Dr Anthony Lee

Lecturer in Psychology

Psychology Stirling

Dr Anthony Lee

Contact details

About me

I completed my PhD at The University of Queensland and was a Marie Curie Fellow at The University of Glasgow. I joined The University of Stirling in 2019 as a Lecturer.

My research covers a wide range of topics on human behaviour and cognition, including human mate preference, face and person perception, and methods and measurement in psychological science. I focus on investigating issues using methods from many difference disciplines, including social psychology, evolutionary biology, and computer sciences.

If you are interested in a PhD, below are potential project ideas I would be interested in working on. I am also happy to chat with students about project ideas, so if you are interested in any of the below projects, or wish to propose a project related to my research, feel free to send me an email and we can organise a meeting.

A Multivariate Investigation of Human Mate Preference

Much research has investigated factors that influence human mate preference; however, most of this research has only investigated one or two factors at a time. Given the massive multivariate nature of human mate choice (and social judgements in general), it is unclear how we attend to and integrate all the relevant information when assessing a potential mate. This project will seek to develop a model of how humans make mate choice judgements.

Sexual Selection and Musical/Artistic Ability

Musical/artistic ability has long been theorised to be important for sexual selection. Indeed, in a data-driven analysis of descriptions in dating profiles, we found that music/artistic ability was associated with desirability for both men and women. Prominent theories have suggested that musical/artistic ability is associated with ‘good-genes’, though it’s equally as likely that this ability is preferred for more direct benefits, for example, traits associated with resource acquisition such as determination. These possibilities are yet to be disentangled. This project would seek to investigate the underlying mechanism that leads musical/artistic ability to be desirable in a partner.

Self-perceptions and Wellbeing

How people perceive oneself is important to many aspects in life; however, people are not accurate with their self-representations; for example, in recent study, we have found that Asian Americans are more likely to perceive themselves as having stereotypical East Asian features, and idealise phenotypically “Whiter” faces. Negative self-perceptions potentially lead to many problems, such as depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem. This project, using techniques such as reverse correlation to assess internal representations of self, will seek to investigate how variation in internal representations of oneself influences individual differences in wellbeing.

Research centres/groups