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ULM psychology professor presents in Boston

Published May 01, 2015

Dr. Kilian Garvey, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, delivered four research presentations at the 9th Annual North Eastern Evolutionary Psychology Society meeting in Boston, Mass., in early April.

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Garvey

Garvey’s presentations were co-authored with colleagues from Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.

One of Garvey’s projects was a paper, titled “Terror Management and Moral Inclusiveness: Death, Pain, and Saving the Family Dog,” which explored regional differences in resolving the ethical dilemma of saving a family member rather than five strangers on a railroad track.

In addition, Garvey presented the results of three different studies: “Regional Variation in Grooming;” “Exposure to Pathogens Predicts Increased Motivation to Coif, Environmental, Political, and Social Effects on Intellectual Creativity: Regional Differences in the MacArthur Genius Awards;” and “Beauty Pageants, Mating Effort, and Life History: De Facto Debutant Balls in Regions of the U.S. with Lower Life Expectancy.”

All of these studies have the common theme of exploring the relative pressures of regional differences in environmental threat and how it might affect a variety of judgement and decision tasks.

Garvey earned a B.A. in philosophy, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuropsychology. He has taught at ULM since 2012.


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