Evolution, Conflict, and Equality Lab
Welcome to the Evolution, Conflict, and Equality Lab at the University of Melbourne
Using behavioural science, evolutionary biology, and sociocultural theory, our research focuses on big issues that profoundly influence people’s mental, social and economic wellbeing. We examine topics including sexual conflict, competitiveness and empowerment, sex hormones, and aggression and violence. Our combined application of nature and nurture frameworks provides a useful guide to understanding how cross disciplinary insights can be used to promote public good.
News and Media Coverage
Current Members
- Dr Khandis Blake
Director of Lab
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences
+61 3 9035 5733
- Francesca Luberti
PhD Candidate - Sydney
Socio-political attitudes, mating market, mating competition, mate value, sexuality
- Dax Kellie
PhD Candidate - Sydney
Objectification, sexual double standards, evolution and patriarchy, open science
- Tee Schofield, PhD
Data Scientist
Big data, statistics, website scraping
- Lindsie Arthur
PhD Candidate
Menstrual cycle, sex hormones, wellbeing, applied psychology
- Tomas Cartmill
PhD Candidate
Radical extremism, deradicalization, political ideology, emotions
- Tessa Cowley
Research Assistant
Menstrual cycle, emotions, mind-body, trauma
- Bruna Andrades
Clinical Psychologist
Domestic violence, marital interaction, attachment
- Leo Mares
Research Assistant
Masculinity, radicalisation, class politics
- Meg Trinder-McCartney
Honours Candidate 2020
Menstrual cycle, sex hormones, wellbeing
- Sarah Zhang
Honours Candidate 2020
Income inequality, status anxiety, sexualization
- Freya Satarawala
Research Intern
Female competition, methods
- Alsa Wu
Research Intern
Interpersonal influences, menstrual cycle, sex hormones
- Melody Ooi
Research Intern
Female competition, methods
Collaborators
Dr Gulnaz Anjum, Institute of Business Administration, Pakistan
Dr Tania Reynolds, The Kinsey Institute Indiana
Dr Kathleen Casto, New College Florida
Professor Steven Gangestad, University of New Mexico
Professor Rob Brooks, University of New South Wales, Sydney
Professor Thomas Denson, University of New South Wales, Sydney
A/Prof Michael Kasumovic, University of New South Wales, Sydney
Ms Siobhan O’Dean, University of New South Wales, Sydney
Dr Stephen Whyte, Queensland University of Technology
Dr Barnaby Dixson, The University of Queensland
Dr Isabel Krug, University of Melbourne
Dr Scott Griffiths, University of Melbourne
Professor Brock Bastian, University of Melbourne
PUBLICATIONS BY MEMBERS OF THE EVOLUTION, CONFLICT, AND EQUALITY LAB
Blake, K. R. R., Denson, S., Lian, J., & Denson, T. (in press). Misogynistic tweets correlate with and prospectively predict domestic violence incidents over time. Psychological Science
Blake, K. K., Godwin, M., Letheren , K., Russell Bennett, R., & Whyte, S. (in press). “I sexually identify as an Attack Helicopter”: Incels , trolls, and non binary gender politics online. First Monday.
Kasumovic , M. Hatcher, E., Blake, K . R.R., & Denson, T. (in press). Performance in video games affects self perceived mate value and mate preferences. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences https://www.doi.org/10.1037/ebs0000231
Blake, K.R. & Gangestad , S. (in press). On attenuated interactions, measurement error, and Statistical power: Guidelines for social and personality psychologists. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0146167220913363
*Arthur, L., Brooks, R. & Blake, K. R. (in press). Female self sexualization covaries with mate value but not mate availability. Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology.
Blake, K. R. R., Brooks, R., *Arthur, L., & Denson, T. (in press). Sexually motivated beautification can increase assertiveness in women. PLoS One
*Kellie, DJ, Blake, KR, & Brooks, RC (2019). What drives female objectification? An investigation of appearance-based interpersonal perceptions and the objectification of women. PloS one, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221388
Blake, K. R., Brooks, R., Arthur-Hulme, L., & Denson, T. (in press). Sexually motivated beautification can increase assertiveness in women. PLoS One.
Blake, K. R. & Brooks, R. (2019). Status anxiety mediates the positive relationship between income inequality and female sexualization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Available at https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1909806116
*Luberti, F., Blake, K., & Brooks, R. (in press). The effects of the mating market, sex, age, and income on socio-political orientation: Insights from Evolutionary Theory and Sexual Economics Theory. Human Nature.
Blake., K. R., & Brooks., R. (2019). Income inequality and its implications for gendered conflict. In J. Jetten & K. Peters (eds.), The Social Psychology of Income Inequality. Springer.
