Specialist Research Laboratory
Social/Personality Laboratory
| Coordinators | Professor Nick Haslam |
| Location | Room 824, 8th Floor, Redmond Barry Building |
| Phone | +61 3 8344 6374 |
| nhaslam AT unimelb.edu.au |
Research Activities
Our research explores an assortment of topics involving social perception and individual differences. Our social psychological work currently focuses on the subtle and often nonconscious ways in which people deny humanness to one another. Often using implicit social cognition methodologies, this work explores how some groups – genders, ethnicities, refugees, indigenous people – are perceived as lacking particular human attributes and likened to particular kinds of nonhuman (e.g., animals, robots). We also examine how people’s beliefs about the nature of group differences are associated with their attitudes and their endorsement of stereotypes. Our personality-related research mainly investigates whether individual differences are best conceptualised as matters of degree or as matters of kind (i.e., dimensions or categories), using taxometric research methods.Current Areas of Research
- Dehumanisation processes
- Implications of essentialist thinking for stereotyping and prejudice
- Perception of people with mental disorders
- Implicit social cognition methodology
- Application of taxometric procedures in personality psychology
Research Staff
Lab Facilities
The Laboratory is equipped for research in the broad field of social and personality psychology, particularly social cognition experiments.
Funding & Grants
| Project: | Implicit transmission of embodied culture (with Y. Kashima & S. Laham) |
| Year: | 2010–2012 |
| Funded by: | Australian Research Council |
| Project: | Dehumanisation: Understanding the Attributing of Lesser Humanness to Others |
| Year: | 2007–2010 |
| Funded by: | Australian Research Council |
Current Research Students
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Amanda Allan, Elise Holland, Evan Jureidini, Erlend Kvaale, Cat Reynolds
Recent Past Research Students
- Lauren Ban, Brock Bastian, Peter Koval, Stephen Loughnan, Jennifer Whelan, Sam Wilson
Publications (2008-present)
In press
Haslam, N. (forthcoming). Psychology in the bathroom. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Bain, P., Vaes, J., Haslam, N., Kashima, Y., & Guan, Y. (in press). Folk psychologies of humanness: Beliefs about distinctive and core human characteristics in three countries. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.
Ban, L., Haslam, N., & Kashima, Y. (in press). Does understanding behavior make it seem normal? Perceptions of abnormality among Euro-Australians and Chinese-Singaporeans. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.
Bastian, B., & Haslam, N. (in press). Experiencing dehumanization: Cognitive and emotional effects of everyday dehumanization. Basic and Applied Social Psychology.
Bastian, B., Loughnan, S., Haslam, N., & Radke, H. (in press). Don’t mind meat? The denial of mind to animals used for human consumption. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Haslam, N. (in press). The return of the anal character. Review of General Psychology.
Haslam, N., Holland, E., & Kuppens, P. (in press). Categories versus dimensions in personality and psychopathology: A quantitative review of taxometric research. Psychological Medicine.
Haslam, N., & Lusher, D. (in press). The structure of mental health research: Networks of influence among psychiatry and clinical psychology journals. Psychological Medicine.
Koval, P., Laham, S. M., Haslam, N., & Bastian, B. (in press). Our flaws are more human than yours: Ingroup bias in humanizing negative characteristics. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Loughnan, S., Kuppens, P., Allik, J., De Lemus, S., Dumont, K., Gargurevich, R., Hidegkuti, I., Leidner, B., Matos, L., Park, J., Realo, A., Shi, J., Sojo, V. E., Tong, Y., Vaes, J., Verduyn, P., Yeung, V., & Haslam, N. (in press). Economic inequality is linked to biased self-perception. Psychological Science.
Park, J., Haslam, N., & Kashima, Y. (in press). Relational to the core: Beliefs about human nature in Japan, Korea, and Australia. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology
2011
Lilienfeld, S. O., Lynn, S. J., Namy, L. J., Woolf, N. J., Jamieson, G., Haslam, N., & Slaughter, V. (2011). Psychology: From inquiry to understanding. Sydney: Pearson.
Bastian, B., Laham, S., Wilson, S., Haslam, N., & Koval, P. (2011). Blaming, praising and protecting our humanity: The implications of everyday dehumanization for judgments of moral status. British Journal of Social Psychology, 50, 469-483.
Haslam, N. (2011). Genetic essentialism, neuroessentialism, and stigma: Comment on Dar-Nimrod & Heine (2011). Psychological Bulletin, 137, 819-824.
Haslam, N. (2011). The latent structure of personality and psychopathology: A review of trends in taxometric research. Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice, 8, 17-29.
Haslam, N., Loughnan, S., & Sun, P. (2011). Beastly: What makes animal metaphors offensive? Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 30, 311-325.
Reynolds, C., & Haslam, N. (2011). Evidence for an association between women and nature: An analysis of media images and mental representations. Ecopsychology, 3, 59-64.
2010
Bastian, B., & Haslam, N. (2010). Excluded from humanity: Ostracism and dehumanization. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 107-113.
Boldero, J., Haslam, N., & Whelan, J. (2010). Increasing the predictive utility of neuroticism for health behaviors: The role of implicit neuroticism. In R. G. Jackson (Ed.), Psychology of neuroticism and shame (pp.197-210). New York: Nova Publications.
Cho, Y. B., & Haslam, N. (2010). Suicidal ideation and distress among immigrant adolescents: The role of acculturation, life stress, and social support. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 39, 370-379.
