Psychology Colloquium: Prof Agnieszka Tymula (University of Sydney)
2026-03-13 15:00 - 16:00 (Australia/Sydney)
Prof Agnieszka Tymula (University of Sydney)

Title: Rationally Selected Utility – A New Theory of Choice

Abstract:

Traditional prescriptive decision theories from Pascal’s to Expected Utility have struggled to explain inconsistent human choices, leading to predictive models like Prospect Theory. This paper introduces a novel approach to understand why these behaviors occur, reconciling these observed “irrationalities” with a simple rational objective. Here we propose that the human nervous system, faced with limited cognitive capacity (a finite representational precision for the representation of reward value), optimally selects a task-appropriate utility function to either maximize long-run average earnings or to minimize errors. We argue that the utility functions we have measured are tools, sculpted by knowledge of the choice environment’s probabilistic structure and the decision-maker’s precision level, for optimally achieving a rational objective. Our results show that almost every experimentally observed utility function can be described as a near-optimal tool for achieving a maximization of objective earnings (a goal abandoned since Bernoulli) or for minimizing errors. We quantify the specific gains that result from adding cognitive capacity and find that these gains are quite small as long as the utility function is correctly adjusted to cognitive capacity. Our research provides a novel framework that offers a testable and foundational explanation for why human and animal decision-makers evolved the puzzling range of utility functions and risk attitudes that have been widely observed.

Bio:

TBA

Psychology Colloquium: Prof Phillippa Diedrichs (University of the West of England)
2026-03-20 15:00 - 16:00
Prof Phillippa Diedrichs (University of the West of England)

Title: Beyond journal articles: How research psychologists, industry and civil society joined forces to reach 140 million young people with evidence-based body image interventions.

Abstract:

Industries have long shaped body image, appearance ideals, and wellbeing, yet a persistent gap remains between scientific discovery and real-world application. Brands and businesses struggle to access academic expertise and evidence-based tools; researchers, meanwhile, often lack the platforms, resources, connections, and sometimes the confidence or appetite to translate their findings into practice. In the meantime, young people continue to be shaped by appearance pressures that harm their health and curtail their relationships, aspirations, and opportunities. The solution lies not in more research alone, but in a fundamentally different model of knowledge translation, one built on disruptive innovation, ethical industry partnerships, and task-shifting to community-led delivery.

Drawing on ten years of work spanning academia, global brands, civil society, and policy, this talk traces how evidence-based body image interventions were designed, scaled, and delivered to more than 140 million young people worldwide. It examines the realities of cross-sector collaboration candidly, including the processes, tensions, and hard-won lessons, so that researchers and practitioners can consider how similar approaches might strengthen the impact of their own work.

Bio:

Professor Phillippa Diedrichs, PhD, is a social scientist on a mission to create a world where no one is held back by how they look, their gender or identity. She’s an internationally recognised psychologist, researcher, author, and speaker specialising in body image, mental health and inclusion. Phillippa is a Professor of Psychology at the Centre for Appearance Research, UWE Bristol and founder of EVERYBODY Consulting, partnering with brands like Dove, Nike and Instagram to challenge beauty norms and drive social change. Her best-selling teen guide, The Body Confidence Book, is now published in five languages.

Psychology Colloquium: Dr Philip Jean-Richard Dit Bressel (University of NSW)
2026-03-27 15:00 - 16:00
Dr Philip Jean-Richard Dit Bressel (University of NSW)

Title: A cross-species paradigm for exploring persistent detrimental behaviour

Abstract:

A basic precept in psychology is that actions with positive consequences are repeated while actions with negative consequences are avoided. However, individuals vary immensely in their tendency to cease detrimental actions, with many persisting in self-destructive behaviour. Tasks used to study this often fail to reveal psychological roots for these inter-individual differences. We have sought to address this via rodent and human versions of a conditioned punishment task. Across studies, we have found that avoidance of negative consequences is bimodally distributed across individuals. We have found these differences in avoidance are not readily attributable to differences in appetitive or aversive motivation, nor differences in behavioural control. Rather, avoidance differences were driven by failures in Action-Punisher learning, indicating an overlooked source of maladaptive choices. Factors that interact with these tendencies, broader implications, and future directions will be discussed.

Bio:

Dr Philip Jean-Richard Dit Bressel is a Senior Lecturer at UNSW School of Psychology. His lab investigates the psychobiology of learning, decision-making, and behaviour, with a special focus on how we learn and make decisions about actions with negative consequences. His research program leverages complex behavioural tasks across species, precision neuroscience techniques (in vivo pharmacology, optical and genetic approaches for real-time neural measurement and manipulation), and advanced analysis methods.

