Prof Bridget Waller Seeking 3-yr Funded PhD Student on Facial Expressivity Project

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We are seeking applications for a 3-year full-time PhD student to work on human facial expressivity and social relationships.

The PhD will be supervised by Professor Bridget Waller as part of ERC Consolidator Project FACEDIFF ‘Individual differences in facial expressivity: Social function, facial anatomy and evolutionary origins’. FACEDIFF is a five-year project examining individual differences in facial expressivity and how this is related to social network size and success at social interaction in humans and macaques.
Communicating with others via the face is crucial for navigating our social world. Deficits in facial expression production can have debilitating effects on social interaction. Despite this, we know surprisingly little about individual differences in facial expressivity in the typical population, what causes these differences and whether such differences impact on individual lives. In part, this could be due to an historical focus on the universal nature of facial expression, assigning individual difference to random ‘noise’, rather than an evolutionarily relevant characteristic. The FACEDIFF project will diverge from this classic approach and test the novel hypothesis that individual differences in facial expressivity equip individuals’ differentially to engage with their social environment:expressivity has a benefit (social engagement) but also a cost (over-exposure and thus risk of being cheated by others) and is related to the size and quality of an individual’s social network. FACEDIFF will combine psychological, anatomical and cross-species methods to provide the first thorough interdisciplinary investigation of individual differences.

The advertised position will be situated within the FACEDIFF project with the strand of research focussed on human facial expression, social interaction and social networks. The PhD student will work within a larger interdisciplinary team with an overarching plan to investigate the relationship between variation in facial muscles and the quality of social bonds with others. The successful PhD candidate will conduct laboratory based behavioural experiments at Nottingham Trent University in which pairs of participants (friends or strangers) take part in dyadic and individual tasks (e.g. cold pressor test: emerge their hands in water of varying temperatures to induce mild pain and stress). Behavioural and physiological measures will be recorded. The goal is to monitor how variation in facial muscle-use affects facial communication and emotional recognition during these tasks, and how this affects social dynamics during social interaction.

Candidates with prior experience conducting experimental research in humans, and those with a strong interest in social, behavioural or comparative/evolutionary psychology are preferred. Training and support in some specific research skills such as social network analysis and FACS (Facial Action Coding System) will be provided, but the successful candidate will need to have a demonstrable interest in standard quantitative approaches to experimental data.

Enquiries
Please contact Professor Bridget Waller via email (bridget.waller@ntu.ac.uk) for informal discussions in advance of applying. Also, please see www.FACEDIFF.co.uk for more information about the overarching project. Any questions please don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Qualifications
Entrants must have an excellent academic record, with an undergraduate degree in psychology, behavioural science or related field. A master’s degree in a relevant field (or equivalent research experience) would be preferred, and experience of experimental social research with humans is essential.

Funding
The PhD will be funded by European Research Council Consolidator Grant FACEDIFF ‘Individual differences in facial expressivity: Social function, facial anatomy and evolutionary origins’ awarded to Bridget Waller. Funding will be provided for tuition fees, stipend for three years andresearch/conference expenses. Ideal start date October 2021, but this is negotiable.

How to apply
Please apply via the following link* (application deadline – 09/07/2021, expiry time 11:59 pm):
*Please include a short proposal for the PhD outlining how you would tackle theresearch questions posed in the brief. Your proposal should focus on the goals and general methodology rather than precise details. The word limit stated in the application page is 1500 words which should include your reference list and timeline.

Interview details
Interviews will take place from w/c 19th July 2021

ECR Funded 2-yr Post-Doc at Peace Research Institute Oslo

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The Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) invites applications for a two-year, full-time Postdoc position in human coalitional aggression within the project Adapted to War (AWAR), funded by the European Research Council (ERC Starting Grant).

The position provides an opportunity to work in a leading international research institute, located in Norway’s capital city, as part of an interdisciplinary project on human aggression.

Summary of AWAR

Have humans evolved psychological adaptations to coalitional aggression or small-scale war? This question has generated major scientific debate involving anthropologists, archaeologists, economists, primatologists, psychologists, and political scientists. If humans are adapted to war, then human psychology must be equipped with specialized adaptations designed for the effective navigation of war: planning, executing, and defending against coalitional attacks. AWAR probes the existence of such adaptations. It focuses, specifically, on coalitional formidability assessment mechanisms, which likely helped ancestral humans to avoid costly fights. AWAR also explores contemporary implications of coalitional formidability assessment mechanisms: if they indeed exist, do they shape our attitudes and behavior today, particularly in the context of modern political violence (e.g., violent protests or civil conflicts)?

The Postdoc’s role in the team

The project’s core team will consist of Postdoc 1 (psychologist/cognitive scientist; expected expertise: evolutionary psychology and information-processing/computational models), Postdoc 2 (psychologist/cognitive scientist; expected expertise: cognitive experiments), and Principal Investigator (PI), Henrikas Bartusevičius (political scientist; expertise: the psychology of political violence).

This vacancy concerns Postdoc 1, whose responsibilities will be as follows:

  • Collaborating with PI in theorizing an information-processing/computational model of a psychological mechanisms regulating coalitional aggression (i.e., the coalitional formidability assessment mechanism);
  • Collaborating with Postdoc 2 and PI in designing experiments to probe the existence and design features of the theorized coalitional formidability assessment mechanism;
  • Contributing to conducting and analyzing cognitive lab experiments;
  • Writing journal articles in collaboration with Postdoc 2 and PI.

The application must be submitted in English via online application system no later than 1 June 2021. The application must include:

  1. An application letter (1–2 pages) addressing the required and desired qualifications as listed above. Please briefly describe your relevant experience and qualifications for each of the 9 qualifications listed above (if you do not have experience/qualifications pertaining to one or more of the qualifications listed above, just say so).
  2. A statement (1–2 pages) on how your qualifications will contribute to implementing WP1 (in particular) and WP2 of the project.
  3. One or two papers that you consider as your best work. This work, preferably but not mandatorily, should demonstrate the qualifications as listed above. Single- or first-authored work carries greater weight. You are welcome to submit unpublished manuscripts, as long as you consider them as demonstrating the highest quality of your research and the qualifications listed above.
  4. A CV in English, which must include a list of publications.
  5. Scanned copies of original transcripts/certificates from higher education, in one PDF file.

The project offers a degree of flexibility with respect to candidates’ research during the project. Therefore, the applicants are welcome, but are not required, to suggest (in Attachment 2) research ideas that could be integrated into WP1 and WP2 of AWAR.

Read the full advert here.

Early Career Writing Group for Evolutionary Scientists — Sign up!

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Early Career Writing Group!

A virtual writing group is being organized by Stacey Makhanova for early career evolutionary psychologists and evolutionary scientists more broadly who want some external motivation to get writing done and an opportunity to network (and commiserate) with people in similar career stages. For this group, “early career” means assistant professors, post-docs, and graduate students at the dissertation stage.

If you are interested, see the Google Doc for details and to add your contact info to the email list