School of Psychology Events

Psychology Colloquium: Cancelled
2025-09-12 15:00 - 16:00 (Australia/Sydney)

Psychology Colloquium: Prof Barbara Mullen (Curtin University)
2025-09-19 15:00 - 16:00
Prof Barbara Mullen (Curtin University)

Title: Beyond individual behaviour change: Can we use the behaviour change techniques successful in changing health behaviour to change behaviour in health professional led interventions?

Abstract:

Drawing on her research over the past 25 years Professor Mullan will explore behaviour change in health psychology. Starting with an overview of using theory to predict behaviour, she will demonstrate how advances in theory allowed for the successful development of interventions to change behaviour at an individual level. Using research across a range of behaviours, including physical activity, nutrition, adherence, sleep, alcohol consumption, in diverse populations (e.g. people with eating disorders, diabetes, stroke, and obesity) and conditions (e.g. cancer, autoimmune conditions) she will demonstrate a range of interventions where behaviour was successfully changed (and not so successfully). The final section will explore how these individual-level techniques can be adapted for use by health professionals—nurses, dietitians, psychologists, and pharmacists, answering the question of whether we shift from isolated success stories to widespread, sustainable behaviour change across entire populations? Professor Mullan’s work is especially relevant in today’s healthcare landscape, where chronic illness and lifestyle-related conditions are on the rise. Her approach blends rigorous theory with practical application, making her insights valuable for both researchers and health care professionals.

Bio:

Professor Mullan is a Professor of Health Psychology, in the School of Population Health at Curtin University. Professor Mullan completed her undergraduate studies in psychology at University College Dublin, where she then completed her Masters degree. She completed her PhD in health psychology at Cardiff Metropolitan University. She became a Registered Health Psychologist with the Health & Care Professions Council UK in 2007. She has worked in health psychology for more than 25 years including at the University of Birmingham, the University of Sydney, and Curtin University. Her PhD was the first to use psychological theory to predict safe food handling behaviour in consumers and she has remained a world leader in this important research area ever since. This work has had important implications for theory, practice and policy. With her team she has pioneered using theory and behaviour change techniques in interventions to change behaviour, across a range of behaviours. Her recent research has used these interventions in large population scale interventions to change behaviour in interventions using health professionals.

Psychology Colloquium: Dr Jaimie Northam (USYD) & Priya Vaughan (USYD)
2025-09-26 15:00 - 16:00
Dr Jaimie Northam (USYD) & Priya Vaughan (USYD)

Title: A new age for youth mental health: practical considerations for research and practice

Abstract:

Youth mental health has been recognised as research priority by the Australian government with the goal of reducing long term harm and social and economic costs. Lived experience participation and engagement has also been emphasised to ensure interventions and outputs are meaningful and relevant to young people. However, any research that engages youth must acknowledge that young people have distinct experiences and needs to those of children and adults. Young people are more independent than children, and capable of great creativity and unique perspectives. But they are not yet adults and require varying levels of parental and societal support. As a result, young people have unique needs for psychological interventions, and how they’re engaged in research processes. How do we know we are getting their involvement right? And how can we involve young people in research in a meaningful way that drives our research, and also empowers and strengthens young people’s mental health? In this talk, we argue that there are ways to meaningfully engage young people in research that benefits us as researchers, them as developing individuals, and the collective society.

Dr Northam will present recent data regarding young people’s attitudes to mental health help-seeking and how this work is helping to inform development of a new digital mental health tool specifically for 12 to 17-year-olds. Dr Vaughan will share reflections about the co-production of MyBRANCHES, a digital, self-management tool for young people (16+) preparing to discharge from an Early Intervention in Psychosis Service. She will reflect on what the co-production process looked like ‘in real life’ (as opposed to the neat frameworks she’d seen in journal articles) and share learnings and challenges. Drawing on co-design and co-production approaches, Jaimie and Priya will close with an interactive discussion with the audience so we can collectively explore the steps we can take to better include our stakeholders in research.

Bios:

Dr Jaimie Northam is a Lecturer and Clinical Psychologist. She has been practicing as a psychologist working with young people for over 15 years and is passionate about supporting them and their parents meet the unique needs of this life stage. Currently, her work is based in the Child Behaviour Research Clinic where she provides treatment, supervision and conducts research focused on improving childhood mental health outcomes.

