Ian Stephen

Ian Stephen

  • stepheni at bournemouth dot ac dot uk
  • Associate Professor of Psychology
  • Poole House P116, Talbot Campus, Fern Barrow, Poole, BH12 5BB
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Biography

I joined Bournemouth University as an Associate Professor in 2024. Before that, I held academic positions at Nottingham Trent University, Macquarie University (Australia) and The University of Nottingham (Malaysia) and research posts at the University of Bristol and the University of St Andrews. I hold a BSc (Hons) from UCL, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD from the University of St Andrews.

Research

My research focuses on person perception, which I approach from two main angles:

1. I am interested in understanding what aspects of physiology and psychology are reflected in our faces and bodies, and how our brains extract this information to form judgements. For example, is our health reflected in cues in our faces and bodies, and how do we use those cues to form perceptions of health and attractiveness?

2. I am interested in understanding the mechanisms that underlie our perceptions of our own and others' bodies. By understanding how these perceptions are formed, updated and maintained, we aim to provide the scientific basis for new treatments for body image disturbance and related mental health issues such as body dissatisfaction, eating disorders, and muscle dysmorphia.

I have supervised projects on these topics at undergraduate, honours, masters, and PhD level, and would be interested in hearing from prospective students with interests in these areas.

Journal Articles

  • Hall, B. et al., 2024. Registered Replication Report: A Large Multilab Cross-Cultural Conceptual Replication of Turri et al. (2015). Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 7 (4).
  • House, T., Stephen, I.D., Brooks, K.R., Bould, H., Attwood, A.S. and Penton-Voak, I.S., 2024. The effect of an odd-one-out visual search task on attentional bias, body size adaptation, and body dissatisfaction. Royal Society Open Science, 11 (7).
  • Ip, K., Kusyk, N., Stephen, I.D. and Brooks, K.R., 2024. Did you skip leg day? The neural mechanisms of muscle perception for body parts. Cortex, 171, 75-89.
  • Buchanan, E.M. et al., 2023. The Psychological Science Accelerator’s COVID-19 rapid-response dataset. Scientific Data, 10 (1).
  • House, T., Wong, H.K., Samuel, N.W., Stephen, I.D., Brooks, K.R., Bould, H., Attwood, A.S. and Penton-Voak, I.S., 2023. The relationship between body dissatisfaction and attentional bias to thin bodies in Malaysian Chinese and White Australian women: a dot probe study. Royal Society Open Science, 10 (9).
  • House, T., Graham, K., Ellis, B., Bould, H., Attwood, A.S., Stephen, I.D., Brooks, K.R. and Penton-Voak, I.S., 2023. Is body dissatisfaction related to an attentional bias towards low weight bodies in non-clinical samples of women? A systematic review and meta-analysis. Body Image, 44, 103-119.
  • Tzschaschel, E., Brooks, K.R. and Stephen, I.D., 2022. The valence-dominance model applies to body perception. Royal Society Open Science, 9 (9).
  • Legate, N. et al., 2022. Erratum: A global experiment on motivating social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (2022) 119 (e2111091119) DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2111091119). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 119 (36).
  • Dorison, C.A. et al., 2022. In COVID-19 Health Messaging, Loss Framing Increases Anxiety with Little-to-No Concomitant Benefits: Experimental Evidence from 84 Countries. Affective Science, 3 (3), 577-602.
  • Wang, K. et al., 2022. Erratum: Author Correction: A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic (Nature human behaviour (2021) 5 8 (1089-1110)). Nature human behaviour, 6 (9), 1318-1319.
  • Bago, B. et al., 2022. Situational factors shape moral judgements in the trolley dilemma in Eastern, Southern and Western countries in a culturally diverse sample. Nature Human Behaviour, 6 (6), 880-895.
