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Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences

Evolution, Conflict, and Equality Lab

Welcome to the Evolution, Conflict, and Equality Lab at the University of Melbourne

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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.

  • Research Projects

    Learn about our key areas of research and current and past projects.

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  • Join the lab

    Get involved as an intern, Honours, Masters, or PhD student.

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  • Join a study

    Browse current studies open for participant sign up.

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News and Media Coverage

  • Family matters: why people can hold political views that disadvantage their own sex

    The views of women and men can differ on important gendered issues such as abortion, gender equity and government spending priorities. Surprisingly, however, average differences in sex on this front are usually small. Many women adopt social and political positions that favour men and many men favour women-friendly positions. In our latest research we tried to make sense of this “paradox”. We did so by understanding how people’s politics and practices don’t just track what’s good for them, but also what’s good for their relatives.

    20 Jan 2021 News
  • Congratulations Dr. Khandis Blake on being awarded a DECRA for 2021.

    Congratulations to Dr. Khandis Blake on being awarded an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award for 2021. Dr. Blake's research is testing socioeconomic and motivational influences on self-objectification and we look forward to the amazing work to come.

    04 Nov 2020 News
  • Want to buy sexy clothes? It might be in your hormones.

    Women are more inclined to buy raunchy outfits in the middle of their menstrual cycle.

    06 Oct 2020 News
  • A Fake Dating Site and an Astonishing Political Opportunity

    Three researchers from the University of New South Wales in Australia make no claim to magical powers of foresight. Still, they seem to have stumbled on one way to increase popular support for public relief efforts, such as free medical care for people who are especially vulnerable to the coronavirus disaster.

    06 Oct 2020 News
  • Study on hormone fluctuations finds women feel more assertive when they are fertile

    Female hormones impact women’s assertiveness and sexual availability, according to a study recently published in Psychoneuroendocrinology.

    06 Oct 2020 News
  • Sex and shame and the merry-go-round of outrage

    There’s also the reality that the sexual double standard – which sees women, but not men, being punished for expressing their sexuality – has been around for about 10,000 years, and is therefore difficult to budge.

    24 Aug 2020 News
  • Selfies, sexualisation, and female objectification

    The objectification of women and sexualisation of their bodies is nothing new. But the proliferation of sexually charged images online, like the sexualised selfie, has taken things to another level. How concerned should we be?

    11 Mar 2020 News
  • Nature, nurture and gender

    Evolutionary biologists say the way men and women behave is based on thousands of years of history. Many gender theorists argue such differences are socialised and come from the environment we grow up in. Dr Khandis Blake, a gender psychology researcher from the University of New South Wales, says these groups need to work together if we're to have meaningful advances in our understanding of gender.

    09 Mar 2020 News
  • Why being the fairest of them all still pays

    We may like to pretend, in Western society, that beauty doesn't matter anymore and that we have transcended superficiality. But sadly, both research and many of our day-to-day experiences say otherwise.

    10 Feb 2020 News
  • People are going to use the tools they have to get ahead

    Status anxiety in an economically unequal society can lead to women sexualising themselves to get ahead, new Australian research has claimed. A role playing experiment, led by researchers at the University of Melbourne and the University of New South Wales, sought to shed light on the types of environments and motivations which cause women to enhance their appearance.

    05 Feb 2020 News
  • The science of selfies, and why they can actually benefit us!
    05 Feb 2020 News

Current Members

  • Dr Khandis Blake

    Director of Lab

    Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences

    +61 3 9035 5733

    khandis.blake@unimelb.edu.au

  • 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

    lindsie.arthur@student.unimelb.edu.au

  • Tomas Cartmill

    PhD Candidate

    Radical extremism, deradicalization, political ideology, emotions

  • Tessa Cowley

    Research Assistant

    Menstrual cycle, emotions, mind-body, trauma

    tcowley@g.harvard.edu

  • Bruna Andrades

    Clinical Psychologist

    Domestic violence, marital interaction, attachment

    brandrades @gmail.com

  • Leo Mares

    Research Assistant

    Masculinity, radicalisation, class politics

    lmares @student.unimelb.edu.au

  • 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

    khandis.blake@unimelb.edu.au


    Address:

    The Evolution, Conflict, and Equality Lab

    Redmond Barry Building

    Tin Alley, The University of Melbourne

    Parkville, 3010, VIC, Australia

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