Dr Priya Vaughan is a Research Fellow at the Central Clinical School (The University of Sydney) and at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course. Priya’s research focuses on collaborative and participatory research with people with lived experience. Recent research has focused on experiences of psychosis and schizophrenia, climate emotions, and discrimination experienced by people with experience of both disability and mental distress.

Psychology Colloquium: Dr Graeme Hoddinott (USYD)
2025-10-10 15:00 - 16:00
Dr Graeme Hoddinott (USYD)

Title: Applying psychology (socio-behavioural science) to tuberculosis – acceptability, value, and preferences

Abstract:

When I was a psychology student, I thought I was going to be ‘a psychologist’. That’s not what happened. Instead, I trace a journey of 20 years working alongside medical clinicians, epidemiologists, and public health implementers. I have leveraged my expertise in understanding people’s experiences and how these experiences interface with history, context, social systems, and health systems, to turn my training in psychology to a required skill for policy-impactful health research. I share five examples from the field of mixed-method, multi-disciplinary projects, mostly on tuberculosis and children. And I invite discussion on lessons-learned toward opportunities and conceptualisations of applied health psychology.

Bio:

Graeme trained in psychology in South Africa. He is now a senior lecturer in global health at the Sydney School of Public Health. He is also an extraordinary associate professor in paediatrics and child health (Stellenbosch University, South Africa), and an African Academy of Sciences “ARISE” Fellow hosted by the Group for Research in Infectious Diseases (GRID) at the University of Namibia. He will tell us about his research in the presentation.

Psychology Colloquium: Prof Sabina Kleitman (USYD)
2025-10-17 15:00 - 16:00
Prof Sabina Kleitman (USYD)

Title: TBA

Abstract:

We make thousands of decisions every day, often without realising how complex and costly they can be. In this talk, I will provide an overview of several research programs currently underway in the CODES Lab, with a focus on decision-making, meta-reasoning, and cognitive fitness.

Within the meta-reasoning framework, our group is the first to examine individual differences in giving-up behaviours. The decision to give up is not simply a failure but a metacognitive strategy—one that can reduce errors and resource costs during problem solving. Across a series of studies, we have shown that people give up in systematic ways, and that some strategies are adaptive while others are maladaptive for performance.

I will also discuss our work on collective decision making, highlighting the role of metacognitive confidence and in-group communication in shaping group outcomes.

Finally, I will share findings from our research on cognitive fitness, examining the factors that support mental resilience, adaptability, and sustained performance under pressure.

Together, these programs advance our understanding of how individuals and groups manage the demands of decision-making, and how metacognition and cognitive fitness can be leveraged to improve performance in everyday and high-stakes contexts.

Bio:

Dr Sabina Kleitman is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Sydney, and she is a director of the CODES lab at the School of Psychology. She researches psychological traits underlying decision-making, meta-reasoning, cognitive fitness, resilience, and mental well-being, and how extreme and uncertain conditions affect them. She and her team also develop or assist with developing novel assessment and research tools, and methodologies of significance to various end-users, including Australian Defence.

Psychology Colloquium: Dr Daniel Feuerriegel (University of Melbourne)
2025-10-24 15:00 - 16:00
Dr Daniel Feuerriegel (University of Melbourne)

Title: Where are the prediction errors? Three tests for expectancy effects on visual evoked responses

Abstract:

We can rapidly learn repeating patterns in our environment. These learned patterns are often used to form expectations about future sensory events. Several influential predictive coding models posit that stimulus-evoked neural responses in the visual system are reduced when an expected stimulus appears (expectation suppression). However, there is currently scant electrophysiological evidence for genuine expectation suppression in the visual system when relevant confounds are taken into account. To provide stronger tests for expectation suppression in the visual system, we performed three predictive cueing experiments (n=48, n=48, n=60) while recording electroencephalographic (EEG) data. Participants learned cue-stimulus associations during a training session and were then exposed to the same cue-stimulus pairs in a subsequent experiment. Experiment 1 presented faces, whereas experiments 2 and 3 presented oriented gratings. Across the three experiments we did not find evidence that expectations influenced event-related potentials in the first 300ms after stimulus onset (i.e., during afferent visual responses). These findings do not support predictive coding-based accounts that specify reduced prediction error signalling when perceptual expectations are fulfilled. Our results instead highlight the role of other hypothesised processes that allow our minds to adapt to our environments, which do not appeal to prediction error signalling modulations.