  • Bago, B. et al., 2022. Erratum: Publisher Correction: Situational factors shape moral judgements in the trolley dilemma in Eastern, Southern and Western countries in a culturally diverse sample (Nature human behaviour (2022) 6 6 (880-895)). Nature human behaviour, 6 (6), 897-898.
  • Legate, N. et al., 2022. A global experiment on motivating social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 119 (22).
  • House, T., Stephen, I.D., Voak, I.S.P. and Brooks, K.R., 2022. The effect of attention on body size adaptation and body dissatisfaction. Royal Society Open Science, 9 (2).
  • Brooks, K.R., Bell, J., Boothroyd, L.G. and Stephen, I.D., 2021. Editorial: Experimental Approaches to Body Image, Representation and Perception. Frontiers in Psychology, 12.
  • Wong, H.K., Estudillo, A.J., Stephen, I.D. and Keeble, D.R.T., 2021. The other-race effect and holistic processing across racial groups. Scientific Reports, 11 (1).
  • Zopf, R., Kosourikhina, V., Brooks, K.R., Polito, V. and Stephen, I.D., 2021. Visual body-size adaptation and estimation of tactile distance. British Journal of Psychology, 112 (4), 1012-1027.
  • Brooks, K.R., Stevenson, R.J. and Stephen, I.D., 2021. Over or Under? Mental Representations and the Paradox of Body Size Estimation. Frontiers in Psychology, 12.
  • Wang, K. et al., 2021. A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nature Human Behaviour, 5 (8), 1089-1110.
  • Antar, J.C. and Stephen, I.D., 2021. Facial shape provides a valid cue to sociosexuality in men but not women. Evolution and Human Behavior, 42 (4), 361-370.
  • Hsieh, J.Y.J., Gwinn, O.S., Brooks, K.R., Stephen, I.D., Carragher, D.J. and Nicholls, M.E.R., 2021. The “cheerleader effect” in facial and bodily attractiveness: A result of memory bias and not perceptual encoding. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 74 (5), 972-980.
  • Jones, B.C., Stephen, I.D. et al., 2021. To which world regions does the valence–dominance model of social perception apply? Nature Human Behaviour, 5 (1), 159-169.
  • Brooks, K.R., Keen, E., Sturman, D., Mond, J., Stevenson, R.J. and Stephen, I.D., 2020. Muscle and fat aftereffects and the role of gender: Implications for body image disturbance. British Journal of Psychology, 111 (4), 742-761.
  • Sulikowski, D., Tan, K.W., Jones, A.L., Welling, L.L.M. and Stephen, I.D., 2020. Editorial: Perceptions of People: Cues to Underlying Physiology and Psychology. Frontiers in Psychology, 11.
  • Wong, H.K., Stephen, I.D. and Keeble, D.R.T., 2020. The Own-Race Bias for Face Recognition in a Multiracial Society. Frontiers in Psychology, 11.
  • Brooks, K.R., Mond, J., Mitchison, D., Stevenson, R.J., Challinor, K.L. and Stephen, I.D., 2020. Looking at the Figures: Visual Adaptation as a Mechanism for Body-Size and -Shape Misperception. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15 (1), 133-149.
  • Gould-Fensom, L., Tan, C.B.Y., Brooks, K.R., Mond, J., Stevenson, R.J. and Stephen, I.D., 2019. The Thin White Line: Adaptation Suggests a Common Neural Mechanism for Judgments of Asian and Caucasian Body Size. Frontiers in Psychology, 10.
  • Brooks, K.R., Baldry, E., Mond, J., Stevenson, R.J., Mitchison, D. and Stephen, I.D., 2019. Gender and the Body Size Aftereffect: Implications for Neural Processing. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 13.
  • Mahmut, M.K., Stevenson, R.J. and Stephen, I., 2019. Do women love their partner's smell? Exploring women's preferences for and identification of male partner and non-partner body odor. Physiology and Behavior, 210.
  • Stephen, I.D., Hunter, K., Sturman, D., Mond, J., Stevenson, R.J. and Brooks, K.R., 2019. Experimental manipulation of visual attention affects body size adaptation but not body dissatisfaction. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 52 (1), 79-87.
  • Wong, H.K. and Stephen, I.D., 2019. Eye tracker as an implied social presence: Awareness of being eye-tracked induces social-norm-based looking behaviour. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 12 (2).
  • Tan, K.W. and Stephen, I.D., 2019. Skin color preferences in a Malaysian Chinese population. Frontiers in Psychology, 10 (JUN).