Blake, K. R., Bastian, B., Denson, T., Grosjean, P., & Brooks, R. (2018). Income inequality not gender inequality positively covaries with female sexualization on social media. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Available at https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1717959115
Denson, T., O’Dean, S., Blake, K., & Beames, J. (2018). Aggression in women: Behavior, brain, and hormones. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. Available at https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00081
Blake, K. R. (2018). Resolving speculations of methodological inadequacies in the standardized protocol for characterizing women’s fertility: Comment on Lobmaier and Bachofner (2018). Hormones and Behavior. Available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2018.05.022
Blake, K.R., Fourati, M., & Brooks., R. (2018). Who suppresses female sexuality? An examination of support for Islamic veiling in a secular Muslim democracy as a function of sex and offspring sex. Evolution & Human Behavior. Available athttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2018.06.006
Blake, K. R., & Brooks, R. (2018). High mate value men become more accepting of intimate partner abuse when primed with gender equality. Frontiers in Sociology. Available at https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2018.00028
Dixson B., Blake, K. R., Denson, T. F., Gooda-Vossos, A., Sulikowski, D., Rantala, M. J., & Brooks, R. C. (2018). The role of mating context and fecundability in women’s preferences for men’s facial masculinity and beardedness. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 93, 90–102. Available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2018.04.007
Dixson, B., Lee, A., Blake, K. R., Jasienska, G., & Marcinkowska, U. (2018). Women’s preferences for men’s beards do not change with their likelihood of conception. Hormones and Behavior. 97, 137–44. Available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2017.11.006
Kasumovic, M., Blake, K. R., & Denson. T. (2017). Using knowledge from human research to improve understanding of contest theory and contest dynamics. Proceedings of The Royal Society B. 284, 2182–91. Available at https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.2182
Blake, K. R., Bastian, B., & Denson, T. (2017). Heightened male aggression toward sexualized women following romantic rejection: The mediating role of sex goal activation. Aggressive Behavior. 44, 40–49. Available at https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.21722
Blake, K. R., Hopkins, R., Sprunger, J., Eckhardt, C. I., & Denson, T. (2017). Relationship quality and cognitive reappraisal moderate the effect of negative urgency on intimate partner violence. Psychology of Violence. 8, 218–28. Available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/vio0000121
Blake, K.R., Dixson, B., O'Dean, S., & Denson, T. (2017). No compelling positive association between ovarian hormones and wearing red clothing when using multinomial analyses. Hormones and Behavior, 90, 129–35. Available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2017.03.005
Blake, K. R. & Denson, T(2017). Contexts for men’s aggression against men. In T. K. Shackelford & V. A. Weekes-Shackelford (eds.), Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer Nature. Forthcoming book. Available at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_862-1
- Featured in Women’s Health Victoria policy document (McKenzie et al., 2018, Ádvertising (in)equality: The impacts of sexist advertising on women’s health and wellbeing, Women’s Health Victoria, available at https://apo.org.au/node/209151)
Blake, K. R., Bastian, B., O'Dean, S., & Denson, T. (2016). High estradiol and low progesterone positively predict assertiveness in women. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 75, 91–99. Available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2016.10.008
Blake, K. R., Yih, J., Zhao, K., Sung, B., & Harmon-Jones, C. (2016). Skin-transmitted pathogens and the heebie jeebies: Evidence for a subclass of disgust stimuli that evoke a qualitatively unique emotional response. Cognition and Emotion. 31, 1153–68. Available at https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2016.1202199
Blake, K.R., Dixson, B., O'Dean, S., & Denson, T. (2016). Standardized protocols for characterizing women’s fertility: A data-driven approach. Hormones and Behavior, 81, 74–83. Available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2016.03.004
Blake, K. R., Bastian, B., & Denson, T. (2016). Perceptions of low agency and high sexual openness mediate the relationship between sexualization and sexual aggression. Aggressive Behavior, 42, 483–97. Available at https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.21644
Kasumovic, M. M., Blake, K. R, Dixson, B. & Denson, T. F. (2015). Why do people play violent video games? Demographic, status-related, and mating-related correlates in men and women. Personality and Individual Differences, 86, 204–11. Available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2015.06.018
Jones, B.C., DeBruine, L.M., Flake, J.K., … Blake., K. R.,… Chartier,C.R. (2019). Social perception of faces around the world: How well does the valence-dominance model generalize across world regions? Pre-print at Psyarxiv. Available at https://psyarxiv.com/n26dy
Brooks, R., & Blake, K.R. (2019). Gendered Fitness Interests: A proposal explaining how relatives affect socio-political attitudes and behaviours. Pre-print at Bioxiv. Available at https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/847814v1.full
* denotes a student in the ECE Lab
Lab Contact Details
Address:
The Evolution, Conflict, and Equality Lab
Redmond Barry Building
Tin Alley, The University of Melbourne
Parkville, 3010, VIC, Australia