Bio:

Dr. Daniel Feuerriegel is an ARC DECRA Fellow and Head of the Prediction and Decision-Making Lab at the University of Melbourne. He uses a variety of neuroimaging techniques in combination with psychophysics and computational modelling to investigate how decision-making and visual perception are implemented within the human brain. His team uses high temporal resolution recording methods, such as scalp and stereotactic EEG, to track the formation of decisions as they unfold over time. His research group is also interested in how our past experience and expectations about future events shape responses of stimulus-selective neurons within the visual system.

Psychology Colloquium: A/Prof Yoel Inbar (University of Toronto)
2025-10-31 15:00 - 16:00
A/Prof Yoel Inbar (University of Toronto)

Title: Moral Language Use By U.S. Political Elites

Abstract:

Politicians on the left and right vary in the extent to which they moralize social issues. Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) posits five moral foundations said to constitute the basic building blocks of morality across cultures: the “individualizing” foundations of harm and fairness, and the “binding” foundations of ingroup loyalty, respect for authority, and purity. Past self-report studies suggest that conservatives endorse the binding foundations more strongly than liberals do. However, research does not consistently show that moral language use differs by ideology as predicted by MFT. I’ll present a series of studies in which we use computer-aided natural language analyses to uncover moral language used by U.S. Members of Congress. I’ll discuss differences between liberal and conservative politicians in how much and what kind of moral language they use, and how this changes across time and different issues.

Bio:

Yoel Inbar is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto Scarborough and director of the Morality, Affect, and Politics (MAP) Lab. His research is dedicated to uncovering the basic processes underlying moral thinking and applying this knowledge to understand people’s ideology, beliefs, and reasoning.

Psychology Colloquium: Dr Jessica Flake (University of British Columbia)
2025-11-07 15:00 - 16:00
Dr Jessica Flake (University of British Columbia)

Title: Methodological Research Needs Methodological Reform Too

Abstract:

Psychology is in a period of methodological reform. Researchers are rethinking their practices, sharing their data, and trying out registered reports. In this open science era, my work has focused on the role of measurement practices. I’ll provide some background as to how that previous metascience and psychometric research in the context of replication studies led me to discover two related problems. First, even as registration becomes common, we lack practices to analysis plan for complex models and to ensure their transparent reporting and reproducibility. Second, current methodological research does not address this because it does not focus on how to navigate the garden of forking paths and quantify the uncertainty in results that comes from reasonable analytical flexibility. In fact, methodological research seeks to increase the size of the garden of forking paths! These problems prevent the uptake of open science practices and threaten the validity of research results. I’ll preview my on-going work to develop research synthesis methods for methodologies and ways of integrating multiverse analysis with metascience to quantify analytical uncertainty. I’ll discuss how applied and meta researchers can consider decision making in analysis pipelines as a unique contributor to the uncertainty of results and ideas for correcting for it.

Bio:

Dr. Flake developed an interest in psychology and statistics as an undergraduate at Northern Kentucky University and went on to complete a PhD in Measurement, Evaluation, and Assessment from the University of Connecticut in 2015. She recently joined the faculty in the Quantitative Methods Area of the Department of Psychology at University of British Columbia, after having been an Associate Professor at McGill University. Her lab works on applied problems in psychological measurement and psychometrics with an emphasis on reproducibility and replicability. She was a founding member of the Psychological Science Accelerator, a distributed laboratory network of over 1,000 researchers, serving as the Assistant Director of the Data and Methods Committee from 2018 to 2023. She continues to work on methodological challenges for big team science and psychometric methods for complex data structures. Currently she is an Associate Editor at Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science and Psychological Methods. Her recent and future work is considering how open science practices like registered reports and multiverse analysis can be further developed for latent variable models.