  • Stephen, I.D., Salter, D.L.H., Tan, K.W., Tan, C.B.Y. and Stevenson, R.J., 2018. Sexual dimorphism and attractiveness in Asian and White faces. Visual Cognition, 26 (6), 442-449.
  • Brooks, K.R., Clifford, C.W.G., Stevenson, R.J., Mond, J. and Stephen, I.D., 2018. The high-level basis of body adaptation. Royal Society Open Science, 5 (6).
  • Tan, K.W., Tiddeman, B. and Stephen, I.D., 2018. Skin texture and colour predict perceived health in Asian faces. Evolution and Human Behavior, 39 (3), 320-335.
  • Stephen, I.D., Sturman, D., Stevenson, R.J., Mond, J. and Brooks, K.R., 2018. Visual attention mediates the relationship between body satisfaction and susceptibility to the body size adaptation effect. PLoS ONE, 13 (1).
  • Longman, D.P., Prall, S.P., Shattuck, E.C., Stephen, I.D., Stock, J.T., Wells, J.C.K. and Muehlenbein, M.P., 2018. Short-term resource allocation during extensive athletic competition. American Journal of Human Biology, 30 (1).
  • Challinor, K.L., Mond, J., Stephen, I.D., Mitchison, D., Stevenson, R.J., Hay, P. and Brooks, K.R., 2017. Body size and shape misperception and visual adaptation: An overview of an emerging research paradigm. Journal of International Medical Research, 45 (6), 2001-2008.
  • Stephen, I.D., Hiew, V., Coetzee, V., Tiddeman, B.P. and Perrett, D.I., 2017. Facial shape analysis identifies valid cues to aspects of physiological health in Caucasian, Asian, and African populations. Frontiers in Psychology, 8 (OCT).
  • Tan, K.W., Graf, B.A., Mitra, S.R. and Stephen, I.D., 2017. Impact of fresh fruit smoothie consumption on apparent health of Asian faces. Evolution and Human Behavior, 38 (4), 522-529.
  • Teoh, Y., Wallis, E., Stephen, I.D. and Mitchell, P., 2017. Seeing the world through others’ minds: Inferring social context from behaviour. Cognition, 159, 48-60.
  • Sturman, D., Stephen, I.D., Mond, J., Stevenson, R.J. and Brooks, K.R., 2017. Independent Aftereffects of Fat and Muscle: Implications for neural encoding, body space representation, and body image disturbance. Scientific Reports, 7.
  • Burke, D., Sulikowski, D., Stephen, I. and Brooks, R., 2017. Inconsistent with the data: Support for the CLASH model depends on the wrong kind of latitude. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 40, 16-17.
  • Stephen, I.D., Burke, D. and Sulikowski, D., 2017. Tinbergen's "four questions" provides a formal framework for a more complete understanding of prosocial biases in favour of attractive people. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 40.
  • Zuniga, A., Stevenson, R.J., Mahmut, M.K. and Stephen, I.D., 2017. Diet quality and the attractiveness of male body odor. Evolution and Human Behavior, 38 (1), 136-143.
  • Brierley, M.E., Brooks, K.R., Mond, J., Stevenson, R.J. and Stephen, I.D., 2016. The body and the beautiful: Health, attractiveness and body composition in men's and women's bodies. PLoS ONE, 11 (6).
  • Tan, C.B.Y., Sheppard, E. and Stephen, I.D., 2016. Recognizing Dynamic Faces in Malaysian Chinese Participants. Perception, 45 (3), 300-314.
  • Stephen, I.D., Bickersteth, C., Mond, J., Stevenson, R.J. and Brooks, K.R., 2016. No effect of featural attention on body size aftereffects. Frontiers in Psychology, 7.
  • Brooks, K.R., Mond, J.M., Stevenson, R.J. and Stephen, I.D., 2016. Body image distortion and exposure to extreme body types: Contingent adaptation and cross adaptation for self and other. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 10 (JUL).
  • Tan, C.B.Y., Sheppard, E. and Stephen, I.D., 2015. A change in strategy: Static emotion recognition in Malaysian Chinese. Cogent Psychology, 2 (1).
  • 38th European Conference on Visual Perception (ECVP) 2015 Liverpool. Perception, 44 Suppl 1, 1-415.
  • Tan, K.W., Graf, B.A., Mitra, S.R. and Stephen, I.D., 2015. Daily consumption of a fruit and vegetable smoothie alters facial skin color. PLoS ONE, 10 (7).
  • Van den Abbeele, J., Penton-Voak, I.S., Attwood, A.S., Stephen, I.D. and Munafò, M.R., 2014. Increased facial attractiveness following moderate, but not high, alcohol consumption. Alcohol and Alcoholism, 50 (3), 296-301.