Franklin, T., Lee, A., Hall, N., Hetrick, S., Ong, J., Haslam, N., Karsz, F., & Vance, A. (2010). The association of visuospatial working memory with dysthymic disorder in pre-pubertal children. Psychological Medicine, 40, 253-261.
Haslam, N. (2010). Bite-size science: Relative impact of short article formats. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5, 263-264.
Haslam, N. (2010). Symptom networks and psychiatric categories. Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 33, 158-159.
Haslam, N., & Koval, P. (2010). Possible research area bias in the draft ERA journal rankings. Australian Journal of Psychology, 62, 112-114.
Haslam, N., & Koval, P. (2010). Predicting long-term citation impact of articles in social psychology. Psychological Reports, 106, 891-900.
Haslam, N., & Laham, S. (2010). Quantity, quality, and impact in academic publication. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40, 216-220.
Loughnan, S., Haslam, N., & Bastian, B. (2010). The role of meat consumption in the denial of moral status and mind to meat animals. Appetite, 55, 156-159.
Loughnan, S., Haslam, N., Murnane, T., Vaes, J., Reynolds, C., & Suitner, C. (2010). Objectification leads to depersonalization: The denial of mind and moral concern to objectified others. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40, 709-717.
Saminaden, A., Loughnan, S., & Haslam, N. (2010). Afterimages of savages: Implicit associations between “primitive” peoples, animals, and children. British Journal of Social Psychology, 49, 91-105.
2009
Arntz, A., Bernstein, D., Gielen, D., van Nieuwenhuijzen, M., Penders, K., Haslam, N., & Ruscio, J. (2009). Taxometric evidence for the dimensional structure of cluster-C, paranoid and borderline personality disorders. Journal of Personality Disorders, 23, 606-628.
Bain, P., Park, J., Kwok, C., & Haslam, N. (2009). Attributing human uniqueness and human nature to cultural groups: Distinct forms of subtle dehumanization. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 12, 789-805.
Haslam, N. (2009). The taxon concept is not taxonic: Response to Grove (2008). Psychological Reports, 104, 784-786.
Haslam, N., & Laham, S. (2009). Early-career scientific achievement and patterns of authorship: The mixed blessings of publication leadership and collaboration. Research Evaluation, 18, 405-410.
Haslam, N., & Laham, S. M. (2009). Ten years on: Does graduate school promise predict later scientific achievement? Current Research in Social Psychology, 14, 143-149.
Haslam, N., Whelan, J., & Bastian, B. (2009). Big Five traits mediate associations between values and subjective well-being. Personality and Individual Differences, 46, 40-42.
Kashima, Y., Bain, P., Haslam, N., Peters, K., Laham, S., Whelan, J., Bastian, B., Loughnan, S., Kaufmann, L., & Fernando, J. W. (2009). Folk theory of social change. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 12, 227-246.
Loughnan, S., Haslam, N., & Kashima, Y. (2009). Understanding the relationship between attribute-based and metaphor-based dehumanization. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 12, 747-762.
Read, J., Haslam, N., & Davies, E. (2009). The need to rely on evidence not ideology in stigma research. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 119, 412-413
Wilson, S., & Haslam, N. (2009). Is the future more or less human? Differing views of humanness in the posthumanism debate. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 39, 247-266.
2008
Bastian, B., & Haslam, N. (2008). Immigration from the perspective of hosts and immigrants: The roles of psychological essentialism and social identity. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 11, 127-140.
Haslam, N. (2008). Do personality types exist? In S. Boag (Ed.), Personality down under: Personality research in Australia (pp. 23-31). New York: Nova Publishers.
Haslam, N., Bain, P., Loughnan, S., & Kashima, Y. (2008). Attributing and denying humanness to others. European Review of Social Psychology, 19, 55-85.
Haslam, N., Ban, L., Kaufmann, L., Loughnan, S., Peters, K., Whelan, J., & Wilson, S. (2008). What makes an article influential? Predicting impact in social and personality psychology. Scientometrics, 76, 169-185.
Haslam, N., Kashima, Y., Loughnan, S., Shi, J., & Suitner, C. (2008). Subhuman, inhuman, and superhuman: Contrasting humans and nonhumans in three cultures. Social Cognition, 26, 248-258.
Haslam, N., & Loughnan, S. (2008). Attributing aberrant emotionality to others. In L. Charland & P. Zachar (Eds.) Fact and value in emotion. Amsterdam: John Benjamin.
Haslam, N., & Whelan, J. (2008). Human natures: Psychological essentialism in thinking about differences between people. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2, 1297-1312.
O’Connor, M., Loughnan, S., & Haslam, N. (2008). The self is implicitly seen as more human than others. In S. M. Columbus (Ed.), Advances in psychology research, Vol 53. New York: Nova Publishers.
Olatunji, B., Williams, B., Haslam, N., & Abramowitz, J. S., & Tolin, D. F. (2008). The latent structure of obsessive-compulsive symptoms: A taxometric study. Depression & Anxiety, 25, 956-968.
Rawlings, D., Williams, B., Haslam, N., & Claridge, G. (2008). Taxometric analysis supports a latent dimensional structure for schizotypy. Personality and Individual Differences, 44, 1640-1651.
Rawlings, D., Williams, B., Haslam, N., & Claridge, G. (2008). Is schizotypy taxonic? Response to Beauchaine et al.. Personality and Individual Differences, 44, 1663-1672.
van de Berg, R., Dirani, M., Chen, C. Y., Haslam, N., & Baird, P. (2008). Myopia and personality: The Genes in Myopia (GEM) personality study. Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, 49, 882-886.