http://www.stir.ac.uk/natural-sciences/news/2015/psychologystudentship/

Evolutionary approaches to the social perception of faces using a range of stimuli and measures.

This studentship will investigate how evolutionary pressures may shape our processing of faces across a range of social perceptual tasks, using a variety of stimulus types, and using a variety of response measures. 

In recent years, an evolutionary approach has shed light on how we perceive the attractiveness of faces. This evolutionary framework has also been applied to the perception of leadership, the attribution of personality traits, and the recognition of identity from face images. Much of this previous work relies on the 2D facial photographs and explicit judgements. For example, attractiveness is often assessed by showing participants 2D photographs and asking them to rate the image for attractiveness. The goal of this studentship is to address the impact of the type of stimulus used and the type of measure employed in conclusions about judging faces. The student will then explore the social perception of faces using a variety of stimuli (e.g., 2D faces, 3D faces, moving faces) and a range of measures of preference and attention (e.g., explicit and implicit preferences, eye-tracking).

More information about current research topics can be found at: www.alittlelab.com

Deadline 31 July

Peter Hancock
Professor,

School of Natural Sciences
University of Stirling
FK9 4LA, UK
phone 01786 467675
fax 01786 467641

http://rms.stir.ac.uk/converis-stirling/person/11587

Psychology at Stirling: 100% 4* Impact, REF2014