Evolution, Conflict, and Equality Lab
Welcome to the Evolution, Conflict, and Equality Lab at the University of Melbourne
Current Members
- Dr Khandis Blake
Director of Lab
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences
+61 3 9035 5733
- 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
- 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
- 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
*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
*Kellie, D., Blake, K., & Brooks, R. (2019). What drives female objectification? An investigation of appearance-based interpersonal perceptions and the objectification of women. PLoS One. Available at https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221388
*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
TwitPlat and Locatarithm
For researchers interested in big data and social media, our TwitPlat database can provide access to billions of data-points from around the world. At The ECE we have conceived, developed and are now maintaining a database of 6 billion geolocated Twitter posts (spanning 8 years). What first sets TwitPlat apart is the sheer size of data availability. Adding to this strength, all posts are geolocated to very fine granularity using an algorithm developed with help from a team of computer scientists. This Locatarithm algorithm geolocates posts with unique specificity, locating:
- Every city in the world with over 100,000 inhabitants.
- Every country in the world.
- Using six languages.
- Every United States city with over 5,000 inhabitants.
- Every Australian suburb, city and region.
No other algorithm known provides such fine-scale variation in location, and it is this variation that provides us with the unique ability to examine socio-structural correlates of behaviour across time and place. If you are interested in using the TwitPlat database, please get in touch with us!
Menstrual Cycle Studies
Are you interested in understanding how female cognition and behaviour is influenced by fertility? Although this is a fruitful area of emerging research, measuring fertility and menstrual cycle phase can be indirect, imprecise and ambiguous.
To resolve this problem and help other researchers, we have developed a data-driven method for characterising women’s fertile phase. Our research compared frequently used counting methods (including several approaches to forwards- and backwards-counting) against luteinizing hormone tests. While developing these guidelines for best practice, we found:
- No counting method predicted ovulation with more than 30% accuracy.
- Less than 40% of the fertile days were predicted using counting methods.
- Combining counting methods with a luteinizing hormone test (a relatively inexpensive urine test) can improve fertility accuracy to 95%.
If you are interested in conducting menstrual phase, hormonal contraceptive or fertility studies, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. You can also find more information about Standardized Protocols for Characterizing Women’s Fertility through our Open Source Framework webpage.
Image from The Menstrual Cycle at Hello Clue.