Juggling priorities: How do tertiary students balance work and study? This project aims to apply boundary management theory to examine how tertiary students cope with the competing demands of work and study while at university. The project will use survey, interview, and diary studies to test the associations between work demands and academic, career, and well-being outcomes over time. The expected outcomes will contribute an improved understanding of these relationships and the underlying mecha ....Juggling priorities: How do tertiary students balance work and study? This project aims to apply boundary management theory to examine how tertiary students cope with the competing demands of work and study while at university. The project will use survey, interview, and diary studies to test the associations between work demands and academic, career, and well-being outcomes over time. The expected outcomes will contribute an improved understanding of these relationships and the underlying mechanisms with potential benefits for individuals, tertiary institutions, and the community.Read moreRead less
Enhancing adolescent mental health through positive education. Positive education is a preventative, strengths-based approach to address the mental health needs of young people in schools. This project will use innovative methods to examine the contribution of positive education to adolescent mental health, and to social and learning outcomes; and will also guide effective and widespread dissemination of positive education, more generally.
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
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
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
Understanding and reducing the impact of sexual objectification. Violence and discrimination are serious problems facing women in Australia. This project examines how sexual objectification contributes to these problems, investigating the process from both the perpetrator's and the victim's perspectives. Using a multi-method approach, the project is expected to show how objectification hampers women in their personal and professional lives. Importantly, the project aims to go beyond identifying ....Understanding and reducing the impact of sexual objectification. Violence and discrimination are serious problems facing women in Australia. This project examines how sexual objectification contributes to these problems, investigating the process from both the perpetrator's and the victim's perspectives. Using a multi-method approach, the project is expected to show how objectification hampers women in their personal and professional lives. Importantly, the project aims to go beyond identifying the harm caused by objectification to start examining ways in which it can be reduced and women can protect themselves from its effects. This is expected to provide insight into a previously unstudied psychological cause of violence and discrimination against women, and map ways of reducing its harm.Read moreRead less
Adjustment to retirement through social identity change. This project aims to improve our understanding of the factors governing successful adjustment to retirement. Retirement involves a major life change, to which 30 per cent of people fail to adjust successfully. Previous work in the social identity tradition suggests that the negative effects of significant life changes (eg moving into care) can be buffered by access to social group networks, but this possibility has not been examined in the ....Adjustment to retirement through social identity change. This project aims to improve our understanding of the factors governing successful adjustment to retirement. Retirement involves a major life change, to which 30 per cent of people fail to adjust successfully. Previous work in the social identity tradition suggests that the negative effects of significant life changes (eg moving into care) can be buffered by access to social group networks, but this possibility has not been examined in the context of retirement. This project plans to address this gap through studies that establish the importance of social group factors for successful adjustment among Australian, English, American and Chinese retirees. It also plans to test the efficacy of a new model that seeks to improve adjustment to retirement by incorporating various forms of social planning into preparation for this transition.Read moreRead less
Establishing safe driving practice: Improving young learner driver training. This project plans to develop a best-practice model to enable professional instructors to teach essential higher-order skills (e.g. hazard perception) to young learner drivers to establish safe driving behaviours. Australian young drivers aged 17–25 years comprise 13 per cent of the population but 22 per cent of road deaths. More effective teaching models are expected to reduce young drivers’ crash risk when they drive ....Establishing safe driving practice: Improving young learner driver training. This project plans to develop a best-practice model to enable professional instructors to teach essential higher-order skills (e.g. hazard perception) to young learner drivers to establish safe driving behaviours. Australian young drivers aged 17–25 years comprise 13 per cent of the population but 22 per cent of road deaths. More effective teaching models are expected to reduce young drivers’ crash risk when they drive unsupervised. The project aims to develop and assess the effectiveness of the model including the impact on instructor teaching practices, and changes in young driver skills, attitudes, and driving behaviours including crashes and offences. It also aims to assess instructor and young driver perceptions of the model.Read moreRead less