Faculty

Melissa Mcdonald
Associate Professor

Broadly, my research takes an evolutionary and social psychological approach to examining how the ultimate motivation to protect reproductive choice has shaped women’s psychology. I postulate that women are equipped with a threat management system for protecting reproductive choice that assesses the environment for possible threats, and in response produces cognitive, emotional, and behavioral output that is calibrated to the likelihood that one will experience a threat to reproductive choice, and the severity of the costs were the threat to be realized. Currently we are identifying inputs to this system (individual and situational factors that moderate threat) as well the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral consequences of perceiving threat (e.g., fear of rape, risk avoidance, seeking familial protection, increased intergroup bias, changes in dating behavior, consumption of true crime media, intrasexual gossip).

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