Dr Rebecca Owens

Having contributed to all levels of teaching on our psychology courses throughout my career, I now teach only at stage 3 of our undergraduate courses, where I lead an optional module in Male Psychology. I currently have a number of PhD students, and I am available to supervise projects with a focus on male psychology.

Over the course of my career, I have developed three main research interests: male psychology, body modifications, and mating behaviours. My main area of focus now is male psychology, which incorporates biological and evolutionary psychology to understand how things that affect males differ from how they affect females, why that might be, and what might affect males only or much more than they affect females. Within the School of Psychology, we have a Collaborative Laboratory Group (CoLab) which brings together staff, students, and local stakeholders with an interest in male psychology with the aim of developing meaningful impact.

I bring an evolutionary perspective to all aspects of my work. My PhD research involved taking an evolutionary perspective on competitiveness and risk-taking behaviours. This involved considering the role of mating motivations and dominance striving, how such factors vary over the lifespan and are responsive to external cues in the environment, as well as the suggested biological underpinnings of such fluctuations of testosterone levels. This led me onto the area of male psychology generally.

Male psychology is a relatively new area of research and involves considering and integrating biological and evolutionary perspectives on sex differences and similarities with the areas we typically consider, such as social and developmental, to better understand issues that primarily or exclusively affect men and boys. This often also uncovers areas relevant to people who are not male as well, which is also helpful!

I am also interested in body image and representation in terms of body modifications. I am interested in the motivations people have for engaging in various forms of body modifications, to different extents, and how this is perceived by people who are not familiar with the industry. Furthermore, I am interested in the impact that engagement in body modifications has on individual mental health and wellbeing, and whether this is sometimes seen as therapeutic.

• Psychology
• Evolutionary psychology
• Individual differences
• Male psychology
• Mating behaviours and relationships
• Sex differences
• Tattoos and body modifications.