing a) a more rigorous test of the currently dominant account of expression processing, the evaluative congruence account, and delineating how b) contextual factors and c) person knowledge affect expression processing. The research aims to advance our understanding of facial expression processing, to build international collaborations, and to train the next generation of emotion scientists.Read moreRead less
The neuroscience of group membership and its effects on action perception and empathy. People belong to different groups and sometimes group membership can lead to discrimination of people outside the group. This project will use brain imaging techniques to understand better how our brains make group distinctions and how this can sometimes lead to discrimination of other people.
Killing which averts suffering: the role of norms and empathy. Abattoir workers and butchers kill animals to prepare food, farmers to cull stock, and veterinarians to alleviate suffering. Soldiers kill other humans in war, police or security guards to protect the public, and doctors to enact legal euthanasia. Research shows that these tasks can be confronting, and even traumatic. This project aims to test the processes through which people learn socially supported palliative killing to avert suf ....Killing which averts suffering: the role of norms and empathy. Abattoir workers and butchers kill animals to prepare food, farmers to cull stock, and veterinarians to alleviate suffering. Soldiers kill other humans in war, police or security guards to protect the public, and doctors to enact legal euthanasia. Research shows that these tasks can be confronting, and even traumatic. This project aims to test the processes through which people learn socially supported palliative killing to avert suffering and their neural underpinnings, with a focus on norms and empathic distress. It will focus on two core samples: veterinarians, who must euthanize animals, and health practitioners in Victoria, where legal changes will introduce ‘voluntary assisted dying’ in mid-2019. It will investigate how practitioners learn palliative killing, and what the impact is on psychological variables such as empathy and identity. It will generate new understandings of social influence around life and death decisions, provide an evidence basis to inform policy makers, and help institutions and practitioners seeking to manage distress and respond to fast-moving, controversial policy changes.Read moreRead less
How inequalities affect attitudes and behaviours concerning sex and gender. This project addresses how economic inequalities—between and within the sexes—shape behaviour, gender sentiment, and violence both online and ‘in real life’. The research brings evolutionary understandings of sexual marketplaces together with the psychology of social behaviour, to shed new light on the origins of sexual conflict and harmful gender ideologies. This project integrates within-individual variation, careful e ....How inequalities affect attitudes and behaviours concerning sex and gender. This project addresses how economic inequalities—between and within the sexes—shape behaviour, gender sentiment, and violence both online and ‘in real life’. The research brings evolutionary understandings of sexual marketplaces together with the psychology of social behaviour, to shed new light on the origins of sexual conflict and harmful gender ideologies. This project integrates within-individual variation, careful experimental dissection of the sources of inequality, and the study of large-scale (among cities, among countries) patterns of behaviour on social media. A fuller understanding of how and why inequalities affect behaviour presents opportunities for improved social policy and responses to gendered violence and cyberhate.Read moreRead less
The emotional face: Effects on orienting, visual search, and categorization. The processing of facial expressions of emotion is essential for successful social functioning however our understanding of how these important signals are processed and of the factors which may impede appropriate processing is lacking. Using a range of converging methodologies drawn from neuroscience, social, and cognitive psychology, this project aims to advance our understanding of the processing of the expressions o ....The emotional face: Effects on orienting, visual search, and categorization. The processing of facial expressions of emotion is essential for successful social functioning however our understanding of how these important signals are processed and of the factors which may impede appropriate processing is lacking. Using a range of converging methodologies drawn from neuroscience, social, and cognitive psychology, this project aims to advance our understanding of the processing of the expressions of two central social emotions, happiness and anger, by delineating the conditions that support or limit it in the general population. This research aims to provide an invaluable knowledge base for subsequent applied research into deficits of emotional expression processing such as occur in autism, anxiety, or old age.Read moreRead less
Investigating anticipatory traumatic threat in refugees and asylum seekers. This project seeks to establish how traumatic threat differs from post-traumatic stress and generalised worry. Research into traumatic stress has focused on the pathogenic role of past trauma. There has been little research among populations facing ongoing traumatic threat. A cluster of future-oriented threat-related intrusive symptoms has been identified among refugees with insecure residency that is distinct from post- ....Investigating anticipatory traumatic threat in refugees and asylum seekers. This project seeks to establish how traumatic threat differs from post-traumatic stress and generalised worry. Research into traumatic stress has focused on the pathogenic role of past trauma. There has been little research among populations facing ongoing traumatic threat. A cluster of future-oriented threat-related intrusive symptoms has been identified among refugees with insecure residency that is distinct from post-traumatic stress and worry. The project aims to investigate this traumatic threat response using descriptive and experimental approaches. The findings from this study may lay the foundation of a revised understanding of the human response to traumatic threat.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE220100087