Psychology Colloquium: Prof Ed Awh (University of Chicago)
2026-02-27 15:00 - 16:00
Prof Ed Awh (University of Chicago)

Title: Content-independent pointers mediate storage in working memory

Abstract:

Although past neural studies of working memory (WM) have focused on stimulus-specific activity that tracks the stored feature values, a separate line of evidence has revealed neural signals that track the number of items in WM, independent of the contents of those items. Thus, a common neural signature of WM load has been identified for highly distinct visual features, and even across visual and auditory sensory modalities. Our working hypothesis is that these content-independent load signals reflect the operation of spatiotemporal “pointers” that enable the binding of stored items to the surrounding event context, a process that is critical for precise access online memories despite high levels of proactive interference. This hypothesis predicts that pointer deployment is a key limiting factor for WM capacity. To test this prediction, we applied representational similarity analysis (RSA) to EEG data to determine the number of pointers deployed across set sizes that ranged from 1 to 8 items. We observed a “neural load” function that rises with increasing numbers of stored items, while controlling for differences in sensory energy and spatial attention. Critically, this function differed sharply as a function of individual differences in WM capacity. Subjects with higher capacity showed a monotonic rise in the number of pointers deployed that leveled off at higher set sizes. By contrast, low capacity subjects showed an initial rise followed by a sharp decline in the number of pointers deployed at higher set sizes. This empirical pattern dovetails with past behavioral and neural studies that have documented increased costs for low capacity observers as the number of memoranda exceeds capacity. We conclude that content-independent indexing is a core component of individual differences in WM ability.

Bio:

I’m a cognitive neuroscientist who received a doctoral degree from the University of Michigan, training with Drs. John Jonides and Edward Smith. I then spent 2 years at UC San Diego, working with Dr. Hal Pashler, and Dr. Steve Hillyard. I took my first professor position at the University of Oregon in 1999, where I spent 16 years and developed a close collaboration with Dr. Ed Vogel. In 2015, Vogel and I both took positions at the University of Chicago where I still reside. My core research interests focus on working memory and attention, with an eye towards the intertwined nature of these constructs. I’ve been very interested in the sharp capacity limits that characterize working memory performance, and we have recently proposed that those limits may relate to limits on content-independent operations that serve to bind item representations to the observer’s current context. My talk will focus on the evidence supporting this broad hypothesis.

Psychology Colloquium: Prof Luigi Fontana (University of Sydney)
2026-03-06 15:00 - 16:00
Prof Luigi Fontana (University of Sydney)

Title: Promoting healthy longevity through lifestyle medicine: biological and behavioural mechanisms

Abstract:

Chronic diseases are often perceived as an unavoidable consequence of genetics or chance. Yet converging evidence shows that a large proportion of cardiometabolic disease, type 2 diabetes, and many cancers is preventable, and that the years lived with disability can be dramatically reduced through mechanism-focused lifestyle interventions. Modern healthcare has excelled at prolonging survival after disease onset, but too often this extends years characterized by multimorbidity, polypharmacy, reduced independence, and escalating costs.1

This lecture synthesizes human and translational evidence showing how lifestyle medicine can extend healthspan by targeting fundamental biological pathways that drive aging and chronic disease risk.2-4 Key interventions include optimizing diet quality and energy balance (e.g., a Mediterranean-like, minimally processed, fiber-rich dietary pattern), regular endurance and resistance exercise, and avoidance of smoking and harmful alcohol use.1, 5

Importantly, the effectiveness of these interventions in both clinical trials and real-world settings depends on adherence and long-term compliance, which are influenced by psychological and behavioral factors that remain incompletely understood. I will briefly discuss how improving health literacy—particularly through education—may help shape health behaviors and strengthen prevention. Finally, I will outline how integrating lifestyle medicine into proactive, personalized care can reduce disparities and support sustainable healthcare systems while aligning human and planetary health goals.6, 7

Key references:

1. Cagigas ML, Twigg SM and Fontana L. Ten tips for promoting cardiometabolic health and slowing cardiovascular aging. Eur Heart J 2024; 45: 1094-1097. DOI: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehad853.

2. Green CL, Lamming DW and Fontana L. Molecular mechanisms of dietary restriction promoting health and longevity. Nature reviews Molecular cell biology 2022; 23: 56-73. 2021/09/15. DOI: 10.1038/s41580-021-00411-4.