Thriving With and Beyond Cancer: A World Psycho-Oncology Day Webinar
2026-04-09 13:00 - 14:00
Beyond the Clinical: Supporting Mental Health in Cancer CareCancer care is about more than just treatment, scans, and surgery. In honour of World Psycho-Oncology Day, the Psycho-Oncology Cooperative Research Group (PoCoG) invites you to a special webinar: Thriving With and Beyond Cancer.

Join us on Thursday 9 April to discover how psycho-social and supportive care clinical trials and implementation research are transforming the way we support the emotional and psychological needs of patients and their families.

This session is open to all – clinicians, researchers, students, and community members alike.

REGISTER HERE

When: Thursday 9 April, 1pm – 2 pm AEST

Where: Online (link provided upon registration)

Host: PoCoG (School of Psychology, Faculty of Science, University of Sydney)

CANCELLED: Psychology Colloquium: Prof Mark Dadds (University of Sydney)
2026-04-17 15:00 - 16:00
UNFORTUNATELY, MARK’S COLLOQUIUM HAS HAD TO BE CANCELLED AND WILL BE RESCHEDULED FOR LATER IN THE YEAR.

Prof Mark Dadds (University of Sydney)

Title: What is it to discipline a child; what should it be? Evidence, myths, and the moral high ground

Abstract:

Parental discipline of children is central to children’s moral development but is also the context for most abuse and violence. Time-out (TO) is a widely used parental discipline strategy developed as an alternative to physical punishment for children with behavioural problems and is now the 2nd most common discipline strategy. Despite strong research support, concerns have spread widely regarding adverse impact on child mental health (CMH) in part driven by evidence of widespread variability in how TO is implemented, and also with regard to its use with child from trauma and adversity backgrounds. I will present the results of several studies using a new measure of procedural implementation of TO by parents of children aged 2-8 years, to examine the relationship between use and implementation of TO and child mental health, attachment, moral development, and other outcomes. Data will include the first surveys of young adults who grew up in the Time-out generation. Overall, the findings suggest that TO is ……. you’ll need to come to hear this bit!

Bio:

Mark Dadds is Director of Growing Minds Australia, Professor of Psychology at the University of Sydney and Founding Co-Director of the Child Behaviour Research Clinic, which develops state-of-the-art treatments for children and adolescents with MH problems. He has received over $17M of NHMRC, MRFF and philanthropic funding since 2020. He has developed and directed several national intervention programs for children, youth, and their families, at risk for MH problems. His Integrated Family Intervention for Child Conduct Disorder (with D.Hawes) is implemented throughout the world in the form of a tertiary treatment and since 2020, online as Parentworks and FamilyMan, both developed in partnership with the Movember Foundation. The ABC 3-part documentary of his approach to treating early onset child mental health problems led to him being awarded the 2021 Inaugural APS Award for Media Engagement with Science. Other awards include Early Career Award from the Division of Scientific Affairs of the Australian Psychological Society, the Ian Matthew Campbell Award for Excellence in Clinical Psychology, Distinguished Career Award of the Australian Association of Cognitive and Behavioural Therapy, the Eric Taylor Award for Translational Research into Practice, Association of Child and Adolescent Mental Health, UK, 2020, and in 2021, the APS President’s Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology. He has authored 4 books and over 280 papers on child and family psychology receiving over 39,000 citations in total and over 11,000 since 2020 on Google Scholar, and has given invited keynote addresses and skills training workshops to international audiences throughout the world. In 2021 he established Australia’s first Clinical Trials Network in Child and Youth Mental Health funded by the federal government and tasked with developing innovative methods for identifying and responding to early mental health problems in children. This CTN has since 2021 developed Australia’s first network of Early and Midcareer researchers in child and youth mental health, established over 14 flagship, funded and endorsed new research trials, established core methods support teams in Health Economics, Lived Experience and Co-design, Translation, and Statistical methods, and engaged ~100 research collaborators in child and youth mental health.

Psychology Colloquium: Dr Natalie Matosin (University of Sydney)
2026-04-24 15:00 - 16:00
Dr Natalie Matosin (University of Sydney)

Title: Decoding the impacts of stress on the human brain

Abstract:

Severe psychological stress is a global issue. The accumulation of recent geopolitical, environmental, and health crises has highlighted that stress has broad and substantial ramifications for global mental health. In this presentation, Dr. Natalie Matosin will present cutting-edge research on how stress and trauma affect the cytoarchitecture of the human brain, and how through studying this process, the lab is defining new brain cell types that have not been described before.

