My Research
My research has covered a broad range of subjects. I tend to come from an evolutionary standpoint in all of the projects I work on. One large focus for me is the psychology of music, especially from an evolutionary perspective. I am currently supervising masters students and third-year undergraduate students on a research project looking at how "8-Dimensional" music can potentially help individuals with ADHD or ASD with focus and emotion-regulation.
Recently, I have become more interested in research on gender. One of my recent projects has looked at how internet usage for members of "Generation-Z" has influenced perceptions of feminism. I am additionally interested in the and the so-called "mating crisis," or recent dating trends in young people, including the boycott of dating.
I conducted my master’s thesis at the State University of New York at New Paltz, under Dr. Glenn Geher. This research focused on the evolutionary adaptiveness of being able to detect emotions that are being portrayed in music.
My doctoral work was completed under the instruction of Dr. Lauren Stewart, Dr. Keon West, and Dr. Jacques Launay. The main focus of my dissertation concerns how similarities in music preference influence social attraction. This project has two main goals: the first is to test and replicate previous literature on similar music taste and social attraction, the second is to examine what happens when individuals share some genre preferences but not others.
In addition, as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, I have started research examining how being apart from community singing groups is similar or different to separation from other community groups. Part of the focus of this project is understanding the uniqueness that is the experience of singing with others in a shared space at the same time.
Current Projects
Here is what I am currently working on:
"8-Dimensional" Music
This study examines the online and TikTok phenomenon known as 8-Dimensional (8D) music in order to assess its efficacy for concentration and emotion-regulation. Online sources argue that editing music such that it sounds like it is travelling around you is helpful for people with ADHD and Autism, however there is currently no empirical research supporting this phenomenon.
This research looks at groups of children and young adults with varying levels of ADHD or autistic symptoms to determine whether listening to 8D music improves focus and/or emotion-regulation beyond what other audio can do.
PsychTable
PsychTable.org is a collaborative taxonomy of Evolved Psychological Adaptations (EPA's) (Balachandran, 2011). The site aims to provide a dossier of compiled research relating to each EPA such that evidence can be evaluated by users for its merit. This process will help the scientific community find gaps in research that can be pursued in the future. We hope the tool can also be used for teaching students about evolutionary psychology and research in general.
Fem-Z
This project is looking at how social media usage and online presence influence perceptions of feminism for members of Generation-Z (GenZ). There have been several “waves” of feminism since the turn of the 20th century. However, changes in the focus of feminism, combined with the advent of the internet and online communities have altered the way feminism is perceived. This is visible in the proliferation of the #MeToo movement and online activism.
In contrast, some argue that the rise in arguably toxic spaces such as the “manosphere,” has come as a direct response to online feminist activism. By asking a diverse group of members of Gen-Z about their online social media usage and their perceptions of feminism, we hope to understand how social media use is related to changes in the way young people think about feminism.