3. Cagigas ML, De Ciutiis I, Masedunskas A, et al. Dietary and pharmacological energy restriction and exercise for healthspan extension. Trends Endocrinol Metab 2025; 36: 521-545. 20250502. DOI: 10.1016/j.tem.2025.04.001.

4. Fontana L, Partridge L and Longo VD. Extending healthy life span—from yeast to humans. science 2010; 328: 321-326.

5. Tosti V, Bertozzi B and Fontana L. Health benefits of the mediterranean diet: metabolic and molecular mechanisms. The Journals of Gerontology: Series A 2017; 73: 318-326.

6. Cheng K and Fontana L. Investing in value-based primary care: a pathway to sustainable healthcare. Eur Heart J 2024 20240710. DOI: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehae404.

7. Fontana L, Fasano A, Chong YS, et al. Transdisciplinary research and clinical priorities for better health. PLoS medicine 2021; 18: e1003699. 20210727. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1003699.

Bio:

Luigi Fontana is an internationally recognized physician scientist and one of the world’s leaders in the field of nutrition, metabolism and healthy longevity in humans. His pioneering studies on the effects of dietary restriction in humans have opened a new area of nutrition-related research that holds tremendous promise for the prevention of age-related chronic diseases and for the understanding of the biology of human aging.

Professor Fontana is the Leonard P. Ullmann Chair of Translational Metabolic Health at the Charles Perkins Centre, where he directs the Charles Perkins Centre Royal Prince Alfred Clinic and the Health for Life Research, Clinical & Educational Program. He is also a Professor of Medicine and Nutrition in the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney and a Clinical Academic in the Department of Endocrinology at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.

Professor Fontana was a Senior Scientist at the Italian NIH (ISS) and a Professor of Medicine and Nutritional Sciences at Washington University in St.Louis (USA), and co-director of the Longevity Research Program at Washington University. Fontana graduated with highest honors from the Verona University Medical School (1994), where he completed his internship and residency in Internal Medicine (1999). He also received a Ph.D. in Metabolism and Clinical Pharmacology from the University of Padua Medical School (2003).

Professor Fontana has published over 180 manuscripts in prestigious journals including Science, Cell, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, BMJ, CA Clinical Journal cancer, Nature Reviews Mol Cell Biol, Cell Metabolism, Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol, Circulation, Journal American College of Cardiology, and PNAS ; 96.4% of his papers are in the top 10% most-cited journals (Google scholar total citations >39,000; h-index 90). He has been invited to present his work at international conferences and top medical schools and research institutes around the world, including Harvard University, Cambridge University, Yale University, Universitè Paris “Pierre et Marie Curie”, Max Plank Institute of Aging, Baylor College of Medicine, Buck Institute for Research on Aging, Spanish National Cancer Research Centre, National University of Singapore among others.

Dr. Fontana’s is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the 2009 American Federation Aging Research (AFAR) Breakthroughs in Gerontology Award and the 2011 Glenn Award for Research in Biological Mechanisms of Aging, the 2016 Vincent Cristofalo Award of the American Federation Aging Research, 2021 Vice-Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence of the University of Sydney, 2022 Honorary Member of the Italian Association of Hospital Gastroenterologists, 2022 Ordinary Non-resident Member of the Italian Academy of Medical and Surgical Sciences of the National Society of Sciences in Naples, and 2023 Ordinary Non-resident Member of of the Italian Pontanian Academy of Naples (founded in 1458). He was a Scientific Member of the Board of Directors of the American Aging Association (2014-2019), and since 2016, he is the Editor-in-Chief of ‘Nutrition and Healthy Aging’ and Associated Editor of ‘Geroscience’.

Professor Fontana believes that the time has come for a change in the conversation about chronic disease to a refreshed and repurposed model of health care, which emphasizes the power of mechanism based prevention and education to change potential to actual outcomes. Fontana is also an environmentalist. He wrote several highly-cited perspective articles and book chapters with Daniel Kammen, Walter Willett and Nicoletta Batini on the beneficial role of efficient use of energy and food in promoting human, environmental, and planetary health, and sustainable economic development. Fontana and colleagues believe that it is possible to substantially enhance human and environmental health, societal wealth and well-being, but this requires a profound transformation in the way we live, and a new prevention- and environment-centred healthcare, agricultural, industrial and economic system. They argues that most of the knowledge and technology to transform the world and begin a new industrial revolution already exist today. We only need to relinquish the idea of producing more energy, food, and other products at lower cost in favor of a new paradigm that opts for less but high-quality energy, food and materials for a healthier life and environment. They also claims that “both individual and societal wealth, happiness, and well-being do not depend merely on the acquisition of material goods and on economic growth, but are powered by our physical and psychological health, the quality of life and the richness of our social relationships, and foremost by the health of the environment that supports all life on earth, our Natural Capital that must be preserved”.