Bio:

Dr. Natalie Matosin is a Sydney Horizon and Al & Val Rosenstrauss Senior Research Fellow in the School of Medical Sciences, and Director of the MINDS Lab in the Charles Perkins Centre. With over a decade of international training in neurobiology, Natalie specialises in advanced techniques to explore brain complexities and disorders. Her lab’s pioneering research in spatial and single-cell histology aims to improve diagnostics and develop new treatments for mental health conditions, driving solutions from lab research to clinical applications.

CANCELLED: Psychology Colloquium: Learning, Education, and Assessment Research Network (Psychology) (USYD)
2026-05-01 15:00 - 16:00
UNFORTUNATELY, THE L.E.A.R.N.’S COLLOQUIUM HAS HAD TO BE CANCELLED AND WILL HOPEFULLY BE RESCHEDULED FOR LATER IN THE YEAR.

L.E.A.R.N. (Learning, Education, and Assessment Research Network) (Psychology) (USYD)

Title: The discipline that couldn’t explain itself: Narrative identity and Psychology’s crisis of coherence

Abstract:

Anyone familiar with Psychology’s history will recognise a discipline shaped by fragmentation, competing paradigms, and unresolved questions about Psychology’s identity and purpose. These tensions have become more pronounced in contemporary debates about open science, interdisciplinarity, decolonisation, and Psychology’s standing beyond being ‘just’ a science. In this presentation, we argue that Psychology continues to face an identity problem that is at once theoretical, pedagogical, and professional. We situate the problem historically, tracing enduring tensions between experimental science, applied practice, and humanistic approaches. Drawing on McAdams’ narrative identity framework, we propose that Psychology’s pluralism can be understood not only as intellectual diversity, but also as narrative fragmentation.

We then examine how Psychology’s narrative is encountered by students in undergraduate education. Undergraduate curricula often present Psychology as a collection of disparate topic areas, with limited explicit guidance on how these areas connect to one another or to students’ emerging professional identities. We argue that this lack of a shared disciplinary narrative has important negative consequences for student engagement, sense of belonging, and their understanding of Psychology as a coherent and meaningful field of study.

We then present findings examining first-year students’ perceptions of the implicit and explicit narratives operating within our large introductory Psychology courses. Our findings reveal systematic mismatches between what we teach within the scientist-practitioner model and student narratives potentially shaped by career aspirations and broader societal understandings of Psychology.

We conclude by addressing how narrative coherence can function as a unifying device for Psychology education, linking disciplinary identity, pedagogical practice, and student professional development. More broadly, we suggest that addressing Psychology’s identity challenges begins not only with theoretical integration, but with the stories we tell both ourselves and our students about what Psychology is and can be.

Bio:

L.E.A.R.N (Psychology) is a collective of education‑focused academics within the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney, dedicated to advancing evidence‑based teaching and learning in higher education. The group has enjoyed recent success in securing Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) grant funding for innovative projects spanning feedback literacy, clinical supervision, self‑regulated learning, peer‑assisted study, and learning analytics. Funded initiatives include: Facing Feedback: Developing Student–Teacher Feedback Literacy Through Partnership; Advancing Clinical Supervision Pedagogy: Using Developmentally‑Tailored Approaches to Strengthen Engagement, Competency, and Confidence in Early Clinical Placements; Teaching First‑Year Students How to Learn: Co‑Designing Self‑Regulated Learning at Scale; The Value of Peer‑Assisted Study Sessions (PASS) for Mathematics and Statistics Students; and Early Warning: Using AI to Predict and Support At‑Risk Students in Large‑Scale Units.

Psychology Colloquium: Prof Louise Sharpe (University of Sydney)
2026-05-08 15:00 - 16:00
Prof Louise Sharpe (University of Sydney)

Title: Treating anxiety in the context of physical illness: The importance of safety behaviours and fears of disease progression

Abstract:

Cognitive-behavioural treatments (CBT) for anxiety disorders are amongst the most successful applications of CBT, with a vast literature confirming efficacy with large effect sizes. However, when anxiety is treated in the context of a chronic physical illness, meta-analyses confirm that treatments are far less effective, typically with small effect sizes. This keynote will explore two potential mechanisms that are important in working with people with chronic physical illness and comorbid anxiety. First, the presentation of safety behaviours in people with chronic physical health problems will be explored. Clinicians must determine the difference between safety behaviours that exacerbate anxiety and safety precautions which keep patients safe from the impacts of their illness. A decision-making framework will be presented to differentiate safety behaviours and safety precautions. Second, the content of worries differs for people with anxiety in the context of chronic physical conditions. Specifically, an extremely common worry across populations of people with different chronic illnesses is the fear of their disease progressing. Our research shows that fears of progression are common amongst common chronic physical illnesses, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, rheumatological conditions, respiratory conditions and diabetes. This keynote will review evidence of the importance of fears of progression in anxious symptoms, theories of fear of progression and review the relevant treatment outcome literature.

