ARC Discovery Projects 2025

Congratulations to our successful researchers, who have had an astounding about of success in the latest round of ARC Discovery Project grants.

MSPS researchers have been named as investigators on seven out of the 34 psychology grants awarded for 2025. Five of these projects are administered by the University of Melbourne, totalling $2,470,000 in funding, with a further two hosted by UNSW and UQ respectively.

What drives moral amplification?

Professor Brock Bastian and Dr Kelly Kirkland

Morality provides the foundation for human cooperation, however amplifying everyday moral attitudes, judgements and beliefs has the potential to sow intolerance, social conflict and polarisation. This project aims to explore how facing threats, from those experienced day-to-day, to widespread societal issues and ecological contexts, can lead people to adopt more unforgiving moral stances. The findings will provide the basis for a new theoretical framework from which to understand the functions of morality, and will feed into practice by identifying psychological processes through which intolerance can emerge. In turn, this will highlight critical junctures for targeted interventions aiming to build social cohesion.

Impact of Delayed Sleep Phase on Fear Extinction Circuitry in Adolescence

Professor Kim Felmingham, Professor Amy Jordan and Dr Elise McGlashan; Professor Benjamin Harrison (Department of Psychiatry)

Sleep onset is progressively delayed from puberty and this sleep phase delay peaks in late adolescence, a developmental stage characterised by marked disturbances in sleep and the emergence of mental health problems. Light exposure is critical for synchronising sleep and the internal ‘body clock’, but developmental changes and night-time light exposure in late adolescence delay sleep timing, leading to impaired sleep and emotion regulation. Despite these associations, the human brain circuitry underlying sleep phase delay, light responses, and fear processes is relatively unknown. This advanced imaging project will provide the first insights into the impact of sleep and circadian (‘body clock’) factors on fear processes in late adolescence.

Harnessing Eco-Emotions for Social Action on Climate Change

Associate Professor Katie Greenaway

The effects of climate change are escalating and the emotional impact is costing Australia in money and lives. This project aims to understand ‘eco-emotions’ about climate change and harness their power to promote much-needed action. Combining cutting-edge experimental and experience sampling methodology, the project expects to create new knowledge on functional and flexible regulation of eco-emotions in everyday life. Expected outcomes include new theory of emotional complexity in the context of climate change and new methods of studying collection action in situ. Potential benefits include enhanced national capacity in emotion science, increased climate action, and greater well-being among Australians coping with the climate crisis.

Understanding cultural shifts in concepts of mental health

Professor Nick Haslam

This project aims to investigate how and why public understandings of mental health have shifted in recent decades, and to examine the impact of these conceptual changes. The project will generate new knowledge of how mental health-related concepts have broadened their meanings, using innovative computational methods for evaluating semantic change. Expected outcomes of this project include enhanced knowledge of cultural shifts in mental health discourse and of how these shifts affect stigma, help-seeking behaviour and diagnosis-based identities, as well as new computational methods for studying conceptual change. These outcomes will provide significant benefits for understanding the social dimensions of the current mental health crisis.

Emotions as Complex Systems: Non-Linear Approaches to Real-World Emotions

Associate Professor Peter Koval; Professor Vassilis Kostakos; Associate Professor Niels van Berkel; Professor Peter Kuppens

Daily emotional experience is central to human well-being, but also highly complex. Maximising well-being and resilience requires a full understanding of the complex dynamics of real-world emotions, which cannot be achieved using standard linear statistical approaches. This project aims to apply cutting-edge empirical dynamic modelling tools, developed by ecologists to characterise complex systems, to model emotions in the world's largest database of daily emotional experience. Expected outcomes include new interdisciplinary collaborations, enhanced research capacity, and new knowledge of theorised complex emotion dynamics. This should result in significant benefits to emotion science and inform future interventions to enhance well-being.

Understanding and overcoming cognitive inertia

Professor Brett Hayes; Professor Andy Perfors; Professor Todd Gureckis; Professor Gordon Brown
Administered by UNSW.

This project aims to advance understanding of cognitive inertia, where decision-makers persist in choosing familiar but inferior decision options, and how to best respond to this problem. A new conceptual framework explaining how inertia develops will be tested through an integrated program of experimental research and computational modeling. The expected outcomes are advances in our understanding of the cognitive processes that drive inertia and how these may differ between individuals, and the development of more effective methods for preventing or reversing inertia. This will provide significant benefits by guiding better decision making in domains such as finance, environmental sustainability, and health.

Causes and consequences of cognitive offloading in children

Dr Jonathan Redshaw; Dr Natasha Matthews; Professor Iroise Dumontheil; Professor Amanda Waterman; Dr Richard Allen; Professor Sam Gilbert
Administered by UQ.

Australian children often use external thinking tools (eg, calculators, laptops, smartphones) to help themselves solve problems. Among adults, such cognitive offloading behaviours can have detrimental effects on internal cognitive abilities, but nothing is known about the long-term effects on children. This project aims to examine how children and adolescents trade off the benefits and costs of cognitive offloading, and establish the cognitive and neurocognitive causes and consequences of such trade-offs. Expected outcomes include the ability to identify children whose use of cognitive offloading may put their thinking skills at risk. This knowledge may eventually assist in training children to offload only when it benefits them.