Kevin E. Moore - Psychology

Kevin E. Moore

Kenneth S. Wagoner Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience

Why Psychology?

Why Psychology? Well, I suppose its because if you took most of the most interesting parts of Biology, Anthropology, and Neuroscience, mixed it with a bit of Philosophy, Computer Science, and Medicine, added a dash of Mathematics, and just a pinch of Sociology, then you would have Psychology. I like being in a field that crosses into so many other disciplines. I think that the most interesting ideas are those that don’t just have an impact in one small area of human knowledge. For me, evolutionary theory, because of its influence across so many fields, is one of the most interesting and important ideas.

My Research Interests

My recent research has ranged from comparative cognition/behavioral neuroscience to scholarship of teaching, but has focused primarily on evolutionary psychology/human ethology—particularly on the effects of facial similarity in mating and parental investment decisions, the effects of ovulation on mating judgments and risk perception, the effects of situational variables on judgment and risk-taking, the role of facial symmetry in mating judgments, and sex differences in response to relationship threat. I have presented research regularly at national and regional conferences, with 15 DePauw students in the last dozen years as co-authors, and published on occasion.

Selected Publications & Presentations

Moore, K. E., & Hertenstein, M.J. (2006). Charles Darwin. In N. Salkind (Ed.), Encyclopedia of measurement and statistics. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
(2009). Introductory Psychology Can Alter Student Views on Evolution and Psychology as a Science. Presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, May 22-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA.
(2009). Taking Psychology Beyond the Department: An Interdisciplinary Course in Evolution, Psychology, and Human Behavior. Presented at the annual meeting of the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology, January 3-6, 2009, St. Petersburg, FL.
(2007). Ovulation, risk perception, and behavior in women. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, May 2007, Washington, D.C.
(2007). Introductory psychology can effectively alter student knowledge and views of evolution, and views of psychology as a science. Presented at the annual meeting of the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology, January 2-6, 2007, St. Petersburg, FL.
(2006). Resemblance affects social and sexual judgments differently in men and women. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, May 2006, New York, NY.
(2005). Ovulatory Status in Women Affects Distress to Relationship Threats and Rival Characteristics. Poster Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Society, May, 2005, Los Angeles, CA.
(2005). The Effects of Metyrapone on Spatial Memory Performance in Shock-Stressed Rats. Poster Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Society, May, 2005, Los Angeles, CA.
(2001). Effects of Prenatal Stress and Postnatal Environment on Rat Exploration and Learning. Poster presented at the meeting of the American Psychological Society, June 2001, Toronto, Canada.
(1998). The roles of facial and feature symmetry in judgments of attractiveness. Poster presented at the meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, April 30-May 2, 1998, Chicago, IL.
(1998). Facial attractiveness and its relation with facial symmetry: A multidimensional scaling approach. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, May 21-24, 1998, Washington, D. C.