  • Coetzee, V., Greeff, J.M., Stephen, I.D. and Perrett, D.I., 2014. Cross-cultural agreement in facial attractiveness preferences: The role of ethnicity and gender. PLoS ONE, 9 (7).
  • Stephen, I.D. and Perera, A.T.M., 2014. Judging the difference between attractiveness and health: Does exposure to model images influence the judgments made by men and women? PLoS ONE, 9 (1).
  • Stephen, I.D., 2014. Putting the theory before the data: Is "massive modularity" a necessary foundation of evolutionary psychology? Frontiers in Psychology, 5 (OCT).
  • Stephen, I.D. and Perera, A.T.M., 2014. Judging the differences between women's attractiveness and health: Is there really a difference between judgments made by men and women? Body Image, 11 (2), 183-186.
  • Stephen, I.D., Mahmut, M.K., Case, T.I., Fitness, J. and Stevenson, R.J., 2014. The uniquely predictive power of evolutionary approaches to mind and behavior. Frontiers in Psychology, 5 (NOV).
  • Tan, K.W. and Stephen, I.D., 2013. Colour detection thresholds in faces and colour patches. Perception, 42 (7), 733-741.
  • Stephen, I.D., 2013. Applied evolutionary psychology. BRITISH JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY, 104 (3), 438-439.
  • Danel, D.P., Fedurek, P., Coetzee, V., Stephen, I.D., Nowak, N., Stirrat, M., Perrett, D.I. and Saxton, T.K., 2012. A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Population-Specific Face Shape Preferences (Homo sapiens). Ethology, 118 (12), 1173-1181.
  • Whitehead, R.D., Ozakinci, G., Stephen, I.D. and Perrett, D.I., 2012. Whitehead et al. respond. American Journal of Public Health, 102 (10).
  • Park, J.H., van Leeuwen, F. and Stephen, I.D., 2012. Homeliness is in the disgust sensitivity of the beholder: Relatively unattractive faces appear especially unattractive to individuals higher in pathogen disgust. Evolution and Human Behavior, 33 (5), 569-577.
  • Stephen, I.D., Oldham, F.H., Perrett, D.I. and Barton, R.A., 2012. Redness enhances perceived aggression, dominance and attractiveness in men's faces. Evolutionary Psychology, 10 (3), 562-572.
  • Stephen, I.D., Scott, I.M.L., Coetzee, V., Pound, N., Perrett, D.I. and Penton-Voak, I.S., 2012. Cross-cultural effects of color, but not morphological masculinity, on perceived attractiveness of men's faces. Evolution and Human Behavior, 33 (4), 260-267.
  • Whitehead, R.D., Ozakinci, G., Stephen, I.D. and Perrett, D.I., 2012. Appealing to vanity: Could potential appearance improvement motivate fruit and vegetable consumption? American Journal of Public Health, 102 (2), 207-211.
  • Tan, C.B.Y., Stephen, I.D., Whitehead, R. and Sheppard, E., 2012. You look familiar: How malaysian chinese recognize faces. PLoS ONE, 7 (1).
  • Stephen, I.D., 2012. New directions in colour studies. BRITISH JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY, 103.
  • Stephen, I.D., Coetzee, V. and Perrett, D.I., 2011. Carotenoid and melanin pigment coloration affect perceived human health. Evolution and Human Behavior, 32 (3), 216-227.
  • Scott, I.M.L., Pound, N., Stephen, I.D., Clark, A.P. and Penton-Voak, I.S., 2010. Does masculinity matter? The contribution of masculine face shape to male attractiveness in humans. PLoS ONE, 5 (10).
  • Stephen, I.D. and McKeeganh, A.M., 2010. Lip colour affects perceived sex typicality and attractiveness of human faces. Perception, 39 (8), 1104-1110.
  • Coetzee, V., Chen, J., Perrett, D.I. and Stephen, I.D., 2010. Deciphering faces: Quantifiable visual cues to weight. Perception, 39 (1), 51-61.
  • Stephen, I.D., Law Smith, M.J., Stirrat, M.R. and Perrett, D.I., 2009. Facial skin coloration affects perceived health of human faces. International Journal of Primatology, 30 (6), 845-857.
  • Stephen, I.D., Coetzee, V., Smith, M.L. and Perrett, D.I., 2009. Skin blood perfusion and oxygenation colour affect perceived human health. PLoS ONE, 4 (4).
  • Coetzee, V., Perrett, D.I. and Stephen, I.D., 2009. Facial adiposity: A cue to health? Perception, 38 (11), 1700-1711.