Bio:

TBA

Psychology Colloquium: Scientia Prof Kaarin Anstey (University of NSW)
2026-05-15 15:00 - 16:00
Scientia Prof Kaarin Anstey (University of NSW)

Title: Disaggregating by sex and gender sheds new light on cognitive ageing and dementia risk

Abstract:

There is now a well established body of literature on modifiable and non-modifiable risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD). However, most findings have been reported in aggregate, without considering whether effects different by sex and or gender. This is a critical problem for the field because of the far higher rates of Alzheimer’s disease in women. In this presentation I will discuss epidemiological research and population modelling on the prevalence and risk factors for ADRD in terms of sex and gender and identify strengths and weakness of this approach. I will then describe the role of research that focusses on the individual including cohort studies and clinical trials, as well as mechanistic research. From this I will describe consistent sex differences in cognitive abilities over the adult life course, as well as sex differences in dementia risk factors, the association of female neuroendocrine factors with cognitive decline and incident dementia, the effects of APOE genotype, as well as sex differences in the accumulation of tau and amyloid pathology. I will also describe recent frameworks for differentiating sex and gender in cognitive ageing research.

Bio:Kaarin Anstey is a Scientia Professor of Psychology at the University of New South Wales, Director of the UNSW Ageing Futures Institute and Senior Principal Research Scientist at Neuroscience Research Australia. She held an ARC Laureate Fellowship 2020-2025 focusing on cognitive resilience in ageing. Anstey conducts research in the fields of dementia epidemiology, risk reduction, and cognitive aging and has developed evidence-based, dementia risk assessment tools that are used in clinical practice and research, including the ANU-ADRI and the CogDrisk. She currently leads two clinical trials focussing on risk reduction in in people with mild cognitive disorders, a program of research on women’s brain health and the app-based Resilient Minds study. Anstey is a member of the World Dementia Council, and a member of the World Health Organisation Guideline Development Group for risk reduction. In 2025 she was awarded the NSW Premier’s Award for Excellence in Biological and Medical Science.

Psychology Colloquium: Dr Poppy Watson (UTS)
2026-05-22 15:00 - 16:00
Dr Poppy Watson (UTS)

Title: When Cues Drive Behaviour: Associative Mechanisms in Humans

Abstract:

Associative learning theories provide parsimonious explanation of how stimuli in the environment can trigger behavioural responses through both instrumental and Pavlovian mechanisms. Although much of this experimental work has been conducted using rodents, many studies have demonstrated similar associative mechanisms that underlie (at least some) human behaviour. I will provide an overview of some of this research and discuss a series of ongoing experiments investigating human S-R habits and Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer in both healthy and clinical populations. I will highlight some of the conceptual and methodological issues that have arisen along the way and outline some future plans.

Bio:

Dr Poppy Watson is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at University of Technology Sydney and an ARC Future Fellow. Her research examines how environmental cues influence attention and choice behaviour, with a particular focus on the tension between explicit goals and more reflexive responses shaped by reward learning and habit. Using behavioural experiments, alongside methods such as eye tracking and neuroimaging, she investigates the mechanisms that contribute to unwanted patterns of behaviour in both healthy and clinical populations, as well as how these insights can inform behaviour change interventions.

Originally from New Zealand, Dr. Poppy Watson completed her Master of Research and PhD at the University of Amsterdam. She worked at UNSW Sydney from 2017 to 2023 as a postdoctoral researcher and later an ARC DECRA Fellow. Since 2023, she has been based at University of Technology Sydney, where she has helped develop the undergraduate psychology program alongside her research as an ARC Future Fellow.

Psychology Colloquium: Dr Denise Moerel (Western Sydney University)
2026-05-29 15:00 - 16:00
Dr Denise Moerel (Western Sydney University)

Title: TBA

Abstract:

TBA

Bio:

TBA