Major Media attention

Quoted in The New York Times, “Food for Holiday Thought: Eat Less, Live to 140?” by David Hochman, by David Hochman, Nov 23, 2003

Profiled on a NHK special documentary “Challenge the aging: You can live longer”, 2004

Quoted in The Washington Post, “Seeking the Low-Calorie Fountain of Youth: Severely Restricted Diets May Slow Aging Process” by Rob Stein, May 4 2004.

Quoted in Science “Lean, Hungry, and Healthy” by Constance Holden, Apr 23 2004(Science 2004;304:514)

Quoted in New Scientist “Eat less and keep disease at bay” by Anil Ananthaswamy, Apr 24, 2004 (New Scientist 2004;182:2444)

Featured in the Korean documentary “Secrets of Living, Aging, Illness and Death ” by Mia Lee (Korean Broadcasting Systems), 2005

Quoted in The Times of London, “Eat less — and live to 130” by David Mattin, Oct 3, 2005

Profiled in an Italian TV documentary on nutrition and longevity “Calorie restriction and aging” by Piero Angela (“SuperQuark” series), 2005

Quoted in The Wall Street Journal, “Reducing Your Daily Calories by 40%: The Science Behind ‘Starvation’ Diets”, by Tara Parker-Pope, Jan 31 2006.

Quoted in The Washington Post, “High Protein Diets May Boost Cancer Risk” by Steven Reinberg, Dec 7, 2006

Featured in the BBC4 documentary “Live longer: Caloric restrictions and ageing of the heart”, 2007

Quoted in Newsweek, “Never say die”, by Anne Underwood, Dec 12 2008.

Quoted in The New York Times Magazine “The Calorie-Restriction Experiment” by JON GERTNER, Oct 7 2009.

Quoted in the Los Angeles Time, “Permanent diet may equal longer life” by Karen Kaplan, July 9, 2009

Quoted in the Time Magazine, “Health Checkup: How to Live 100 Years – Eat Less, Live Longer?”, by Bryan Walsh, Feb 11 2010.

Quoted in New Scientist “Eat less, live longer?” by Laura Cassiday, Jun 3, 2010

Time Magazine – “9 Healthy Snacks That Prevent Overeating”, by Markham Heid, Aug 11, 2016.

Featured in the BBC2 Horizon documentary Eat, Fast & Live Longer by Michael J. Mosley, 2012

Featured in the ABC ‘Catalyst’ documentary “Staying Younger For Longer” by Jayne Parker, 2019

Featured in the ABC ‘Catalyst’ documentary “The Truth about Fasting”, 2021

Psychology Colloquium: Prof Agnieszka Tymula (University of Sydney)
2026-03-13 15:00 - 16:00
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) TBC
2026-03-20 15:00 - 16:00
Prof Phillippa Diedrichs (University of the West of England)

Title: TBA

Abstract:

TBA

Bio:

TBA

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.

Psychology Colloquium: Prof Mark Dadds (University of Sydney)
2026-04-17 15:00 - 16:00
Prof Mark Dadds (University of Sydney)

Title: TBA

Abstract:

TBA

Bio:

TBA

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

Title: Insights into the human brain and major psychiatric disorders with single cell and spatial omics technologies

Abstract:

TBA

Bio:

TBA

Psychology Colloquium: Learning, Education, and Assessment Research Network (Psychology) (USYD)
2026-05-01 15:00 - 16:00
Learning, Education, and Assessment Research Network (Psychology) (USYD)

Title: TBA

Abstract:

TBA

Bio:

TBA

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

Title: TBA

Abstract:

TBA

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: TBA

Abstract:

TBA

Bio:

TBA

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

Title: TBA

Abstract:

TBA

Bio:

TBA

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
