The Cognitive Psychology Research Group of the School of Psychology, University of Newcastle, hosted the Australasian Mathematical Psychology Conference (AMPC) on 11 and 12 February 2021. The conference was a great success and received unanimous positive feedback on its innovative format.
A recent publication by UoN School of Psychology’s PhD student, Chloe Peneaux, has made it into a short list of just four papers nominated for the best paper published by an Early Career author in the international journal IBIS in 2020. Her paper titled “The potential utility of carotenoid‐based coloration as a biomonitor of environmental change” was selected by IBIS Editors and the final vote for the best overall paper is now over to the wider ornithological community.
Chloe argues that measuring brightly coloured morphological
features in birds could proactively ascertain whether populations are at risk
of declining. This is because bright markings often correlate with an
individual’s reproductive success. She shows that coloration measurements could
easily become standard practice within widespread banding programs.
To cast your vote, go to https://bou.org.uk/ibis/best-ecr-paper-of-2020/
The mere presence of others can sometimes be enough to change the way we make decisions. This might be something so simple as changing your order at breakfast so you don’t end up with the same meal as your friend (the horror!), or to something more serious like deciding when, and how much, to bid in an auction for your dream home. Given that some decisions can have more significant consequences than others (paying too much for a house vs you and I both having scrambled eggs), it is important that we can understand how certain social contexts affect our decision making.
Our recently published article examined how a competitive social context affects simple bidding decisions in a virtual Dutch auction. A Dutch auction is an exciting auction format where the price of an item begins at an exorbitant price and decreases until the first person makes a bid and wins the item. This auction format is unique as it presents a series of risky choices that requires groups to continuously choose between (i) a fast bid that would cost more or (ii) waiting for a cheaper price but risk losing to another participant!
Interestingly, we found that when our simulated auctions started at higher prices participants tended to pay more with higher bids. We also saw that different auction designs (e.g., a faster decrease in price, or variations in the number of items for sale on each auction) did not change the strategy that participants used to bid.
If you would like to find out more about the effects of competitive social contexts on group decision making, you can read the open access article at https://rdcu.be/cbwFC
Bennett, M., Mullard, R., Adam, M. T., Steyvers, M., Brown, S., & Eidels, A. (2020). Going, going, gone: competitive decision-making in Dutch auctions. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 5(1), 1-22.
Are you a
graduate from our Psychology programs at the University of Newcastle?
Linda.e.campbell@newcastle.edu.au
Also, if you know any graduates who you think may be suitable, can you please forward this information to them or let them know about our project.
Have you ever noticed that women are typically the ones spearheading gender equality movements? Think of the suffragettes, the #MeToo, and #TimesUp movements, the March for Women.
All fronted by women – but at what cost? Research increasingly shows that relying solely on female leaders is not enough to achieve equality. Indeed, male and female pro-equality leaders experience vastly different evaluations regarding their motivations and effectiveness when discussing gender equality.
Research on these issues driven by UON Psychology researchers, Dr Stephanie Hardacre and Dr Emina Subasic, has recently been discussed in a new book by former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and economist Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
There’s been a recent upsurge in male-led initiatives, such as the HeForShe movement, and the Male Champions of Change initiative. Both of these call on men to use their privilege and power to place gender equality on the agenda.
These types of initiatives aren’t just companies taking a stab at something new – they’re backed by social psychological research. For example, two studies by Hardacre and Subasic looking at how leader gender affected individuals’ responses to calls for equality found that men and women were more likely to follow a male leader (than a female leader) into action. It will be interesting to see how long the male ally advantage persists: in the longer term, effective feminist leadership (such as that embodied by recently re-elected New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern) will presumably eliminate the ironic inequality. But this is for future research to establish!
This research has been featured in the new book “Women and Leadership”, by Julia Gillard and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, which sought to put the academic work about women in leadership to the test in the real world.
If you want to know more about this line of work, email Stephanie.Hardacre@newcastle.edu.au
An exciting opportunity for PhD scholarship at the University of Newcastle's Functional Neuroimaging Lab, with a team of heralded Australian and international experts. Check the flyer below, email frini.karayanidis@newcastle.edu.au, or use this link for more details:
Various researchers have demonstrated that people who have less social support are also more likely to have poorer mental and physical health. Currently, we are living through a pandemic which has reduced the amount of socialising many of us can do. This change has led to many new and unique ways to maintain our social support networks.
A study by UON Psychology Dr Romany McGuffog and A/Prof Mark Rubin explored an unusual explanation for the relation between social support and health. Specifically, they investigated dreams and sleep. Research surrounding dreams has been mixed: Some types of dreams have been found to be associated with better mental and physical health, but nightmares are related to more stress.
To clarify the role that dreams could play in the relation between social support and health, Romany and Mark broke down dreams into various components including dream emotions, dream bizarreness, recall, impact, and frequency of dreams/nightmares.
The results suggest that less social support is related to more negative dream emotions, higher impact of nightmares, and poorer sleep, and (then) also to poorer mental and physical health. In other words, it seems that people who experience good social support then experience more positive dreams and less nightmares, which provides better sleep and better mental health and physical health.
