My main research area is in social learning and face perception. I am interested in how various social factors impact upon people's perception of what is attractive in a face and how we as individuals place different value on the importance of such factors. I am interested in the effects of sociosexual orientation (do we devote more effort into pursuing long- or short-term relationships?), self esteem and self rated attractiveness on what we consider attractive in a potential mate. In addition I am interested in human preferences for facial dominance and whether social factors combine to have multiplicative effects on preferences for trust and dimorphism in faces.
I am originally from the East of England and after receiving my MA Hons from Aberdeen in 2009 I have now transferred to the MRes with a view to gaining a PhD. My undergraduate thesis was on the effects of fear on cognitive fluency supervised by Dr Maarten Milders. Other general interests in psychology include fear, executive function, the constructive memory framework, self memory system, abnormal psychology and safety research in organizational psychology.
CD Watkins, BC Jones & LM DeBruine (in press). Individual differences in dominance perception: Dominant men are less sensitive to facial cues of male dominance.Personality and Individual Differences. [abstract»»]
CD Watkins, LM DeBruine, FG Smith, BC Jones, J Vukovic & PJ Fraccaro (2010). Like father, like self: Emotional closeness to father, but not mother, predicts women's preferences for self-resemblance in opposite-sex, but not same-sex, faces.Human Behavior and Evolution Society in Eugene, Oregon. June 2010. [abstract»»]
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