Dr Rebecca Owens

With my background in evolutionary psychology, I like to contribute to teaching this in our undergraduate provision where I can. I also lead a stage 3 optional module in Male Psychology. I supervise research projects at both undergraduate and postgraduate, and I currently have a number of PhD students. 

I am interested in supervising projects informed by an evolutionary perspective. There are three broad areas of research I am interested in:

Mating behaviours, preferences, and strategies: Sex differences in mating behaviours and preferences, costly signalling behaviours, including competitiveness, risk-taking, and the role of testosterone in such behaviours.

Male psychology: My PhD thesis took an evolutionary perspective on sex differences in competitiveness and risk-taking. This has led to an interest in male psychology, including the impact of gender roles on mental health and wellbeing, and the impact of so-called 'toxic masculinity' and 'gender blindness'.

Body image/identity and wellbeing: I am interested in the motivations for, and perceptions of those who engage in various body modifications. Body modifications vary widely in both form and quality, and I am interested in why there is such variation, and whether this contributes to wellbeing, and what they signal about an individual. I co-host a podcast called the Inking of Immunity Podcast with colleagues at the University of Alabama. This is a cross-disciplinary research project where we speak with other academics interested in body modifications.

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 and 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.

• Evolutionary psychology
  
• Male psychology
  
• The role of testosterone
• Tattoos and body modifications
  
• Sex differences