Chapters

  • Stephen, I.D. and Luoto, S., 2023. Physical Cues of Partner Quality. The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology and Romantic Relationships. 42-73.
  • Stephen, I. and Sulikowski, D., 2019. Tinbergen's Four Questions. In: Shackelford, T. and Weekes-Shackelford, V., eds. Encyclopaedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer.
  • Stephen, I. and Stevenson, R., 2019. Pathogen Load and Attractiveness. In: Shackelford, T. and Weekes-Shackelford, V., eds. Encyclopaedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer.
  • Stephen, I.D. and Wei, T.K., 2015. Healthy body, healthy face? Evolutionary approaches to attractiveness perception. Culture and Cognition: A Collection of Critical Essays. 45-65.

Conferences

  • Wong, H.K., Keeble, D.R.T. and Stephen, I.D., 2023. Do they ‘look’ different(ly)? Dynamic face recognition in Malaysians: Chinese, Malays and Indians compared. British Journal of Psychology, 114 (S1), 134-149.
  • Wong, H.K., Stephen, I. and Keeble, D., 2017. The Importance of the First Fixation for Recognising Own- and Other-Race Faces: An Eye-Tracking Study. I-PERCEPTION, 8, 54.
  • Brooks, K.R., Sturman, D., Mond, J., Stevenson, R. and Stephen, I., 2016. The Neural Encoding of Bodies along the Dimensions of Fat and Muscle. PERCEPTION, 45, 83.
  • Brooks, K., Stephen, I., Murley, A., Mond, J. and Stevenson, D., 2015. Representation of Body Size for Self and Other: simple-, cross- and contingent adaptation. PERCEPTION, 44, 188.
  • Keeble, D., Wong, H.K. and Stephen, I., 2015. The Own-Race Bias for Face Recognition in Malaysians and Whites. PERCEPTION, 44, 23.
  • Perrett, D., Re, D., Whitehead, R., Stephen, I., Coetzee, V., Lefevre, C., Moore, F., Xiao, D. and Ozakinci, G., 2011. Face colour, health, lifestyle and attractiveness. PERCEPTION, 40, 23-24.

Preprints

  • Brooks, K., Stephen, I.D. and Mobbs, L., 2023. Experimental Manipulation of Visual Attention Affects Muscularity Perception.
  • Brooks, K., Stephen, I.D., Ip, K. and Kusyk, N., 2023. Did You Skip Leg Day? The Neural Mechanisms of Muscle Perception for Body Parts.
  • Brooks, K., Stephen, I.D. and marie.angela.echevarria@gmail.com, 2023. Looking Round: The viewpoint dependence of body size aftereffects.
  • House, T., Stephen, I.D., Brooks, K., Bould, H., Attwood, A.S. and Penton-Voak, I., 2023. The Effect of an Odd-One-Out Visual Search Task on Attentional Bias, Body Size Adaptation, and Body Dissatisfaction.
  • House, T., Wong, H.K., Stephen, I.D., Brooks, K., Bould, H., Attwood, A.S. and Penton-Voak, I., 2023. The Relationship Between Body Dissatisfaction and Engagement and Disengagement Bias to Body Size in Malaysian Women.
  • House, T., Graham, K., Ellis, B., Bould, H., Attwood, A.S., Stephen, I.D., Brooks, K. and Penton-Voak, I., 2022. Is Body Dissatisfaction Related to an Attentional Bias Towards Low Weight Bodies in Non-clinical Samples of Women? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.
  • House, T., Keat, W.H., Samuel, N.W.-Y., Stephen, I.D., Brooks, K., Bould, H., Attwood, A.S. and Penton-Voak, I., 2022. The relationship between body dissatisfaction and attentional bias to thin bodies in Malaysian Chinese and White Australian women: A dot probe study.
  • House, T., Stephen, I.D., Penton-Voak, I. and Brooks, K., 2021. The Effect of Attention on Body Size Adaptation and Body Dissatisfaction.
  • Stephen, I. and Luoto, S., 2021. Physical cues of partner quality.
  • Zopf, R., Kosourikhina, V., Brooks, K., Polito, V. and Stephen, I., 2020. Visual body size adaptation and estimation of tactile distance.
  • Gould-Fensom, L., Tan, C., Brooks, K., Mond, J., stevenson, D. and Stephen, I.D., 2019. The Thin White Line: Adaptation suggests a common neural mechanism for judgements of Asian and Caucasian body size.
  • Brooks, K., Keen, E., Sturman, D., Mond, J., stevenson, D. and Stephen, I.D., 2019. Muscle And Fat Aftereffects And The Role Of Gender: Implications For Body Image Disturbance.
  • Brooks, K., Baldry, E., Mond, J., stevenson, D., Mitchison, D. and Stephen, I.D., 2019. Gender and the Body Size and Shape Aftereffect: Implications for neural processing.