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$452,285.00
Summary
Sally disagrees with you! A unified theory for human sociality . As fundamentally social beings, we usually keep company with the people that think like ourselves: Our friends and loved ones. This project aims to deliver a unifying theory of human sociality that can account for why the human brain may want to avoid conflict between own and others' ways of thinking. This will be achieved via online behavioural experiments, a highly innovative functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) design, a ....Sally disagrees with you! A unified theory for human sociality . As fundamentally social beings, we usually keep company with the people that think like ourselves: Our friends and loved ones. This project aims to deliver a unifying theory of human sociality that can account for why the human brain may want to avoid conflict between own and others' ways of thinking. This will be achieved via online behavioural experiments, a highly innovative functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) design, and philosophical approaches. The project expects to generate knowledge on the social neuroscience of political/religious group behaviour, shedding light on the brain mechanisms that underlie social cognition. It will benefit our approach to social problems like discrimination, fundamentalism and extremism.Read moreRead less
Drivers and constraints of romantic partner choice. This project aims to illuminate how genetic and environmental factors drive and constrain romantic partner choice. This choice can be the most significant in people’s lives, but how it works is not scientifically understood. This project will analyse the preferences and actual partners of thousands of twins using multivariable statistics and theoretic models of partner choice. The project aims to reveal why some people pair with incompatible pa ....Drivers and constraints of romantic partner choice. This project aims to illuminate how genetic and environmental factors drive and constrain romantic partner choice. This choice can be the most significant in people’s lives, but how it works is not scientifically understood. This project will analyse the preferences and actual partners of thousands of twins using multivariable statistics and theoretic models of partner choice. The project aims to reveal why some people pair with incompatible partners, and the consequences of partner mismatch for psychological wellbeing and for evolutionary processes driven by mate selection. This could lead to more effective relationship management.Read moreRead less
The intergenerational origins of social and emotional wellbeing. This project aims to map inter-generational pathways that connect parental life histories, from infancy to parenthood, to offspring development decades later. The project brings together rare data from three long running studies of social development in Australia and New Zealand: The Australian Temperament Project (est. 1983), The Victorian Inter-generational Health Cohort (est. 1992), and The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health & Dev ....The intergenerational origins of social and emotional wellbeing. This project aims to map inter-generational pathways that connect parental life histories, from infancy to parenthood, to offspring development decades later. The project brings together rare data from three long running studies of social development in Australia and New Zealand: The Australian Temperament Project (est. 1983), The Victorian Inter-generational Health Cohort (est. 1992), and The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health & Development Study (est. 1972). Expected outcomes include enhanced understanding of the factors that strengthen or undermine well-being in families from one generation to the next.Read moreRead less
Intergenerational determinants of child development on school entry. There is widespread interest in preconception determinants of child development but progress relies on multigenerational longitudinal datasets, which are rare internationally. This project takes advantage of a unique opportunity to follow third-generation offspring from one of Australia's oldest longitudinal studies of psychosocial development. The Australian Temperament Project has followed 2000+ young Australians (and their f ....Intergenerational determinants of child development on school entry. There is widespread interest in preconception determinants of child development but progress relies on multigenerational longitudinal datasets, which are rare internationally. This project takes advantage of a unique opportunity to follow third-generation offspring from one of Australia's oldest longitudinal studies of psychosocial development. The Australian Temperament Project has followed 2000+ young Australians (and their families) since 1983, and over 1000 offspring from pregnancy to 4 years since 2012. This project will expand offspring assessments to 6-years, marking the transition to school. Findings have the potential to reshape approaches promoting intergenerational wellbeing and breaking intergenerational cycles of disadvantage.Read moreRead less