Romany will be presenting this research at the Early Career Researcher and Postgraduate conference of the Centre for Brain and Mental Health Research on October 16th at HMRI, JH Hospital.
For any questions or to discuss further, contact Romany at:
Romany.McGuffog@uon.edu.au | Twitter: @RomanyMcGuffog
He had done it again!
For the second consecutive year, Prof Scott Brown from the School of Psychology at the University of Newcastle was named the top Australian Cognitive Scientist (2020). Scott was among six University of Newcastle researchers that have been named as top in their field in new data published in The Australian’s 2020 Research magazine. Well done Scott.
NEW PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE DEGREE COMING IN 2021
From Semester 1 2021, a new degree will be on offer – the Graduate Diploma in Psychological Science. This new program offers
undergraduate degree graduates from a broad range of disciplines an alternative
pathway into the profession of Psychology.
Graduates will develop a wide range of knowledge and skills which will enable
progression into management positions and will be valued across multiple
industries including human service organisations, employment agencies,
counselling services, personnel management, market research, or health and
community services.
LEARN MORE https://www.newcastle.edu.au/degrees/graduate-diploma-psychological-science
Global economic crises, like the one we will experience post-COVID, disproportionately affect vulnerable segments of society. Historical data tell us that they increase disparities and threaten social cohesion. A research team led by A/Prof Paolini at UON Psychology has partnered with a local high school to check on the impact that the COVID crisis is having on the academic aspirations of students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Dr Paolini explains: “We know that, even in regular times, vulnerable students, more than other students, struggle to align their aspirations for the future to their academic performance and potential. We have also observed that their academic aspirations tend to decline over time, as vulnerable students approach the time in which they need to make consequential decisions about their future schooling and professional pathways, at the end of middle school”. This dampening in academic aspirations can undermine efforts at forging positive futures for these students and their families. It can be a key contributor to difficult to break cycles of poverty in our local communities.
These troubling patterns in academic aspirations of vulnerable students are likely to get even worse as the post-pandemic crisis deepens. As the economic pressures increase, stigmatization of social minorities often becomes more pronounced. Narratives of ‘survival of the fittest’ and ‘succumbing of the weakest’ thrive in especially competitive and uncertain job markets, like the one we are facing. These stigmatizing narratives and stereotypes can be used to explain away and normalize differences in rates of recovery in society. Market-oriented views of education can become rampant and reduce education to just an instrument for “preparing individuals for their ‘place’ in the labor market”.
With their work, Dr Paolini and her UON research team want to minimize the risk that disadvantage students in the Newcastle area will fall through the cracks of the post-pandemic crisis and cut their aspiration short, accepting a bleak future for themselves and their families. For this, they will take a closer look at post-COVID experiences of stigmatization and exclusion of local Indigenous students, students from low SES, Out-of-Home Care, refugee and migrant background.
Their work will track trajectories of academic success and aspirations of these students and their more advantaged counterparts, over a three year period. This investigative effort will help identify the drivers of debilitating dynamics in academic aspirations and protective factors. It will help the school put in place strategies to ensure that all students at this local school and around Australia do not miss out on the bright futures they can forge and deserve.
From left to right the research team: A/Prof Stefania Paolini (Psychology), Dr Olivia Evans (Psychology), Dr Stephanie Hardacre (Psychology), Adele Ghabrial (Psychology), Prof John Fischetti (Education)
To know more about this research project and progress with tackling these important challenges, get in touch! S
The world has always been a pretty uncertain place, but it feels like it’s even more uncertain now than ever before. With COVID-19 outbreaks happening unpredictably and restrictions changing rapidly, we’re all struggling to keep up, and uncertainty is making life more stressful for everyone.
However, uncertainty can affect people in different ways. Some people are happy to fly by the seat of their pants, while others need to have every event for the next month noted in their calendar. Unsurprisingly, people who have a high need for certainty tend to have poorer mental health, experiencing more symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress than those with a low need for certainty. But why is certainty so important to some people and not others?
Recently minted UON PhD graduate Dr Monica Gendi considered this question during her PhD studies, supervised by A/Prof Mark Rubin. Monica found that the way that adults respond to uncertainty seems to be related to the way their caregivers responded to their needs as babies.
Ideally, caregivers respond to children’s needs consistently and appropriately, providing comfort and care when the baby signals that they need it (e.g., by crying!). However, some caregivers consistently disregard or ignore their baby’s needs, while others respond appropriately sometimes but ignore their baby at other times.
Monica’s research suggested that people whose needs were not consistently met when they were children have a high need for certainty as adults. This might be because their early experiences taught them that the world is not a safe place, and those around them can’t be trusted to help if they are in trouble. This lack of confidence in the world and in others translates to a desire for the world to be predictable and unambiguous so that they can plan for how to deal with it.
As life becomes less predictable and more ambiguous, the negative consequences of being unable to deal well with uncertainty are likely to be exacerbated. This research highlights the importance of parenting in creating children’s basic beliefs about the world, the consequences of which echo throughout their adult lives.
To know more about (just PhD awardee) Dr Monica Gendi’s research: monica.gendi@uon.edu.au
